Is there demand for an additional skin pack(s)?

Björn · Jul 4, 2014

Hey guys,

during today's Mini Friday TS session, the topic of Alex' FBMW livery initiated a brief discussion on car skins other than WTCC/Minis.
Personally, I've always liked both the variety and the ability to make a car 'yours' our skin packs offer, and given the size of the WTCC and Mini packs, I think I'm not the only one

With WTCC and STCC2 alternating, I think it would be a great idea to introduce a STCC2 skin pack or incorporate it into the WTCC one to form a new 'TCC skinpack' allowing every driver to have up to 2 skins (one for each series) added to it - it just so happens that the STCC2 templates are already present in our download resources

But why stop there? I just scoured the webs for more templates and I think I got everything covered - Caterhams, Rads, F3000, FBMW, IFM, FRR (should we ever drive it

), Retro's, WTCC87, GTs.. everything we've driven for the past months seems to be there

However, all combined and 7zipped weighs in at a whopping ~175MB, might've to be splitted for comfort

However, before any uploads are started - would there be actual interest in this? If so, in which varieties?

- alter the WTCC skin pack to a new one combining it with STCC2 skins?
- add a new STCC2 skin pack?
- add a new 'miscellaneous' skin pack?

Dennis Phelan · Jul 4, 2014

I'm good with it, as long as there's someone to make my Team Margarita cars for me

Björn · Jul 5, 2014

Just took a glance at your Mini skin, color scheme's pretty simple, not many graphical elements, I might just do these as needed

Arne Dopudja · Jul 6, 2014

Make a general RD skinpack for Race07. Inside the RD folder, there should be subfolders for each driver and in their folder all the files needed for their skins to work. Style of file placement inside those folders is dependand on every person but once they make up how they want to do it, they should stick to it so updates only overwrite what has been changed and there is no mismatching, duplicating or other problems.

If its is a 500mb skinpack, why not? I mean, we live in 2014 where 500mb is nothing.

Arunas · Jul 6, 2014

Yes, great idea, especially when we drive FBMW's

I'm ready for creating my new skins

ajokay · Jul 7, 2014

You'll not hear me complaining. 50% of my time spent on racing sims is making liveries for the cars, as one day I hope for it to be my career! It's great to be able to see who you're racing against from a glance of their livery.

I too have all the templates for everything is anyone needs any.

Björn · Jul 7, 2014

Arne Dopudja said:
Make a general RD skinpack for Race07. Inside the RD folder, there should be subfolders for each driver and in their folder all the files needed for their skins to work. Style of file placement inside those folders is dependand on every person but once they make up how they want to do it, they should stick to it so updates only overwrite what has been changed and there is no mismatching, duplicating or other problems.

If its is a 500mb skinpack, why not? I mean, we live in 2014 where 500mb is nothing.

Great point(s), especially as the Mini skinpack weighs in at just below 15mb although it contains quite a lot of (partially inactive) skins.
Cleaning it up (deleting drivers who have been inactive for X months) every once in a while, I think a 'global' skinpack should be a good way of handling things - as long as @Justin Swan / staff in general are okay with that, of course

File structure per user sounds good and would actually help with cleaning up since one wouldn't have to check all folders for a certain user's skins.
As far as subfolders are concerned.. yeah, I'd leave it up to each user, with the restriction that it's kept at one level beneath that user's folder, e.g.

- RD Race07 Skinpack (root folder)
--- John Doe
----- FBMW (dds & ini files in here)
----- Leon (dds & ini files in here)
----- IFM (dds & ini files in here)
and so on..

ajokay · Jul 9, 2014

is there any advance on this idea?

Björn · Jul 9, 2014

Are we gonna do it? Judging from the response so far... yes!

However, I'm gonna wait until after tomorrow's race for staff response(s) in terms of organisation, in specific whether or not we merge existing skin packs into this new one - I'm gonna 'interview' Dennis on that during the race hoping he'll get distracted enough to let me by

One way or another, it's gonna happen, so 'get skinning' if you want

I might actually start uploading the templates later on, but you're all set in that matter, anyway

Dennis Phelan · Jul 9, 2014

@Justin Swan does all the work on skinpacks so you might want to get in touch with him on this. He's laying low right now a response might not be too quick.

Björn · Jul 11, 2014

Okay, here's how we're gonna do this (for now)

I don't want to get this on an 'official track' of any type (with or sans merger with the current packs) without Justin's input/approval but some of you might want to power up the paint shops/brushes/crayons

So, let's just keep everthing in this topic for the time being, you can post links (dropbox, mega, whatever suits you) to your finished skins in here and I'm going to assemble them into a pack later.
If we're ready to go 'official' by then, we're gonna move everything into new topics with 'rules', guidelines etc, otherwise I'm going to post a link to the pack here and in the relevant events' topics

As fate would have it, we're running the muscle cup cars next Thursday which hasn't happened for quite a while (not in my time at RD, anyway

) - they weren't in the template pack so far, so I added it a few moments ago: http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/race-07-additional-templates.2668/
Should one or more skins be submitted for this class, the first version of the pack will, of course, be posted prior to Thursday's event

Gentlemen, start your imaging software