[ui feature] [feature request]: player controlled in game tag management and rating system.

With the ever increasing number of mods out there, the Players being able to organize,categorize and rate their cars and tracks will become more and more important.

Here are some of my ideas. I've highlighted the essentials (the rest is explanation, examples):

I would like to be able to manage and add my own tags to the cars and tracks inside of Assetto Corsa's menu GUI. I would like to be able to give them a rating of one to five stars. We should be able to filter content by rating (meaning, number of stars should be in the list of tags when we hit the filter button). We should be able to hide cars/tracks(both mod and official) that we're not interested in or that I don't use very often. Yes, there is the option of deleting mods but hiding is useful for content that you don't want to delete but you don't necessarily want to see every time you hit the select track or car buttons. Some mods may be needed for events I want to participate in, I may change my mind in future/give it another chance or it's unwanted official content (as unlikely as that might be) which I wouldn't want to delete or mess with. New cars and tracks that I have not driven should be give a tag and a label by the game as New (this avoids us installing a mod and forgetting it's there or getting new official tracks/cars and failing to try them because we didn't notice them). Official cars and tracks from Kunos should come with a tag of their choosing saying something like "Official" or "Kunos". Not all tags are of the same importance. We should be able to highlight tags of importance to us and have them display first when we click the filter button, maybe be able to add a colored rectangle around it. We should be able to change the listing order of cars: alphabetical, date added to AC (most recent first), user ratings etc. We should be able to delete or at least hide existing tags we don't find useful or disagree with.

Here are some examples of how this could be used: I have arount 10-15 moded tracks and about 20 car mods. It would be nice to be able to give them a tag like "Track Mods" and "Car Mods". I would make the tags Track Mods, Car Mods and Official priority tags so that they would pop up first when I hit the filter button. I'd like to be able to rate tracks and cars (be they stock or mods). The mod makers don't always put "manual" on their H-Shifter cars. I should be able to correct that. Some of the retro cars come with the tags "historic" others "vintage" or "retro". There's no point in having 3 tags for the same thing cluttering my tag list. I can go ahead and merge all three into historic and delete the other tags saying vintage/retro. I don't need tags saying "racing." Delete.

At the moment, I currently modify the ui_cars.json and ui_tracks.json of each car and track to get the full benefit out of AC's tag system but it is quite a painful process that can easilly be rectified by being able to do it within the game. Finally, instead of modifying the ui_cars/ui_cars.json files (which gets over written in each time mod or AC is updated), the game's tag system could make seperate json files called usertags_cars.json and usertags_tracks.json so that the tags can persist through updates. The usertags json files could even keep a list of what tags you want to delete for each car,track, rating info and hidden status.

 

Maybe the modded content could be tagged as such but I see little to no use for the rest of your post.

edit: I should also say Historic, Vintage and Retro are very different from each other. You would be hard pushed to sell a Retro car for anything close to what a Historic car would demand. Historic could be confused with Vintage but still they are different, vintage could be styled in a certain era but build in another. So the long and the short of it is that they are different and as such your tags would have to include them.

 

Kunos' own content should have its own tag so you could essentially filter out all mods if you wanted to. Also it would be nice you could favourite cars and tracks and have separate favourite list (or dynamic favourite tag).

In the larger scale of things some kind of series or classification tag would be nice so you could just pick gt3/gt2/road_cars for example and it would automatically fill the race with those cars (or just show those cars)

 

This seems like a good idea the mods should look at and decide what best way to implement.

 

There is already a favourite car selection when you start AC. It still seems like a lot of work for no real reason, maybe a modder will make something that will fit the bill. Kunos have enough to do with sorting out AC, Multiplayer, sounds, graphics, replays, etc etc I also see it as not really relevant unless you only play offline (Not saying offline play is any less worthy than online) so when you go online the servers you join are those that have been made for you and sometimes that is not going to be what you really want but close enough for it to be fun.

edit: saying all that it would be nice to have the profile page have a break down of the hours spend in each car and then with your fastest lap have how many hours you have been on that particular track. Again much of a muchness you kind of know what you like to race and what you don't.

 

Duly noted lol! - though I would personally just bunch them together because I'm stubborn that way... Be that as it may. That was just an example. I'm sure there are tags you would find redundant and if you used your tags to access your content, you may want to merge them into one.

I'm not proposing anything that would hinder any of the improvements you've listed which I think are important too. The whole idea, tag and rating system included, is not that hard to implement. Literally a system that puts tags in text files and the UI GUI mods that goes along with it. For the rating it would just put just put even more tags (5Stars, 4Stars etc) in those same text files. For the sorting, the game already sorts the cars by brands and tags (or tracks by tags). The rating sorting can easily piggy back on that. Small in the scope of the amazing things Kunos already does with this simulator. Although it's not that big of a request, though obviously it's not important for you or your own gaming needs, I think it would go a long way to improve the quality of the experience for those of us who need to be able to organize our content.

With regards to their favorites system, in all honesty, I did not find it helpful to me. It's automated, listing the players' so-called "favorites" based on their usage patterns. The players can't set their own favorites and the system can be confused if the player is trying out different cars or tracks and getting the feel for it. My current favorite list has mods that I've deleted on it and cars I haven't driven for weeks. In the long run, once I know what my favorite content is and it sees me using it again and again, it might be helpful and a great tool in it's own right in aiding me see my usage patterns but it does not substitute a user chosen favorites or rating system. It can't read my mind and know that I love this or that car/track from the first, third or fifth moment I've driven it.