Friday, November 25, 2005
Ghost car mod for Live for Speed
Ghost car mod for Live for Speed
The best online racing simulator on the net, Live for Speed, finally has had a ghost mod added which allows you to see a ghost car with you on track as you practice (alone).
It uses the InSim interface to communicate with the game and always records the fastest lap as your ghost by default, including all split times.
The green/yellow/red lines show whether the car is accelerating (green), holding its current speed (yellow) or is decreasing in speed (red). Thumbs up!
Download: mod.zip (3.5 mb)
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·: Ghostcar mod v1.0 for LFS S2:·
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This mod adds a ghost car to Live for Speed S2.
To install, extract this archive to your LFS install
directory. Do NOT put the included d3d8.dll into any system
directory! Then either run LFS with LFSGrun.exe or enable
InSim manually to the ghostcar insim port (default: 28888)
A video card with Pixel Shader 1.0 support is required
When the ghostcar is active, any laps you drive alone on
the track (single, hot lapping or multiplayer modes) will
be automatically recorded and the fastest lap is always
stored. When you pass the start line the saved ghostcar for
that car/track combo will play, if such exists. The path
of the ghostcar is also displayed, where green colour means
the speed of the car was increasing, red means decreasing
and yellow means no change.
The ghostcar/config.cfg file contains some configuration
options, and some settings can be changed in-game using
the following commands in the chat:
/ghost help - Display help
/ghost on - Enable ghostcar recording & playback
/ghost off - Disable ghostcar recording & playback
/ghost delete - Delete ghostcar for current car/track
/ghost load CAR - Load ghostcar for CAR, ie. LX4
/ghost drawcar - Toggle ghost car drawing
/ghost drawpath - Toggle ghostcar path drawing
/ghost offset MS - Ghostcar time offset, ie. 100 for 100ms
LFS will give you a 'Unknown command' error when using
the ghost commands, which can be ignored.
To uninstall the mod, remove the d3d8.dll from the LFS
directory, and the ghostcar directory if you want.
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known bugs
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- When driving close to the ghostcar, it shakes back
and forth rapidly
- When the road is banked the ghostcar path disappears
partially inside the track.
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credits
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Made by Kegetys
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license & disclaimer
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You are permitted to install and use this software for
personal entertainment purposes only. Any commercial,
military or educational use is strictly forbidden without
permission from the author.
You are free to distribute this software as you wish, as
long as it is kept 100% free of charge, it is not modified
in any way and this readme file is distributed with it.
The author takes no responsibility for any damages this
program may cause, use at your own risk.
The included CMX models are from Live for Speed, copyright
(c) 2004 Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey, Victor Van Vlaardingen
www.liveforspeed.net
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Sunday, November 20, 2005
The ultimative racing game week
3 racing games in the top10 demo downloads ranking this week, this does look promising.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted, ToCa Race Driver 3 (2006), TrackMania Sunrise Extreme, World Racing 2... what else can you ask for?
I tried Most Wanted and Sunrise Extreme so far, so here is a little personal review:
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Big glitches on the physics side of the game. Not as bad as Underground1 or 2, but still bad. The steering is bad (but bearable) using keyboard, decent with a gamepad and using a wheel - scrap that, I don't recommend it unless you want to destroy your PC wheel. Still, the cars feel "fat" and very unrealistic on the track while the game physics constantly tries to find a way between understeering and drifting.
Gfx-wise I expected more but it still looks fine. "Tracks" could be more detailed though.
Sound is great, much better music than in the Underground parts and it simply suits more to a racing game. Especially the music during car chases is well chosen, thumbs up in the sound department.
Obviously EA brought back Pursuit mode which is the only game mode in Most Wanted which promises some good old NFS-fun if you know the series from back then. The bad side is that they seemed to have some problem with the AI so they gave the computer rigged cop cars - the AI cheats! In sprint races the game is too easy, even on hard setting. Big letdown.
The online lobby is an eye-catcher, but just an eye-catcher really. 4 cars on track max.? I do remember the time when there were 8+ cars allowed without the framerate suffering, why oh why Electronic Arts?
Even with only 4 cars on track, racing online with collision detection on is a very bad idea unless you like losing to the bad network code instead of your opponent. Cars warp around the place all the way, it's just like in Underground where you'd "lead" the race all the way and suddenly after the finish line it turns out that the warp car beat you. I simply don't recommend playing online with this title.
Besides, the lobby is very slow. Might be due to peak times, but still...
Amazingly, it still is a fun game - but only for a short while. I already have enough of it after playing the demo, why would I buy the full version? Give me reasons, EA!
More cars? No thanks, I'd have to unlock them in an endless grind.
More modes? Thank you, but they all seem boring except for pursuit.
More tracks? The track design of the demo tracks already seems boring, how bad can it be with the whole map unlocked?
TrackMania Sunrise Extreme
It's TrackMania, how could you be wrong playing this amazingly fast racing game? :)
On a side note, this is probably the only demo title which comes with a copy protection on-board. Only Nadeo knows why this is the case. I even had to reboot because it asked me to. Very weird.
Regarding the gameplay, nothing new. It still is the best racing title for perfectionists, hands down. Great graphics and the usual "lagging" music while loading are what makes this one of the best fun titles this year.
This is definately one of the few games this year that you can play for 20 minutes and still have a good time.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted, ToCa Race Driver 3 (2006), TrackMania Sunrise Extreme, World Racing 2... what else can you ask for?
I tried Most Wanted and Sunrise Extreme so far, so here is a little personal review:
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Big glitches on the physics side of the game. Not as bad as Underground1 or 2, but still bad. The steering is bad (but bearable) using keyboard, decent with a gamepad and using a wheel - scrap that, I don't recommend it unless you want to destroy your PC wheel. Still, the cars feel "fat" and very unrealistic on the track while the game physics constantly tries to find a way between understeering and drifting.
Gfx-wise I expected more but it still looks fine. "Tracks" could be more detailed though.
Sound is great, much better music than in the Underground parts and it simply suits more to a racing game. Especially the music during car chases is well chosen, thumbs up in the sound department.
Obviously EA brought back Pursuit mode which is the only game mode in Most Wanted which promises some good old NFS-fun if you know the series from back then. The bad side is that they seemed to have some problem with the AI so they gave the computer rigged cop cars - the AI cheats! In sprint races the game is too easy, even on hard setting. Big letdown.
The online lobby is an eye-catcher, but just an eye-catcher really. 4 cars on track max.? I do remember the time when there were 8+ cars allowed without the framerate suffering, why oh why Electronic Arts?
Even with only 4 cars on track, racing online with collision detection on is a very bad idea unless you like losing to the bad network code instead of your opponent. Cars warp around the place all the way, it's just like in Underground where you'd "lead" the race all the way and suddenly after the finish line it turns out that the warp car beat you. I simply don't recommend playing online with this title.
Besides, the lobby is very slow. Might be due to peak times, but still...
Amazingly, it still is a fun game - but only for a short while. I already have enough of it after playing the demo, why would I buy the full version? Give me reasons, EA!
More cars? No thanks, I'd have to unlock them in an endless grind.
More modes? Thank you, but they all seem boring except for pursuit.
More tracks? The track design of the demo tracks already seems boring, how bad can it be with the whole map unlocked?
TrackMania Sunrise Extreme
It's TrackMania, how could you be wrong playing this amazingly fast racing game? :)
On a side note, this is probably the only demo title which comes with a copy protection on-board. Only Nadeo knows why this is the case. I even had to reboot because it asked me to. Very weird.
Regarding the gameplay, nothing new. It still is the best racing title for perfectionists, hands down. Great graphics and the usual "lagging" music while loading are what makes this one of the best fun titles this year.
This is definately one of the few games this year that you can play for 20 minutes and still have a good time.
