Skin Companion is finally out! (and now free)

Due to people sharing "pirated" versions of the app, I've decided to make it public. If you appreciate the work I'm doing, please support it.
I can't stress enough how important this is so this project can be completed.


Skin Companion is a project I’ve been working on for quite some time.

The core idea is that I want to build a centralized skin system for Assetto Corsa.

What that means is that it would allow anyone to use any skin they’d like, and other people would be able to see that skin online without having to install it on their end.

Is this what this app is? No, not quite yet.

At the moment there isn’t even an app that lets you change skin online. Or to be more precise there isn’t a public app that lets you do that yet. Compu, the main developer behind Assetto Server, has had a prototype working for some time already.

The work I’ve been doing here has been based off of the prior work that stemmed from the shared efforts of x4fab and Compu.

From there and through a lot of exchanges and support from x4fab, the CSP lua api now has more tools to do skin changes properly.

So, where are we just yet?

As of now Skin Companion is “just” an in game app.

For the most part, things work as you would expect, even for encrypted cars. So instead, I will talk about what does not work yet:

Skins with extra kn5, such as extra wings, different wheels, etc. are not supported yet. Skins would still change on the car itself but those extra models would not be loaded.

Honestly as far as I know everything else should work as expected. If it doesn't, please use the discord to report it.

https://youtu.be/kkub4sdh52U

Are skin changes synchronised in replay?

In short, no they aren’t, not yet. But they will be soon. This feature is planned for the next app update.

However, I have provided a way to manually change any car’s skin in replays.
I think it’s a tool that is needed for people that would want to make recordings, edits etc. So even when skin changes are actually synchronised in replays, there will still be that option to apply skins manually for cars.

What about online functionality?

While it’s true that there isn’t a centralised server yet, skin changes do work online!

The limitations are that to see when someone changes skin both users would need to have the app installed, and you could only see skins that you have already installed.

If someone changes to a skin you don’t have and you don’t have their skin, their car would have the original server skin instead.

Why an “early” release

• The main reason and probably one that pertains more to me than to anyone else:
  I need to pay the bills!
  I took a pretty big leap of faith by not looking for a job after I graduated, and to instead work on Assetto Corsa projects. I graduated in a different field, but I enjoy my work here, and I hope I can bring things of value to the game.
  So my hope is that this app can make me financially stable so I can keep working on things there.

• Things will take some more time to be fully functional, both from the CSP side of things and from me. Especially when it comes  from the third party server. Things might not work from the first try (or they might!), but I can guarantee that they will work eventually.
  On the plus side, an early release means more people get to use it, more potential issues get reported, and fixed.

• The app is pretty functional already and I think that even in its current state it already adds pretty good value, so I don’t see the point of keeping it under wraps.

About that centralized skin system

Things are not finalized on that front but I believe I have all the pieces I need to make things work.
I’m open to discussing things relating to how skins would be shared with other players, whether they could be protected and how. I think things in that regard would be pretty limited, but if you absolutely want to keep a thing private you could only share the files with trusted friends and maybe have some lower quality version uploaded or something like that.

I want to have some control over what gets uploaded there. I don’t want NSFW content to be on there and I’m not quite sure yet how to do things yet. Reviewing skins myself one by one isn’t something I want to do, but maybe reviews could be user based.
For example, people uploading skins could have to review some skin files from another creator before their skin can be uploaded. This way if a skin gets reported and was reviewed by peers are fine when it's not, people that gave the wrong review could be prohibited from uploading new skins or something like that. I think this would keep the skin content SFW. Anyway, that's just an idea for now.

What I think this means for skins in the future

Once other people are able to see each other's skin online, I’m hoping that will be an incentive for people to make their own skins, or to get skins commissioned.
Having personal skins was a feature I loved back when I tried LFS and I think it would be amazing to bring that experience to Assetto Corsa.

I do think there is a real opportunity for people that enjoy making skin to provide their services through this app, so if you are one such person, please do get in contact with me through the discord and we can discuss how this app could be a way to promote your work together. In the meantime maybe there could be some skin forum on the discord, where you could showcase your work.

The next update

• The next update will bring replay support for online skin changes.
  This way skin changes done online would be effective in replays too.

• It should also bring car color changes.
  I haven’t taken the time to look into that bit yet, but I believe color changes could work better now, since we can reset the car to its original look and apply a color to the car from there, instead of applying it over the current car’s skin.
  I think for this there will be two options because why not:

  • changing the car color on top of a skin (what the current CSP feature does),

  • resetting the car to its original look first, then changing paint color.

• And while I can’t promise this will happen for that version, I will work with x4fab to extend support to skins with extra KN5s. I think it’s important to have things working fully before I completely move on to the skin server.

For server owners

If you wouldn’t want this app to work on your server, please get in touch, we could figure something out (for future version of the app).
That would most likely involve a simple server script asking for skins changes not to work, this way it would work on vanilla servers too.

Installation

Drag and drop in CM or unpack in "steam\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\apps\lua\".