Messages

I'll throw this here

If you go to the "All results" page for a track, the download links for the replays now contain the replay sha1 hash:

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http://zak.stunts.hu/replays/d3079e8bb43f91c4eb630da6828cf718664204de

Take the hash, and put it in this new endpoint:

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http://zak.stunts.hu/api/replays/d3079e8bb43f91c4eb630da6828cf718664204de

and you switch to the wonderful world of data!

There is very little at the moment (replays and tracks), and what is there is likely to change when I split races and tracks, results and replays. But hey, it's a start.

Now, what can we build on it?

Getting ready for the live race, I see

A mildly obscure feature of ZakStunts are the RSS feeds, which list recent messages and replays.

In a long term plan to make them more useful, I have renamed the existing two, and moved them under /feeds. You can now find a full list at http://zak.stunts.hu/feeds

The old addresses redirect to the new feeds and still work, but I will eventually remove them. If you are following them, please switch to the new ones

Skid. It's raining a lot so I have to go kayaking this weekend.

There's no arguing with propitious weather, go, have fun, bring us back a cool picture —e.g., kayaking through a cork l/r!  And if you come back early enough, you know where to find us

(thanks for spotting the wrong time, post above fixed)

So, like before, will there be a last-moment modification to the tracks to prevent old replays being sent?

Yep, as usual there will be a small change that affects the actual track, invalidating any pre-recorded replay. E.g., adding some ice or some dirt, a tunnel, a slalom, etc.

Only thing, please don't remove the icy segments which mark the lap line—we'll need those for scoring!

[Sunday 17th]

So Sunday 20:00 GMT? Dreadnaut started this thread, would you do the honors of designing the track?

Sounds good!

Next live race is then on Sunday 17th, 17:00 Buenos Aires / 17:00 Brasilia / 20:00 London / 21:00 Rome and Budapest. We'll meet on the forum chat at that time.

Attached are two tracks, although they are actually the same: I made "Sundown" first, but I put down the finish line in the wrong direction, and discovered that it was also an interesting track. So "Sunrise" was born! I think they allow different approaches, but they also have a few nasty bits

For both I would add the rule "The loop must be looped".

As usual, feel free to practice on the tracks, the cars for both is the Porsche P962.

This is a brilliant, yet somehow hilarious analysis. I've looked at those signs a few times, puzzled when they looked perched on top of a ramp, but too see the rules so simply exposed is brilliant!

Should we have a "Road signs" page on the wiki?

Should we aim at Sunday 17th, afternoon/evening then?

- Afullo
- Cas
- dreadnaut
- Overdrijf

Who else is in?

I'll use them as background music when I write the next newspost

I have a bit of a regular thing on Saturday evening, but I think I can make that go away. I'd also be able to do Friday or Sunday.

Oh, Friday works for me as well!

Hi, if i am allowed, i would like to create the track for oct.

You are very welcome: added to the list!

And welcome to the forum

I could do next weekend, 16-17 March!

Images broken, but you probably meant this
https://pics.onsizzle.com/llama-llama-llama-llama-llama-a-llama-llama-en-llama-9591514.png

I think different identification systems might work better for different tasks.

For example, books are classified in libraries with different schemes: you have an author and a title, an isle and a shelf number to find the physical book, a code following the Dewey Classification, but also an ISBN number.

Each way to "address" a book is actually answering a question: who wrote this book and what is it about? where do I find it? how can I identify it and order it from the publisher? Which questions do we have about Stunts tracks and replay?

In ZakStunts I need to answer the questions "which of the known tracks does this replay belong to?" and "have I seen this replay before?". For this, I have been using a full-file SHA1 hash, which has good distribution guarantees and makes collisions unlikely. Given the small space of the existing tracks and replay, you could keep the first 7-8 characters of the hash and still avoid collisions. But these identifiers are opaque and difficult to remember, they are not meant for humans.

This is also a strict file comparison, while other "similarity" measures are of course possible. One could consider only the track, minus scenery elements—but sometimes a well placed building can make a difference. Maybe there's a good "checksum" based on adding the "values" of each tile in the track, beginning with the start line and following all paths. And going full data-science, if you consider the map of a track as an image, you can apply feature recognition techniques to compare tracks. But what question does this answer? Can it map tracks on a space which gives us useful insights, or is it merely a numeric exercise, and looking at the maps would be faster?

If the question instead is about storing files on disc, the ZCTnnnn format is not bad, and could be extended to other competitions. However, I've recently been working on splitting the concepts for "track" and "race", at least in the back-end.

A track is just a track file, paired with a record (title, author, preferred 8-character name). A race has a ZCT number, a track, start and end dates, extra rules, etc. So ZCT079 is a race that ran between the 1st and the 31st of December 2007, on the DEFAULT track, which was created byt Distinctive Software in 1990. The split can of course be confusing, so when you download the track it's still called ZCT079.TRK.

While for competition tracks we could use a "competition + counter" id, I can't think of a good way to classify non-competition tracks, which also abound. The reason might be that we don't have corridors and shelves to explore, and that's what we need to find out first, because it will inform our classification system.

Maybe it's by "track type" (flat, aerial, ...), or by "number of minutes for a Lambo track", or... The number of numbering systems is infinite, but each one will suffer from the mismatch between universality and the subjectivity of defining it. For this reason, I am not too interested in finding the perfect naming pattern, and I'll stick to unreadable hashes. On top of that, we can build facets and tags and any sort of partial classification, each a different view of the track-space, answering different questions

I noticed this in the forum index, so I had go for a ride on Default! And what a ride!

First try: A good start! I seem to remember all the important mistakes, and I actually avoid most of them... except jump off the bridge with the wrong angle. But 1:08.25 is a really, really good time for me.

Second try: woooo, I'm on a roll! I go a bit long in the corner after the boulevard, but the fast grass of the chicane saves me; I also go a bit out at the last corner, but I end up on the other half of the junction! And still I close the lap at 1:07.55, which might be my personal record! I'm saving this replay

Third try: wrong angle out of the cork, and I roll out on the grass — 1:13.10.

Fourth try: a bit of mess with the gears before the bridge means I miss powergear, but I still close in 1:08.00

Fifth try: this is it, I'm ready, I'm tense! A really nice first corner, I do OK at the corner-chicane before the bridge, and reach powergear on the ramp; a good landing, a couple of decent corners... and it's 1:06.00 —woooooo!

Ah, it's the first time that I get decent numbers out of the Five Laps! Maybe it was a good idea to try this after racing on Race4Kicks, which just happens to have an Indy track