Topics

Hello,

thanks to Mingva the IRC site is available again.
See it at http://www.stunts.hu/irc

http://irc.stunts.hu will also be available.

Zaki

Usually I like tracks which are competitive for several cars.
However, with the Corvette possibly reaching 40% bonus, and followed most likely by the Audi with only 32% as the second highest value, I tried to design a track where at least these two cars are competitive.
I could have done it - with a track similar to the current one by CTG.
But I want to keep pipsqueaks motivated, especially before the summer, when the competition traditionally attracts less attention.
So, this time I decided to let the Corvette fly.
This will result in a fun track (as far as a track with the Vette can be fun ), and hopefully a very interesting multi-car track in July.

Does any of you use twitter, tumblr, blip.fm or such?

Twitter is useless imho, tumblr is nice but not used by me.

I quite like blip.fm especially since last.fm is non-free for poor Eastern-European users 
So come and catch my music. I am curious listening to yours!
http://blip.fm/zaqrack

Have you ever wondered, that in Stunts, the standard replay handling panel (F3 view) why has a Ferrari F40 as the symbol on the left side? Makes no sense to me.

so, what do you think? I have no clue about the car yet...

[Adopt a Team!]

ZakStunts announces a new program for 2009 in order to help the newbies integrating with the community and improving their racing skills. The program is called:

Adopt a Team!

Requirements:
Teams formed in 2009 can only apply for adoption if they consist of at least two members (maximally four), and at least two members from the full team qualify for the criteria of being a newbie pipsqueak. Teams must announce their formation to the race manager before applying for the adoption.

Application:
The team enlisted and registered at ZakStunts must announce its application for adoption here in this topic until the 28th of February, 2009.
Supporter teams must also announce their interest in adopting a newbie team.

Selection:
Each formerly present "historic" team (Cork's Crew, Damage Inc., MeganiuM Aces High and other possibly re-formed teams) can adopt one applicant team each. The selection will be made according to the adopting teams' preferences and must be agreed with consensus. If no consensus can be reached, the selection will be random.

Benefits:
Each adopted team receives a new subforum. Members of the applicant team AND the supporter team gain full access to the subforum. The supporter team must help the adopted team constantly with tips, comments on the replays and can share its members' replays with the new team.

Restrictions:
Supporter teams are not obliged to share their best and latest replays but must continuously supply the adopted team with new material (replays and/or tips and analysis)
The aim of this concept is to teach the newbies not to let them copy. 
Adopted team members can not access the supporter team's forum.
The adoption lasts only for one season, until the 31st of December, 2009. After this date the access of the supporter team members to the adopted team's forum will be restricted to zero.

I just realized that my "legendary" status as I'm a pipsqueak who has never won a single track during his whole career was almost never true!

Check this: http://www.geocities.com/charles959/pipsqueaks.html (substitute pipsqueaks.html with r.a.c.e.r.s.html
Apparently I won a track at Charles's competition back in 2001 and I don't even remember.
Does anyone remember which track this was?

I'm shocked 
And disappointed. 

[poll is only open for 3 days.]

See the originating question and problem in this thread: http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2320.15

If we choose yes, the rule will be applied retrospectively, so the current ZCT92 bonuses will be also modified (not much though...) as I'd like maintain the same rules for the whole season.

Taking this into account, the poll is only open for 3 days.
Will only apply the rule if at least 66% of the voters agree with it.

Zak

This topic has been moved to Stunts Code Extraction.

http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2303.0

This topic has been moved to Stunts Portal.

http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=1546.0

This topic has been moved to Stunts Code Extraction.

http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2306.0

there is no general topic on music. doh!

I have prepared a tribute to the Champion of 2008.
Cheers to Ayrton! Enjoy the fame. As for the other pipsqueaks - enjoy the video! (and sorry for the music selection.  )


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di9Rd6lABI4

This topic has been moved to Site Announcements.

http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2297.0

As you already know I'm measuring the number of page hits on each subpage since the new year.
Just some teaser on the top 30 measured in the first 20 days. Remember, the site has ~60-80 unique visitors each day. Of course around 30% of this and all the number below are bots, but stil...
It shows how important it was to make the newbie pages. I just wonder where those 80 people, who clicked on the "signup" page
There is still room to improve. Will publish monthly stats.

PAGE ID - PAGE HITS
2009scores   288
download   286
stats   241
articles   222
newsarc   222
contact   221
rplinfo   209
school   208
faq   203
newbie7   146
newbie6   139
newbie2   129
newbie8   124
newbie5   110
newbie4   110
newbie3   110
permanent   104
2008season   100
newbie1   97
2009profiles   92
2009season   81
2008podium   80
signup   80
welcome   80
2005season   78
2008profiles   77
2007season   76
2006season   74
2007profiles   73
2008scores   68

done. I find it well-balanced
Released possible today, maybe tomorrow.

Zak

Now that ZakStunts is newbie-friendly I plan to do some advertising in January.
Of course I'll do my yearly spam - send one mail to all stored addresses.

Do you have any other ideas, how to advertise the site, where to gather new pipsqueaks?

Zak

Look what I've found laying around 

[pipsqueaks and pipsqueak profiles]

I have started working on the 2009 site. I'll list here (update this post) always my progress.

pipsqueaks and pipsqueak profiles

We had (by far) 30 active pipsqueaks in 2008. Not much, but I think we have a strong community now. At least I enjoy it a lot.

Those who have sent at leat one replay in 2008 don't have to re-register in 2009 on the site.
Furthermore, I'd like to renovate the "pipsqueaks" page a bit. Should we re-upload pictures of the pipsqueaks? What do you think?

I'll also collected & corrected the pipsqueak join dates. This will be listed on the pipsqueaks page from now on (until now it was accessible only in the pipsqueak profile. For your interest, here is the list. Join date = first replay sent to ZakStunts. Before 2007 only the year and month is valid. After that the day also.
Conclusion: those who join after july rarely stay with us. :-(

2001
Zak McKracken   2001-03-01 00:00:00
JTK   2001-03-01
Bonzai Joe   2001-04-01

2002
Usrin   2002-01
akosspoo   2002-03
CTG   2002-04
Alan Rotoi   2002-05
Krys TOFF   2002-07
satanziege   2002-07

2003
2004
Dark Chaser   2004-02
AbuRaf70   2004-12

2005
Ayrton   2005-02
Chulk   2005-02
SergioBaro   2005-03
CTG   2005-06
Marci   2005-10

2006
Mark L. Rivers   2006-02
SuperBrian   2006-03

2007
Duplode   2007-06-03

2008
AMG   2008-01-16
Turkey   2008-02-19
Freddy   2008-02-26
Pavekiller   2008-03-19
Lene   2008-03-20
Böbszlee   2008-03-27
dstien   2008-04-06
Antti   2008-04-10
Fredmen67   2008-10-11
tgm   2008-10-27
Goblin   2008-11-29

[In each round add only as much bonus as much we substract.]

I like the bonus system. But I don't like bonus renormalization and ever-growing bonuses. I want to avoid this.
In order to avoid this, there is a simple mathematical rule to be followed:
In each round add only as much bonus as much we substract.
So I reversed this simple rule, and created the rule for 2009:

After each track the bonus for the unused cars (+2,+3,+4 and so on) will be summed.
The resulting value will be distributed between the cars on the podium the following way:
50% for the winner car
30% for the second
20% for the third.
(of course all rounded to integers)

This guarantees the continuous flow of the season, and also - if there is a dominant car on a track, surely less other cars will be used -> more bonus for unused cars -> more substracted from the dominant cars. Hopefully this will result in a self-balancing system.

From this point read on only if you're interested in details:

Remember, there will be more cars in the 2009 season, so probably there will be slightly bigger fluctuations, which I'd prefer, as I'd like to see more winner cars compared to 2008.
In 2008 the average positive bonus / track was 16. We had 11 cars. we'll have at most 15 in 2009, (16/11)*15=21.8
That means an average 22 negative points/round, which would result in
-11 for the winner (takes 4 rounds to regenerate when unused)
-7 for the second (takes 3 rounds to regenerate when unused)
-4 for the third (takes 2 rounds to regenerate, when unused)
A car occupying the whole podium would need around 5 rounds to regenerate to its previous bonus value, when completely unused. So maximally 2 wins/car a year, which I think is an optimal value.

What do you think? Should we further raise the positive/negative bonuses and kick out strong cars for a longer period, or does this system sound balanced this way?