Reiza please consider editable files

[morsify]

Reiza,
this is definitely the best incarnation of GSC so far, but I must ask you again, please let us edit some of the files.
Many of us enjoy the fact that the AI are very good to race offline, perhaps the best I have seen.

I am not an expert by any means but I have learnt a fair bit about editing the Gmotor files over the years, and with access to hdv & engine files, I can build a season where the racing is extremely close, the tyre wear and fuel usage closely match mine, the field behaves realistically, there are mechanical failures in line with the racing era, and the pit stops become an important part of the strategy.

You know far more than I do, and you therefore know that it is difficult, with these files locked away, to really enjoy any more than short sprint races. So while it works ok for the Stocks and the Minis, the discrepancies are too noticeable on a 70 lap formula 1 race. There is no way to adjust these discrepancies and keep the racing close for the entire race.

You know what I am asking. I respect your work completely, but I do not understand why this tweaking is discouraged. It is surely what the GMotor engine was designed for, to allow the user to access and control the race experience.
It would give your brilliant game a much wider appeal and longevity.

The same applies to the race calendar. First, there is no way of knowing what the next race is until you actually go there, which seems strange. Secondly, we should be able to edit and choose the order of races, to alter the season. Again, more longevity for the game. Let's not fool ourselves, I know that you know, that we use other tracks. But even your team members have produced some superb addon tracks, so for instance we cannot even include Alex's tracks in a custom season. This is surely a must have option in current race sims, to be able to alter the season from year to year.

I am not moaning about the quality of your game, I think it is excellent, and also great value. But please consider what I have asked. Many of us enjoy offline racing only.
Thank you if you have read any of this.

regards
Keith

 

[DavidMk7]

I couldn’t agree more Keith. GSC2012 was bad enough, but they’ve locked us out of even more stuff in 2013.

For health reasons I always edit out the windscreens and enable auto-blip and lift on all of my sim cars. In rFactor and its other relatives, this is usually doddle, as I can easily amend the appropriate .gen or .hdv file (or the equivalent file for the particular game). If I can’t do so, then the mod or car gets deleted. This was also possible in the original GSC, but by 2012 the .hdv file had gone and now the .gen file has vanished too.

At the risk of offending someone, but this general trend in PC sims is really p*****g me off. Assetto Corsa and Project Cars seem not to be user configurable at all (at least from a car and track perspective), rFactor 2 is, but hides it behind the awful mod packaging system and now GSC has gone all ‘Iron Curtain’ on us too. Editing the files and turning the games into ‘your’ sim was always one of the best aspects of PC games for me, but, with this drive away from user customisation, they might as well all just convert their products onto the PS4 or Xbox One.

I love GSC2013; the new vehicles are brilliant and I think it’s probably the best sim out there at the moment (until AC matures anyway). But I find the lack of control incredibly frustrating and annoying and it definitely taints the experience for me.

I also appreciate that they are trying to prevent cheating and mismatches in multi-player. But there has to be a better way than this. I don’t race on-line at all and it infuriates me that the single player experience is affected by changes made to fix an on-line only problem. Hopefully, with their next game being built in-house from the ground up, Rieza can approach the problem from a different perspective and find a way to implement solutions to the multi-play issues that won’t compromise the single player side of the game.

 

[morsify]

Agreed. My main complaint as an offline racer is that editing some of the files is the only real way to make long races a close challenge from beginning to end. The best example is in the pit stops.
No matter how I set the difficulty, race length or fuel or tyre multipliers, by the time I have raced for more than forty five minutes and had at least one pit stop, at least one discrepancy has shown up and I usually end up in front or racing on my own, and the main reason is that the AI take longer in the pits.

If I can edit the HDV file it is a different story. I can create a separate HDV for myself with a 'slower' pit crew, and I then have races of an hour or more where the racing is extremely close from start to finish.

And that is not to mention all the other fuel and power tweaks that can be made to add realism to the behaviour, performance and reliability of the whole grid. Such a shame that all this is hidden from us.

I am finding ways round some of it, and I am still impressed with GSC2013, but I really wish Reiza would reconsider this.

 

[Renato Simioni]

Hiding the files has probably been the most effective anti-piracy measure we have taken to protect our content from being converted left, right and center. So while we understand this frustrates the desire some have for tweaking things on their own, the fact of the matter is that this measure protects our assets to a vital extent.

We very much welcome the feedback on what could be improved on however - I think we have a good record of keeping our ears open to the community in that regard. Lay it out so we can try make things better for everyone.

 

[morsify]

OK, thank you very much for replying, it is much appreciated and understood, and certainly very fair.

1) Above all I think we want the option to choose how many pit stops and how much fuel. I am aware that it is not in keeping with the real championships, but the ability to change this is a major one for offline players.

The biggest reason is this: of all the ways I have found to edit the AI performance in order to match them to mine, fuel is the single biggest equaliser. In every set of vehicles that exists in this game and any of the gmotor games, the tyre wear is usually nigh on impossible to match to the player through an entire race, especially with only the multiplier option in the menu and no other edits possible. Even if the racing is close to start with , very soon the difference is noticed, either by the AI needing to pit while the player continues merrily on, or vice versa.
But the fuel strategy actually works, because it can be used in combination with the fuel multiplier in the menu. Using both, I can make sure that all cars are forced to pit, at roughly the same time, either once, twice or three times in a long race. And if I set this correctly, the tyres are no longer a spoiling factor because they do not get chance to wear out too much. Then all I need to do is adjust the difficulty and talent files to match the ability to mine.
So the ability to have the cars pit for fuel is VITAL in keeping the AI competition in line with the player's ability.

2) car reliability. In the 70s and 80s, (and I sat and watched these races so yes I am unfortunately that old ), over half of the field usually failed to finish in a Formula 1 race. I know this doesn't matter to many players, but when an offline player has gone to great lengths to make the racing close and challenging for a full 1.5 hours, and is fighting in 7th position just outside the points, the occasional car pulling off on the side of the track is a welcome and realistic sight.
I used to be able to point each veh file to a different engine file (yes, 24 or more different engine files). They were all identical except for the engine lifetime figures, so that for example in the F_Classics, Prost finished just about every race, but Lauda in the same car was lucky to finish a single one all year - exactly as it was in 85.
You have taken away the ability to add these files because the game always looks for the hidden hdv, so I can no longer tell each car to use a different engine.
I would be over the moon to learn of a way of overriding this without accessing the hdv, but I don't think it is possible.
So yes I would like to access the hdv file. Over the years, and certainly over the past three years with GSC, it has allowed me to create the best offline racing I have ever experienced. But if that is not possible, and I do understand your reasons, then the fuel strategy alone would be a very welcome amendment to the cars.

3)as mentioned in my previous post, I often notice that I pit much quicker than the AI. I never cut corners or cheat, I think the AI must be more cautious entering the pits and getting back up to speed. But in GSC 1, with access to the PITMENU in the hdv, and using a separate hdv for my own car, I could make my pit stops take several seconds longer, and so I was able to match my stops with theirs, so I ended up entering and leaving the pits at the same time, and it made the racing extremely close and exciting. Is there any way at all to add some way to access the PITMENU options? And even better, to be able to edit them for a) the whole field, or b) the whole field except the player or c) just the player.? I seriously doubt it, but it is worth asking

There are other ingredients that make the racing closer and exciting offline, but I have gone on far too long already.

Thanks again if you have read this far, here's hoping you might be willing to consider this.

 

[Nox]

Personally I'd like to be able to set up custom championships too. (If there is a way, feel free to point me in the right direction).

 

[DavidMk7]

That’s fine, I fully understand the need to defeat the pirates, but can’t you give us more control from within the game itself? With a more open game like rFactor, that’s probably difficult, but with GSC’s cars all being created by you, I would have thought it quite possible. For me, that would mean adding a ‘no visible windscreen’ option and an option to override the blip and lift setting in the hdv. That is, rather than auto-lift and auto-blip being on/off functions, give them 3 settings; ‘off’, ‘on where applicable for the vehicle type’ and ‘on at all times’, which should cater for all tastes. I don’t mind whether these settings are controlled through the game interface or the player.ini, though I do think it’s about time that there was an ‘advanced options’ page where more of the .ini functions could be changed from within the game.

As an alternative to this, could you not perhaps employ a system which allowed ‘loose’ versions of some files. By this, I mean in the same way that GPL allows you to place an amended file into a car or track folder and this overwrites the file in the .dat. The uneditable file could still need to be present for the game to work (and perhaps be the only file used in multi-player, to avoid mismatches), but we could create a second version in the car folder that allowed us to change certain parameters that would be used instead of the settings in the main file.

I have to agree entirely with the need for some sort of custom championship option. One of GSC’s biggest problems is that you do find yourself repeating pretty much the same season over and over again, just with different cars. With a host of add-on tracks now available, it would be nice to have the facility to easily create a custom championship from within the game. Preferably, this would allow for different qualifying types and points systems.

On a less important note (and I appreciate that I’m digressing a bit here), I know not everyone uses the ‘look back’ option, but I do, as do many others, and it seems to me that there’s something lacking in the implementation. You have gone to the effort of putting rearward graphics in, but, as the whole purpose of the ‘look back’ function is to be able to see what’s behind, it does seem rather pointless having a graphic which blocks your view so much. As a result, I imagine that anyone who does use this option immediately makes a bee-line for their player.ini and disables the graphics. This is a shame, as I think it looks quite good when you ‘look back’ and can see the interior of the car.

So would it be possible to amend the rearward graphics by removing the image of the seat? If you were to look backwards, you wouldn’t look straight through the back of your head anyway, you’d turn your body and look around the seat. So, while ‘look back’ isn’t realistic, you could argue that it is even less so with the seat in place. Take a look at the Mini, which has a great ‘look back’ view, where you can see the interior of the car, but you can also still see the track behind you. The V8 has the worst rear interior though, where you can’t see anything at all. Couldn’t you expand the window considerably to allow a reasonable view of the track behind. OK, so it wouldn’t be realistic, but then, ‘look back’ view isn’t realistic anyway. But at least it should be useful!

Some of the single seaters have peculiar rearward graphics that consist only of wheels and suspension parts and it would be nice if any wings and rear bodywork were included. So long as they didn’t completely block your view of course!

Oh, and can I just say after reading the post about new content, I would be more than happy to pay good money for these features. The auto-blip/lift thing in particular is very important to me, as the problem with my legs greatly affects the amount of time I can spend sim racing and will probably have an influence on my mobility in later life (and the effect that windscreens have on my eyes also reduces the time I can spend driving some cars). Hell, I’d be willing to pay someone for my own personal copy of game, if it did what I wanted it to do.

 

[Vaillant]

Hiding the files ...

Please, Reiza, don't .... "show" those files

 

[Jeff Huber]

You know.....I just wanted to jump in here and say " How cool is it to have the game Dev crew in here to actually listen to the players? "......

It's beyond cool! Some awesome ideas being thrown around.....and I can't wait to see how this "beyond awesome sim " evolves over the next few years. So many possibilities......and I think I jumped into the sim racing thing at the right time!

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

I think it's great that Reiza has found a way to curtail piracy. As with all kind of piracy, those that actually paid for the software are the ones that usually suffer. This is not reiza's fault but the way life is, unfortunately.

However, a system of overrides or an "Advanced" screen in the UI would be very welcome.

For instance I start many SP races only to get out when the pit stop rotation goes out of sync or, worse yet, I lose the group by simply being too fast or too slow. I would like to set the AI to display multiple skill levels inside one race, the way real SImracing races actually work. That way even if I weren't at the front, I would still be able to race backmarkers and I would be able to set the AI level higher without having to tune it for each car to perfection.

Probably the Override system would be faster and easier to implement. By keeping most of the files locked and allowing an override only on those items that count for AI and other settings no one would have access to the entire file.

 

[morsify]

The override menu Corrado suggests would be a fantastic solution if it were possible.
Create a separate hdv file for the player, also hidden of course, and then include an Advanced Menu in the game - it would include the PITMENU options from both the AI hdv and the player hdv, so it would then be possible to adjust refuelling, damage, driver changes, pit times etc.

Davidmk7, the loose file system you suggest actually already works. But we do not have an example of an hdv to be able to insert it. This is why I asked Reiza for access to the file. But I also respect their fight against piracy, so if there is any way round this, a way for us to add the necessary overrides into the game, I am all for it.

Also, did you know you can clear your rear view in the plr file? Just look for 'self in rearview' and set it to 0

 

[Ho3n3r]

Also, did you know you can clear your rear view in the plr file? Just look for 'self in rearview' and set it to 0

Bloody hell, I was wondering about that all through the VSCC race last night. When viewing back, I see a little hole through the back window, seeing only the edge of the road, and the sky...

That'll teach me to get the game so late. Thanks for the tip

 

[DavidMk7]

"Also, did you know you can clear your rear view in the plr file? Just look for 'self in rearview' and set it to 0"

Yes I did Keith. That’s’ what I meant by ‘I imagine that anyone who does use this option immediately makes a bee-line for their player.ini and disables the graphics’. It’s certainly what I do.

I hadn’t realised that ‘loose files’ worked already in principle. What I was trying to suggest is that they allow a sort of mini version, which is editable, but doesn’t contain all the information in the main file, so can’t be used to replace it entirely. Or, perhaps, the file is split into 2, with part hidden and part loose and editable. Of course, I’m no programmer and have no idea what is or isn’t feasible, but I do hope that there is some sort of alternative system that can protect the game, whilst still allowing us to enjoy it to its maximum.

 

[Juha Vainio]

Personally I'd like to be able to set up custom championships too. (If there is a way, feel free to point me in the right direction).

Sorry to dig up this old post, but I like so much driving Mini's and driving offline championships. And have question that is maybe related to this "custom championship".

Is it possible to change the tracks that are included in Mini (or any other car) championship?

I like the game a lot. But it would be better if track set would be everytime different when you start championship. There is lot of tracks to choose from, so why I need to drive in same tracks all the time? I know that in "single race" selection I can select track, but random tracks in championship would be much more fun.

Juha

 

[Wedsley Dias]

Sorry to dig up this old post, but I like so much driving Mini's and driving offline championships. And have question that is maybe related to this "custom championship".

Is it possible to change the tracks that are included in Mini (or any other car) championship?

I like the game a lot. But it would be better if track set would be everytime different when you start championship. There is lot of tracks to choose from, so why I need to drive in same tracks all the time? I know that in "single race" selection I can select track, but random tracks in championship would be much more fun.

Juha

I believe this is a desire of many, including me.

@FerrariMan96 had a workaround to the previous version, but for "Extreme" I think we still have nothing for now...

 

[morsify]

For the Extreme version, it is easy to do manually as Reiza have brought the rfm files back.
Just go to the rFm folder and open the rfm file of your chosen cars.
reiza03.rfm is the mini challenge file.
Scroll down to the SceneOrder section and enter the circuits you want to drive. The circuit must be spelt exactly as it is named for the AIW and GDB files.
As always, don't forget to back up the rfm first.

 

[Wedsley Dias]

@Keith Windsor is really possible, but I would like an friendly solution through the UI.

 

[Wedsley Dias]

Double post (Delete this).

 

[Catlin]

Edit*

Didn't read properly

 

[FerrariMan96]

@Wedsley Dias My workaround was quite simple for the 2013 version... what I needed to do was work out the names of the rFM files, hidden in the 2013 version (but now in full view for GSC Extreme). Basically what I did is replaced the UI with the GSC2012 UI which showed the rFM name when you selected a different one!

Also regarding the 'friendly solution'... remember that GSC is essentially rFactor on steroids, and because rF didn't have this feature neither does GSC. Reiza probably could implement it but I'm no programmer so I wouldn't know.

I've just thought of something though. Now that the rFM files aren't hidden, it's possible that you could use CTDP's Championship Manager NX to create championships for GSC (just point it to your GSC directory rather than rF) - I haven't tried it but it might work...