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Invaders

  Definitely!  Let the thread not get cut!

Very funny glitches!  I guess no matter how complex an engine is, there will always be some strange behaviour

Sorry to answer late, but here I go...

Like Mark said, the P3S/3SH file of a car contains three models and each can, in theory, be completely independent and entirely different from the other two, but Stunts uses these models for different things (showroom, game and race intro), so it makes sense for the first model to be more detailed than the second, which should in turn be more detailed than the third.

When creating a new car, though, since we're in 2023 and computers are extremely fast, it's reasonable to just make one design and scale it. There are still reasons why you would want to manually modify some model, but CarWorks makes things quick for you and you can just clone the model, which will be auto-scaled.

What you see in green in CarWorks exists in the 3SH file, including the wheels. Here, the wheels are primitives just like any other. The orange objects are defined by parameters in the RES file, though. These are physics objects, not graphical, but are drawn in the 3D section of CarWorks because they are three-dimensional. The circle corresponds to the distance of car-car interaction, the box is for car-environment collision and the dots define the physical wheel position, which is taken into account when the car lands or as it rolls in the air. CarWorks will try to adjust these to your 3D graphics model as well as possible, but the resolution of these physical objects is not very high and besides, they are always centred at the origin, whereas the graphical car model does not need to.

In the 3D editing section, pressing Ctrl+B wil automatically regenerate the physical objects. As of the current version, CarWorks does not include an option to manually edit the values, but you can see what it gives you. The 3D part of CarWorks is the one that's the most buggy and underdeveloped and I've been thinking of rewriting it for quite some time.

Yeah, I think that'd be the best option.

What were you referring to with "that" ?

Yeah, it was not clear, sorry. I meant the "PG-cars on/PG-cars off" switch Alan proposed

It's very interesting how the PG turns are seen in the video

Uhm... not sure if I'm imagining correctly. In my mind, lines for the different cars would all be straight lines coming from the origin at different angles and probably there'd be points marked on them for the posted replays. Maybe a horizontal or vertical line could extend from each posted lap so that we can find the intersection with the other straight lines, which would be the estimated time. If it were interactive, then hovering on the spot would give you the driven time for that car to reach the other car. Sounds like a lot of work.

Yeah, I think that'd be the best option. Or else, we have to actually verify replays and subjectively decide whether they are PG-replays and ban only PG-replays for certain tracks.

Even today, with the current system, PG-cars like the Indy are almost never used unless it is for a PG-run of the whole track, so they are already significantly affected.

Welcome!  The guys have said it right. What I can add is that now that you're in the forum, you can always post your TRK files if you create something interesting. There are tournaments and special events and sometimes, one of your tracks could be featured too... or you could share replay files as well.

Hadfield (Canadian astronaut that recorded a David Bowie song in space)

Like the guys said, we're pretty aware about what the car parameters intend to represent, but we haven't really read and analised the engine code (of the physics part). The work necessary seems so huge that it becomes discouraging. For this reason, and because the engine has limitations and we would have to create mods freely... and also because we'd like a native binary for modern OSs, I've been doing some work with the purpose of developing a new engine that would read the original data files and imitate Stunts while allowing for modding comfortably.

All the menus, track editor, etc., are relatively easy things to redo, so the difficulty lies in graphics rendering and physics. I've been able to create a graphics engine that recreates Stunts decently and allows for some more features, but I'm stuck with the physics part mainly because of collision. So if you know where to learn about 3D collision in a simple way, something that can help for a game like Stunts, I'd like to know about that.

Of course, creating a new physics engine from scratch would mean it wouldn't be compatible with original replays, that is, playing a Stunts replay on the new engine would produce a different path and vice-versa, but this isn't serious if we consider that replays across different versions of Stunts itself aren't compatible either. We still consider all those to be Stunts. So as long as the new engine feels like Stunts, it should be OK.

We could do a "composed race" to avoid this problem and also, to make it more interesting. Like... five tracks are published just before the event and then, you have to race them in order and post the replays one by one with some time tolerance. In a way, it'd be as if it were an open circuit with several stages, and we can make it as long as we wish.

Hi, Niels!  Welcome to the forum!

The physics engine hasn't been analysed... at all, I would say. But the game behaviour has been observed carefully and the structure of game files does show signs that lead us in the direction of what information the engine handles, so we do have a vague idea of how it works. And of course, some pipsqueaks are very skilled and know how to exploit these bugs, so they know them well to some extent.

Graphics and other aspects are a lot better understood than physics

Hi, Niels!  Yes, indeed, version 1.1 has a bug and it won't handle driving time in excess like version 1.0 does. Maybe it's a bug we can fix someday

Tart