FRC

"CTDP"

Press – First of all, when was CTPD founded, and by who?
Dahie: May 1st 2001, last year we had our fifth birthday, which we celebrated with the release of the Bahrain circuit for rFactor.

For 2 years CTDP only released small updates for F1-2001, F1RC and GP4, before starting with full-season mods. 2003 was the first complete mod, followed by 1995, 2004, 1998, 2005 and now 2006.

Enzojz: I don't know exactly, but when I was playing F1-2002, the group existed already. The two other famous mod teams at that time, were RH and BeAst's CDG. By the end of the 2002, Andy found me and I joined the team. The team has created some cars for F12002, e.g Williams 2002, and the carshapes were created by CTDP and we used textures from others with permission. The members at that time were Andy, BMWFan, and Dahie. Dahie seems to have worked with the famous Jan Frischkorn at GP3 period. You can find his name in JF's carset.

My first car with CTDP was the F2002, seems poor nowadays but that is the start. The team members worked close at the first year then there was a quite good 2003 MOD both for F12002 and GP4.

At about 2003, the team had a reform with another one: TDG, from which we got the 1994 mod heritage. That's the current CTDP.

FRC - What are the requisites, that CTDP don’t abide, when a new member wants to join your Team?
Raulongo: As one of the newest members here, I think CTDP's crew looks the quality of the work you do above all, but they look also your friendship and your relation with other members on the sim community. Also, they want serious members.

CoDan: The team always looks for talented guys/girls who already made good work. This is one important aspect. But much more important for us is that someone can (and wants to) work in a team.

Dahie: Take of dedication, high skills, some sense for humor and an unheathy high developed sense for perfection and you get the common CTDP member.

FRC - Until now, you guys have only made Open wheel mods. Are there any plans to do any other type of cars?
Dahie: At least once a year. There have been ideas every now and then, but we are always busy with the running projects, so we cancel them early.

Raulongo: I love Formula One and there's a lot of seasons that are in heaven... why not make them?

CoDan: Formula 1 is the highest motorsport for me (with 4 wheels). Most of the team are thinking a similar way. Second is there are enough more talented groups out there, like GSMF or TCMT which make really great touring-car-mods. I play them, too, but fighting against the other f1-cars with a Ferrari is something special for me.

FRC – Where and how, CTDP researches the physics part of your mods?
CoDan: We use everything we get, for CTDP05 Gonzo asked Toyota for some physics informations and they sent us some.

Further we watch onboard-laps and try to create a similar handling for the car. We work together with a online league (onlineracer.de) which gives us a lot of input.

FRC – And how about the future, are the any plans to go on a ‘Simbin’ type of route?
Enzojz: I hope that personally.

CoDan: Well, I guess this won’t happen, because we would need a F1 licence and that would be a little bit too expensive.

Dahie: We don't pursue any plans to become professionals or make CTDP commercial. If there are offers, we'd discuss them and decide on the occasion.

FRC – You are here since the F12002 days, and therefore, you have plenty of experience in this modding world. What advices would you give someone willing to get started at this kind of activities?
Enzojz: You must have much freetime, and you must be strong enough to bear all kinds of critic. You must have a team working hard (not enough) and always explore all kinds of the modding techniques.

Raulongo: I think that any member that wants to start modding, must have good sources and a lot of inspiration. Also, he/she must practice and learn, as much as he/she can. You'll never learn all, and there's always something new to learn.

Dahie: When you start, set yourself the right goals. It takes time, so you need the right motivation. You project may not be too big, start out small so you can release something early and improve on it. Get feedback, critics may be hard, but they improve. Don't try to take others credit, work for your own.

FRC – Alongside the experience, comes also a better view on the bad and good things of this hobby. In you point of view, which bad ones are there in the top of the list?
Dahie: There is always a bad feeling about legal aspects of the mod. We try to be cautious, but it's a big grey area. So there is always the question how far we can go, how popular we may get. Also the time you spend on modding can be immense, depending on how good you want to get your stuff.

Enzojz: Some members seems a little tired with modding for some time.

Raulongo: The time you spend creating things... if I can stop the clock... and above all, the million changes that real drivers do to their helmets / cars that made me crazy. Also, my girlfriend gets angry if I spend more than 2 or 3 hours with this, and I don't attend her.

FRC – And the good ones?
Dahie: You learn many skills, you have a nice team to work with and you learn many different approaches to teamwork and work management. When we started out we just modded, now we improve and get more organised, which is a nice development.
But most important are the people, they are all perfectionists and it's great working together for such a long time on a common goal.

Enzojz: Personally, if I can't found work in my major, modding exprience will help me.

Raulongo: Get admired by many people because of your work, and the partnership of the group. I'm doing very good friends here and I'm improving my work a lot.

FRC – How important is the community reaction to your products? When CTDP releases something new, is there any special attention to forums like RacesimCentral, and other places like that?
Dahie: Of course, we read allot after releases and we take every critics seriously and talk how to improve things either for patches or future mods.
Most interesting are community reactions on places where they don't know we're reading. So next to the big forums, where we actually post, we learn many things when we take a look in smaller forums.

CoDan: Very important for me. You think about what people are saying, you get happy when someone just says “well done” and you get angry if someone just writes “it’s shit”. Getting feedback is our payment in some way.

FRC – May not be a fair question, but, which mod, is between the CTDP members, the best one from your point of view?
FlyingIceman: The best mod after the CTDP Mod's for my point of view, it is the 2006 Champ Car World Series Mod from the iDT Team.

Dahie: Concerning our own mods or by other teams? I like the Nippon-Mod a lot, but I was also fond about the rTrainer, so ... figure. :)

Aprilliaracer: Grand Prix 1979, because the cars are cool and the physics are great, not to forget of the sounds. The whole package is simply one of the best mods for rFactor.

Enzojz: My computer is not strong enough to run any mod including ourselves.

Raulongo: Champ Car 2006 or Megane.

CoDan: Hard to say, I like a lot of mods, for example DTM07, Megane, Champcar by iDT because all of them are giving a good feeling how it might be to drive those cars.