AMS2 - User Livery Overrides

Hopefully, they let us someday. I always enjoyed making "murdered out" liveries in AC by making normal map only designs.

 

Side note: Does anyone know the naming format for the Corvette 73 C3?

I noticed there isn't a folder in the override section. I tried making one to the naming scheme they had on the template, but I keep getting the flat red livery that tells you something is formatted wrong. The folder format of Corvette_73 must be right, because it's recognizing the ID code from what I put in the XML, but not recognizing the livery.

 

i checked that and found a bug to report.
There is a mismatch inside the internal definition files.
Half links to corvette_73, half links to the puma_gtp
so, if you want it working currently, you'll have to copy (not move) your livery folder and your corvete_73.xml to the puma_gtp folder and rename the xml to puma_gtp.xml

EDIT:
Will be fixed in the next update
EDIT2:
in the beta from last night its fixed.
Thanks to Rob Thompson for this quick hotfix

 

a not open wheeler offer

#99 winning machine 24H Nords 2020

 

Has there been any mention of facilitating specific track overrides for liveries (as is now possible with custom AI drivers)? I.e. the ability to specify in the XML which livery to load for a given slot for certain tracks?

 

My Formula V10 Smokers Pack has been loaded more than 2000 times at Racedepartment.
Sure, smoking is bad for your health. Don't smoke!!!
Nevertheless this old skins with tobacco adverticements are legendary.
Thats why i decided to create a "Smokers Pack revival" for the Formula Ultimate Gen2.
Including "Smokers" and other well known beauties.
I think you'll like it too.
The first are finished

 

This is not possible in AMS 2. If you want to have different liveries on certain track, you gotta copy/paste them manually into your vehicles folder.

 

Thanks, yes - that's what I thought - but the functionality recently added to the custom AI XMLs (specific track overrides) could potentially be replicated with the liveries (i.e. facilitating adding references to alternative livery files in the folder to be subbed in for specific tracks), and I was wondering if that had been mentioned/discussed/requested anywhere. I couldn't find anything about it. It might not be a huge leap considering we can already specify one of three wheel textures for the F-USA cars via the livery override XML files.

 

This is awesome stuff, thanx bro!

 

You can choose wheel textures for some classes, but not different ones for different tracks. Same with liveries. The madness engine just was not made for modders and it took Reiza more than a year to find a way to bring in your own liveries and, only for a few car classes, wheel textures.

 

I know you can't do it right now - I'm just saying it would be nice. Technically I don't see how swapping one texture based on an xml file should be much different from swapping another (but I could be completely wrong about that, and I'm not suggesting it would be trivial to implement). Anyway, I'm not here to argue, just saying that in my opinion it would be a cool addition

 

the swapping is not the problem.
The problem is AMS2, loading the .xml just once. Therefore editing it while the game is active would not work.
On the other side, renaming the .dds would work.
All we need is a talented coder who creates an editor for temporarily copying and renaming the .ddses from a spare folder to a default folder and save that in a config file.
Then you could load a config, execute it and will have the liveries with the right names and sorting in default folder. So switching between different skin packs on the fly would be possible.
The advantage of such method would be, that you can have endless liveries stored in the spare folder, whilest in the default folder there are exactly as much as defined by the xml.
And it works either AMS2 is running or not.

 

They look great.

 

Okay - bear with me here, as I obviously don't have the mechanics of this clear in my head, and would like to understand it. I was guessing that what happens at the moment is something along these lines:

1. Game is launched
   
2. Game reads xml files
3. User chooses mode/track/cars/etc
4. User launches race session
5. Game iterates through the data loaded from xmls at step #2 to check if any livery overrides have been specified for any of the livery IDs required for the session. If so, it loads the specified texture .dds file from the specified path. If not, it sticks with the default/base livery.

So, I thought that it would not be a huge leap to allow the following at step 5 instead:

• Game iterates through the data loaded from xmls at step #2 to check a) if any livery overrides have been specified for any of the livery IDs required for the session, and b) if there are any alternative, track-specific overrides also specified relevant to the chosen track. If a), it loads the named texture .dds file from the specified path. If b) it loads the alternate named texture .dds instead. If neither, it sticks with the default/base livery.

Where am I going wrong?

An example use case (in case anyone is wondering what I am on about) would be the 1991 Lotus F1 car, for which the community has already made five different liveries that were used at different races throughout the season. With track-specific overrides, you could have all five dds files in your folder (with different names) and all listed in the xml with the relevant tracks specified (as you can do with the custom AI xmls).

 

too much effort for too few users. Its your personal dream
such a system is more needed for leagues for simple distributing livery sets

 

That's not particularly helpful - I'm just trying to understand how it works in order to make better use of the existing functionality and/or to give more useful feedback. Obviously broadly similar override functionality was already deemed worth the effort for wheel textures and custom AI, but yeah - let's evaluate my 'personal dream'...

 

its not much effort to relink livery and AI internally, because there is an internal list for AI behaviour and an internal list for the livery assignments to be relinked per car.
This lists are just text files to be traced, located in the encrypted car bffs.
Override was a simple hack made by Reiza in the main code.

But nothing similar to override each car per track that could be hacked.
With arrays instead of parsing text files it would be easier.

 

Easy workaround that I am currently using as I have different liveries for certain classes and tracks:

I created a folder for those tracks on my HD where I put in the liveries for it. When I want to drive on this track, it is just one simple copy/paste thing to get them into the game. As the dds-files have the same name as the other files of the mod, I do not have to take care about the xml.

 

you could simply rename the folders with a .bat file

 

Thanks, folks - I appreciate that I could use workarounds, but tbh I'm not so interested in that route (I've done stuff like before, but it's not what I'm getting at here). I was interested in the potential for it to be done in an automated/integrated way to link in with the custom AI files. I appreciate it's a niche 'wish'.

My thinking was that if you could automate switching the liveries like the AI drivers (i.e. per track) you could e.g. sub in the cars that got through pre-qualifying for F1 in 1991, or part-time/one-off entries for IndyCar races, etc. If you could do that via xml overrides you could then package it up with an AI file and all the extra skins, and it would just work as a really nice, hassle-free mod.

Again, I appreciate this is a niche (within a niche), but some people like to run historical races/seasons. If it's not possible - oh well, no worries.