HOF2Lap Limitations and Future Plans

First off, let me say that I'm not a fan of Geoff Crammond; the phrase I normally use to describe people like him who write superficially good code is "a triumph of ingenuity over intelligence", that is, his basic designs are poorly thought out but his clearly very creative mind somehow manages to code around this and the result is something almost but not quite brilliant. The reason I'm telling you this is so that you understand the perverse file format which is a GP2 hot lap has made life very difficult for me whilst writing HOF2Lap and is the central cause of the program's limitations.

Technical explanations for these problems appear in Gizmo's GP2 FAQ as part of the HOF2Lap Home Page. Please read that document before sending a bug report.

Okay, on to the actual problems (for which there is a solution now).

If you drive two or more laps in succession, and save a hot lap which is slower than a following lap, HOF2Lap cannot find the correct lap time and will instead display the faster time. This is most noticable if you try to save the last lap of race (but that's not actually useful anyway!). Note that whilst it's possible to use this "feature" to fool HOF2Lap into producing "false" authcodes, the actual replay when viewed is still correct. In general, HOF2Lap is not viable for arbitrary race laps.
Qualifying laps which are disqualified (because you cross the line at the end of lap number 12 when you should have returned to the pits) cannot be displayed correctly.
HOF2Lap may be unpredictable if multiple drivers are selected. If you find it doesn't work for a particular lap, send me a copy and I'll take a look.
More limits are described in the FAQ.

Solution

The solution is to improve the hotlap file structure. GP2Lap does exactly this by adding vital data to the file from within GP2. Since it has access to all of GP2's real-time internal data, the whole problem of not having all the needed data in the hotlap is solved. Of course, original hotlaps will still have the same problems mentioned above. To make use of the new hotlap structure, it's necessary to use GP2Lap with GP2 while driving and saving your laps. See the GP2Lap home page for more details.

Things to do

The current version of HOF2Lap has a few limitations which can and will be corrected in future versions:

Use the setup in it's encoded version. At the moment, if you enter the pits and alter your setup, then save a hot lap before you exit the pits again, the setup listed will be wrong. The whole area of setup handling is tricky; if you notice a discrepency between the setup listed and the one you actually used, please send me a copy of your hot lap. Thanks.

HOF2Lap is untested during linked play. It may work fine; let me know if you can confirm or refute this.

I also have yet to publicly release any code for interpreting the authentication codes produced by HOF2Lap. My recommendation to those running hot lap and race competitions is to ask competitors to send in actual hot laps, and for HOF2Lap to be used to check each lap. If this is not possible, please contact me to see if we can make arrangements to use the codes directly.