Support for Assetto Corsa’s Black Cat County

Although Racing Club Manager doesn’t have any currently active Assetto Corsa clubs, I still want to keep up with the track lists when I catch wind of a new release. With AC’s new massive update, v1.5 they included a new fantasy track called “Black Cat County.”

The new track has 3 variations: short, intermediate, and long. I’ll let the dev blog describe the environment…

…until now the simulation did not include a proper road environment, an ideal scenario for the simple pleasure of driving, something that people are especially looking for while driving road cars and grand-tourers.

One of the car manufacturers that use Assetto Corsa for promotional, training and R&D activities has noticed the same, and last winter requested our team to create a fictional road environment with the purpose of taking advantage of the driving feeling granted by the simulation, just for the sheer enjoyment of driving without the need to learn and practice on a track, aimed at people who are not yet familiar with driving on racing circuits.

I also added some tracks I missed: Barcelona, Zandvoort, and Brands Hatch.

Release 11 Details

Release 11 has wrapped up its coding phase and is now moving into testing. I am ahead of schedule by 2 whole weeks, so I’m going to publish on Wednesday March 30th instead of April 8th. The two major features I announced were not as monstrous as I thought they could be and that’s always a good thing. Below are some screenshots and more detailed descriptions of all the changes I made for this release.

 Ability to drop specific races from calculating final series results

The admin screen for adding and editing series and races has changed a bit. I made the font slightly larger which is better for any mobile users. Still not perfect, I know, but better.

I removed those ambiguous buttons for deleting and editing the post race write-up. Mostly, I removed the buttons because I couldn’t find one that meant “exclude” that wouldn’t be confused for remove, delete or cancel. Also, I think this looks cleaner.

Each time you expand a race node, you will see the save icon and the options icon. Clicking the options icon allows you to exclude a race from being calculated in a series, delete this race from the series or you can edit the pre/post race write-up. You can hide the options menu by clicking the icon again or just leave it up and it will follow you around when you click on other race nodes. In a future release I will do the same options menu at the series node level.

When a race gets excluded from a series, your members will see this message if they bring up the race details screen. All of the data for that race will still show but when you view series standings the results from this race will not be calculated into the leaderboard.

Alternatively, on the series details screen your members will see a little warning icon next to any races that have been excluded. If they get curious and click the icon a dialog will pop up explaining that the results from that race will not be calculated into the series leaderboard.

Please, keep in mind that when you exclude a race we do not treat it like the race never happened. If you view your average finish position or your monthly/yearly standings, etc. you will still see all of the excluded races calculated into those statistics.

Series List Screen Overhaul

I made a point to overhaul the series list screen because it was really slow to load and really not mobile friendly. Now I only show the name of the series and when the next race is. I do this inside big blue boxes, perfect for mobile users.

Now, all of the active and inactive series show at the same time and it loads very quickly. The ordering of the boxes is different now too. A series with a race that is coming up soon will be ordered ahead of other series that have races further out. Your most recently races inactive series will show ahead of series that have been long forgotten. This design also leaves open the possibility of someday using images in place of the blocks. I do not know if or when I will implement that, but this at least sets the foundation.

Stretch Items

Since I had some extra time, I worked on some little things that have always bugged me. Above is a screenshot from the club home page. The checkbox from the “before” side was hideous and was near impossible to click on mobile with my fat finger. I fixed it by using that bug green button. When on a club home page that is not your default it will appear red with the text: “Not My Default”. Clicking the red button will make this club your default and turn the button green.

I don’t have a screenshot for this but on the admin series/races screen when you would save a race, we would automatically reload all of the series nodes, but it would not expand and show the race node you were recently editing. Now it does! Just a minor convenience for the admins.

I use larger font sizes in the menus so that navigation will be slightly easier on mobile users. In addition, I shortened the text on the admin menus so that the larger font sizes would not stretch the menu too wide.

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So that’s what I worked on over the past couple of weeks and it is almost ready to be published. I’d like to thank @jacall11 for suggesting the change where we can exclude races from a series. I know it will be a useful addition for clubs other than one he is associated with and I always appreciate feedback that benefits lots of potential users.

I will probably tease what I’m going to work on next after this release gets published so stay tuned on twitter and facebook AND DON’T FORGET TO ENTER THE LIVERY CONTEST FOR A CHANCE TO WIN $10 USD. Currently as of this writing there are 6 weeks left in the contest and no entries, so go paint me something and submit it.

Livery Contest 2016 Details

Any Forza Game, Any Car, Fantasy, Realistic… It doesn’t matter. This year we want to encourage Forza painters to come up with their own versions of what a Racing Club Manager livery would look like. Our primary colors are dark blue, orange, white but that doesn’t mean you absolutely need to use those colors in your livery. Think, “What scheme will make my livery stand out from the rest?” and go from there. Last year‘s winner SCS Skreamies won because he had a super clean, realistic livery. Although we are encouraging you to think outside the box this year, that doesn’t mean that a really great clean racing livery cannot get the win.

This year’s livery contest is going to be Forza-based since every one of last year’s entries came from Forza painters and the top 9 clubs on racingclubmanager.com are Forza clubs. So you could consider this sort of a Forza appreciation event.

Prize

The winner of the contest will receive $10 USD via PayPal and will ultimately be judged by me, the creator of Racing Club Manager. I will however hold a fan vote and take the fan’s votes and comments into consideration before making my final decision.

Entry Submission

Entries can be submitted to Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit by May 6th 2016. That gives everyone 8 weeks to come up with an idea and execute it. Monday May 9th I will declare a winner and send the money via PAYPAL so make sure you’re set up to receive money.

Past Entries & Other Samples

Below are the entries from last year and some other liveries I have made in Forza just to get the creative juices flowing.

Last year’s winner SCS Skreamies

Another really great one from last year by Forza_ElMutem

This one I made for the first RDUX Forza 6 series

Release 11 To Do List

Release 10 was successful and so now we look to Release 11 which is based around a user requested feature. Let’s dive in!

• Ability to drop specific races from calculating final series results

As an admin you will be able to toggle each race on/off. If turned off those results will not be calculated into the series results leaderboard. Messages will be displayed to users that view the results of these races, notifying them that the results will not be counted.

This is an easy change but affects a lot of screens throughout the site and will take a significant amount of time to complete.

• Overhaul Series screen

I really hate the current series screen and it takes too long to load with the data that is shown.

I haven’t fully figured out what the end result will be, but I’m thinking tiles or some sort of large block that is mobile friendly.

Turnaround is typically a month so you can expect this release to be publish around April 8th. Obviously if I finish early or run into any trouble I’ll keep everyone updated on twitter.

Also, I am working on another Racing Club Manager livery contest and will have a blog post about that soon. CASH PRIZE! stay tuned everyone.

Project CARS Tracks I missed :(

Racing Club Manager supports a lot of racing games and it is certainly possible that an update gets missed here and there. If someone speaks up I’ll act immediately. Right now Forza is receiving a lot attention from current and new clubs so it makes sense for Forza updates to be heavily on the radar. That being said, here is support for 2 Project CARS tracks that I missed.

First up is a classic French track “Rouen Les Essarts” which has 2 configurations, GP and Short.

 

Lastly is “Bannochbrae” a Scottish fantasy track with a single layout that looks gorgeous.

Again, sorry for the misstep and if you notice I didn’t post about a track release send me an e-mail: rcm@racingclubmanager.com

Forza 6 VIR Track Support

Forza 6 announced along with the Porsche expansion that they have added Virginia International Raceway. That means Racing Club Manager is also adding support for VIR and the 7 ribbons. VIR is only available along with the purchase of the Porsche expansion($19.99 USD) which is unfortunate but with 21 total possible configurations and a bunch of great cars, it is definitely worth the money.