Custom Hosted lobbies for PC?

Wow didn't this one go off the rails. Anyway we can all share the love now. Thanks Peter Dee for posting your comments I was wanting to ask the exactly the same questions. Bloody love this game, I have been on PCars, iRacing, Raceroom and Automobilista. But I keep coming back to Assetto as the racing AI and physics are top shelf, also might I add the mod community are amazing. This just adds to the excellence of this game.
The only suggestions I would like to make if this is ok (treading carefully here). A way of doing custom liveries a little easier than the current way, I love having my own designs in iRacing using Trading Paints but the Assetto way is a little tedious.
Also the custom lobby thing, I know people do set them up, but you can only do Green Hell so many times. It just seems that all you can ever fine, the and a spattering of one or two other tracks but very few. The SRS plugin is good but the races are too far apart timing wise, sometimes it is 2 or 3 hours before you can get into a race. I just want to quickly set up a match, invite a few friends have a race then set up another race with different parameters and track and jump in.
I read the server set up doc, but wow that is a lot of steps. Anyway keep up the good work and I am sure the future is going to be awesome. The one thing about discussion is it leads to progress and i am sure that a we talk and feedback it can only be good for the dev to see what the users are looking for and forward too.
Cheers

 

That's what I find too, D3L8OY. Mainly Green Hell, Mugello (which I love) and a bunch of empty rooms. It'd be so awesome to try different car/track configurations with so many great cars available.
I'm still astounded at how well they are all translated! Each has such a different personality!!

I did look at that guide about setting up a server and wow! I am clearly retarded because it looked far more technical than anything I could understand.

Couldn't you just pop by Project Cars' office for a coffee and steal their code for their lobbies while you're there? I won't tell anyone!!

 

It's really not. You have to do some setup the first time, like plugging in some values and forwarding the ports on your router, but it's maybe 10 minutes of work and after that you just select your car(s), track, weather, session lengths, and then start the server. Once you have the initial setup done, after that it takes about 1 minute and just a few clicks to get a server up and running with your selected combo, really easy and as long as you have good internet anyone can do it.

 

Thanks Brandon,
I can see what you mean to a degree, although do you have to either purchase or rent a server?, if so what are the additional costs that have to be factored as a add-on to the purchase of the Sim plus DLC or season pass.
Can this be set up on the computer you use for playing the game, then if you life in Australia like me with 100Mb/35Mb, internet at the max (because we have a stupid government that thinks 100 Mbit is all society needs).

Then the 10 minutes of set up and one minute or so and a few clicks is done do you launch the game and start playing, so after this you want to change cars, track, parameters, do you have to quite the game, make the changes, launch the game, re-invite everyone. What if you want to do a season with multiple tracks and go from one race to another. This could end up being a long night.

Like I was saying. Assetto is, in my opinion probably the best sim out there. The tyre model, the car selection the tracks, the graphics, the physics, the mod community (These people are the best). but the online, come on, you got to admit is is a little restricted and I am sure this has to be a point of discussion. Lets face it the Console people lost there minds when no private lobbies were included. Sure Console players are use to a certain level of ease, this is why most (me included) buy consoles because it is easily accessible. With todays tech, I can't see why the PC, with the extra power and smarts can't have the private lobbies generated with in the game.

Now before certain people lose their S*** with me. No I am not a programer or developer, i'm just a gamer who loves this sims. But there are a lot of us that like having good constructive discussion and adding feedback to help the community and the developers vet what people are thinking so that we progress can be made to make a great product move forward. That is what I think things like alpha and beta testing is for so progress is made before release then ongoing support is made to improve and develop further.

Love always and may the Sparrow of Happy Sim racing nest in the tree of Speed.

Del.

 

For now just take some time figuring out how to do all this dedicated server setup. It really isn't as hard as you might assume. After you succeed once, you will find yourself very proficient at changing server settings, opening up a new server for a quick race with friend, etc. You might also find that the AC server manager app is a lot nicer to use compared to for example RF or AMS server tools, although you will also be able to setup a server for those games very quick as well.

Personally I think having the private lobby option could be nice, and I'm all for it, but private lobbies could also be a double edged sword for the experience. Take the example of PCars, I often find there are a lot more lobbies with weird combos, with lobby hosts who have no clue how to set up races properly, and who just want to cramp as much stuff as possible, such as weather changing drastically like every 5 seconds which is very annoying, and servers with a lot more slots than the tiny internet pipe that the host can handle. I often get frustrated with PCars MP and ended up sadly in a Nords/Suzuka/etc track day server because I know the experience would be more consistent, connection would be stable, and people don't usually try to kill me every corner.

Anyway that is also not to say that dedicated servers are guaranteed to provide better experience because I do believe we need a bit more variety online.

 

Yeah Thanks Stefan
I have full intentions of figuring this out as, like I keep mentioning Assetto is the go to sim, I like others in Australia are limited with our crappy internet speed. Thanks for adding to this in a respectful way as it is good to have a wider discussion that can benefit all.

RR3 is a mess and PCars MP is a joke when you get on a lobby with *****s. But i am part of a big racing League here and we host a number of events on PCars for our group only which makes the Private Lobby and championship thing a lot easier to set up.

Anyway enough banging on about it I will endeavour to educate myself and hopefully my small brain and rubbish internet will be able to get this happening.
Cheers
Del

 

Luxury..... Try 13Mb/0.8Mb - No NBN where I am until end of 2018.

 

You don't have to rent a server if your internet is fast enough, and if your internet is 100mbps/35mbps I'd think it should be fine to host a fairly larger server. My internet is something like 24mbps/4mbps and I can run at least 20 slots on a server with no problems. Otherwise you can rent a server for $5-10/month.

You don't have to quit the game to change the server, the server manager is a separate app. If you wanted to make changes you do have to restart it so everyone would have to rejoin, but to make the changes and restart the server would take maybe 30 seconds so it's not really a big deal. Seriously, after you do the initial setup it's super easy to get a server going, pick your track, pick your car, pick your session lengths, click the Start button, really couldn't be much easier. Also, I believe there's an app that lets you setup several tracks that you can cycle through, so once you finish at one track you could cycle to the next track without having to restart (I've never used it though so not sure how it works). Thing is though, most PC players are used to just doing one track for the whole night so none if this is necessarily necessary.

As far as I know rF2, AMS, and R3E all work the same way, you setup a server and if you want to make changes you have to close it and restart it. So in comparison to the other PC sims it's not really restricted at all. It's only restricted when you're comparing it to console games, but that's comparing apples to oranges. This is how PC sims have been forever so PC players are just used to it and aren't bothered by it. When I switched to PCs from consoles it kinda took me awhile to get used to because I was used to switching between different combos all night, but now I don't think anything of it and actually enjoy just spending the whole night with one combo and really getting to know the car and track.

Well, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but your own PC has little-to-nothing to do with hosting a console style lobby where you can change settings/tracks/cars on the fly. For console players they're not hosting the lobby from their own equipment or connection, that's all done from remote servers (presumably run by Kunos) that the players connect to. So infrastructure would need to be built in order for this to happen, and I'm not sure there's enough demand amongst PC players to make that a worthwhile investment.

There was a long "beta" phase called early access where lots and lots of people (myself included) could "buy" the game before it was released and help with feedback. IIRC in some of the early versions of the game there was no multiplayer at all. Eventually it was added but I remember the early version being a bit complicated to setup. At some point they updated and simplified the server manager app and now it's super easy to use and has pretty much all the features of the other PC sims (as far as I know)(except PCars). Plus, lots of features continue to get added to multiplayer, just this year we've received timed races, forced pitstops, new pitstop strategy presets, reverse grids, new ballast/restrictor options, and dynamic time progression, so there is lots of ongoing support and improved development.

I get what you're saying, that the PC version should have all the options of console games. But to do that requires investment in infrastructure (I believe) and most PC players are used to playing the way things currently are and I don't think there's much desire from the community for things to change.

Just as long as he doesn't poop on my car.

 

Well after days of trying and watching YouTube videos and reading information the Private server thing on Assetto did not work me. Wow it is an effort. Oh well maybe the future will be brighter. Have been enjoying joining some others though, just wish they would be a little more creative with their track choice.
Thanks for the help anyway.

 

What were the problems? It puzzles me that you're having troubles because it should be pretty easy to get setup and going, if I can do it anyone can do it. The only tricky part for me was getting my ports forwarded on my modem/router, after that the server manager setup was a breeze. In fact, when I got my new PC about 6 months ago I used all the default settings in the server manager and it worked fine, so once you get your ports forwarded you may not have to do much else.

PM me if you want, hopefully we can get you sorted.

 

People will be very happy to help your problems if you provide a little hint how it didn't work.

 

If you end up getting it sorted, Del80y, let me know. I'd be keen to be the slowest around whatever track you chose