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As we can do without the passive-agressive message over at the atw.hu site, I have replaced the 302 redirect on our side with a more friendly landing page.

A sensible track for a final match: austere, harder than it looks (as some of you have pointed out) and assigned an appropriate car.

What happens if two pipsqueaks end the season with the same REAL score?

I feel the "Xylocaine problem" raised in ZakStunts news is worth a non-binding opinion poll. Relevant quotes, for the sake of completeness:

Will we *ever* have a Xylocaine race? Should Zak just ban it outright, or alternatively set a month apart for it so that we brace ourselves in advance?

DUP: Xylocaine race... well, maybe as a bonus track, outside the championship, after ZCT173 finished and there are still 12 days in the year. Just an idea.

Why? Whatvis the xylocaine problem?

@Marco: Easy handling plus weird powergear, likely requiring a special-purpose, carefully designed track to make the race enjoyable.

Because racing the Xylocaine is rather about digging deep into the weird and UNREAL physics of the car instead of fast/technical driving. I think Stunts is not about this.

My vote went to Option 5, for various reasons - including that I really like the idea of a ZCTP4 

Placeholder for the season finale.

2014 poll standings:

ZCT 150 - Doupe (Lancia, Lancia, Lancia)    2 (25%)
ZCT 152 - Halfnight (Countach, Countach, Countach)    2 (25%)
ZCT 155 - Dough Job (Audi, Audi, Audi)    2 (25%)
ZCT 151 - Ochenta Velas (Indy, Indy, Indy) 1 (12.5%)
ZCT 153 - Frogs at Dusk (Acura, Acura, F40)    1 (11.1%)
ZCT 158 - Nature Dad (GTO, GTO, GTO) 1 (12.5%)

Judging by the previous polls, it is about time for the runoff. My vote keeps being on Z152.

I hereby announce that I am quitting the ZakStunts 2014 title challenge. I will put that into effect by not posting any further laps with the Duplode profile until the end of the current season. My decision is final and irrevocable.

(I will possibly take part in the next three races under a publicly disclosed pseudonym. In that case, I will share replays with my teammates as usual.)

I have been granted access to the server database for collecting ZakStunts data for analysis. I should disclose that to you all because, beyond all the useful possibilities that opens for a stats junkie, it also means that if I had evil intentions I could do nasty stuff like peeking at hidden times during quiet days.

Feel free to ask me any questions about this state of affairs.

('cause every team needs a team forum)

It is strange that dreadnaut was dropped from the newbie scoreboard already, as he should be about halfway though his 18-month allowed stay...

[Windows executable bundle]

Back in February, when we were discussing automated replay logging, at some point I mentioned the Micro Machines-style video of the Z70 winning lap was done using a vectorial track viewer. Thanks to a stroke of good fortune, I am now able to make available a very rough preview of that viewer. The most interesting thing about it is that there are rendering parameters, as you can see in the attached screenshot. You can, for instance, generate images of different sizes, or adjust the proportions according to which the key track elements are drawn.

The links to the files are provided below. Before that, usage instructions for those of you who wish to test it:

• As usual, I did not test the Windows build in an actual Windows system, so please tell me whether it works or not  (If you would like a Linux binary instead, just ask and I will prepare one.)
• How to start it: drop the directory inside the zip somewhere (I suggest the folder with your tracks), launch the executable with stcarto viewer from a command line (if the Windows Firewall asks for permission, just allow it), leave it open and navigate in your browser to http://localhost:8023 . That will take you to the interface you see in the screenshot. When you are done, just close the prompt.
• You can retrieve the image files by using "Save Image As..." in the browser.
• Do not open the track viewer in more than one browser window at the same time (it will start failing randomly).

And now, the links:
Windows executable bundle (updated in 2022-01-30)
Source code repository

Incidentally, by digging into the repository you can figure out how that Z70 animation was generated. The really tricky parts related to getting the lap data from DOSBox are, of course, obsolete thanks to dstien's restunts-powered logger. In any case, I will at some point add support for overlaying lap traces to the viewer. I also plan to create an annotation system - that is, overlaying cars, icons, split markers, etc. over the map. Edit: these features, and quite a few others, were added in subsequent releases.

Feedback appreciated, as ever 

Edit: the link will keep being updated to point at the latest Windows bundle.
Edit 2: the repository was moved to Bitbucket, and then to Github.

The most beautiful long jump in Stunts still is the one by Mark L. Rivers in the final SDR race. It makes my spine tingle even today...

Quoting myself from a deleted post:

If this was e.g. the Southern Cross subforum I wouldn't even moderate it this much, but it is in the best interests of everyone that the technical threads stay clean.

I hate to delete messages in any circumstances, but in this particular subforum the tolerance for aggressive flaming will be very low. Thanks in advance for your collaboration!

Hopefully to be thawed next weekend

It certainly needs a slow car, but which? (I did a quick test with the GT3 and found it amusing, but I certainly don't expect you to agree!  )

...

...or: Everything you know about penalty time is wrong.

(Okay, not everything; but some of these findings did surprise me.)

which is leading to a question - does anyone know how is penalty counting?

Surprisingly enough, it seems that at no point did anyone stop to document this basic bit of Stunts knowledge, ever since the times of Luke, Nailwood and Riesbich. I guess that was because the usual two-tile rule covers 95% of the scenarios met in the race track, and most of the time it doesn't matter for us pipsqueaks exact penalty for a racing line, only whether it is different from zero. Anyway, I ran a few experiments whose results seem to cover everything but the crazy edge cases involving dual-way tracks. Two interesting points they settled are:

• Skipping multi-tile elements is no more costly than cutting small ones.
• The penalty sometimes given for entering the start/finish tile through the "wrong" side does not depend on the direction of entry.

The main conclusions are included in the penalty time Wiki article for your enjoyment.

[watch this space]

I am glad to announce the first major update to the Southern Cross site in a long while. You can see the results at the usual address, http://scr.stunts.hu . Besides the replacement of my track viewer with Dreadnaut's much nicer JS implementation, the changes are not so visible for now. The crucial point, however, is that the underlying infrastructure was rebuilt from scratch, so that updates are now much more pleasant to do - and that, of course, should work wonders for any new Southern Cross initiatives In other words...

The most important thing, however, is that this is only the beginning! With the groundwork done, we are ready for a very lively 2013 at Southern Cross, so watch this space

Main line sketched in about 15 minutes after reading CTG's post. Suggested car: Melange. BTW, I would like to try McLaren in the following round, too (or the one after that, lest we piss Friker off too much with these fast cars )

Coming on the heels of the fruitful thread about the 2013 pointsystem, here is a topic for discussing the bonus system and other car-related rules. I will begin by proposing a discussion about new (and old) cars for the next season.

---

Given that in all likelihood there will be new cars in ZakStunts 2013 (Melange, and possibly the McLaren), we should consider whether we will continue to increase the number of cars without bound.  My opinion on that issue is that we should stop at 16 cars total (11 original + 5 custom), due to three main reasons:

• Adding cars will affect the balance of the bonus system, as more points will be exchanged overall after every race. Countering that by reducing the bonuses will only get harder as more cars are included.
• The interval between races with the same car, which can be quite large already, will also grow.
• It seems appropriate that the number of custom cars remains significantly lower than 11. I feel that in this case it makes sense to be a little conservative; simplicity and accessibility to newcomers can also be seen as motivating concerns.

If we limit the number of cars to 16 or some other value, one question which follows immediately is whether any scheme for rotating the custom cars (e.g. swapping X cars  every Y years) will be put in place.

[So what is this about?]

A thread for setting up Le Stunts endurance events, propagating the buzz from the old Le Stunts thread. A brief overview for the uninitiated:

So what is this about?
Sweat and adrenaline - exhilarating live races in a challenging endurance format.

Who can take part?
Anyone! Simply join the discussion as we arrange the date and time for the next event, either in the Fixtures thread or in the thread for the next race (which you can create if it doesn't exist  ).

How does it work?
Here is what happened in the 2013-01-13 race. None of these "rules" are set in stone, anything can be adjusted if we feel like it.

The essentials

• The race is held on a track in which the finish line is on a pit lane, separate from the "main" track, thus allowing pipsqueaks to complete however many laps they need to.
• Räcers have 12 minutes to completing as many laps as they can within 8 minutes of in-game time.
• Shortcuts are allowed; saving partial replays and using RH are legal too - as for the latter, however, twelve minutes will be hardly enough for avoiding crashes and such disasters, so the action is more like NoRH.
• The final result will be based on (1) number of laps completed within 8 minutes, and (2) distance covered in the last incomplete lap (for pipsqueaks with the same number of laps).

The fine print (race stewarding)

• The track designer posts the track ~24h before the start time of the race, so that pipsqueaks have the opportunity to learn it.
• Some time before the start, we meet at the forum chat. Eventually, someone other than the track designer posts a slightly modified version of the track (to prevent cheating with older replays), starts a 3-minute countdown so that people can download the track and, after that, shoots the metaphorical starting gun at the chat.
• After the starting shot, pipsqueaks have twelve minutes to post the replay of their race to the forum. The deadline is checked by comparing the timestamp of the post with the replay with the one in the chat message announcing the start of the race. (Tip: to avoid delays when posting the replay, it is a good idea to turn on the "Don't warn on new replies made while posting" checkbox in your forum profile settings - Profile >> Modify Profile >> Look and Layout.)

One extra thing we want to do at some point is team racing (pairs, or maybe trios) as in the original Le Stunts. Each pipsqueak in a team would drive a set number of laps and then post/send the partial replay to a team mate, and so on until the eight minutes are completed. With teams we would have the races a bit longer (15min) so that the driver changes become feasible.

Are there archives from past races?
Check the race threads in this subforum. For the very first race, check this post in the old Le Stunts thread for the track and, further down the thread, replays, results and analysis.