I have added all tracks and variations(that I could find online) for Gran Turismo 5 and 6 to the Racing Club Manager. The site now supports 9 games and 660 tracks including 70 from GT5 and 100 from GT6.
Month: December 2014
rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa, simraceway
I got carried away and added the tracks(that I could find) to rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa, and simraceway. The Racing Club Manager now supports 7 games with more to come. The full list is as follows:
- Forza 4 – 132 tracks including variations
- Forza 5 – 53 tracks including variations
- Project CARS – 52 tracks including variations
- iRacing – 99 tracks including variations
- rFactor 2 – 26 tracks including variations
- simraceway – 111 tracks including variations
- Assetto Corsa – 16 tracks including variations
The games I still need to support are GranTurismo 5 & 6, F1 2014, rFactor 1, and maybe others if anyone shows interest.
iRacing and Project CARS
My last post was about the Advanced Search functionality I had implemented, and I continued to test and make small changes to that yesterday and now I think it is good for release #1. This post is about what I am going to be working on next.
The next thing I will be working on is error logging. Right now on the development site, I just spit out a generic error “This page encountered an error: Error 1” or something similar to that. I don’t really give a lot of details to the user and this is by design. I don’t want potential hackers to be able to know how close they are getting to cracking my application, so the less feedback the better off the site will be. What I need to do next is log these errors into the database so that I know that something on the site is failing, so I can address it quickly. Most users don’t report issues and if they see something go wrong they either ignore it and move on or potentially stop using that feature or the site altogether. I want to log what the error is and what page it occurred on, who it occurred to(if that person was logged in) and when the error occurred. This way if that user doesn’t contact me about the error I can fix it and reach out to that user and let them know that I fixed the issue. I expect this to take a few days to implement on every page of the site.
Okay! here is where the title of this post becomes relevant. Over the next couple of days I will be compiling a list of all tracks and variations for iRacing and Project CARS so that I can support those game son the site. All of Project CARS tracks and variations are listed plainly on their site, so that should be easy. iRacing is a little tougher. I found a resource that has a lot of the tracks and variations listed, but I’m not 100% sure if all of those tracks are available to everyone all the time or how that works. If anyone has any insight on how iRacing tracks work or who gets which ones and how, it would be amazing if you could contact me. racing.club.manager@gmail.com
Thanks for reading! It looks like I have about 5 faithful viewers and I suspect some of them are from my club, but I am betting I get a few that aren’t so I want to personally thank YOU for viewing the blog and paying attention to YOUR future website.
Advanced Search
I worked on the Advanced Search screen the past couple of days and this is what I came up with.
There is much more that I would like to do with this screen and the functionality but this will work for now. Right now you can say that you want to find a club that plays <Select a Game> that is holding a race between <# o’clock> and <# o’clock> within the next <# of days>. This is already a pretty powerful tool once clubs start joining and adding races. This will only show clubs that are available to join, so if you search a club that plays your game and you are available to race between 8PM and 11PM, you will be able to see if any clubs exist and ask them if you can join.
In the future I would like to set up something called “Club Match” and we will guide a user through the process of finding a club. We will ask you what days and times you are available and for which games. You will be able to select the club personalities that most resonate with your style of racing. You will be able to filters by average number of racers that show up to races. Experienced racers might want to race with a club that usually has a full field, while beginners might want a more relaxed open field. I’m sure there are other metrics that will present themselves to me by the time I implement that new functionality, but those are the ones that I am thinking of right now.
I believe that this will improve the value of the site exponentially. I don’t know of any other site that does what I am planning to do and just think of what it will do for being able to find clean races in new games and getting connected right away. Finding clubs that play when you do and have a similar personality as you has to be the hardest part about getting into and staying into games.
Thanks for reading!
Create a Club
I finished up the Create a Club screen this morning, did some mild testing, and it works! Now anyone can add their own club and try to get people to join. Here is a screen shot.
I added a link to the main navigation at the top of every page and I think that should be easy enough for people to find.
The next thing I want to work on are options for the club search. Right now the club search just has you enter letters and it gives you clubs that match what you type. Nobody is going to know the name of a specific club if they are searching for a new club to race with. I need to provide features like searching for clubs that have races at a specific time, clubs that have a specific personality, and obviously being able to search for clubs by game. I will provide some screen shots when I have them available.
Thanks for reading!
Logo, Menus and Club Creation
I have been working on some pretty boring stuff the past few days. The only cool thing that came out of it is the new logo. I can’t even call it new because it’s the first one I’ve ever had. Check it out.
It’s not amazing, but it’s a start.
I also worked on the menus, specifically which drop-downs show depending on what club you are viewing, or logged in as, or is your default. I still think there are things I can do to improve the menus, but none of it is vital.
Next I will be working on club creation. Initially I wasn’t going to allow just anyone create a club on day 1, but I think that’s silly. Now I need to add a sign up link to the home page and login page and create the screen that allows you to pick a unique club name and prevent spamming.
Remember I am still planning to launch around January 8th, so stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
Change/Reset Password
In my last post I was talking about the edit admins screen and how level zero permission admins can add new admins and that they get e-mailed a temporary password until they first log in. Below are some screen shots of the screen I have been working on. They don’t have a lot of content on them, but they are some intricate little pages.
Above is the main log in screen. If you forget your password you can click the Forgot/Reset Password link.
The Reset Password screen needs your club name, login name, and e-mail address you have associated with your admin account. Clicking Submit will verify that the information provided is accurate and if so, we reset your password to something nobody on earth could figure out and send an e-mail letting you know what the password is.
The first time you login, you will get the Change Password screen. This screen lets you change your password to anything you want within the bounds of our required criteria.
I hope you all had a great holiday and I should have more updates very soon. possibly tomorrow 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Racing Club Manager 