Important Message

Brendon Pywell

Bob's Track Builder
Future Development

The past year has seen me work pretty much full time on BTB with a couple of side projects helping fund BTB development. That has meant between 12-16 hours every day with very few days off.

Whilst I have enjoyed indulging myself in BTB development and have added a lot of good features, continuing in this manner is not financially possible. Sales haven’t been anywhere near what is needed to sustain this rate of development.

My kids are growing older and naturally more demanding, the wife wants an occasional holiday and it would be irresponsible of me (and impossible) to continue solely on BTB income. A recent offer to join one of the leading game development teams at what they call "good income" still is a financial step backwards compared to what had been my regular job.

So, somewhat sadly, having given a lot to track building (very willingly of course) it is now time to devote more of my life to my family and to other areas of my life in order to live a more balanced existence.

Henceforth I am back into the regular development world and BTB development will continue at a more relaxed pace.

Licenses

Licenses are generated for a CPU and Motherboard.
I have had a few users request for licenses to be reset because they have had hardware failures. On occasion I get someone asking for a second license for another of their own machines, and after I reject their request, they later cite they hardware failure as a reason.

Given that I have no way of determining if a request for a new license after hardware failure is genuine or not; nor do I have any control over how well a user looks after their hardware; I have decided to reject all such requests. If your hardware fails, you will need to wait for your existing license to expire, then generate a HardwareId.txt file and upload it in order for a new license to be generated.

I will be resetting all licenses with v0.9 so if you are currently locked out because of hardware failure, you will be able to generate a new license again soon. If you wish to help test the Beta, then that will be even sooner.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Windows XP is listed as a requirement for BTB.

More people are moving to Windows 7 and hence are asking for me to reset their licenses so that they can run under the new operating system.
I still do not have either operating system and will refuse to assist anyone attempting to run BTB on anything other than Windows XP running on a PC.

The version 0.9 release does contain some updates to the 3rd-party HardwareId generation application so it will be more stable when generating the HardwareId number. This might help some users where the HardwareId number changes upon reboot or where removable drives are causing fluctuations.

Emails

Ironically, despite the lack of sales, I get many emails a day asking for free BTB/Track building help. This is something which I cannot personally answer in any kind of satisfactory detail. Please continue to use these forums as a primary resource of assistance.

And as usual ... please read the sticky threads. I do intend on updating these over time and the tutorial videos too, but I can't give a date on when that might happen.

Thanks,
Brendon.
 
You have turned us all into BTB monsters as we waited for food, now the monster wont be feed as often, hope we don't starve!!


Thanks for all the hard work and sacrifice from you and your family!




PS: Do you know our next feeding time is? I'm starving? (v0.9) :no:
 
hi,

Brendon thank you for all that time spent in development of BTB.

A remark anyway after this post about the problem of hardware changes, it may be common to charge people for wind in Australia but not very well seen in France to tell people not to use their software they have paid. What would you do after breaking a part on your car if your mechanic told you I did the command in 2, 3 or 6 months and meanwhile you're just looking at it because you can't use it?

I do not question at all your efforts to create and improve software, but this protection is really moldy. There should be less restrictive alternatives, and more, I do not think that BTB will be very pirated , I have not looked at this, but people should be most disturbed by this system are the users to pay in believe the lift problem.

@+
 
How about an upgrade charge for every major dot revision. So v.80-89 wouldn't require one, but .v8 to .v9 would. As long as the charge isn't ridiculous I'm sure you'd get a pretty high participation level.
(Maybe $20-$25 - US Dollars)

One other thought is that you use the machine name/domain as part of your license key generation. I know this sounds silly, but anyone running a windows network knows you can't have two machines with the same name.

Of course all the b!tchers out there will say... well what If I wanna change my computer name, what if I wanna change my network. I say If you spend that much time d!cking around with your setup, you should create a test environment and leave your production one alone.
 
DOH! Thanks for reminding me! I spend so much time in BTB I forgot I have a daughter :bulgy-eyes:

Good luck with what ever you do and thanks for what you have done.
Personally, I see no need to spend so much time on the project, it's extremely fluid the way it is. With the addition of AIW and in the near future more shading options (and possibly even more goodies), I really don't think you could make it much better. If it were any better it would replace 3dmax.

Cheers :beer:
 
Thanks Brendon for BTB,
at this point it is still the fastest way to start building new tracks, no matter
if BTB is not finished, its a really damn good peace of Software at this point.
Yes i wait for v0.9 because of the Hardware shading, this will just speed up
things when creating Textures. Right now i work on 3D models with 3dsmax
anyway so its not a hurry ;)

greets
Nedo
 
good luck brendon, btb is a fine product and it is still possible to build a track, no matter what missing.people will just have to learn to use simed to assisted them even more,

ed
 
My first post, time ago was to ALWAYS remember the cheap cost for this sofware that is giving the chance to create a track to hundreds of people that otherwise never could make it.
Unbelieveble software, easy to use... and without you Brendon today this software will be a dream only.
Personally I understand your feeling and I agree your choice.
One chance could be to ask for a little fare over any new important step or revision.
But now let me know in public explain what I cannot agree (and I hope this could be useful).
2 things (one that touch me personally):

1. I understand that the way to generate the ID etc. etc... do not cover you from the doubt that when a people ask for a new licence before it expires just for some changes to his hardware, he lies. But I think that the 99.9% of the people that follow you and the forum are really honest and so intersted into this software and your new upcoming release that they never lie... and if someone is not honest and you help him, well... this is the world... but obviously this must your personal decision

2. my Eng is poor I know and several times it is quite complex to explain issues in the correct way, as well as to avoid any misunderstanding; that sometime runs me into a rude appareance, but I hope you can understand that is not my intention to offend anybody!!
I wrot you sending my current licence and the "old" and "new" IDs asking for a new license if needs (please READ carefully: IF NEEDS!!!) because of I changed the OS from Vista64 to Seven64 and I found that ID changed also if the hardware is always the same one!
You answered the next days my email, but you said that you do not give techsupp to Vista and Seven.... It sound like a wrong answer on my side!
I asked for the use of BTB because of a new ID appears (only changing the OS and not the hardware) and this is strange.

I think you can answer:
A. no problem, the license is still active also if you changed the OS and the different hardwareID is only a nonsense
B. yes, also changing OS the license is no longer active, so I attached the new license

I think any other answer is not right, so please if you or another friend here is able to explain where I'm in wrong, let me know.
Sorry to have wrote so many words in a so bad English, but I did my best to be clear and gentle.
 
Thanks for all of your work and hopefully this is not the end anyway and you still find at least some time for btb development. It has changed the world of track building for us mortals. Anyway at least I haven´t even got the time to build tracks as fast as you have updated the program, so for me a slover updating is just fine. :) I actually think btb kind of has all the features already I need to build tracks. Only thing I am missing is better plugin for RBR with all the shadows and other stuff i have listed many times here.. THANK YOU PIDDY ! your a great guy!

ps. BTB is not expensive program. Buy it . everyone. donate if you have any loose money!
 
I would like to start by saying many thanks to Brendon for dedicating so much of your life to this software. It's fantastic and before it came along I would spend a lot of time sketching tracks when I was bored and imagining I could drive them. It really is fantastic that I can do it for real now (or at least virtually).

I don't have many complaints, but I would like to say that I am only 17 years old and am still at college, and therefore am not earning much money. What money I do earn from a saturday job goes straight towards learning to drive on the road and racing karts in real life as this is my real passion, therefore I do not have enough money to pay for each new upgrade as some people have suggested, no matter how cheap it may be. I haven't even been able buy BTB evo even though GTR2 is still my preferred game and I barely ever play rFactor.

I would also like to say that although BTB is now working for me, I have spent months in the past having not been able to use the software which I own due to license problems. This is not because of hardware failures or changing my system or anything like that, it was just because my license appeared to expire early. While I accept that you may not want to move to Vista or 7, as a software developer I think that it is important that you are able to support newer operating systems even if you don't want to use them yourself. As you say, more and more people are moving to Windows 7 and you simply can't expect people not to do so just because one piece of software that they own is not supported.

Please understand that my criticisms are intended to be constructive. I very much sympathise with your financial situation especially considering how people are increasingly unwilling to buy new software due to the recession etc. I only ask that you understand and take into consideration my point of view.

Thanks,
Dave
 
Stop whining guys, this program gives you joy for hours, days, months, years and it's only 50 bucks once!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You probably spend less than a cent per hour of playing with this amazing program! The saddest thing is that you are still *****ing about this!
How much do you spend on beer every week?! How much you spend going out to have fun once?! How much you spend on fast food, though you are capable of making your own sandwich for a fraction of the cost?!
Get your priorities straight!
This program is easily worth 100 bucks every year!
And once again, it gives you hours upon hours upon hours of joy!!!
 
Fully agreed... sometimes people sounds like have a scorpion in their pockets... not allowed to put hands into...


Stop whining guys, this program gives you joy for hours, days, months, years and it's only 50 bucks once!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You probably spend less than a cent per hour of playing with this amazing program! The saddest thing is that you are still *****ing about this!
How much do you spend on beer every week?! How much you spend going out to have fun once?! How much you spend on fast food, though you are capable of making your own sandwich for a fraction of the cost?!
Get your priorities straight!
This program is easily worth 100 bucks every year!
And once again, it gives you hours upon hours upon hours of joy!!!
 
Stop whining guys, this program gives you joy for hours, days, months, years and it's only 50 bucks once!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You probably spend less than a cent per hour of playing with this amazing program! The saddest thing is that you are still *****ing about this!
How much do you spend on beer every week?! How much you spend going out to have fun once?! How much you spend on fast food, though you are capable of making your own sandwich for a fraction of the cost?!
Get your priorities straight!
This program is easily worth 100 bucks every year!
And once again, it gives you hours upon hours upon hours of joy!!!
If what you are saying is aimed at me, I don't think you fully understood what I wrote.

I know that the majority of BTB users are a lot older than me, have full time jobs and can afford to pay extra for software, in which cases I understand what you're saying. However, like I have already stated, I spend every spare penny which I earn on racing in real life. I struggle to pay for it and have to make many sacrifices in my life to do it. I hardly ever go out and spend money with my friends because I simply cannot afford to, I don't go out and buy fast food, I make my own sandwiches like you say. However, it is worth every penny to me because motorsport is what gives me the joy that you talk about.

BTB to me is not my priority (although I may enjoy it when I'm in my computer, and I have spent many hours playing around with it). Therefore if every upgrade had to be paid for I would simply not be able to pay it, because I accept that you simply cannot buy what you can't afford. That would make me very sad indeed, and that is all I was trying to say.

I'm sorry to have a go, but I really don't appreciate being told to 'stop whining' and that I don't 'have my priorities right' when as a matter of fact, you don't know what my priorities are.
 
It's fantastic and before it came along I would spend a lot of time sketching tracks when I was bored and imagining I could drive them. It really is fantastic that I can do it for real now (or at least virtually).

Same, I just got my license and everything sorted out today, can't wait to start BTBing them. I can definatley understand the maintanaince fees and all, while BTB is a difficult program at first, it is loads of fun and to pay back brendon for his hard work, and keeping up a job ontop of that Is extrarordinary to me. Like dave i'm still a teenager, so I don't know everything even if I act like I do, which usually I don't, If I do it sometimes too, I'm sorry. Also, I can easily understand your prediciment brendon, keep up the good work though, bank wise and BTB wise.
 

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