hi

this is something that has crossed my mind

do you have a standard for creating standalone cars

like

before numbering a car check that that car number is available.

or

all stand alone cars created for the BUDE GTL or GTR2 should have a prefix ALT for GTL cars and PILS for GTR2 cars,
so the car folder 56 would be ALT56 or something alone the lines of that,
or even A for alt and OCT for OCTober and P for Pantera so you get AOCTP56, now if you get 2 cars with the same number in the same folder put on a lottery ticket.

also

car previews .tga and *.bik (animated or static bik files) should have something in them so you can tell they are stand alone cars, as a lot of cars are so well done, better than the originals, that you can't tell.

and

do you specify that the .car file has a team name of blahblah

I guess there's no "standard" but it would be great if some rules would be established.

Of course it's important to check if the number is already used on the Bude. It's also important to know that for example all Corvettes (1965 and 1976 versions) count as one car-class in/for GTL. So a 1965 Corvette #63 will get overwritten by a 1976 Corvette #63 for example.

To name the car or better the car-folder itself with a special like "ALT" or "PILS" will not help as I was told from DerDumeklemmer because for the game and scripts on the Bude only the number is important and will get used. For example it makes no diffrence if you name a car "1", "01" or "ALT1" it'll all be counted as "1".

It's necessary for obviously reasons that the movies and especially the icons are standalone and working. Icons should be easily created by using one of the available "Icon templates" for PSD. With the movies it's a little more difficult because not everybody has the programms and knowledge to use them. But of course there're good tutorials available that will help out.
I don't know what you mean with "should have something in them"? It's easy to give the icon an other background-color for example but to have some text in the movie is something diffrent and more difficult.

To specify a "Team" or a "PitGroup" would be nice but is not so important in my opinion.

Much more important would be that "addons" like wheels, steeringwheels, seats etc. are really standalone. For example the #129 BMW CSL Erdinger has addon wheels and a window-mask that aren't standalone. The wheels overwrite all original wheels of the 3.2 Alpina CSL and the windows-mask will get overwritten by the original. An other example is the 911 "Police". The seat used in this addon overwrites all seats of other cars so you'll find a white seat with Recaro and Porsche logo in nearly each used car.
I don't want to blame any of the creators of such addons but I think a little more beta-testing would have helped in that case and if they didn't knew how to fix this problems there're a lots of people around that could answer questions and give help.

I thought about fixing some of the problems I know but of course I can't do that for all car(classe)s on the Bude and it'll also be hard work for the admins to update all the inflicted cars.

I don't know...lets see how the reply to this topic will be.


Greetz
Martin

Hi to all,

The slot itself is not overwritten as long as the folder name is different.

If you download cars from other sites and they have the same slot numbers it is not a problem as long as the folder name has some other prefix to it as already suggested, for example: I have 4 Ford Capri’s slot number 3, so I have renamed the folders usually after the drivers names as such:

3 Stommelen
3 Theodoracopulos
3 Titford
3 Turbo

If I had not of renamed them I would only have 1 folder and not 4 as the original would have been overwritten by the next one downloaded and so on.

I also have slots 3a, 3AG, 3JP, & 3s. If someone brings out a folder with any of these slots it will be overwritten unless I change myself.

Obviously some folders have to be overwritten if the details of the car have been updated, but if it is a completely different car then you will lose the original one unless you rename the folder as I do.

The Zip file name gives more detail about the folder within and so far I have not found any problems of overwriting with these although the only Zip files I keep now are ones downloaded off the Budes sites.

Put simply:

1… Car Zip files are no problem as long as the naming is unique.
2… Car folders extracted from the Zip files are no problem as long as there naming is also unique.
3… Car slot numbers being the same are not a problem as long as the two above statements are adhered to.

Cheers for the lend of your ears,

Gee-Deeman

Hi again,

Standardising the cars so you know what site they originally came from I think is a good idea or who painted them even better so you can be reminded who did the great work to create them.

However, standardising the cars so you know what site they can be used on I would think is impossible.

The reason for this is simple:
Someone paints a car and puts it on a site and gives it a slot number and site ID code. If another site adopts this car to use they will have to add their ID to it and this will have to happen every time other sites also adopt that car otherwise you will not know which site you can race it on. The new ID cannot be put on the Zip files or Car Folders names as this would mean that you would have that car on your game as many times as the sites it has been downloaded from. Sounds complicated but it is not really.

The only way you can do it is by putting A code number or letter on the small icon that loads to show the car and if it has been purchased or not (don’t know what they call that file). This would have to be updated every time a new site adopts it so they would put their own code on this icon also. This may sound good but it will only really work if all sites update this car when a new ID is added as a new driver starting out is not going to know where to get the download from that has all the ID’s on it.

At the moment I race mainly on the Bude, and I know which cars belong to them by using a simple method, all my Bude cars cost just 2 credits. Each car Folder has a ‘car file’ which can be opened with ‘Notepad’. At the end of the file the value of the car is shown e.g., Value=25000. This is the actual cost of the car but you can change that figure to anything you want I have set all my Bude cars to the value of 2 so they only cost me 2 credits. Once you change this you must save it (Ctrl + S) or it will remain as the original. When you play the game any car costing 2 credits is a Bude car …simple!

Only problem is that at the moment there are 684 cars to change! Glad I started doing this when I first joined the Bude some months ago and there were far far less. But, every time you download any new cars you must change the value of them also.

I have tried giving all sites their own unique car cost such as NoGrip = 1 credit, Altbierbude = 2 credits, GTL4u = 3 credits etc., but it becomes extremely complicated to work as there are more than 10 sites to get cars from. I was tearing my hair out in the end!

I hope this helps the discussion in some way.

Cheer for the lend of your ears.

Gee-Deeman

Hi GeeDee, Hi all

Yes, its right. It costs a lot of time to update or change all *.car files comes from the Bude.

But, I have done the heavy work within the last couple of weeks.

I have updated all car files regarding:

Value of cars: The Bude-cars cost +500 $ as the standard cars. A little tribut to heavy work for car designers

Drivers name: Phantasy, Real-names, Names of Buden-drivers

Classes: all updated to generate a realistic carrer in the game (offline)

Talent: Create and updated with the correct driver names as note in the car-files for the most of the cars. This will lead to a heavy carrer, specially in the Professional mode.

By time, I have just started a new carrer with these update files and its really hard for me to get the "Diamant-cup" in all series.

If somebody are interessted for these updated files, please sent just a PN to me.

Regards,
Alex

Hi Alex,

You will now find it much easier to know which cars to use on the Bude,but be careful to keep it up to date.Every time a new car download comes out you will have to remember to change the cost. If a lot of downloads happen together I make a note of the make and type of car eg., Jaguar MkII, Ford Capri etc., then when the downloads are complete I access the folders for these models and sort them by date so that you can see the latest downloads of that car all together, then I change the prices in the CAR files.

The work is worth it it the end though, well done.

Gordon

Hi Alex,

You will now find it much easier to know which cars to use on the Bude,but be careful to keep it up to date.Every time a new car download comes out you will have to remember to change the cost. If a lot of downloads happen together I make a note of the make and type of car eg., Jaguar MkII, Ford Capri etc., then when the downloads are complete I access the folders for these models and sort them by date so that you can see the latest downloads of that car all together, then I change the prices in the CAR files.

The work is worth it it the end though, well done.

Gordon