Announcing Hotlaps, an Android and Now Mobile Web app for Saving/Sharing Your Laptimes!

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NoStreetCred / GTP_CerealKiller
I might play this game a bit strangely but I find myself spending most of my time just picking a car, picking a track, running a few laps and then watching the replay. I love to see how my laptimes stack up against past attempts but GT isn't great for this. Only 8 times are stored, you can't see what tire it was run on, what PP the car was tuned to at the time, or if it was wheel or controller. (I tend to use both) As such I thought it might be a fun project for my first Android app.

The app is called Hotlaps, and you can get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.rmrf.hotlaps.

It is quite simple right now, just a screen that is intended to make it very quick to punch in your laptimes (search for car and track by any part of it's case insensitive name, tap out just the digits in your time, PP autoseeded to the default for the car), a list of your laptimes filterable by tire and wheel/controller, as well as a "global leaderboard". Bear in mind that global leaderboard is uncurated so take everything there with a grain of salt. I may someday implement a "follow" other users feature, or some kind of clubs, which would give you some options for a more meaningful leaderboard.

The sharing aspect requires laps be stored on a remote server, which has the added benefit that you can login from any Android device or potentially a web interface in the future. This implies you need to create an account however, an email address is required (it will never be displayed publically, there's a separate username for that). You will see a link to a privacy policy on the registration screen. (spoiler alert: your data will never be sold to or shared with any third party)

It is ad-free and requires very few permissions, just enough to talk to the server where the data is stored. In the future, it may nag you gently periodically to "go pro" for a couple dollars either as a donation, or if that is completely unsuccessful, to be able to log more than a certain number of laps per month. (~20) I will be implementing an export feature however so if that day does come, and you do not feel it is worth it a dollar or two, you can export all your past data, it belongs to you.

Working on multi-game support next for Forza 5, and I plan to add GT7 when that glorious day arrives.

Hope some of you find it useful! I've seen people mention using spreadsheets and notebooks for this so hopefully this will turn out to be a better way, I find it quite handy. Let me know if you have suggestions or run into any problems and I will do my best.

Update Sep 29 2015:

There is now a mobile friendly web-ui at https://hotlaps.rm-rf.ca. It's in very preliminary stages, really just add and view global laps right now, but I usually get a little work done on it every weekend. It might even become the primary interface as it's a lot quicker and easier to add features than in Android. (and only slightly more clunky to use)

You will get prompted about a certificate problem the first time you load the app for now, I hope to address this later but for now you just have to tell the browser to accept it and move on.

I suggest Google Chrome on Android, Firefox works but you have to scroll down a little when using the fancy typeaheads to search for car/track before they show up. I've done minimal testing in iOS but it looked good there too.
 
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Great idea CerealKiller. Downloaded the app today and it works well. Top 8 times always frustrated me with varying performance vehicles o the same track. Well done.
 
I am not Android 4.0, but might be when I get a new phone!

You don't know how much this will help with my league testing!! I mean, I have a computer to plug numbers and such, but this is golden!
 
I might play this game a bit strangely but I find myself spending most of my time just picking a car, picking a track, running a few laps and then watching the replay. I love to see how my laptimes stack up against past attempts but GT isn't great for this. Only 8 times are stored, you can't see what tire it was run on, what PP the car was tuned to at the time, or if it was wheel or controller. (I tend to use both) As such I thought it might be a fun project for my first Android app.

The app is called Hotlaps, and you can get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.rmrf.hotlaps.

It is quite simple right now, just a screen that is intended to make it very quick to punch in your laptimes (search for car and track by any part of it's case insensitive name, tap out just the digits in your time, PP autoseeded to the default for the car), a list of your laptimes filterable by tire and wheel/controller, as well as a "global leaderboard". Bear in mind that global leaderboard is uncurated so take everything there with a grain of salt. I may someday implement a "follow" other users feature, or some kind of clubs, which would give you some options for a more meaningful leaderboard.

The sharing aspect requires laps be stored on a remote server, which has the added benefit that you can login from any Android device or potentially a web interface in the future. This implies you need to create an account however, an email address is required (it will never be displayed publically, there's a separate username for that). You will see a link to a privacy policy on the registration screen. (spoiler alert: your data will never be sold to or shared with any third party)

It is ad-free and requires very few permissions, just enough to talk to the server where the data is stored. In the future, it may nag you gently periodically to "go pro" for a couple dollars either as a donation, or if that is completely unsuccessful, to be able to log more than a certain number of laps per month. (~20) I will be implementing an export feature however so if that day does come, and you do not feel it is worth it a dollar or two, you can export all your past data, it belongs to you.

Working on multi-game support next for Forza 5, and I plan to add GT7 when that glorious day arrives.

Hope some of you find it useful! I've seen people mention using spreadsheets and notebooks for this so hopefully this will turn out to be a better way, I find it quite handy. Let me know if you have suggestions or run into any problems and I will do my best.
I will give it a shot. Downloaded.
 
Thanks for trying it out! Particularly to whomever 5 starred it already, you are a good and decent human being. :)

Got functional multi-game support mostly working last night (Forza 5) which will be good for the future when GT7 and other titles are released. (this isn't published just yet)

Will be working on a view lap screen with as much interesting info as I can come up with for a particular lap very soon, probably as next weekends project.
 
Great idea and thanks for the great work. Also not an Android user at the moment but I may be adding a tablet for next gen so I'll bookmark this page. 👍👍
 
Good work. Neat app. Nice clean interface and very intuitive. I'll be trying it out over the next few weeks and I'll let you know how I get on. I hope it takes off. Any plans for an ios version? It would be even better on the iPad rather than my fiddly phone.
 
Good work. Neat app. Nice clean interface and very intuitive. I'll be trying it out over the next few weeks and I'll let you know how I get on. I hope it takes off. Any plans for an ios version? It would be even better on the iPad rather than my fiddly phone.

Thanks!

Unfortunately no plans for iOS, to develop for iOS you need Apple hardware, I'm not a huge fan and do not have any. If there were major financial incentive I might go for it but I don't think that's the case with this. I have however been considering a web UI which could be quite mobile friendly, but I'm not sure if I'll get that far or not.
 
Actually I'll just throw this out there, I built the Android app, and the web API that backs it and all the data is stored. If by some chance there is an iOS programmer who sees this and would like to perhaps make a client for iOS, please get in touch. There's an API up you can talk to already.
 
Deserved 5 stars mate. Added a whole new dimension to the game. Frustrated me testing a car and not registering on the board.

Got a crash trying to edit, no biggy just deleted and reposted. Would b great to include TCS, SRF settings for reference.

Cheers
 
Deserved 5 stars mate. Added a whole new dimension to the game. Frustrated me testing a car and not registering on the board.

Got a crash trying to edit, no biggy just deleted and reposted. Would b great to include TCS, SRF settings for reference.

Cheers

Whoops yes I think I forgot about edit when I was recently doing the autocomplete stuff, will get that fixed asap!

Driving aid flags is a great idea. Is on off sufficient do you think?
 
This is really cool!

I did come across one oddity. What is Settings? When I select it nothing happens.

Ah my apologies, it's a dead menu entry, android inserts it by default when you generate some screens from a template. I'll get that removed soon.
 
Whoops yes I think I forgot about edit when I was recently doing the autocomplete stuff, will get that fixed asap!

Driving aid flags is a great idea. Is on off sufficient do you think?

Yep on or off would be great. SRF, ASM as well if you can. Cheers
 
:bowdown:Finally, this I have been waiting for.

I asked for a way to store lap times, already for the GT2. Then I received the answer: PEN and PAPER:boggled:

This app I'm going to use A LOT.



Thanks:bowdown:
 
Really great idea! I bought an Android tablet just 2 days ago and then I saw this thread, Epic Win!
The UI is very easy to use, but I'd love to have an option for saving my lap times offline so I don't have to register/log in :P.
Apart from that, very good work!:cheers::bowdown:
 
What an exceptionally brilliant app in all its simplicity. :bowdown: Will give it a "five star treatment". :cheers: This should absolutely be posted on the gtplanet main page:gtpflag:

I do have few suggestions/reminders. :)
First - make sure you keep the right to edit the inputted data as an admin. To keep the lists free of errors/misuses.:mischievous:
Also suggestions for filters: by car, by pp and tuned/untuned - we could even check list s of untuned/stock lap times in arcade time trial.. 👍

Great work 👍👍
 
What an exceptionally brilliant app in all its simplicity. :bowdown: Will give it a "five star treatment". :cheers: This should absolutely be posted on the gtplanet main page:gtpflag:

I do have few suggestions/reminders. :)
First - make sure you keep the right to edit the inputted data as an admin. To keep the lists free of errors/misuses.:mischievous:
Also suggestions for filters: by car, by pp and tuned/untuned - we could even check list s of untuned/stock lap times in arcade time trial.. 👍

Great work 👍👍

Good ideas thanks, will add them to my todo list.

I do have direct access to the db so I can delete anything fraudulent. I do know of one bogus 1ms lap a buddy added when testing out the app. In future if I have to I can flag accounts and have them disappear from leaderboards entirely.

I was thinking about doing PP as perhaps every even 50? So you could select 500, 550, 600, etc. This seems like it would make those "classes" a little more concrete than freeform PP entry, agreed?

Cheers!
 
Yes, i think even 50 is sufficient. So that it's the max pp. ie 550pp lists all times of 550pp and below.that way it's easier to compare stock cars as well as maxed out cars as neighter of these usually have even pp numbers.

👍
 
I think this is cool, but needs filters for assist. Its very cool and something we need. No proper leader boards here this will provide a leader board for us.

I don't even want to look at times with SRF, or other assist. With no filter for assist, I can't use it.
 
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