I have a dream... well not really, but I have a plan.
I said i wouldn't continue expanding on this application and I don't plan to do so. However, I have certain idea's floating in my head and several limitations with the MXS bike setup app are constantly making me think of a better way to handle things.
I have a big project to finish for school and I thought I could kill 2 birds with one stone.
I'll lay down my idea's here. and if you want to give feedback and new or better ideas you are welcome to share.
my biggest problem with the current application is that it's all just on big grid of data, 1 setups equals about 35 settings and all of them have to be set for each individual setup.
now it's pretty easy to create a new setup by clicking the grab from config file button but that leaves a second big problem. I myself don't often change much about my advanced stability settings, but when i do change them and i save a new setup all my other setups still have the old adv. stab settings. while I would like some if not all of them to have the new settings I just created.
second, not really a problem with the MXS bike setup app, but just a feature i have been thinking of adding for a long time is a bike skin and gear selector.
in the same style as the MXS bike setup app is now.
My plan is to create one big application with multiple functions allowing you to edit just about everything from gear and bike skins to adv. stab and suspension/gear settings. all divided up into "modules".
now there are 2 possibilities floating in my head at this point:
1:
1 application with:
A bike skin/gear section where you can select and save a gear setup that can then easily be changed.
A adv. stability section where adv. stab settings can be saved.
and a suspension/gearing section where suspension settings can be saved.
all 3 of these will be saved separate from each other in the same manner as is done right now in the bike setup app.
the major thing being that you can link a certain adv. stability setting (not required) to a suspension setting(since suspension is the thing that changes the most.).
adding an adv. stab setting to your suspension setup would make changing your adv stability settings much easier.
For example. you have a adv. stab setting called "SX".
and you link it to 3 suspension setups you create called "houston 2010", "anaheim 1 2010" and "toronto 2010".
now when you change a setting in the adv. stab setting "SX", because it is linked to the 3 suspensions mentioned above they will automatically refer to the newly updated adv. stab settings. You can then have for example 2 adv. stab settings like "SX" and "MX". and a whole lot of suspension settings reffering to either "MX" or "SX" and when there is a change in either of the adv, stab settings you only have to change it once.
2:
basically the same as idea 1 with a small change.
The ability to create packages.
no longer link adv. stab settings to the suspension settings.
create a package in the "package manager", here adding a suspension setup and a adv. stab setting to the package, and optionally a skin/gear setup.
that way it would be possible to link a certain bike to a certain setup. again changing a setup in any of the three "components" (not entirely sure what to call them yet) adv. stab setting, suspension/gearing setting and skin/gear would change it for any package containing that setup.
Separating the components this way would create a much more flexible way of dealing with setups and different things. While also insuring that it is easy to incorporate any further expansions of the game into the application.
so those are my very early ideas on a larger project to make things easier in the MXS'ers lives
. I still have to run these ideas by my teacher and see how well it fits into the parameters the school has set for the project I need to finish. So I have some time to come up with a good plan of attack (which i did not have for the bike setup app, hence the 101 updates haha.)
PS. there is almost 0% chance ("But wait there is no such thing as 0% chance", yes, yes, I know
) that the bike skin/gear selection will have a render option to show you how it all looks in game since that would require me to be able to read saf files and know a whole lot about the game that jlv probably doesn't want me to know hahaha. The purpose of the saf files being to protect it's contents so that only MXS can use the files.
Please don't TL;DR me, and throw you opinions at me, good or bad