• New! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items are added in D3PlayerPicker 1.14:
  
  
  • For Windows 2000 and XP users, you can now select the process priority at which the game will run when it is launched, effectively giving the game larger slices of time in whihc to run. I notice a much snappier response time when moving from screen to screen in the game. Your results may vary. If you experience problems in the game, just set it back to Normal.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.13:
  
  
  • The sound folders were not being properly analyzed when you ran the program the first time. This resulted in an incorrcet error message and required manual file handling on the part of the user.
  
  
  • When you added a new sound folder specification on the Settings/Sound Folders tab, the buttons at the bottom of the list (add, edit, and delete) were not being properly enabled.
  
  

• New! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were added in D3PlayerPicker 1.12:
  
  
  • You can now re-arrange the personalities in the main list box by click/dragging and dropping where you want them.
  
  
  • D3PP now understands double-clicking a personality. Even better, you can make it do one of three things in response to a double-click - edit the personality, launch the personality, or do nothing (the default setting).
  
  

  I recommend that you backup your D3PP folder just in case something weird happens.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.11:
  
  
  • There was a minor issue with detecting when the desired sound folder was already in use (thus eliminating the need to rename the sound folder yet again).
  
  
  • When you quit the sim, it would try to restore the "oem" sound folder. This was absolutely unnecessary with the new sound folder handling technique, so I removed this functionality.
  
  

• Update! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were changed in D3PlayerPicker 1.10:
  
  
  • The use of alternate sound folders has been completely changed. You now have to manually specify which sound folder is to be used with a given series mod.

    The down-side of this change is that selection of the soundd folder is no longer automatic (there's a new page in the Settings dialog that allows you to add, edit, and delete series mod/sound folder associations).

    The up-sides are that you can name your sound folder anything you want (but it still has to reside in the sim folder, and the sound folder name CANNOT contain space characters), multiple series mods can use the same sound folder (TPTCC and PTA for instance), and the amount of hard drive space dedicated to sound folders can potentially be dramatically reduced.

    Just in case I really borked this up, it might be a good idea to backup your sound folders and the last copy or D3PP you were using so that you have something to fall back to.

    As always, make sure you read up on the details in the online refernce guide.

  
  

FAIR WARNING: Thinks might get a little freaky with this release. You would be well advised to Backup your player folders.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.09:
  
  
  • If you were minimizing to the system tray, and add/edit an item in the list of personalities, the list would contain more entries than should be there.
  
  

• New! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were added in D3PlayerPicker 1.09:
  
  
  • Added the ability to retain player records, ai strength, and the NResults value (whatever that does) after the sim terminates. See the next item about a new module that allows you to view your records without having to start the sim.

    I STONGLY recommend that you backup your playrecs.ini files just in case something goes a little bonkers.

  
  

• New Module! (D3PlayRecs) - Added a new module that allows you to view player records saved by D3PlayerPicker. Make sure you review the Reference Guide for the where's and why's of the module. This program is in heavy development, and most certainly not finished, but it should be enough to see your records for now. It doesn't change any data, so you won't lose anything by checking it out. D3PlayerPicker MUST be used to launch races in order to get your records to show up in D3PlayRecs.
  

I'm pleased to announce that the fix for the track set problems (implemented in v1.07) for Win9x users has been verified to actually repair the problem.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.08:
  
  
  • The trackset manager tab would cause the program to crash if you click in a blank area of the list.
  
  
  • The "All Tracks" trackset now automatically unhides *all* tracks. The old (and errant) behavior was that only the tracks that were present when the program was run the first time would be seen for this track set.
  
  
  • The roster list was not changing when you select a different series.
  
  
  • The program was not saving the selected sim install (in a multiple sim install environment).
  
  
  • Under Win9x, if you select an executable file that has one or more spaces in the file name, the selected executable file would not launch.
  
  

SPECIAL NOTE: The changes I made to fix the track set issues require that you delete your current trackset files - again. Sorry about that. :)

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.07:
  
  
  • On the Edit Personality dialog, if you checked the "Use same cars" checkbox, it didn't re-select the offline car to be the same as the online car.
  
  
  • The "Use same cars" checkbox was always checked, no matter what it's prior status was for the personality.
  
  
  • The roster combo box was not being re-populated when you selected a different sim install.
  
  
  • Fixed several small problems with track sets. Maybe even for win9x users as well?
  
  

SPECIAL NOTE #1: I recommend that everyone delete their D3PlayerPicker data files (D3PPlayer.ini and all trackset files) because some RADICAL changes gave been made to the program. If you don't perform these actions, and then complain that nothing seems to work anymore, I won't be gentle about reminding you that this note exists (and everyone that heeded this warning will be allowed, nay, vigorously encouraged to point and laugh at your sorry ass.

SPECIAL NOTE #2: There is A LOT of new stuff in this release. It's entirely probable that I may have missed something during my limited and admittedly insufficient (okay, half-assed might be a better term) testing. All of the screenshots on the Reference Guide were updated using the latest compile, and nothing weird happened to me, so you should be okay, too. If the program crashes and burns spectacularly, I apologize in advance. Let me know as accurately and precisely as possible what you were doing when the program puked on you, and I'll fix it ASAP.

• NEW! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were added in D3PlayerPicker 1.06:
  
  
  • You can now re-scan for new tracks from the trackset dialog box.
  
  
  • Support has been added for multiple installs of the sim. I was strongly opposed to this feature since D3PlayerPicker was written specifically to prevent you from needing multiple installs of the sim, but it makes sense to have this feature for people beta testing series mods that don't want to commit a mod to their retail installation.
  
  
  • You can now select separate online and offline cars for each personality.
  
  
  • You can now select the desired roster for offline racing.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.06:
  
  
  • I took a stab at fixing the trackset issues for Win98/ME users.
  
  
  • There was a memory leak when the program was terminated.
  
  
  • In the Edit Trackset dialog, some of the appropriate tracks weren't being selected when you selected "Speedway", and then clicked "Select".
  
  
  • In the Edit Trackset dialog, the number of tracks selected (above the list box) was not being correctly calculated.
  
  
  • Since D3PlayerPicker maintains the special "" trackset, the Edit, Clone, and Delete buttons are disabled when this trackset is selected in the Manage Tracksets dialog box.
  
  
  • Specified a few more invalid characters in the trackset names to compensate for some Win9x (or maybe international/Unicode) weirdness. See "SPECIAL NOTE #1" at the top of this news item.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.05:
  
  
  • Phoenix and North Carolina were not being recognized as Papyrus tracks. Truth be told, it was nothing more than a stupid spelling mistake for both tracks.
  
  

• New! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were added in D3PlayerPicker 1.04:
  
  
  • The program now allows you to specify that it starts up when you start your machine, and/or minimize to the system tray.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were added in D3PlayerPicker 1.04:
  
  
  • The program was not detecting track folders that had a dot in the name (like "RoadOne_v1.0").
  
  
  • The program was not correctly determining when an instance of itself was already running.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.03:
  
  
  • Tracksets were hiding/un-hiding incorrect tracks.
  
  

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker 1.02:
  
  
  • Added support for multiple series mods that use the same file extention (like the Trans Am mods from The Pits and Project Wildfire).
  
  
  • When launching the sim, the program would only set the online car file. It now changes both the online AND the offline carfile to the same file.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following items were fixed in D3PlayerPicker:
  
  
  • When you change players for a personality, the trackset combo box is emptied, preventing the user from selecting a trackset for the personality.
  
  
  • The program would hang if you manually deleted a trackset file, and then started the program. I added a default trackset called "All tracks" which is treated as the default selection, and is built on the fly (when the program starts). I also made D3PlayerPicker validate each personality as it's loaded to make sure you didn't delete something else manually.

    The main dialog now shows two "head" icons in the personality list. If the head is red (and faced to the left), the personality was invalid when loaded, but valid default entries were substituted for the invalid data. To clear the red head, simply edit the personality and click OK. You can also find out what was wrong by selecting the personality, and then clicking the "Errors" button. This is for informational purposes only (so you can see what was screwed up in the first place.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) -
  • In some cases, the sim would not automatically progress to the Sierra lobby. The problem is that some systems perform slower than others where disk access is concerned, and D3PlayerPicker was clicking the mouse to early. To solve this problem, I provided a way for you to specify a series of delays that allows D3PlayerPicker to chill out while the sim is loading. Try it with the defaults values first, and if that doesn't work out, bump them up in 500-millisecond (1/2 second) increments until you find your own sweet spot.

    You should be able to copy the new version over the old one without any problems.

• Update! (Reference Guide) - Updated to reflect new version of D3PlayerPicker.

• New! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following features are new in this module:
  
  
  • Added a way to specify which tracks show up in the sim. See appropriate Reference Guide section for details.
    
    
  • Added a "Settings" dialog that allows you to turn on/off support for sound and track folders. as well as re-scanning your tracks folder for new/deleted entries. See appropriate Reference Guide section for details.

  NOTE: I don't think it's necessary, but just in case you experience really bizarre problems where your personalites are concerned, you may have to delete all of your D3PlayerPicker files and start from scratch.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following fixes were made to this module:
  
  
  • Change the sound folder handling just a little bit to eliminate an incorrect error message that is displayed when you exit the sim and return to the D3PlayerPicker window.

    IMPORTANT! In order to see this fix, you need to restore your original sound folder and your series sound folders, and delete the D3PPSound.ini file from all of your sound folders. Then, start D3PlayerPicker. At that point, you should be good to go.
    
    

• Update! (Reference Guide) - Updated to reflect new version of D3PlayerPicker.

• Fix! (D3PlayerPicker v0.04) - The following fixes were made to this module:
  
  
  • If you didn't have any sound folders other than the original one installed by the game, the program would incorrectly announce warnings about missing files.
    
    
  • When you click the Launch button, the buttons are now disabled to prevent you from clicking on them while the sim is starting up.
    
    
  • When the sim terminates, and you come back to the D3PlayerPicker main window, the list box was not focused. This was just a cosmetic issue.
    
    
  • Advice - if you launch a personality that goes into multiplayer, do not move the mouse after you click the Launch button until you arrive at the MOTD screen or beyond. If you move the mouse while D3PlayerPicker is trying to click it, you'll mess up the automation part. It won't hurt anything, but it may take you a few seconds to realize what has happened.

• Update! (D3PlayerPicker v0.03) - The following changes were made to this module:
  
  
  • The program now automatically changes to the correct sound files for the selected series mod. All you have to do is create new sound folders with the correct naming format, and the program does the rest. Yes, this means that you no longer have an excuse to run multiple installs of NR2K3.

    I STRONGLY urge you to backup your sim folder before using D3PlayerPicker for the first time. While I conducted some testing, I'm not freakin' Superman, so it's possible I missed a problem or two (or three).

    The old version will still be avilable for download if this version is seriously borked for you.

• Update! (D3PlayerPicker) - The following changes were made to this module:
  
  
  • Added the ability to specify the executable file to use to launch the sim (the executable MUST reside in the NR2k3 folder). This change was made to specifically support the possibility of having a renamed EXE that is modified with the No-CD patch.
  
  
  • Added the ability to clone an existing personality to shorten the time required to create a new one with similar selections.

• New Module For Clients (D3PlayerPicker) - D3PlayerPicker public alpha test is now open for anyone who cares to give it a go. The download link is at the bottom of the downloads page.

  This new module allows a client/driver to create multiple personalities. Each personality represents a different combination of connection parameters, such as sierra id, player folder, series, and car file. It's aimed squarely at folks who are partoicipating in more than one racing environment.

  This is a completely stand-alone component - the rest of DeMONS is not required to make use of it, and it is therefore available as a separate download. If you want to make your league drivers aware of it's existance, please link to the file on download page of this web site.

• Update! (web page) - I made the Reference Guide a framed set of pages in order to keep you from getting lost (it was really long when it was all on one page). You may experience a few anomalies web page while I'm prepping the DeMONS server coomponents to support the patch, but I promise to fix any problems that might exist when I make the new version of D3 available.