News:

Herr Otto Partz says you're all nothing but pipsqueaks!

Main Menu

Play Stunts in your browser

Started by Joris, June 05, 2016, 12:31:46 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Joris

First of all: great to see such there's actually still an active community for one of my favourite games of my childhood! I still remember the moment we visited our uncle and he let me play Stunts, and when we left he copied the game on a floppy disk for us, I was so excited to play a race game which had the option to create your own tracks ;D Must be 20 year ago I guess...

Just wanted to let you know that you can now play Stunts when you're at work / bored / whenever you're not near your own pc: just go to https://www.playdosgames.com/online/stunts/ (I figured this is not really spam since JTK already posted a link in the Praise Thread  ;) )

I was wondering how do you -Stunts experts- think the game runs in our online emulator? And are there any mods/cars/tracks which have become so mainstream that they should be included on our website?

Duplode

Welcome!

Quote from: Joris on June 05, 2016, 12:31:46 AM
(I figured this is not really spam since JTK already posted a link in the Praise Thread  ;) )

Indeed, it's not spam at all -- any initiatives involving Stunts are definitely on-topic! :)

Quote from: Joris on June 05, 2016, 12:31:46 AM
I was wondering how do you -Stunts experts- think the game runs in our online emulator?

Two observations:

  • Fluidity could perhaps be improved somewhat, though it is entirely possible that my network connection, browser and/or old CPU are to blame. In any case, one would ideally set the DOSBox CPU cycles setting to at least 10000, if that isn't too expensive in terms of server-side resources.
  • With Firefox I sometimes had a little trouble in getting keyboard input to work. It seems to be just a focus issue, as tab-cycling eventually made it work.

By the way, I noticed high scores and tracks are retained locally, which is a nice touch.

Quote from: Joris on June 05, 2016, 12:31:46 AM
And are there any mods/cars/tracks which have become so mainstream that they should be included on our website?

With respect to custom cars there is no such unanimity (with the arguable exception of the Melange XGT-88). Still, here is a full list of of the "modern" custom cars (i.e. those with custom graphics), in case you feel like adding some of them would enhance the overall experience. In general, those are well-rounded cars that fit the rest of the game well (exceptions to be wary of, for one reason or another: Speedgate, Ford Ranger, Xylocaine). Or, for something entirely different, you might want to add a few of the old-school cheat/rocket cars available from ZakStunts -- the most popular ones being the Skoda Felicia, the Knight Rider and the Lada Niva.

As for tracks, even though there is a huge archive of competition tracks from the last few decades there is no canonical set either. That being so, as long as the six standard tracks are included (which is the case) no one will have any complaints, and anything else you decide to throw in will be a nice bonus.

Joris

Thanks for your input!

Quote from: Duplode on June 05, 2016, 09:33:34 PM

  • Fluidity could perhaps be improved somewhat, though it is entirely possible that my network connection, browser and/or old CPU are to blame. In any case, one would ideally set the DOSBox CPU cycles setting to at least 10000, if that isn't too expensive in terms of server-side resources.
I set the CPU cycles to 10000, it doesn't raise the server load since the emulator is running locally, all it does is downloading the files from my server. Seems like the music is a little messed up now, but I have to test it on some different setups to see what's the exact problem here.

Quote from: Duplode on June 05, 2016, 09:33:34 PM

  • With Firefox I sometimes had a little trouble in getting keyboard input to work. It seems to be just a focus issue, as tab-cycling eventually made it work.
Good to know, I'll take a look at this very soon since this will also affect all other games. Were you also having this issue when trying to click your mouse in the game window?

Quote from: Duplode on June 05, 2016, 09:33:34 PM
By the way, I noticed high scores and tracks are retained locally, which is a nice touch.
Don´t clear your browser cache :)

As for the extra cars and tracks, I'll add some later this week, maybe some more suggestions come in.

Duplode

Quote from: Joris on June 05, 2016, 11:56:31 PM
I set the CPU cycles to 10000, it doesn't raise the server load since the emulator is running locally, all it does is downloading the files from my server.

It is quite a bit better now -- other than during CPU spikes in my background tabs, there seem to be no slowdowns :)

Quote from: Joris on June 05, 2016, 11:56:31 PM
Good to know, I'll take a look at this very soon since this will also affect all other games. Were you also having this issue when trying to click your mouse in the game window?

Clicking leads Firefox to ask whether to "hide" the mouse pointer, which switches mouse input to the DOSBox window as expected. Oddly enough, however, doing that has no effect over the keyboard issue.