Thursday 23 February 2023

A word on Steve, Janne, Luppis and others

If you have just started looking at RBR co driver mods it can get confusing. Sooner or later you will hear about Steve, Janne, Luppis, Leza and Porridge  Here's a brief rundown.

An effective co driver experience needs two things.  Pacenotes and co driver audio.  Pacenotes dictate what is said at which point on the stage by triggering a matching audio call at the right time.  Pacenotes and audio are separate things but obviously need to communicate with each other.  Thankfully there is a 'standard' set of commands defined by the WorkerBee pacenote plugin (included in the RSF install) that co driver audio mods such as this one can adhere to.  Pacenotes need to be written (initially by the track maker) and are typically included with each stage and use these 'standard' calls.

'Steve' is popular co driver audio mod that works with these 'standard' pacenotes to provide a different voice and also has the option for numeric calls (eg. 6 right, 3 left etc) which many people prefer.

Steve's audio style is quite slow and deliberate.  Very clear and easy to understand but sometimes feels a bit safe.

Janne is also a co driver audio mod but contains a lot of extra calls that are not known by the 'standard' pacenotes.  However, they can be used by writing custom pacenotes (which is where Luppis comes in)

Now Janne's co driver talks quickly and with a slight Finnish accent.  Certainly authentic, but is pretty hardcore and some people find it hard to understand in the heat of battle.

Luppis has created a custom set of pacenotes for a large amount of tracks that does know about the extra Janne calls, so using Luppis notes in conjunction with Janne gives a really great experience.  The co driver calls are more detailed and realistic.  As of now, the current version of Janne is V2.  V3 is due out in the future and will expand these calls even further but in order for V3 to work (without writing your own notes) we will also need to wait for V3 of Luppis.  This is something for the future.

My mod is designed to give an alternative by using all the extra calls in Luppis V2 but with a little more speed and 'flavor' than Steve, but not as intense as Janne.  It will still function fine with the 'standard' notes but i highly recommend getting Luppis notes for the full experience.

The latest versions of 'Steve' and Luppis notes can be found in the RSF Discord:
https://discord.gg/rbr-rallysimfans-hu-723091638951608320
You can find them both in the pinned messages of the #pacenotes channel.

Luppis also has a blog with info and downloads:
https://luppisrbr.blogspot.com/p/how-to-install-pacenotes.html

If you want to check out Janne Laahanen’s epic coDriver mod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVFco6uVc8

The other names you will notice a lot are Leza and Porridge.  These are both co driver audio mods that use co drivers from other rally games.  They both sound good and being able to have your favourite co driver from another game is nice however neither support the extended Luppis calls or claim to be 100% compatible with the pacenote plugin.  As such they can not  be recommended and have potential to cause issues.  That said, many people use them and are happy so the choice is yours.

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