What is Browse for Speed?
Browse for Speed is a server browser for the popular online racing game Live for Speed. It is able to query demo/s1/s2 servers, lets you maintain a favourites list and keeps track of your friends. It also has an admin interface to allow you to control your server via Insim.
Some server names have empty boxes in them, how do I fix that?
LFS is avaliable in many different languages, this means that server names may also have characters from languages other than English (Japanese, Cryllic etc). Browse For Speed relies on Windows to render non-English characters. If you see boxes in server names, this means that Windows does not have the required fonts installed. Under Windows XP, rectifying this is very simple:
  1. Open Control Panel > Regional and Language Options
  2. Select the "Languages" tab, and check the two check boxes under "Supplemental language support"
  3. Follow the prompts to install the required files (you may need your Windows XP CD for this)
  4. Windows will prompt you to reboot - this is recommended, although it seems to work for some people without a reboot
This technique will probably work on other Windows versions (2K/95/98 etc), but we haven't tried it. Drop us an email if you get it to work.

Note: You are still able to join and query servers with BFS if you do not have these language packs installed, they are purely aesthetic. Doing this will also enable you to see the characters properly in LFSWorld.

How can I make it faster? What is this 'Disable query wait' checkbox and value? All servers suddenly start giving 'refused connection'!
Windows XP SP2 introduced a limit of 10 outgoing TCP connections per second (this is completely ridiculous). If your OS does not have this limit (XP SP2 definitely does have this limit), you may be able to check this box, and the whole query process will be much, much faster. If you check this when you shouldn't, queries will start failing after a random amount of succeeded queries (Bill seems unable to test this limit very accurately. See the following page for more information, and a possibly way to remove this limit on XPSP2: http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1497).

If, when refreshing, the servers all start giving 'refused connection', increase the value of the 'Query wait value'. This is the number of milliseconds to wait before adding another server to the list of concurrently queried servers.
What advantage does it have over the in-game browser, or LFSWorld with Join2LFS?
It is a lot faster than the in-game browser, and provides ping times (unlike LFSWorld/Join2LFS). It also has a number of extra features, such as a favourite server list (which means you do not have to get a list from the server every time), car and track filtering. It can also show you the players currently in a server.
Why does it not tell me if my favourite servers are passworded until I get the detailed information?
For reasons unknown to us, the rules information returned by each server does not include if the server is passworded. The master server lets you know which servers are passworded when returning a list of hosts, therefore it is not technically possible for us to do this, until you view the server's detailed information.
Who developed it? Is it part of LFS?
Three developers, who have absolutely no connection with the development of LFS. Richard Nelson wrote the majority of libbrowseforspeed, Ben Kenny did the frontend, and Philip Nelson yelled abuse and helped with some of the development.
Where is the server query protocol documented?
Use the Source, Luke!
My firewall complains that your application is trying to access the internet. Why?
Querying remote servers traditionally requires some internet activity. The only servers Browse for Speed will contact are:
I want to use your library in my own application. Can I do so?
Of course, but remember it is GPL'd. Do not violate the GPL. If you have ideas for a better server browser though, we would much prefer that you sent suggestions, or even better, patches (diff format is preferred).
What licence is the software and its source avaliable under?
We're currently licencing (and always intend to) the software under version 2 of the GNU GPL. A copy of this licence can be found in the file called COPYING inside the Browse For Speed distribution. You can also view the licence online at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
Do you guys play LFS? What are your game usernames?
wabz (Richard) and snookle (Ben). We play on Australian servers. Philip is too poor to buy LFS.