LFS Programming - Revision history

Flame CZE at 20:51, 17 February 2026

2026-02-17T20:51:25Z

Flame CZE at 10:55, 11 February 2026

2026-02-11T10:55:58Z

Flame CZE at 10:55, 11 February 2026

2026-02-11T10:55:47Z

Flame CZE: remove InSim Relay section

2026-02-09T14:39:39Z

remove InSim Relay section

Kristofferandersen: /* Programming Categories */

2025-01-21T09:10:41Z

Programming Categories

Flame CZE: /* InSim */

2023-12-03T13:57:25Z

InSim

Flame CZE at 00:34, 2 December 2023

2023-12-02T00:34:49Z

Flame CZE at 22:29, 1 December 2023

2023-12-01T22:29:36Z

DarkTimes: /* LFS Strings and Escape Codes */

2016-02-12T00:26:46Z

LFS Strings and Escape Codes

DarkTimes: /* Introduction */

2016-02-12T00:17:51Z

Introduction

←Older revision		Revision as of 20:51, 17 February 2026
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	[[Category:Guides]]		[[Category:Guides]]
−	[[Category:Programming\| ]]	+	[[Category:Programming]]

←Older revision		Revision as of 10:55, 11 February 2026
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−	~~== Introduction ==~~
−
	By its nature LFS is a very programmer friendly game and, while customisation of the game engine itself is frowned upon, there are many other avenues available for budding addon writers to explore. Whether it's parsing some esoteric file format, writing your own server system, or just grabbing your friend's hotlaps from LFSWorld, LFS has something to keep even the most adventurous hackers busy!		By its nature LFS is a very programmer friendly game and, while customisation of the game engine itself is frowned upon, there are many other avenues available for budding addon writers to explore. Whether it's parsing some esoteric file format, writing your own server system, or just grabbing your friend's hotlaps from LFSWorld, LFS has something to keep even the most adventurous hackers busy!

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 The following category attempts to explain and document the many various programmer topics related to LFS, in hopefully a clear and useful way. Our job of course is not to teach you how to program, there are many, many books about that, but to show you the myriad possibilities for customising LFS which are right at your fingertips.
-== Programming Categories ==
+== Programming categories ==
 === InSim ===
@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 [[InSim]] is a protocol which allows an external program to communicate with Live for Speed. It allows you to create a socket connection with the game and to send and receive packets of data. The InSim protocol describes how each of these packets is formatted, and any programming language which can create a network connection and send and receive strings of binary data can interface with it.
-=== OutSim / OutGauge ===
+=== OutSim ===
-Similar to InSim, [[OutSim / OutGauge|OutSim and OutGauge]] also allow you to create a socket connection from an external program, but specifically for the support of motion simulators and external dashboards.
+{{main article|OutSim}}
 === LFSWorld stats ===
@@ Line 25: / Line 33: @@
 With the release of mods in 2021, there wasn't a good way to fetch information about mods. Victor therefore introduced the REST API where users can fetch nearly anything imaginable from mods. There was a [https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/95699 LFS Forum discussion] about this.
-=== File Formats ===
+=== File formats ===
 Many of LFS's unique [[File Formats|file formats]] have been documented, both officially by the development team, and unofficially by enthusiastic hackers with hex-editors.
-== General Programming Information ==
+== General programming information ==
-=== Data-Types ===
+=== Data types ===
 The LFS game client itself is written in C++ and many of data-types referenced throughout the documentation are named in accordance with that language. The following table represents a breakdown of what each data-type means and what sort of value it holds.
@@ Line 88: / Line 96: @@
 <pre>pack('a16', $variable);</pre>
-=== LFS Strings and Escape Codes ===
+=== LFS strings and escape codes ===
 Strings in LFS are C-style strings, meaning that they end with a NULL character, or are often padded with NULL characters. Most other high-level languages have done away with this limitation, so it's important to strip any NULL characters from the end of a string before using it.

←Older revision		Revision as of 14:39, 9 February 2026
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	[[InSim]] is a protocol which allows an external program to communicate with Live for Speed. It allows you to create a socket connection with the game and to send and receive packets of data. The InSim protocol describes how each of these packets is formatted, and any programming language which can create a network connection and send and receive strings of binary data can interface with it.		[[InSim]] is a protocol which allows an external program to communicate with Live for Speed. It allows you to create a socket connection with the game and to send and receive packets of data. The InSim protocol describes how each of these packets is formatted, and any programming language which can create a network connection and send and receive strings of binary data can interface with it.
−
−	~~=== InSim Relay ===~~
−
−	~~With [[InSim Relay]] you can connect to any subscribed host and share a subset of InSim packets. This is mainly used in the creation of spectator style apps, such as LFSRemote.~~

	=== OutSim / OutGauge ===		=== OutSim / OutGauge ===

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 Through the use of [http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=14480 LFSWorld stats], addon programmers are able to query the LFSWorld Web site for a whole host of information about the racers who play the game and the servers they play on.
 === File Formats ===
 Many of LFS's unique [[File Formats|file formats]] have been documented, both officially by the development team, and unofficially by enthusiastic hackers with hex-editors.
 == General Programming Information ==

←Older revision		Revision as of 13:57, 3 December 2023
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	=== InSim ===		=== InSim ===
		+
		+	{{main article\|InSim}}

	[[InSim]] is a protocol which allows an external program to communicate with Live for Speed. It allows you to create a socket connection with the game and to send and receive packets of data. The InSim protocol describes how each of these packets is formatted, and any programming language which can create a network connection and send and receive strings of binary data can interface with it.		[[InSim]] is a protocol which allows an external program to communicate with Live for Speed. It allows you to create a socket connection with the game and to send and receive packets of data. The InSim protocol describes how each of these packets is formatted, and any programming language which can create a network connection and send and receive strings of binary data can interface with it.

←Older revision		Revision as of 00:34, 2 December 2023
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	[[Category:Guides]]		[[Category:Guides]]
		+	[[Category:Programming\| ]]

←Older revision		Revision as of 22:29, 1 December 2023
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	\| Original text colour and codepage.		\| Original text colour and codepage.
	\|}		\|}
		+
		+	[[Category:Guides]]

@@ Line 90: / Line 90: @@
 Strings in LFS are C-style strings, meaning that they end with a NULL character, or are often padded with NULL characters. Most other high-level languages have done away with this limitation, so it's important to strip any NULL characters from the end of a string before using it.
-LFS uses it's own custom text-rendering engine (hey, it's a videogame!) which raises some interesting issues when dealing with strings. Most importantly LFS does not support unicode, and in fact uses ASCII strings combined with various custom character codes which denote changes in the codepage. The following table represents an attempt to document each of these escape codes and their corresponding codepage, but in reality it's not 100% accurate. In practice however it should give you reasonable results for most purposes.
+LFS handles strings in its own way, it uses Windows codepages sepearared by special escape characters.
 {| border="0" style="border: 1px solid #000000; background-color: #FAFAFA;" width="600"

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == Introduction ==
-By its nature LFS is a very programmer friendly game and, while customisation of the game engine itself is frowned upon, there are many other avenues available for budding addon writers to explore. Whether it's parsing some esoteric file format, writing your own server system, or just grabbing your friends hotlaps from LFSWorld, LFS has something to keep even the most adventurous hackers busy!
+By its nature LFS is a very programmer friendly game and, while customisation of the game engine itself is frowned upon, there are many other avenues available for budding addon writers to explore. Whether it's parsing some esoteric file format, writing your own server system, or just grabbing your friend's hotlaps from LFSWorld, LFS has something to keep even the most adventurous hackers busy!
 The following category attempts to explain and document the many various programmer topics related to LFS, in hopefully a clear and useful way. Our job of course is not to teach you how to program, there are many, many books about that, but to show you the myriad possibilities for customising LFS which are right at your fingertips.