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.

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Release 8 To Do List

Release 7 just went out today and it pleases me very much to be able to put out those updates and I think it adds a lot of value to the site. Release 8 isn’t going to be as spectacular, but it includes some stepping stones that will allow us to build a better advanced search.

In Release 8 I need to allow clubs to specify the platform on which the club is based. Games like Forza and Gran Turismo won’t have any options to choose from, but Project CARS and the Formula 1 games will.

Right now the advanced search is useful for finding a club that has an upcoming race, but if you are searching for a Project CARS race there is no way to filter by PC, XBOX One, or PS4 and there needs to be. Updating the advanced search is not going to happen as part of Release 8 but as part of Release 9. The advanced search is going to be completely overhauled and will take a while to complete.

Another addition for Release 8 is to show the game and platform on the club home page. I haven’t figured out the exact placement for this yet. I’ll provide screenshots when the release date approaches.

Release 8 will also allow clubs to apply penalty points to racers in each race. Right now clubs can give out bonus points, but not take any away. These points will be taken into account for series and race standings and in all leaderboards.

The last item for Release 8 is to add number of races attended to the series leaderboard on the series details page.

To recap, Release 8 will include:

  • # races attended column on series details leaderboard
  • support for penalty points per race
  • ability to specify the platform your club uses
  • show game and platform on club home page
  • show platform on club search and view all clubs(not advanced search, yet)

This is a fairly straight forward release and shouldn’t take too long to complete. I can’t give a hard release date yet, but I can estimate it should be ready before the end of August.

Thanks for reading and please share any feedback you have on the site. If you are ever clicking through the site and say to yourself, “I wish this site did this, it would be so much better,” then please contact me.

Ability to Delete Your Club

The Club Profile page now has a “Delete Club” button at the bottom. It allows clubs that were just trying the site as a test, to delete the club and all data associated with it. In the confirmation prompt, we stress that we cannot un-delete a club. In reality we have database backups so if you were to delete by accident, although an unlikely event, we could restore from our backups.

This is a very minor update and was not included into an official release. I am still developing Release 7 and trying to figure out the best stats to put on the Racer Detail page. Once I figure out the final layout of the page I will do another blog post and detail all the new features.

Thanks for reading!

delete_club

RaceRoom Track Support Update

raceroomracingWe added a few tracks that maybe we missed initially or came out since our site launched for RaceRoom Racing Experience. We don’t currently have any clubs on our site that use the game, but it would be nice to support all of the tracks from their store just in-case we do get a club eventually.

macau
Macau
paul-ricard
Paul Ricard
salzburgring
Salzburgring
shanghai
Shanghai Circuit
sonoma
Sonoma Raceway

Release 4 Endurance Support

Release 4 is finally out and I got all of the details for the changes that are included and there are quite a few.

Manage Races Screen

manage_races

This screen shot of the updated Manage Races Screen is divided by a yellow vertical line.

On the left side I circled the 2 sections of interest. The larger circle shows two expanded drop-down lists. One list shows options for “Time” and “Distance”. If you choose Time, you get to specify how many hours and minutes the race should last. In the other drop-down list labeled “Results” you get to specify if the results should record how many laps, kilometers, meters, miles, or feet each racer competed during the race’s time span. The smaller circle on the left side of the screen shot shows where you record each racer’s distance and just left of the circle is a new field Best Lap.

On the right side of the screenshot you can see what it looks like if you choose Distance for race length. You cannot see it in this screen shot, but if you were to choose Distance for length of race, you would be able to record the Best Lap and Overall Time for each racer in the results table.

Race Details Screen

race_details_both

The race details screen now reflects the length of race in the header of the page. The left screen is 20 Laps and the right is a 1 hour 30 minute timed race.

Both sides show columns for Best Lap, while the Distance race shows a column for Overall time and the Timed race shows a column for Distance traveled.

Another small detail you may have noticed is the presence of the 2 buttons just below the orange Results bar. The button on the left, when clicked, will show you the results for this race. The button on the right will show you the series standings after this race. This page needed the horizontal space because of the new columns, so this is the current solution. This may evolve over time.

Leaderboard Screen

leaderboard

I was able to add a new stat to the Leaderboard screen. Podium % shows you how often a racer finishes 3rd or better within the given leaderboard parameters. This screenshot shows just February 2015, but could be expanded to show all of 2015 or any other month a race result had been recorded. If you have a lot of results recorded over the course of a year, you would be able to see if a racer’s podium % was getting better, worse or staying about the same.

Racers Screen

racers_screen

The Racers screen is like a leaderboard for the entire lifespan of the club, so it is a good place to determine overall podium % and another new stat called “Rival.” Rival shows you which other racer finishes 1 spot ahead of you the most. In the screenshot the first racer “Buddy7085” has a rival “B1G5TIG”. Imagine that B1G5TIG has finished just ahead of Buddy7085 on 6 races so far and other racers have only done it 3 or 4 times. Since B1G5TIG has done it the most he becomes the rival. The club I race with finds this stat really fun because it gives you someone to try your hardest against in-race. Whether you are trying to get rid of your current rival or trying to stay as someone else’s I feel like this is the first time an online statistic has impacted in-game play in a meaningful way, at least for our club.

I am really excited to be able to deliver these new enhancements and hopefully it adds to your game play experience. I will be prioritizing what small updates should go out next and also what bigger features should make it into Release 5. I will let everyone know as soon as I figure it out.

Thanks for reading!

Support for Teams Update

Wow it’s been a while since I posted anything, but I just haven’t had any major site updates since launch. I have fixed and tweaked a few things here and there, but nothing major to report. If you don’t follow me on twitter and you want more contact about the site and what we’re up to, follow @RacingClubMgr. We post almost every day.

I have been working on and off to get support for teams and multi-class racing into the site and I now finally have something to show you guys.

This first image is the dialog that you are going to get when you click “Add New Series” on the manage races screen. You will now be able to name the series and give the series a type before creating it. The types are Standard, Multi-Class, and Teams. I think the types are pretty self explanatory, so I won’t go through them. Once you click the Add button, the dialog will close and the Manage Races screen will refresh the list and you should see your new series.
add_new_series_dlgThe second image shows the Manage Races screen with some new features added. Next to the Points drop-down, you can see a link “Edit Type/Edit Teams” Teams need to be defined for each series, because teams can change from series to series, but should remain the same for each race in a given series. If your club does things differently, CONTACT ME and we’ll come up with a solution together.

edit_type_edit_teamsThe third image is what you would see when you click the “Edit Type/Edit Teams” link. On this dialog you can change your series type or edit teams.

edit_series_typeClicking “Edit Teams” gets you to this screen. This screen allows you to add new teams, remove teams or edit the name and members of existing teams. Right now this screen is set-up so that a racer can only be a part of 1 team per series. I couldn’t think of a reason to allow anyone to be on multiple teams for a given series.

edit_teamsI am about 75% done with the team support and will be moving on to multi-class support next. Apart from a few things left to do on the screens I am showing you here, I still need to come up with the results output for team races and series before I can move onto mutli-class support.