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.

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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 10 Details

I know, I know…. it’s been over 2 months since my last release. I’d like to try and churn them out every month depending on the complexity of the change but my time has been divided a lot. Well Release 10 is ready to deploy, just finishing up some testing now.

The first update is the tabbed design on the Series Details screen. In Release 9 I added this feature for team enabled series which allowed drivers that aren’t on a team to be included in the results and to have their own tab in the results. In that release I only added the functionality to the Race Details screen and now it’s coming to the Series Details.

Another update in this release is to the Edit Series Type dialog. This dialog is where you select whether the series can use teams or contains more than 1 class of car. The dialog used to have a drop-down menu which is terrible for mobile users. Now that I’ve implemented these big buttons, mobile users will find it friendlier. Also when you click a button it automatically saves the type, thus eliminating an unneeded step in the process.

The last new feature in this release is related to the editing of points templates. Right now when you add a custom points template, save it, and close the dialog the template that is set for the series you are editing is visually cleared. That would make it so you could not pass validation on save of the series, until a points template was selected. That worked fine but it was not the best solution. Now with Release 10 when you add/edit a points template and close the dialog, the site will ask you if you want to use the template you just added/edited in the series you are editing. If you choose the yes response then the template will be set for that series and visually will be selected for you. I don’t think anyone had problems with this or at least nobody ever vocalized it but I knew I needed to improve that workflow. Spoiler Alert: a future release will include being able to set a default points template so when you create a new series the template will already be set for you.

I wanted to jam some more of these little tweaks into this release but I was already dragging it out too long. A feature request from a user came in and I decided it was important enough to cinch up this release and start working on the request. I’ll have another post soon after this release is published detailing what I’m working on for release 11.

As always, thanks so much for reading these posts and using the site.

Release 9 Details

Release 9 is finally ready to be deployed. Here is a rundown of the features/updates we are pushing out.

 

Team Enabled Series Output

This change was suggested by Corn Wolf Gaming and it’s a good one. For series that use teams, there are now 3 tabs in the results output.

• Individuals – This view is your basic race results table. Shows everyone in the position they finished.
• Privateers – This is the new view. Everyone that was in the race but is not on a team will show here.
• Teams – Here we list the teams that were in this race and how many points were earned by tallying each racer’s points that are on said team.

Besides the addition of the Privateers view, this was always available on the race results screen. Now it is displayed in a tabbed menu instead of shown all at the same time, which was clunky.

 

Leaderboard Highlighting

This change was something I thought up. After each month of racing I write up a summary and list some stats that aren’t compiled already by the web site. I like to go through the leaderboard and see a racer’s progress month to month. Since racer’s typically finish in a different spot each month it was difficult to make the comparison’s because I had to look hard to find where that racer was on each view. Now with just a click we highlight a specific racer’s row and when you change your leaderboard filter’s that racer stays highlighted as long as they are on the board for that view. Click the row again to make the highlight disappear. Simple change, potentially big impact for stat nerds like me.

 

Duplicate Member Prevention

This is one of those boring updates. All I added was a check to see if the racer already exists as part of your club before they can send a request to join. I ran into this issue a lot when Forza 6 came out. I created a new club for FM6 then added all of the club members I thought would be getting the game. Then a few of them put in a request to join the club even though I already added them. Not a huge problem, but one that I thought I could eliminate.

 

I didn’t have a chance to code an update I talked about in my post “Release 9 To Do List.” It was a feature that would cut down on the number of clicks between setting the type of a series(Teams/Multi-Class) and actually adding racers to their teams or classes. I’ll pick it up again for release 10.

 

Thanks for reading!

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

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

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

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

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 F1 2014

Racing Club Manager now supports F1 2014!

I actually had to ask someone who owned the game for the list of tracks because after a ton of Google searches I came up with no definitive list. Regardless of the method I used to acquire the tracks, we now support F1 2014 and we hope to get some F1 clubs using the site soon.

Release #2 Features

I have started developing what is going to be in release #2 and have some updates for everyone. First of all, I will be publishing the Racing Club Manager site by the end of next week. January 16th at the latest.

The features that will be in release #2 include the ability to enter results for multi-class and team enabled races. Enabling that will impact the results outputs for each race, series, and the leader boards so work will need to be done to display results correctly.

A minor change that I have already developed and will be available in Release #1 is seeing ties in the series standings and leader boards. Obviously it’s possible to end up with the same amount of points as another racer by the conclusion of a series so I needed to be able to show those ties. Below is a screenshot of the series standings on a race detail screen showing that the final standings ended with racers having the same result.

Gran Turismo

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.

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.

This is the Advanced Search Screen

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!