I am aware, this topic has probably been discussed in some threads here and there, but I never found a real statement about it. On Race07, I always loved designing some liveries for the cars. A lot of people did so too, there was a small community surrounding it on places like NoGrip and Racedepartment full of designers sharing content. And I also loved driving in the colours of my team, to really represent them in leagues and have my name on the window. Some teams even have some small sponsors that they represented in the leagues. But of course, on Raceroom this is not possible. We have a WTCC league for example, and like half of the grid has the Michelisz car. There is a lot of features for the broadcasts coming, but it will look a bit stupid when Michelisz is battling with Michelisz and Michelisz. I think, especially for league racing this is an essential feature, that I also wouldn't mind paying for. On Dev streams, Sector 3 has always been very quiet about this topic. So I want to ask directly: Is custom skins support planned for RaceRoom at any point?
@Jay Ekkel I think has expressed that he is interested in the idea but the idea is still up in the air. (I cant be bothered finding quotes atm)
The trickiest part deals with licencing when you open up the ability to put anything and everything on vehicles (via custom liveries) and then show that to the world in-game. Many manufacturers only want certain things (or don't want certain things) on their vehicles either for sponsorship agreements or brand recognition issues. Also there's always the possibility of someone putting something rude on the vehicle. None of this would be an issue if it wasn't so simple to stream or record and upload this content and then share it with the world. All-in-all I'd guess this is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome and it really results in 2 options: 1) Custom liveries all have to be 'approved' by S3S/RR after being uploaded before they can be used (people complain about censorship, how long it takes, extra manpower needed by S3S/RR or at least extra time spent specifically on just this thing) or 2) Custom liveries can only be seen by yourself a-la project cars Unfortunately, any option including custom liveries would likely still require completely re-doing some, if not all, of the licencing agreements which still ends up costing time and likely a lot of extra money. I'd love to have them probably more than most people would, but business-wise it's probably not going to be viable to actually implement for a while (if ever).
actually, user created content falls outside our responsibility. The biggest hurdle is how the game is working/setup to work without any outside influence on the content, to change that is going to be quite a massive task at hand, But its a requested feature from inside and outside the studio, so my guess would be that it will be done eventually, but how/what/when is all a big question mark.
Have no problems with profanity it's the Hello Kitty brigade that's the spoiler, perhaps if customs skins do eventually enter the sim maybe the final decision should be left to us the users via the forum, might lead to a bit more art and a lot less dogs**t!
There's an entire section devoted to 'adult' themed liveries on Trading Paints for iRacing. People will always surprise you.
There is always the report button on a drivers RaceRoom profile page if someone makes something rude or offensive.
@Robert Wiesenmüller This was my question on twitter yesterday. They try to make it possible so that's good news. let's hope that it can become a reality! Only then R3E can catch up with rFactor and iRacing terms of league racing in combination with even better physics in the future. The broadcast for live streams are awesome! Now the costum liveries. The league racing championships and teams need this. This would be so cool with custom liveries !!
I was wondering whether custom liveries could be handled in the dedicated servers thereby maintaining authenticity with the Raceroom servers DTM, ADAC etc etc keeping those within licensing parameters (if in fact they exist) then those who wish to run a Hello Kitty championship can do so and the leagues can do their thing. As long as it gives you the option to download the livery only if you want it, if you don't it defaults to an authentic one then surely everyone is happy! Yeah right!!
This is just a thought, I have no actual facts on the matter here of how stock liveries are build into the game. The problem that I think there is with the current build structure is that all content is compressed together in a couple of files. Therefore it's not possible as a client to add a single livery file in texture format (TGA, DDS or whatever) because it has to be compressed the same way as all other content. If you look at some of the other sims, like Assetto Corsa, you can see that they handle their content differently. They have each car (with it's liveries and content) filed in it's own folder, uncompressed. Therefore you can just put livery files in texture format (TGA, DDS) in there and the game can recognize that. So from what I think I understand is, in order to have custom liveries, S3S has to figure out a way to get the game to recognize external texture files (outside of the compressed content data) and then have those files uploaded to the server and then to the clients so that everyone can see the custom liveries. One thing they do know how to store and access are replay files and setup files (which are saved under Documents > My Games > SimBin > RaceRoom Racing Experience). I was thinking that maybe they can figure out a way to implement a system that would load in textures from a folder within that path. (Documents > My Games > SimBin > RaceRoom Racing Experience > Custom Liveries?) Anyways, we want it, they want it, I'm sure they will figure out a solution. And I repeat, all of the above is just a thought, no facts.
They had a custom skin system in RACE, based in the Documents folder, I'm sure they can figure it out.
@Flavourlicious I don't think that's it; skins have always been compressed in previous games too, but it would check for uncompressed ones and then look in the compressed file if none were found. As this is built upon a similar structure, I suspect it would be the same.
I don't think we need to rack our brains about this. Nobody knows better how something like this might be implemented - technically - than the devs themselves.
yepp - it is to early as it is only in discussions at S3S. Coming to the dedicated server - don't forget that we use the first public Version of it at the moment. That Version was published with the request for suggestions for future versions
Jay actually posted something pretty simular (as my post) a few posts above. Didn't notice that before.
I think this is how most games handle user content like custom skins. Considering that most events have practice/qualifying, there should be lots of time to deal with the tiny number of people with "questionable" graphics. I'd have no problem being asked to replace my skin if I showed up in an event with a car plastered like a billboard for Gran Turismo, and most people playing RR should have enough sense to not do this to start with. This factor is making me antsy to either get P CARS or Forza 6, because especially with Forza, their Livery Editor is quite powerful, allowing you to design your own decals. It's the main reason I like that game series.
At least to minimize the horrendous that it is to have 10 equal cars with equal names and numbers on a league racing something like a 12 color sets and 24 numbers as a kind of league pack for the cars would be cool... just to make the wait for REAL custom liveries less painfull....
unfortunately some manufacturers only allow the devs to sell liveries the cars run in real life so the only way to make 12 liveries would be custom skins.