I don't understand why you couldn't (design the system to) extract and/or sort by type of car.
Settings are meaningless unless you know the type of car. I think I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. How many records do we anticipate getting?
I'm discussing something similar to that with the programmer now...a way that you can see all times/setting entries submitted with each particular car on every track. There's many techinicalities however that must be considered, so this may or may not be included in the final product. Of course, on each individual track listing, you'll be able to sort by car as well.
Is there going be a semi-arbitrary "comment field" in the entries? E.g. perhaps someone might have reason to submit "Good stable settings for beginners, but won't set records". Or will "records" be per-person? You can see that other people might possibly be interested in my settings which allow me to set my PB, even if it doesn't set new overall records. Whenever I give people settings I tend to add a bit of a "rationale". That might be something else the comment field could be used for.
Yes, you will be able to enter "notes" for each time/settings group entered into the DB.
So it would include 1 and 2? Then yes, I would use the DB for settings for GT2
1, 2, 3, Concept, and 4. Extensive GT1 coverage is going to be a part of GTP7.
I think submitting settings with your time might be an annoyance. I would probably go to another site to post most of them and put a couple of the better ones here.
With fraudelent times would come fraudelent settings.
Perhaps there is one issue I'd see with mandatory settings for time entries, if a lot of people are like me, the PS2 is not in the same room as the computer, so I'd have to take the time to write down the settings on a piece of paper, and then type all the info.... perhaps a lot of people won't bother posting times because of that.
Excellent points. I've requested a change in the system so that settings are
not required to submit a time.
There is already a pretty extensive Settings Database that most Settings Junkies use, GT3 Tuners Vault
That being said, I personally think that settings databases should be used judiciously, as a driver's style of driving will have a big effect on whether a particular setting is good or not.
And I think I'll leave the dedicated settings DB to GTVault. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I won't be creating a dedicated Settings DB here, and instead extending the use of our Times DB. I personally would find it rather useless, since I prefer to setup my cars to my own liking. However, settings presented in the proposed format for our Times DB could be very helpful to me in acheiving faster lap times, and I don't think I'm the only one who would feel that way.
I think that having a settings database for the purpose of exposing fraudulant times is ineffective, as well. In addition to the reason I just stated, there are already 3 major databases (see my sig) and any suspicous times are queried for replays to verify them. In addition to verifying a time submitted was actually run, according to the rules of the database, the vehicle can be checked for legality, that is, that a hybrid car was not used for a non-hybrid time entry.
As I said above, I'm removing the requirement for settings. GTP Times DB entries will be able to be verified in different ways. Each entry will have "verified" or "unverified" status (by default). Then, if a user wishes to have their time validated, they can submit it for review. This allows users to have their times posted immediately, while still allowing viewers to decide how much credibility to give each time.
ordan, while I respect your efforts to create a GTP database, I have to believe that folks who already have entries in the existing databases will simply jump on a GTP database and re-enter times that have already been entered (and most likely verified) elsewhere. In the long run, another database will be redundant in the GT community.
True, but the same could have been said about this whole site when I created it four years ago. Now, as the largest and most popular site in its category, GTPlanet will introduce more people to the Times DB concept than smaller independent sites ever could. Also, as the audience is so large here, the competition to hold the top spot will intensify.
