The following is a guide on how to do some things required for LFRS.
See also How to make a car and helmet for yourself.
You may want to change the team values if you have to alter your team name, or when your e-mail address or team homepage changes. Before changing your team settings, you have to give the password to ensure that you're the owner of the team. That way nobody else than you could change your team settings.
You can change all team settings, such as home page, team owner , the owner's e-mail, the team key code or the password. You can even change the team name (which should also include an engine name). Every entry that you don't change will remain the same, so e.g if you don't want to change your password leave it unchanged.
The team key code will be used by your authorised drivers. They enter this code into their driver form and when registering with your team, both codes will be compared. Only when both codes match, the driver will be able to join the team he chose. This way only people that you have told the key code to can join your team.
Be sure that you have asked the team director before joining an existing team. If you select a team without having permission to do so, you may be excluded from that team and you will find yourself without a drive. Sending results while you are an unauthorised member of a team (ie. you have not entered the correct key code into your driver form) is not permitted and will result in disqualification.
Either each driver registers himself or the team manager may register his/her drivers. If you're a team manager and you register your drivers, be sure to write down the driver passwords and tell them to your drivers. They will need their password to change their driver data or submit race results during the season.
To ensure you haven't already been registered by your team manager, look at the drivers list. If your team manager has not already registered you, you will have to register as new driver yourself.
When changing team, e-mail address or country etc. you use the form update driver data to change your settings. The actual settings will be used for any race results you submit in the future.
Don't forget that changing team or class during the season may not be allowed although it would be possible when using the forms.
It may happen that a driver will stop racing during the season and the team manager wants to hire another driver to replace him. Then just add another driver but don't change the name of the driver who left. There may be 2 drivers in each class who race in the same team but as long as only 2 drivers submit race results for that class it will be no problem.
To ensure your're authorised to submit results for the team you chose, the race results form will check if your driver form has the correct team key code. This code will be compared to the code that has been entered by the team director. If both codes match you will be able to send your race results as a member of the team you chose. If they don't match, you can't send results for that team. Be sure to get the team key code from your team director.
After you entered your driver number and your driver password, you'll get the form to submit your race results.
You have to enter the following data:
Race: | You select the race you want to submit your results for from a pulldown list box. |
Qualifying Time: | You should enter your qualifying time, even when it's not a good one
(you may still receive fastlap points even with a bad time).
Only if did not qualify at all (starting from 26th in your race) you may leave the box empty. Once you want to enter a qualifying time, you have to enter all fields: 1 digit for minute, 2 digits for seconds and 3 digits for decimals. |
Fastlap Time: | When you started your race, you will have a fastlap time.
You may only leave it empty if you didn't start your race. Once you want to enter a fastlap time, you have to enter all fields: 1 digit for minute, 2 digits for seconds and 3 digits for decimals. |
Race Time: | When you've finished your race without any error, you will have a valid
race time.
If you didn't finish your race, crashed or were lapped, you have to leave all fields empty. Once you want to enter a race time, you have to enter all fields: 1 digit for hour, 2 digits for minute, 2 digits for seconds and 3 digits for decimals. |
Laps Completed: | If you didn't start, leave it empty.
When you started your race, enter the laps you completed. If you finished your race and full race length was 25 laps, you have to enter "25". If you got a failure or an accident during lap 18 and you couldn't finish your race, you completed 17 laps. So you will have to enter a "17". You can either enter 1 or 2 decimals or you can leave it empty. |
Status: | You select how you ended your race from a pulldown list box. |
Control Info: | Follow the instructions that are displayed on the form.
You can't leave that empty. |
Once you've been successful in submitting your race results, you get
a positive message displaying the data that has been stored.
When you get that message you can be sure your race results have been
stored.
Go ahead and start practising the next track. :)
If you're a team director you could also use that log to find out if all your drivers already submitted their results, or if one of them is still missing.
Please don't only use capital letters for any name. Whenever you enter a name use the natural 'mixed style'. E.g. "SCUDERIA - FERRARI"would not be welcome, "Scuderia - Ferrari" would be acceptable. The same applies to any other name like driver name or team owner.
Please don't use quotation marks in any form control (all the forms used on LFRS will reject your data if you do). Quotation marks are used as text field delimiters. Your data could not be processed when you use quotation marks in names and that would result in an error. Instead you could use apostrophes.
Never enter the same driver twice. Please change the settings of that driver if you mistyped something. Use the update driver data form to correct any errors. Same applies to errors in teams data.
When you enter your team hompage URL be sure to start with "http://" or else your home page link will not work. It would look like a site that resides on the LFRS web server.
Removing Drivers: If you have registered a driver in error, use the update driver data form and alter the drivers name to "Delete Me" or something equivalent and choose the team name "(no team)" Someone should then remove that entry from the driver database. If you think you have been deleted in error, please contact the LFRS Support Team at support@lfrs.com, and they will sort your problem.
Assuming you drive for 'McLaren Mercedes,' your name is 'David Coulthard' and the spare team at the bottom of the carset is 'Arrows Yamaha' here's what to do...
Firstly, go to the team called 'Your Team'. Change the team name to McLaren, and the engine name to Mercedes. Then load in your team's car bitmap from your hard drive. Next go to driver #31 and change the driver's name to David Coulthard, and the name of driver #30 to Mika Hakkinen. Then replace the helmet bitmaps of these two drivers with those of you and your teammate. That's your team fixed.
Now, to fix the McLaren team that was already in the carset, go to the spare team (Arrows) and save the car bitmap and helmet bitmaps of the two drivers in that team to your HD. Go to the original McLaren team, change the team name to 'Arrows', and the engine name to 'Yamaha'. Replace the car bitmap with the one you just saved of the spare Arrows team. Change the driver's names to those of the spare Arrows team, and replace the driver bitmaps with the driver bitmaps you just saved to your hard disk.
If you want to change the cockpit and pitcrew colours of the two teams as well (not necessary), the easiest way to do this is to then save the carset under a new name, load up the original carset again in a new GP2edit window (under the load carset options), then just go to the edit pitcrew screen of the new carset and change the colours to match those of the teams in the original carset. You can arrange the windows so that you can see both pictures at the same time, so you just need to change the one you're editing to look like the other one :)
What ever you do, don't use the save team and load
team options in GP2edit to move the teams around quickly, as this will
also move their HP/Grip values, making the carset illegal and you'll get
DSQ'd!
Also, remember to export lap numbers when you patch GP2!
Thanks to John 'nippie' Bogle for that explanation! :)
Second, run the game using GP2Lap. This is quite easy. If you use Windows 95/98, simply add a GP2Lap shortcut to the 'Microprose' folder in your Start Menu, by using the 'Taskbar Options'. If you use DOS, simply type 'gp2lap' instead of 'gp2'!!
Then, from the main menu, select 'Choose A Driver/Team.' Select the
car/team specified in the race settings. (this should already be selected
from the carset). If your name and team are not there you have made a mistake
with the carset. Go back and correct your mistakes.
When its all correct select 'OK.'
From the Main Menu, select 'Drive Menu,' then 'Drive Options.' Set the race length (65% for A-B, 30% for C-F,H and 45% for G) as specified in the race settings. Practice and qualifying lengths are up to you. Then set the 'Level of Difficulty' as specified by the race settings. Then select 'Car Realism' and turn off all failures, then select 'OK.'
After doing that, Class E/F drivers may load the manditory setup by selecting 'Car Setup' (make sure that you do NOT have 'Seperate Setups for Qual and Race' selected), then select the specified track, then select 'Load Setup', find the manditory setup (raceX_E/F.csx), and hit 'OK.'
Now you're ready to race. See the 'How to Race' section on running the race.
NOTE: The only things that change from race to race is the track and Class E and F setups. So once you've set up for the first race, you shouldn't have to change anything except setups for the rest of the season.
So if you were driver #2158 and you were racing in Monaco in Class G, your files would be named G2158Q.HLD for qualifying hotlap, G2158R.HLD for race fastlap and G2158R.RAD for the saved racegame.