Choose car skin before join server, loading tracks, ping

Hello. This is just a suggestion nothing more. If someone know how i can fix them somehow let me know.

I don't understand why we don't have car skin change function in online... It's too hard to edit ? That's terrible. For example car have 3 color in skin folder:

White
Rad
Black

Before join server i want to use red color for my car and there is no choose function. So server automatically select any color for my car... No way to make some slider or drop down box or server command to change car color manually?

Also why we don't have simple admin command to change tracks ? For example i have 2 road and i want to change it. For this i need stop server every time, edit file, save it and start server again ?

Not possible to edit admin command like "load next track" or "load previous track" ? Last question about server ping.

I search but can't find hot key command how i can see server ping while i driving car in server. Any chance to edit this in next update ?

 

Basically the server has a certain number of slots.
Each slot has a specific skin assigned, named after the skin folder.
In principle, the server doesn't care what skin your client actually loads, it just tells the client which folder to pick the files from.

Anyway, I agree with you, it would be great to choose the skin yourself and in addition it would be great to have custom skin exchange, so you could install your own skin, which would then be exchanged to the other users via the server and visible by the other drivers.
However, I guess it's not done because it would increase traffic and hence servers would get more expensive. Might even affect the network quality in a negative way.
As for the skin selection, I don't know why it behaves like that, but it might have to do with the assignment of skins to the slots.
e.g. let's say that car ID 10 gets occupied by a user who selected the black skin. Then this user leaves and another user joins for slot 10, but selected the red skin.
Now in some way you would need to tell all other clients that they need to change the skin for that car slot on the fly.
I don't know how AC works there in reality and if it could change skins on the fly, but it looks like all car-specific ressources are loaded upon starting acs.exe, so the client would be stuck with the selection of skins at the state when joining.
Getting the skin updates – because some chose different skins – might only get visible when leaving and rejoining.
Might be possible to change that (and maybe it already supports it), but I wouldn't bet on this getting changed.

That was an option a few years ago, but it was removed for some reason I can't remember.
There is a track rotation server plugin on racedepartment, though. But I didn't try it, so no idea if it works well.

At least that's the official way of doing things.
Personally, I like doing a track per day (or 1-3 days), so I'm fine with changing the file.
But yeah, it would be nice if there were other ways.

Your ping to the server is the number in the upper right corner of your screen.

 

I've been on a server that (presumably) ran that plugin. It worked quite well, but every player has the exit the session and reconnect to the server.

Since it was a 3h or 4h session as track day this kind of worked quite alright, yet it is pretty much pointless IMO for a public server that hosts sprint racing.

Could work well though if there would be an auto-join/-reload option, so you automaticly get reconnected to the new track and also to have your car again.
The manual rejoin way there's the possibility other guys take the car you had and want to drive again.

 

It sounds like you are the admin for your server so why not assign steam guid's for you and your friends on the skin you wish to use? It is no way near as good as being able to select skins but just incase you didnt know you can assign them in the entry list using steam guid...

 

andy-riches

I don't understand what you want to say... Here is my entry_list.ini file

Code:

[CAR_0]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_typegt
SKIN=Athlete_Silver
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=

[CAR_1]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_typegt
SKIN=LimeGreen
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_2]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_typegt
SKIN=Uras_Grey_Demo
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_3]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_typegt
SKIN=Uras_White_Demo
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_4]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_street
SKIN=Athlete_Silver
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_5]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_street
SKIN=Uras_Blue_White
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_6]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_street
SKIN=Uras_Demo_White
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_7]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_street
SKIN=Uras_Demo_Yellow
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_8]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_hr34
SKIN=Athlete_Silver
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

[CAR_9]
MODEL=sh_nissan_skyline_hr34
SKIN=Sonic_Silver
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0

So can i select Uras_Demo_White skin every time when i join server ?

 

Yes, if you paste your steam guid into GUID= then the skin will be reserved for you. If you are always the 1st person to populate the server you could just set it as the 1st skin in the entry list. With empty GUID= they are assigned to players in the same order they appear in the entry list (athlete silver first then lime green and so on.)

 

That's not how I believe the skin system worked in GTR2. I believe it worked on a naming system or GUID and simply having the skin in your car folder would display it whilst in the server, otherwise it would just display a default skin, no downloading needed when connecting etc.

 

Note that this works only if you are absolutely the first person joining that server.
If someone joins and then leaves again, it doesn't work anymore, since 1.12 or 1.13, iirc.
Since then, AC tries to be more persistent with the assigned slots, so if you join and leave and then join again, you get the same slot unless it was occupied in the meantime.

Also note that assigning GUID means that you'll get that slot when you join, but AC only preserves the slot as long as other slots are available.

AC does the same. If you don't have a skin a server is requesting, then a dummy skin is shown (usually a white car).

 

For example i have 2 color

Code:

[CAR_15]
MODEL=ks_porsche_cayman_gt4_std
SKIN=00_racing_yellow
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0
RESTRICTOR=0

[CAR_16]
MODEL=ks_porsche_cayman_gt4_std
SKIN=09_sapphire_blue_metallic
SPECTATOR_MODE=0
DRIVERNAME=
TEAM=
GUID=
BALLAST=0
RESTRICTOR=0

My friend want to choose yellow and i want blue metallic. What to do ? Also how i can find my steam guid ? If i put my friends name or steam guid, server can select this color ?

 

right click on your steam profile page and select "copy page url" and then paste it somewhere and grab the number or google steam guid checker or if you use stracker on your server you can probably find it there. it is a 17 digit number. just paste yours on the car you want and his on the car he wants in the entry list.

 

I don't have numbers. I have id/sti228. Will this change anything ? Paste it here ?

 

In Il2 when flying on line, players can set a skin which gets automatically uploaded and then distributed automatically and downloaded into a net cache folder and the game loads them to the aircraft. Until that happens the player sees a default skin. This process is generally quite quick although sometimes you hear "can you see my new skin?"...."no, not yet, I am seeing the plain green camo, oh ok, it's just popped in, yea, looks good....."
This happens for potentially a far larger number of planes where as AC has a finite number of cars. Agreed car skins are more complex and would be larger files but once a player has the skin it does not need to download again.

I wonder if something like this could be achieved in AC engine in the future?

 

Type "Steam GUID" into Google if you cant find it.

 

If your server has stracker, the easiest way is to go into the admin section and then on drivers and then it'll show a list of all recent drivers on the server, each one with their steam guid.