Where's all the racers?

[Vaughn Stegeman]

Now, i haven't been around here very long. But even in the short time I HAVE been here, I've been noticing a fall-off in the numbers of club race entries.
Why is that? Have I bought a dead (or dying) game here?
Race 07 is a lot of fun!! It was hailed as getting the most out of the physics engine. Its graphics still look fine to me (tho, as often noted, a bit lacking in the perception of speed) and SimBin apparently has a good reputation for their force-feedback and tracks and cars ...
What's going on here?
Is it the new games coming out? I don't quite get that, since both Asetto Corsa and rFactor 2 are still not yet actually released.
Why do people appear to be abandoning Race 07??
I just don't understand.
C'MON people!! Get in on these races. They just aren't that much fun with grids of 5 people.
To me, just because a game was released 6 years ago doesn't make it 'old' or render it somehow 'unplayable'. And I don't understand how ANY racing game could ever become boring. After all, it's about you vs. the other drivers. Or you vs. the car and track vs. yourself. What's boring about that?
HELL!! If I could get it to run right, I'd still be playing Sports Car GT!!! That was and still is a great game.

 

[H34d5h07]

Myself has been driving around at Le mans 2004 with the GT1 and GT3 mod. OMG. such fun!!

 

[Guus]

Currently really enjoying the GTR2 cars http://www.drivingitalia.net/forum/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=2582

 

[Calum McLure]

Just done a few laps in the 2010 DTM around the 2011 Silverstone, would definitely do a race with that combo

Didn't think there was that many mods for R07 really so cheers for this thread

 

[Leon Charmant]

The major point with mods, whether they are cars or tracks, is that we must be able to retrieve whether they are legal and authorized. That means that illegal conversions, for which no permission was granted by the original author, can't be used at RaceDepartment.

As far as I know the mods I listed in my big post on the previous page are all legal and could therefore be used. I've asked around regarding this topic, hopefully we'll hear about it soon.

In the meantime I'll fire up the DTM's on Silverstone 2011!

 

[H34d5h07]

I am pretty sure mods from this site is legal as well: One of the modder, I know from prevois work, and as far as I can tell, she is highly liked and all that:

 

[Vaughn Stegeman]

OH NOES!! yet another source for MOAR MODS!! ... but .. but ... I don't have room!! My Race 07 install is already near 30 gigs!! My largest game install EVER

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Lol Daniel Linder that someone is liked doesnt mean its content is legal, which in this case it isn't so ill remove the link.

Shift2 conversions to Race 07, how can you even think that is legal?

 

[H34d5h07]

Lol Daniel Linder that someone is liked doesnt mean its content is legal, which in this case it isn't so ill remove the link.

Well, im no expert, thats for sure. But in all "read me" files. they or she is always gives credits to orginal modder and also say they gotten permission to use orginal creators work. But yeah. it's the internet. People lie and cheat for sure. But as an casual user, All I have to go on is thier word. And the rumor.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Well if the title says SHIFT2U -> Race 07 you can credit whatever you want but that doens't make it legal. Its still stealing copyright work from other game developers.

Going by peoples word and rumors is exactly why all this illegal stuff keeps on spreading and being used. Wish people start realizing what damage this does to the small niche industry we are in.

At some point sim racing will completely disappear and we can all play Forza 45 on the Xbox 1440

 

[Vaughn Stegeman]

Well, since you bring it up ... I don't really understand the whole foo-farah around allegedly illegal mods. What damage DOES it do? Sim racing isn't going to disappear in any case, I'm sure. It's been around forever, and will continue. Many times over the years have I read of the demise or downfall of various "simulation"-style games, being a niche market and all that. Yet from what I see, the sim-games are still around and doing just fine.
Copyright in a digital world is something that is still being hashed out. Sure, laws have been enacted. But many of the provisions therein have not been court-tested. Only time will tell.
Personally, considering all the work and modification that must be done to convert content from one game or platform to another, I think it's arguable that conversion mods could well be considered derivative works, which are indeed legal under current copyright law.
..
I dunno tho. I guess there's strong opinions on both sides here.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

What damage does it do?

Simple example. The day Game Stock Car came out me and others paid the full prize to purchase the game and support the developers (that make games to make a living).

In the first week the servers were not really crowded with maybe 25 to 50 players all the time.

The day the game came out some morron that I won't name here SandroX decided to port the entire game over to rFactor and released it as his own "mod".

Result: empty servers in the GSC lobby as people can't be arsed to pay a whopping 20 dollars anymore and crowded rFactor servers where 100s of cheapass freeloaders were playing the "mod" for free.

This damages in two ways:

1. People like myself paid for a game that at first hardly had any online activity. Some might even think twice to buy another game next time as freeloading obviously pays off.
2. Company loses out on sales -> income decline -> etc -> etc -> etc

Fairly simple to understand why this isn't a healthy thing to do I think.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Besides there is a very good alternative to illegal ports. Have a look at all the creative people in the Bob's Track Builder forums that build kick ass scratch build tracks for the community for free. http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/forums/bobs-track-builder.162/

That is what modding is all about (at least it used to be): creating beautiful things from scratch.

Ripping content from other games and quickly port it over is just stealing. No creativity involved there, just a cheapass egocentric attitude.

 

[Vaughn Stegeman]

BTW, just want to say that I mean absolutely NO contention regarding this. I am legitimately curious, if now a little confused. The sim-racing community is certainly the only sim-community I'm involved with that has this much concern on this issue.

Hmm. interesting case you've pointed out. That is rather extreme however, no?
Also, while I've not played either of those games, I would think the physics and graphics and gamepley etc... would be quite different between those two games. I mean, he didn't port THE GAME itself to rFactor, but he did port the content. That is a pretty big difference. And in that porting, I would think the physics et al would have changed quite a bit.
From what I see online, GSC is doing just fine these days. If I'm reading correctly, it has more players than Race 07 these days.
All I know is that I love mods. One of the first things I do when I buy a new game (after playing it vanilla for a few hours to 'get the feel of it') is go looking to see what mods are available for it.
Now, granted, a lot of that is in general original content, not conversions from one game to another. I guess I see conversions as a grey area.
As a counterpoint to your example, I would mention GTR2 for myself. I'll admit I'm running some conversions to Race 07. However, for ME, this has made me want to buy GTR2 even more, to experience the full game of GTR2 .. Night racing, endurance racing, working headlights, the career mode .. On the other hand, like I said above, my Race 07 install is already around 30 gigs, and I'm not totally sure I want YET ANOTHER racing game on my machine. I tend to prefer having one modded game over several individual games that I must then choose between.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Its very good that you raised this question, no worries about that

SimBin has never objected against GTR2 content being ported to RACE 07 so this forward porting is perfectly fine.

However backward porting or porting GTR2 to a competing title like rFactor is not for obvious reasons.

We have nothing against mods, lets be clear on that, but we have decided many years ago that we go by the rules or don't go at all.

The strange thing is that sites like "Nogrip" and "RaceDepartment" always has to defend themself for making such decisions and having an actual policy but those that don't give a damn about rules and morals are never questioned. Strange world we live race in.

If you don't want to have "yet another" racing game on your pc and prefer mods you can of course also buy all the other titles and then port all the content to your favorite game of choice. Perfectly fine to do that for private use.

 

[H34d5h07]

I must pretty much agree what Vaughn said. Im just the same. I buy games. Play for a few hours (or may even complete it, depending on the game) then I also start to look at mods. Anything to improve, or add content that perhaps should been into the game from the start. Talking about Race 07, Thx to it's game, and few mods to it (that might be illegal, Im not really sure how it work since I use it for private/Singel player use only), I now also own GTR, GTR2, GTL and all Race 07 content released to this day. So mods and stuff has made me want to buy the games, that these mods comes from.

I do however agree, if someone just STEAL somones else work, and then claim it's his/hers whatever. Thats just disgusting. I dont support that kind of stuff. But that requires me to look it up, and sometimes that's just time consuming. I always belive someones work is thiers, or credist is given where credits is due. Until it's proven otherwise.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

All Bram said is true, not following community guidelines can sink the whole genre. Modding tools are great these days, i can take any car from almost any game and port it to rF/Race07 in mere hours, release it to get free credit, whoppidoo, everyone thinks i'm a genius. But having done some scratch built projects, the workload that goes to them is immense.. If not for anything else but an appreciation for the guys who've used thousands of hours to provide high quality free content, leave the convertion-kiddies stuff where it belongs and support modders.. SimBin was a bunch of bedroom modders back in the day too... http://www.racingrenders.com/pages/gtmod.html

 

[Vaughn Stegeman]

I absolutely respect and will follow community guidelines, indeed!!
Seems a lot of people would like to be doing some racing with mods, both tracks and cars. There's plenty of user-made mods that aren't merely conversions from one game to another that we can drive tho. I am of course including user-made mods converted from one game to another. I'm guessing anything available on RaceDepartment or NoGrip would be allowable??

 

[H34d5h07]

Ohh man, would love that! Ford Escort V8 anyone?!

 

[Leon Charmant]

Vaughn Stegeman You'd be surprised how much content on NoGrip are non-authorized and illegal conversions. It's actually hard to find a track which is very much loved but which is also legal. That means it's frustrating sometimes to find an awesome track that you'd really like to play online when you discover that it's not original work.

That said, it's definitely not impossible to come up with good car and track combinations for the racing club.. we'll just have to look very carefully

 

[Mark Gormley]

Real life considerations keeping me away unfortunately. Uni, exams, life, work. I'd be in nearly every club race were I at home.

Regarding the mod content, there used to be a lot more of it running in the clubs and I had each one installed, but became a bit wary when one mod messed up my Race07 installation. When the numbers started dwindling though I think a move to more default content managed to hike the numbers back up again for a while, which makes sense. I'm more likely to hop into an event at the last minute if it's with familiar cars or tracks requiring little or no time to get a workable setup.

The V8SC IronMan events were fantastic though, the cars are a joy to drive, and I usually only pedal FWD stuff. Love the SuperTouring mod too but unfortunately it wasn't too popular as a club event.