Content Manager - Detailed Changelog

This site is best viewed in a modern browser with JavaScript enabled.

Content Manager - Detailed Changelog

x4fab

0.8.1024.19657

Again, very sorry for the delay. At first, I decided to try and add DOF to Custom Showroom, then, I discovered that actually forward shading can be mixed with dynamic lighting, then area lights… Then, 1.14 update came out and it took some time to add those new great features to CM.

Please, be very careful with user championships. They aren’t ready yet, although support some of new AC features. Going to update them a bit later.

AC 1.14 support:
- Wind:
  - Set speed and direction, optionally more specific;
  - Set speed range with new double slider (thanks to Topuz for idea!);
  - Real conditions integration;
- AI aggression;
- Both AI strength and aggression now use double slider;
- Flags support;
- Ballast and restrictors:
- Detailed race grid editor;
- Player car in other game modes;
- New replays autosave system:
- Full support, including options and Replay button in race result dialog;
- Now, replays are looked not only in “replays” folder, but in all subfolders;
- Assign your replays between subfolders (aka categories);
- If needed, you can go back to the old system by going to settings and disabling the new one;
Quick Drive:
- Weather is grouped now;
- Select weather by type;
- Random weather, temperature and time (properly random);
- Change car or track from drop-down menu;
Floating-point AI strength and aggression (hopefully, it won’t cause any issues);
Custom Showroom:
- Move and rotate car within showroom or without it (press T, hold Alt to move car more accurately);
- Load several cars at once;
- DOF (depth-of-field, blur with distance):
- Shader shared by one of Witcher’s devs;
  Very nice and quite accurate in terms of photography, but has its obvious flaws with translucency and leaking in some places.
- Accumulation mode;
  Not actually a real-time algorithm, and since I know nothing about photography, without any fancy stuff such as bokeh, but at least it works with translucent objects and reflections.
- Get an access to depth buffer (press Alt+P);
  Allows if needed to apply DOF later using, for example, some photo editor.
- Autofocus: use Ctrl+Click;
- Dynamic lighting:
- Up to 50 dynamic lights;
- Various types: directional light, spotlight, point light;
- Up to 25 dynamic shadows, optionally smoothed;
- Assign lights to cars (including moving parts);
- Option to try and guess car lights based on mesh and data;
- Assing lights to showrooms;
  If you’re working on a new showroom, you can include CM lights description to it as well! Just press “Save” in lights editor and CM will create a new file called “cm_lights.json” in UI folder.
- Area lights with optionally visible mesh;
- For unblurred flat mirror, light is reflected (optional);
- Various sets of shaders with different features switching automatically;
  Now, CM weights about 500 KB more, but, on the other hand, it should increase performance on low-end graphic cards — of course, as long as you don’t enable all of those features.
- Customized reflection cubemap size and update frequency;
  It actually looks better with 1024×1024 size, and works much faster.
- Option to project (or project and blur) cars’ ambient shadows down instead of just draw them attached to a car;
  Comparison screenshots.
- To add a bit of life, now car lights are switching smoothly;
  Delay is either taken from __CM_SMOOTH_DELAY values in lights.ini or is guessed based on light’s hue.
- SSLR tracing improved;
- SSLR blurring fixed;
- Cameras fixed;
- Bounding boxes building optimized and corrected;
- Custom darkness level for ambient shadows updating;
- Blurred textures support for ksTyres and ksBrakeDisks shaders;
- Outline wings and wheels (with live reloading);
- Position wheels using data (with live reloading);
  Might be useful to fix GRAPHIC_OFFSET.
- Adjust positioned wheels using set of sliders;
  Those params are considered while updating ambient shadows.
- With wheels positioned by data, rotation is available to test blurred textures and meshes;
- Ambient from showroom is now a bit more detailed;
- Tools window is now properly resizeable;
- With flat mirror, objects are now cut to fit properly;
- Some other fixes and optimizations;
Paint Shop:
- Specify which channels take from source maps;
- Map channels to output in any order;
New hints system;
I tried to keep it as less annoying (but at the same time informative) as possible.
New grouped lists for replays and car setups;
Ratings and favourites will be kept correctly while you copy or rename content;
Replays reading improved and optimized;
Ideal conditions checkbox;
A couple of new crashes diagnostics;
Race results dialog fixed in a couple of cases;
Now, missing cars in replays also will be detected;
Car data/models analysis is deeper;
Warning about content with the same file names in enabled and disabled folders;
Sadly, right now (because of FS watching and all that) CM can’t deal with this sort of stuff and might go mad. Please, take care of those files manually.
Additional shortcuts for analyzer and tyre replacement tool in Content/Cars section;
A lot of internal UI stuff is optimized and reworked now;
Other fixes.

Example of area lights

x4fab

0.8.1045.20358

Just when I thought I was going to finish working on new features and instead go back to fixing issues and all that, I suddenly found out a way to implement something I was thinking of for quite a while. Still pretty much WIP, but it looks like concept is working. As usual, sorry for the delay, but I think you’re going to like it.

That new feature: extended online servers.
The idea is to wrap acServer or acServer.exe — both Linux and Windows are supported — in a small script, which monitors logs, collects more information, and then provides it to CM (or any other launcher). Here is its page (open-source, MIT and all that), and, if you want to try it in action, search for “content” online server or use this link. Hopefully, it’ll be running.
Already implemented in CM:
- Actual conditions (including custom clouds for GBW-weather! finally);
- Allowed and denied assists;
- Extra properties, such as description, city or frequency;
- Missing content installation;
- Password checking;
Content installation reworked, almost from scratch:
- Download and install content in background;
- Easily add several links at once;
- While installing tracks, pick layouts you want to add or update;
- Optionally, choose to keep existing shared models;
  Might be useful when installing new layout — such as OSRW extra pits layout — which could theoretically be based on a previous version of the track and thus have obsolete models.
- Install new skins;
  Put cm_skin.json with {"id":"CAR_ID"} next to ui_skin.json if you want to force CM to choose a specific car, but it will work without it — either by looking at potentially car’s directory name in archive, if nothing is found this way, by offering to install a skin to a car currently selected.
- Install new apps;
  Version number is taken from “changelog.txt”, “readme.txt”, “read me.txt” or “version.txt”, more information in About/Important Tips section.
- Install new True Type fonts for some apps;
- Install new driver models;
- Install new weathers and PP-filters;
- Special mode for GBW-pack offering to remove all existing GBW-weather first;
- Apart from Google Drive, install content from MediaFire, Dropbox or Yandex.Disk;
- Downloading from RaceDepartment fixed (probably, temporary);
- New 7-Zip plugin to install content from most types of archives known;
Driver models management (with scanning to find out which model is used by what car);
Rescan usings for fonts improved;
New analyzer diagnostic: find and fix wrong COMPOUND_DEFAULT value (after 1.14 update, AC behaves very weirdly if it’s wrong);
Now, control presets include system (aka experimental) settings;
Specify FFB post-processing while preparing controls settings;
- Included in presets;
- Import LUT-files by dragging them to CM’s window;
- Optionally, import CSV-files as well;
Customize pit stops (in Settings/Assetto Corsa/Miscellaneous section);
Disable or enable notification for downshift protection;
Information loading in Online refactored, now using faster approach;
Arguments handling when CM is just started changed;
Online servers monitor if content is added or removed;
Logarithmic slider for laps number, from 1 to 120;
Livery Editor updated:
- Livery styles, shapes and fonts moved to Data;
- Generating several liveries at once fixed;
- Skin colors guessing fixed;
Right click on button with extra menu (such as replay button) will show that menu;
DDS reading fixed;
Missing content display fixed;
Data analyzer fixed;
Replays scrolling fixed;
Old approach to replays auto-saving (with name template) fixed;
Stats multiline display fixed;
Filtering servers with missing content fixed;
Quick Drive settings fixed;
Not always updating mirror in Custom Showroom fixed;
DOF on screenshots in Custom Showroom fixed;
PCSS in close view fixed;
A lot of various crashes fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1048.20379

Changelog formatting fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1050.20615

Looking for missing content in prebuilt indexes (optional, enabled by default);
Sort of positive secondary effect from content installation testing.
7-Zip plugin improved: now with UTF-8 support, password checking for non-solid archives optimized;
Download files from assetto-DB.com, Mega or adf.ly shortened links;
If needed, here is an extension which adds quick installation buttons to websites. Or, for example, you can simply drag’n’drop URLs to CM.
Some missing-content-related behavior of online servers fixed;
Server presets management fixed and improved (but still not really finished yet);
Select tracks by DLCs;
Multi-monitor and multi-DPI support (hopefully);
Custom backgrounds;
Some fixes and adjustments.

x4fab

0.8.1051.20616

Emergency fix for window-size related issue! Sorry about it.

x4fab

0.8.1053.20790

Custom Showroom now used to generate previews by default, but you can always switch back in settings if needed;
Online presets management:
- Welcome message;
- Clone entries, set specific restrictors or random skins;
- Set ac-server-wrapper settings;
- Pack presets with all files required to run them into single archive archive;
  Although there are some options for ac-server-wrapper, they don’t work yet! WIP and all that. Working on them right now. 🙂
- For Windows, optionally, pack preset to a single executable;
Custom Showroom:
- Modify driver and crew textures live as well using Paint Shop;
- Skinned mesh shader transparency fixed;
- Issue with semi-transparent tyres fixed;
While dragging opponents in race grids, or online entries, hold Ctrl to copy them;
Static data (such as crew stuff in custom showroom, flames textures to repair cars, showrooms for previews, default PP-filter) are cached now, but regularly checked for updates;
RD downloading fixed;
Now, acVideoModes.dll thing should work more often, and when it won’t, messages will be less annoying;
Instant search for missing tracks fixed;
Some crashes fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1055.20797

New server preset creation fixed;
Missing content loading fixed.

By the way, that testing server is up and running again! Sorry about that Morgan, updated Peugeot 504 with neural tyres should be more legit.

Here is a link to join. Just in case, password is 123.

x4fab

0.8.1057.20802

Press Ctrl+B to add or remove car/track/server/etc. to/from favourites;
That crash with changing track in server presets hopefully fixed now.

x4fab

0.8.1065.21193

That ac-server-wrapper thing is still in development, working on it, almost ready… In the meantime, here are some more fixes and small improvements.

The Setup Market integration;
Install setups from the website with this extension, or simply browse setups right from CM using Setups Manager. Also, CM will show how many setups there are in a couple of other places, but this option is disabled by default. To avoid overloading website, quite heavy caching is used.
Now, links to quick missing content installation in Online will lead to content webpages instead;
If needed, hold Ctrl to start installation directly. But I’d check first what exactly is you’re going to install. Just to be sure. And if you want to be able to quickly install content from its webpage, again, try this extension.
CM now offers to quickly install missing content in some other places;
Content Installation is now more reliable;
Python apps settings reworked, now with desktops support;
- Combine several existing presets to a single multi-desktop preset;
- See the list of activated apps in presets’ tooltips;
Pack car — but only necessary files — into a ZIP-archive;
More content types as well as packing several cars at once is coming…
Server presets management improved thanks to Florea Calin’s helpful suggestions:
- Entry list improved;
- Sorting and filtering for saved drivers;
- Drag saved driver to server entry to load values, hold Shift to create a new one;
- Drag car to server entry to change car, hold Shift to create a new entry;
- Option to have most settings in a single tab;
- Press Alt+F1…F6 to switch between tabs;
- Packing fixed;
Press Alt+1…9 to switch between sections (in addition to existing F1…F4 and Ctrl+1…9);
Online: inverted races support;
Filter skins from Kunos;
Some UI and internal fixes and improvements.

x4fab

0.8.1066.21251

Specify location for temporary downloaded files (by default, it’s “AppData\Local\Temp”);
After being installed or failed to install, downloaded files are deleted;
While installing, skins are being detected by “livery.png” and “preview.jpg”, if “ui_skin.json” is missing;
New command-line option to disable HTTPS checks;
Wrapped servers now show remain time properly;
Google Drive loader improved.

x4fab

0.8.1068.21258

Issue with unsupported keys and ac-server-wrapper, hopefully, fixed;
Content description being lost while packing wrapper server is fixed as well.

x4fab

0.8.1070.21260

Right-click issue fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1129.23321

This one is a pretty big update, sorry for it to took so long, but I always found new things which needed to be fixed/reimplemented asap. To be honest, I wouldn’t even upload it now, but rather added some more stuff (first of all, more posts in About section!), but it would take way too much time then, especially considering that apart from new features, there are a lot of bugs fixed as well. Oh, and also, thank you so much for your support! Please, excuse me for not responding in time, sometimes it’s just way too difficult for me to switch contexts… Now, I’ll upload this version, take a breath and try to fix it somehow, at least partially.

Appearance:
- Light theme fixed;
- New previews preset for Light theme;
- New White theme added;
- More customizable things (more examples and small gallery are coming);
- Now, themes can be installed as any other content;
- Option to increase the size of title links;
- Lite mode is less annoying (sorry about that!);
Long promised batch actions!
- Hold Ctrl or Shift and click to enable it, press Escape to go back;
- During multi-selection mode, use right mouse button to switch between active object;
- Various actions including removal, packing, cleaning and fixing UI values;
  More will be added later.
- Supported all apart from tracks, user championships and server presets (working on it);
  Now, this definitely makes that old Cars Manager thing completely irrelevant. Please, stop using it, it might even be harmful at this point.
New Mods tab! Still WIP:
- Manage JSGME mods from CM;
- Hard links for mods installation to avoid wasting space;
- Switch between JSGME presets;
- While installing any piece of new content, try to install it as a JSGME mod — this way, you will be able to easily remove it later;
  Please, keep in mind existing JSGME limitations — for example, new files added to installed this way car won’t be removed while removing mod.
Custom Showroom:
- FMOD integration;
  Press Y to toggle engine sound or open car params section and adjust values there. But don’t forget to install a special plugin first! Linking with gas pedal is planned, but no promises (I think it should use values like ENGINE_DATA/INERTIA, but I have no idea how).
- Screenshots are taken in 1920×1080 (plus multiplier) resolution with no regard to window size;
  Temporary fix, customizable resolution will beforee available later.
- Tiles issue with high-res screenshots fixed;
- ImageMagick Montage plugin updated;
  It consumes twice less RAM than before, and also, now, it won’t take all memory available, but processing might take more time.
- Modify materials from Custom Showroom;
- Fork, replace (as with textures);
- Adjust parameters;
- Patched ksEditor material library is integrated as well;
  Shaders still can’t be changed, but maybe I’ll add this option later.
- New lights are white;
- High CPU usage fixed;
- Shaders fixed and improved to be more accurate;
- Hide ground without showroom;
- Generate base textures for color grading LUTs directly from CM;
- New button in settings allowing to reset the most heavy options to save showroom from crashing, but keep most of current settings;
- Dialogs behavior fixed;
- Keys pressed in tool window now work as hotkeys in showroom as well;
- While saving color grading textures, use PNG to save space (otherwise, preset will be too big);
- Save modified model state and wheels positions;
  It won’t affect online checksums or the way car looks on a track.
Some UI changes:
- Car specs tooltips in Quick Drive section;
- Rating and favourite icons in object lists;
- Quick Switches panel behavior reworked;
- Animations reworked with Google guidelines;
Server presets:
- AC Server Wrapper integration improved:
- Content settings reworked, now supporting packing and local files;
- Packing fixed;
- Option to fit most params at a single tab;
- Pickup mode enabled by default;
AC settings:
- Toggle messages;
- Toggle VR camera shake;
- Move damage displayer around;
Car analyzer:
- Obsolete sound detection (works not always though);
- AI shifting points diagnostics fixed;
- Repairing weight and torque/power things got a new, possibly the best, solution;
Uploading (for sharing replays, for now; more will be ready soon):
- Settings reworked;
- New destinations:
- Dropbox;
- Mega;
- Microsoft OneDrive;
- Yandex.Disk;
- Nothing apart from access tokens are stored;
- Authentication process is optimized;
- All login params can be found in Authentication.data instead of Values.data;
  You’ll have to re-login to Google Drive because of it.
Install content from Microsoft OneDrive as well;
Copy link to a remote file or local file, switch to Content Manager and press Ctrl+V to install it;
Race Essentials integration;
Double-click car, car skin, track or weather in Content section lists to open it in Quick Drive section;
Curves in drive section enabled by default;
Changelog loading fixed;
Track skins;
Some description will be ready a bit later, sorry.
Some more fancy hints, plus some options for debugging them if you want to test a skin;
New system configs (some of them) and sets of textures installation support;
Car packing moved to batch actions, with some options added;
Settings for some plugins;
Online timeouts adjusted;
Notification for installed setups;
Change filter for cars while changing tyres;
Track authors per layout;
Kunos drivers and fonts are labeled;
Car classes list is now fixed;
Hold Shift to adjust sliders more accurately (for now, only works with some of them);
A lot of various UI and core fixes.

x4fab

0.8.1130.23322

Auto-update fix.

x4fab

0.8.1155.24074

Fixing bugs and various issues! Never-ending process, apparently, sorry about that.

Car analyzer:
- New diagnostics for cars about missing or empty LUT-files;
  With those issues, AC’s “log.txt” can easily reach gigabytes in size.
- If there are any critical issues with car (from analyzer), there’ll be a warning in Quick Drive next to Drive button;
Custom Showroom and previews:
- Object-space normals support;
- Materials dialog improved;
- Save and load (optionally) camera position with presets;
- Load camera from any other preset, including previews preset;
- Camera tilt option;
- Press F8 in Custom Previews style editor to create a 1920×1080 screenshot;
- Specify file name for preview images;
- New option to hide ground at all, apart from shadow;
- With PNG extension of previews file name, result image will be semi-transparent;
- New tone mapping functions;
- Tone mapping functions are synced to have similar brightness with similar input params;
- Blurred reflection are independent from reflections resolution now;
- Brightness of visuals for area lights now should me more accurate, and also, just in case, customizable;
- A couple of buttons in settings to reset heavy settings for previews as well;
- Live reloading for animations, driver position and driver model;
- Shifting animation;
- Move driver around and save its updated position to “steer.ksanim” (should exist before that);
- Copy driver position from “steer.ksanim” to “driver_base_pos.knh” (should exist before that);
- Bloom on-off option renamed to “HDR” since this is what it is;
  Use “Bloom” slider option on “Misc” tab to adjust bloom.
- CPU consumption fixed;
- Hi-res screenshots montage fixed;
- Windscreen shader with area lights fixed;
- Car auto-alignment for previews fixed (thanks to Schnipp for pointing out, very slippery bug);
- Movement speed fixed;
The Setup Market integration:
- Disabled by default;
- Lifespan of caches doubled (but now you can decrease it);
- New enabled by default option for taking setups list from a small proxy-server to decrease TSM server overload;
  Very sorry about it.
Quick Drive:
- Random time fixed;
- Missing car skins issue fixed;
- Last position races fixed;
- Car description fixed;
Online:
- Context menus in online section for car and track;
- New option to fix server names even more;
Interface:
- Loading progress in Windows taskbar;
- No more car description in online section or in race grids editor to avoid messing up UI;
Shareable RHM presets (just need to specify its settings location);
Odometer by Stereo integration;
Sidekick’s odometer integration;
For both apps, the larger value will be used. If something will get messed up, use “Recaulculate” button in Stats section to fix it.
New AI limitation feature allowing to prevent AIs from using specific tyres and more;
Very unreliable and questionable solution, still deeply WIP, and might not be around for a long time. For more information, please, go to About section.
New batch actions for car skins: set names from IDs, add a prefix to names;
Processing inline LUTs improved;
New option to display car’s steer lock;
Now, if RSR app is enabled, minimum temperature will be set to 10 °C to avoid banning (optional);
Race results dialog:
- Total time/delta (make dialog wider to see details about laps);
- Remarkable things per driver;
Additional content installation:
- If installation of downloaded content failed, press a button to install it manually;
- No more auto-deleting for content failed to install;
- Warning about missing 7-Zip plugin if needed;
- Ctrl+V will work at that window as well;
- Apps installation fixed (now, empty folders will be included as well);
  Sorry for issues with Sidekick! Please, make sure folder called “odometers” is there if you installed it via CM.
Hold Ctrl while opening car skins or setups section to force it to open in a separate dialog;
Hold Ctrl before opening color picker to immediately go to pick-a-color-from-screen mode;
And hold left mouse button in process. Try it in Livery Editor, for picking colors from preview!
Sidekick optimal ranges integration fixed and improved;
Same for RaceEssentials;
Generic mods disabling fixed;
Saving of race grids’ additional params in non-custom modes fixed;
Steam overlay laggy integration fixed (might consume a bit of CPU now when window is active);
Encoding support fixed;
Message about syntax error in LUT-file fixed (now it shows car ID);
A lot of smaller UI/core improvements and fixes.

x4fab

0.8.1157.24079

UV export issue fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1159.24085

Accumulating DOF with hi-res shots fixed (it will take a lot of time though);
Content download fixed.

x4fab

0.8.1171.24688

More bugfixes! And more to come… 🙂

New Developer Starter;
Race results history;
By default, 1000 of the latest race results will be stored and could be seen or repeated from RESULTS (previously known as STATS) section. Amount of results stored can be changed in Settings/Drive.
Paint Shop reworked:
- Skinning rules loading added;
  For now, using only this repository.
- If any rules found, Paint Shop’s icon will turn colorful;
- Proper new skins creation;
- New pattern-only rule;
- For car paint, optionally set custom textures as carbon, optionally, colorized;
- Numbers support;
- Custom fonts support;
- Specify output format;
- Now, CM is able to save DDS textures as DXT1, DXT5, RGBA4444, RGB565, L8 or LA88;
Custom Showroom:
- Now, accumulation DOF can be used for accumulation AA as well — believe me, it looks the best way possible;
  Of course, it’s far from brilliant TSSAA used, for example, in DOOM… Maybe I’ll find a way to implement it later as well.
- Optional bokeh for accumulation DOF;
- Accumulation DOF blending fixed according to this helpful video;
- Optionally, calculate AO and UV maps per object rather than per texture (from object details dialog);
- UV renderer extended and optimized;
  It would require A LOT of iterations though, if light areas are small.
Trackday results display fixed (now, laps are shown, but only laps driven when player was around);
New option to display skins’ IDs instead of skins’ names;
Extended tooltips for skins;
Description (plus skins description) for image viewer;
A lot of bugfixes and small changes.

x4fab

0.8.1173.24692

Small UI-related fix.

x4fab

0.8.1176.24696

Auto-update fix.