Messages

1

Competition 2019 / Re: ZCT210 - Lynx

« on: February 10, 2019, 02:24:28 AM »

As a present, the best of dozens of replays I tried before finally managing that last powergear turn. The last 15-20 seconds are in flight, and the time is great. Unfortunately, for maybe a couple of meters, there are 33 seconds of penalty

That's fun  Truly, a few meters more and you'd have gone over the last icy tile and then hug the final straight tightly enough for a legal lap. And of course congratulations!

2

Car creation with Stressed / Re: Stunts goes Dtm

« on: November 30, 2018, 09:28:09 PM »

I got two cars with the same handling/length, but one twice as long as the other. The short one steers a lot faster, more responsive. I figure it's related to the reason longer cars jump farther: When a Stunts car turns it doesn't turn by a certain number of degrees per 0.05 seconds, it turns by a certain distance per 0.05 seconds. For a shorter car the front end moving the same distance means it turning a larger angle, so it steers more quickly.

Car length does have a major effect on responsiveness, and as you say it is indeed related to jump distances. If I remember correctly, it goes like this: the game calculates displacements for each of the four wheels, and then, roughly speaking, averages them to compute the overall position of the car. Steering is actually done by changing an angle, but that angle is the direction on which the front wheels are moving. For a longer car, the same change of direction of the front wheels has less of an effect on the car as a whole over a  time step.

The handling parameter seems to be in control more of how long you can keep cornering before the car starts slipping. So they still counteract each other, if you corner slower but can keep it up longer you can corner sort of around the same distance at the same speed.

That is the right intuition. The handling/grip parameter tells you how hard you can steer (i.e. how large the steering angle of the front wheels can get) at a certain speed before skidding or losing control. I had found the exact formula for that, but I lost my notes about it in my HD crash in '16. In any case, longer cars require harder steering for changing the direction of the car at the same rate, so they can't take corners as fast.

All of the faster cars can do a single wide corner at around 150 miles an hour, despite their length or exact handling parameter.

Not quite. The limit speed of IMSA cars following the ideal line on large corners is slightly above 170mph; for the Indy, it is somewhere around 190mph. Such speeds are, as one might expect, very hard to attain without RH.

The sour spot theory is very interesting, and deserves further investigation. I feel it might also have something to do with steering responsiveness (i.e. how the car responds to steering input by the driver).

The BMW has a slightly lower max rpm than the other two with the same top gear ratio, yet I could not for the life of me get its real top speed (the highest of the tree) down just one or two mph, at the very least not without altering the air drag. I could give it slowdowns or lower its flat track top speed, but I think I could only lower that by 2 mph, not one. I think one of the things that's happening is that because the game works in discrete intervals of 0.05 seconds you don't actually touch every bar in the torque curve. You often end up skipping a bunch.

Besides that, the torque curve is made of segments which are 128RPM wide. If you set the redline at 8192RPM, there will be 40 segments; if the ratio of the top gear is set so that the real top speed is 200mph, the resolution of the real top speed will be 5mph per step, which is indeed quite coarse.

3

Stunts Chat / Keyboard issues and ghosting

« on: November 30, 2018, 01:37:12 PM »

Folks sometimes report not being able to press some of the keys needed to drive simultaneously (I remember BJ talking about that in the past). Such issues are, in all likelihood, a problem with the keyboard itself, and not with the operating system or with the configuration of any software. The heart of the matter is that, unless you are using one of those fancy mechanical keyboards plugged to a PS/2 port, there will be an upper limit on how many simultaneous key presses can be registered (a limit which might vary depending on which parts of the keyboard you are using). Some cheaper keyboards are bad enough in that respect that they are unable to handle enough simultaneous key presses for Stunts to be played properly. The keyboard of my newish laptop, for instance, has this issue, and so I still need my old desktop keyboard to race. The keyword to use when looking for more information about this issue, or for choosing a keyboard adequate for Stunts, is "ghosting". This page provides an interactive test for your keyboard. In my case, it reveals my laptop keyboard can't handle "Down Arrow", "Right Arrow" and "Z" simultaneously, which is clearly unacceptable.

4

Car creation with Stressed / Re: Stunts goes Dtm

« on: November 30, 2018, 05:02:26 AM »

After racing with the three cars, I can confirm each of them has its own distinctive temperament. The Audi is smooth as butter, IMSA like as you say, and definitely the easiest of the three. The BMW is very nimble, and I'm fairly sure it beats the other two on a twisty track. All the responsiveness, however, means you end up being very close to the limit at all times. Another complication is the occasional curveball thrown by the bug-susceptible nature of the car. To me, the BMW is the most challenging of the set. Lastly, the Mercedes feels more like a typical "slow car", and is probably the one for which the conventional driving techniques translate more easily.

I think there's a few small holes in the wiki, but I couldn't really point them out. It's mostly in the 3D model stuff I think, the description of how the coordinates of a wheel work is for instance wrong, as far as I can tell. RES-file wise I've also got some maybe new insights in length and handling I've yet to post. I'll get around to that one of these days.

Looking forward to it 

The torque curve itself has some weird features, it's hard to design to an exact top speed [...]

Do you mean flat track top speed, or real top speed, or both?


One tiny issue I noticed is that the stripes over the hood from the BMW's paint job #9 flicker a lot. I'm not sure about what, if anything, can be done about it (I don't see anything obviously problematic when looking at the model on Stressed, though I didn't actually attempt tweaking it yet).

5

Motor sports, Racing / Formula One in 2019

« on: November 22, 2018, 11:46:40 AM »

Robert Kubica will be racing for Williams in 2019! Robert stallin Kubica!!   

6

Stunts Chat / Re: Race for Kicks

« on: November 22, 2018, 03:53:22 AM »

What has a monocle but no speed limit?

Die Ottobahn!

It suddenly struck me: did Otto race DTM, either before or after his Formula One career? 28 years seems quite a long while to stay only in F1 

(By the way, a reminder that the deadline for the current race is Sunday 25th, 23:59:59 UTC -- only four days left!)

7

Competition 2018 / Z209 - pArAnOiA

« on: November 20, 2018, 04:51:12 AM »

A bona fide CTG arena track! This is auspicious. Later I will try GAR -- it is a must, given the name.

8

Chat - Misc / Re: Politics around the world

« on: November 20, 2018, 04:39:34 AM »

Our asshole PM just sent congratulations to yours, expressing his gratitude that he won by sharing the same values as he does.

Bolsonaro's remarks on this exchange of pleasantries included a stupefying quote about dictatorships (I won't pollute the server by reproducing it here). But who am I kidding? In an age of post-truth, gall becomes a virtue.

9

Competition 2019 / Re: Cars and rules for 2019

« on: November 15, 2018, 02:43:45 AM »

Resetting the bonuses to be closer to each other mostly benefits the faster cars.

In particular, it benefits power gear cars, as often the tiniest of margins suffices to turn a track into a PG freeway. The 2008 season illustrates this potential problem.

10

Competition 2019 / Re: Guest tracks 2019

« on: November 13, 2018, 03:11:02 AM »

As for me, please book ZCT217.

11

Stunts Forum & Portal / Re: Competition Archive 2018

« on: November 12, 2018, 01:44:57 PM »

I could also make the replay tags visible in the full list of results for a track. Would that help?

It would help; also it is, for unrelated reasons, a feature I have been wanting for a long time  The way I once imagined it was having little (G) and (N) indicators in the replay entries, like the (A) ones for automatic transmission laps; in any case, I'll be happy with however form of display you decide on.

On an additional note, another thing I would like to do is setting up some architecture for the Archive more resilient than a bunch of folders, textfiles and spreadsheets loosely correlated with each other. I'm not sure I will have time to play with that before the release, though.

Tell me more.

While I didn't really feel such things when I was making an effort to update my working version of the archive at the end of every race, the prospect of updating it after not having touched it in years makes the procedures seem a bit fragile -- prone to mistakes, and perhaps with sub-optimal results for users. More specifically, I would like to have a single point of truth for race information: it might be, for instance, a SQLite database from which the text file race lists and the spreadsheet could be generated, and which could also be used to perform consistency checks on the .TRK and .RPL files (if not storing the files themselves there, though there are some subtleties that would have to be dealt with for that to work well). In terms of amount of work to do, the main complication is that such a plan would entail not only designing the database schema and writing the program, but also getting the ~900 race entries into the database -- a process that in all likelihood can't be fully automated.

12

Car creation with Stressed / Re: Stunts goes Dtm

« on: November 12, 2018, 01:07:50 PM »

Oh yes, dot and dota -- I had forgotten about those. Perhaps I should try and make a new car to get a refresher on things The mystery bytes detail is also interesting, thanks.

13

Stunts Forum & Portal / Competition Archive 2018

« on: November 12, 2018, 04:42:35 AM »

After months of procrastination and computer woes, I can finally announce that there will be a 2018 update to the Competition Archive. The plans are for it to be ready before the new year. Here are the competitions the update should cover (please do tell me if I forgot anything!):

• ZakStunts (2016-2018)
• ZakStunts GAR (2016-2018)
• ZakStunts NoRH (2016)
• R4I (2016)
• R4K (2016-2018)
• LeStunts (2017; Dorsal and Second)
• Superkart Special Event (2010)

I think almost all of those either are somewhere in my computer already, or are otherwise easy to retrieve. In any case, I will ask you folks if anything turns out to be missing.

On an additional note, another thing I would like to do is setting up some architecture for the Archive more resilient than a bunch of folders, textfiles and spreadsheets loosely correlated with each other. I'm not sure I will have time to play with that before the release, though.

14

Car creation with Stressed / Re: Stunts goes Dtm

« on: November 12, 2018, 03:17:17 AM »

Trying out the Mercedes on Die Ottobahn, I noticed the colour of the steering wheel dot. was changed. I wasn't aware that was possible (and I somehow hadn't noticed the Kart used that effect as well). How did you do it? 

(By the way, I encourage you all to give it a go there. These cars are a blast!)

15

Chat - Misc / Re: Politics around the world

« on: November 12, 2018, 12:00:51 AM »

RIP Brazil. The fascists won...

A little over three years ago, I posted this:

What's happening in Brazil? Duplode? Leo?

Economic downturn + corruption scandals + a politically weak and generally adrift government => demonstrators and sectors of the opposition (*) crying "Impeachment!". That has been the default state of affairs since January, so there is nothing to be too overtly worried about (**).

(*) I'd rather say overexcited demonstrators and sectors of agitators within the opposition, but that's my own political slant, and so YMMV.

(**) Of course the three things I listed at the beginning are quite worrying. I just mean we are not at the brink of an institutional crisis or anything really serious like that.

And look where we are now. That should teach me not to tempt fate...