Data distribution ideas

[thelusiv]

Talking with Joe on AIM the other day, we came upon the notion that it would be way easier to develop the features available to cars and tracks (for instance, moving objects in tracks, or fully working interiors and animated drivers in cars), if we only had one track and one car to worry about. For this reason I've already moved all the data to VDrift SF.net SVN, and that is where it will stay.

We have not chosen yet which car/track will be the one to develop on. It is likely we will use a car that was created by a VDrift developer. We would like to have an original track to use instead of one of the imported ones. Our best original car models are the TL2 and XS (in my opinion). Whichever car we do choose, will get the full development effort focused on it. What that means is that we will do our best to make sure that it drives as well as we can possibly make it. Since we won't have to worry about 27 other cars we are supporting, it will not be necessary to waste development time applying new features to all the cars when they don't even drive all that well anyway.

We will still provide the cars/tracks we have in our data set right now, but the only ones that come with the game will be the one car and track we choose to focus on. The other cars will be imported manually by the user or use some data management application as mentioned before in this thread. As some of the other cars/tracks progress, and support all the new features that the official car/track do, we will include them in releases as well.

Please comment on these ideas. Soon, I'll post a poll giving the community some choices on which car we should focus our future development efforts on.