Second quarter of the ZakStunts century 🐲25 years means a lot of stories and traditions, trophies old and new, and a few dusty corners. It also means the 26th year is coming up fast! Are you ready? 😱
While the game stays the same, the Competition is open to rule changes. This thread is here to collect and discuss suggestions, and also to decide which custom cars will be allowed for the coming season.
See also: Cars and rules for 2025 (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4335.0)
For those who have not been part of one of these threads before, let me summarise the process:
- Pipsqueaks bring up ideas, questions, problems. A brief explanation is enough, a bit of data is welcome.
- There are no single solutions to a problem, there always many options that we discuss with curiosity about other people's experiences and opinions.
- We keep in mind the principles of the Competition; I suggest reading along the chain of previous threads to get an idea of what's an acceptable proposal, and what is not.
- We try to find consensus on a very small set of changes: we can't make a lot of changes at the same time, or we'll have no idea what worked and why.
- Some ideas will not gain traction, and that's alright.
Now a few rules to have a productive thread:
- No AI generated content in this thread; machine translation is fine, slop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop) is not.
- No off-topic, spamming, etc. Those messages will be deleted without warning.
- No attacks, no recriminations
I'll start by giving my strong support for the Hexa as new car. Impressing performance and visuals, partially compensated by the difficult reading of the steering indicator.
Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.
I liked all this year's cars so it's hard for me to suggest which should drop to make place.
But maybe Esprit and Diablo tend to overlap a little bit too much, and my beloved Oxia should not become a regular presence to keep its magical aura. Mercedes DTM can go if it manages to win a race, otherwise I'd be happy to give it a second fourth chance.
Idea: all cars available and no rules. Why bother with rules?
https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4312
https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Zapper%27s_car_pack
And:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun
The basic method used to construct such a set of inputs is to record one's input while playing the game on an emulator, all the while saving and loading the emulator's state repeatedly to test out various possibilities and only keep the best result.
Stunts is so advanced that it can do this even without an emulator.
To make this more precise, the game is slowed down.
DOSBox-X can do that, I don't know about DOSBox, but my game can obviously do it with a few modifications and:
https://github.com/schellingb/dosbox-pure
Using the core option Save States Support, rewinding can be enabled.
Keep in mind that rewind support comes at a high performance cost.
I never tried DOSBox Pure, but so much for NoRH (it was outdated anyway).
: HerrNove August 27, 2025, 09:23:17 +02:00Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.
I'd love to see the Citroën XM in competition! It's a well-balanced car that could be a good representative of the "proper slow car" tier (example stablemates: Trueno, Thunderbird).
: Matei August 27, 2025, 10:55:23 +02:00Idea: all cars available and no rules.
There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.
: HerrNove August 27, 2025, 09:23:17 +02:00Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.
But maybe Esprit and Diablo tend to overlap a little bit too much, and my beloved Oxia should not become a regular presence to keep its magical aura.
I tend to agree with
@HerrNove. I love the Oxia, but its brilliance has meant it has dominated a lot so far this year. Much as I love driving it, it is becoming more of a workhorse for me, rather than a fun toy!
As such, it should probably have a rest.
The DTM has similar amazing all-round performance, but as has been mentioned elsewhere, it has yet to get a win so could maybe be given rather chance to shine.
The Niva was fun in the night-time Live race (anyone who hasn't tried this track and custom cockpits, do it!). It drove the nicest of the three. This would be a great slow car, if it could be seperated enough from the LM002.
I haven't tried the XM, but it sounds interesting.
As for the Mazda 787B, it is a beautiful, fast and stable rocketship, and would be a great addition. But as we have found when it first appeared, unless we lose some other original cars like the Jag or P962, we risk saturating the roster with similar cars..
But it is awesome ;)
For the idiot who deleted my latest message: when I mentioned that people who finish in the shortest time (recorded by the game, that is) are considered to win is a stupid rule, I referred to this:
https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4482.msg98492#msg98492
If you really must know, I spent 6.5 hours trying to pull off a power gear lap with the Corvette. That doesn't include the time I spent driving other cars.
Time to realise that I wasted too much time here too. Bye.
[edit]
Further reading, just found in an article published today.
https://trenduri.blogspot.com/2025/08/incrancenatii.html
Translation from Romanian:
I was sitting the past few days to think that we, as a people, have a characteristic that is radically different from other peoples: banter, humor. Honestly, I have never seen such an appetite for making fun of everything.
[...]
Mostly, this characteristic is essential in detecting non-Romanians.
[/edit]
: Duplode August 27, 2025, 11:35:12 +02:00: Matei August 27, 2025, 10:55:23 +02:00Idea: all cars available and no rules.
There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.
I'd love to see that! But only if
@dreadnaut can implement it without going crazy. I guess this would create many special paths in the code (e.g. you must not add the time to the car podiums, you cannot generate a car icon, etc.). You also cannot "just" set a coefficient, you have to ignore the time outright to avoid it skewing the diagrams.
I'm happy with the rules as it is! As for the cars my personal wish is that Mercedes stays, because I enjoy driving it the most 8)
@Matei, are you planning to join the competition next year? I haven't seen you on the scoreboard yet so I'm curious why you are posting here. Hope I get a chance to race against you!
This post was an attempt at an objective analysis of the interplay between car coefficients and power-gear cars.
Since those pipsqueaks who raised the issue left the competition the analysis seems obsolete.
@Matei I think
@KyLiE said 6.5 hours in the 28 days of competition so it's less than 1% of the month. Don't make it personal. The worst arrogancy is when a pipsqueak says i.e. "I did it in half an hour" when you clearly know (after many years in the game and the community) that it was a work of many hours. Somehow some pipsqueaks (and not pipsqueaks too I can see now) feels better saying they invests almost no time racing. That attitude deserves some insults but you only get from me a "poor guy".
I saw the same attitude or speech in other gamer communities where you build the expertise playing and playing. These kind of arrogant commentaries aren't welcome. Let him spend his time as he wishes.
: HerrNove August 28, 2025, 01:28:16 +02:00: Duplode August 27, 2025, 11:35:12 +02:00There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.
I'd love to see that! But only if @dreadnaut can implement it without going crazy. I guess this would create many special paths in the code (e.g. you must not add the time to the car podiums, you cannot generate a car icon, etc.). You also cannot "just" set a coefficient, you have to ignore the time outright to avoid it skewing the diagrams.
Some of these could indeed get annoying (in particular, I'm thinking of the top-12 graphical scoreboards). If "all cars allowed" proves too ambitious, though, this -100% penalty mechanic could be used in a more limited way as a kind of soft ban.
Besides covering exceptional single-race car bans like those we had a couple (https://zak.stunts.hu/tracks/ZCT255) times (https://zak.stunts.hu/tracks/ZCT266) in the past, such soft bans could potentially be used on an original car for the length of a season, be it to make room for an extra custom car, or to reduce the number of powergear cars that are available at the same time.
Only solution I see is this (the others are just nonsense). Make track and all cars available, forget about coefficients and times recorded by the game (waste of time) and just take the artistic impression of every replay into consideration. After the replays are sent by everyone put an archive of Stunts with the track, the replays and all the cars used, for download. All participants vote and if each pirate only votes for himself, I don't see the problem. Everything solved.
: Duplode August 27, 2025, 11:35:12 +02:00: HerrNove August 27, 2025, 09:23:17 +02:00Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.
I'd love to see the Citroën XM in competition! It's a well-balanced car that could be a good representative of the "proper slow car" tier (example stablemates: Trueno, Thunderbird).
: Matei August 27, 2025, 10:55:23 +02:00Idea: all cars available and no rules.
There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.
Is a fixed -100% coefficient sufficient to keep all the "cheat cars" at bay? I haven't tested them much so I am unsure how fast they really are.
: alanrotoi August 28, 2025, 07:09:14 +02:00@Matei I think @KyLiE said 6.5 hours in the 28 days of competition so it's less than 1% of the month. Don't make it personal. The worst arrogancy is when a pipsqueak says i.e. "I did it in half an hour" when you clearly know (after many years in the game and the community) that it was a work of many hours. Somehow some pipsqueaks (and not pipsqueaks too I can see now) feels better saying they invests almost no time racing. That attitude deserves some insults but you only get from me a "poor guy".
I saw the same attitude or speech in other gamer communities where you build the expertise playing and playing. These kind of arrogant commentaries aren't welcome. Let him spend his time as he wishes.
I don't think anybody here claims to be able to do a top replay in like 30 minutes. How much time it really takes to do a good replay varies though. Sometimes you get a useful magic carpet after a few minutes and other times you can try forever and it just does not happen. That is Stunts. ;D
@Matei Do consider posting replays at ZakStunts just for fun; you might actually like it. You don't have to care about scoreboard position or the car bonuses; just pick your favourite car out of the 16 and enjoy the ride. One of the goals of the multi-car system was making this kind of playing possible; Stan286XT did it for a long while in the recent past, and Stingray86 is doing it right now.
: Argammon August 29, 2025, 12:02:08 +02:00Is a fixed -100% coefficient sufficient to keep all the "cheat cars" at bay? I haven't tested them much so I am unsure how fast they really are.
Excellent question. The balanced bonus for PG Indy is somewhere near -30%, so let's round the coefficient to a nice 4/3. A -100% bonus amounts to a multiplier of 2, so the ratio between the driven lap times would be 2/3 for balance. The free/RH Default record with the Indy is around 30 s, while the time of a comparable lap with the Lada Niva Comeback is around 20 s. So yes, the fastest cheat cars might actually be competitive even with a -100% bonus!
(That said, if we were actually going to implement this, we might as well use -150%, or even have two tiers to distinguish cheat cars from the rest.)
: Duplode August 31, 2025, 06:06:17 +02:00Do consider posting replays at ZakStunts just for fun;
Read the end of message here (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4495.msg98499#msg98499)... from which I should have actually translated more, but I can give some of my other messages as example. Anyway:
You don't have to care about scoreboard position or the car bonuses;
I don't care about scoreboard position or the car bonuses, I don't even care about the "races". Do I have to put links to the messages where I already wrote that?
just pick your favourite car out of the 16 and enjoy the ride.
I only have ~4 pairs of skates, but the rides are not very enjoyable because there's cars everywhere.
https://matei.one/osub.html
Clearly, these killing machines have no business being used anywhere there are people around,
If we're referring to favorite games, Stunts is on the second place, here:
https://matei.one/idxscr.html
And it's not actually Stunts. Stunts is not interesting as a game, but has some other things made around it, especially by Cas. Otherwise I wouln't pay any attention to it.
https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Cas
Cas' most significant software contribution to the Stunts community is Bliss Track Editor,
No, his most significant software contribution is R5K_engine (https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/R5K_engine), which should be obvious (https://matei.one/idxscr.html#download). Besides, there was Track Blaster already and I hate "mouse-driven interfaces" anyway.
Another thing. From the messages here I come up with ideas.
https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4482.msg98413#msg98413
Like in Stunts, but not in my game.
Because the framerate is not fixed, but I fixed it to
n frames/second and in the new version the replay is now like in Stunts, i.e. the input controls are saved at each frame, instead of the positions. I tested, it works, the replays will be saved in files and I'll post the version here when it's ready. I will keep the replays like they are now in the main version though, but I will use the new type of replays in Skunks (https://matei.one), because the
replay feature available in previous versions is currently missing there. The same kind of things happen with Wayland, btw. Wayland is a very good protocol for graphics and who knows? Maybe 50...60 years from now it will become usable.
First of all: I joined here in 2021 because I had been observing the competition for quite some time and found it to be just right, and I still do. Apart from a few minor changes, the basic pillars have remained the same, and as far as I'm concerned, that's fine. I particularly like the car podiums as an addition.
When it comes to car selection, I was reminded of RidgeRacer on the PS1. There is a small overview of the most important features for each car:
RR1 PSX Car Parameters.jpg
I would love to do something like that for Stunts, but unfortunately I don't have the time. We could perhaps overlay several of these diagrams to see which characteristics a car would need to have to make it a balanced choice. Here's a video showing what it looks like in RidgeRacer, but I'm sure many of you are already familiar with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrY2eOG-N5g
: Frieshansen September 01, 2025, 04:58:15 +02:00When it comes to car selection, I was reminded of RidgeRacer on the PS1. There is a small overview of the most important features for each car:
This would be very fun to have! I remember having daydreamed with
@CTG about a NFS-style display for our cars. Other neighbouring ideas: category and tier lists (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3841.0); Super Trunfo (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3471.0).
Melange + Lola Indy or McLaren Mp4
To avoid the PTB exploits mentioned by MiDiaN in the shoutroom (and by me some months ago), we could slightly tweak the bonus in this way:
* 2 points if a driver gets 528 PTB-hours in a single race without the help of the carryover
* 1½ points if a driver gets 528 PTB-hours summing those of the race and the carryover
In both cases, the carryover is reset.
There are no exploits. There is a limit of 2 ptb per race.
: alanrotoi September 25, 2025, 02:23:04 +02:00There are no exploits. There is a limit of 2 ptb per race.
The limit does not guarantee the absence of exploits. In certain (rare) circumstances a driver could get more points by doing less.
Really? We should fix that then.
I think exploits are possible if you look at a single pipsqueak. But when you have a system of competing pipsqueaks, connivance notwithstanding, efforts balance out to avoid the extremes.
And because the "exploit" is publicly visible, it becomes part of the stregic game: "it looks like someone is holding back, ah, let me ruin their plan by doing this other thing!"
I'm interested in digging deeper though, because there are competition 'principles' that I think are important:
- strong pipsqueaks should have to make more difficult choices
- moves that can advantage a strong pipsqueaks should also lift the (not-immediate) followers
If there is an "exploit" that can advantage someone without giving something back to the lower scoreboard, that's something we should look into.
Indeed, this is the same issue
@HerrNove and me discussed here back in February (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?msg=96764). Here's a quick example. On the one hand, if someone gets 260 hours on ZCT292 and 400 hours on ZCT293, they will get PTB +0.5 on ZCT292, carry 128 hours to ZCT293 and get PTB +2 there (128 + 400 = 528), for a total of 2.5 points. On the other had, if they get 330 hours on ZCT292 and again on ZCT293 (same total hours across the two races, but evenly spread), they will have no carryover and get PTB +1 on each race, for a total of 2 points.
Now, while that is somewhat of a wrinkle in the system, I'm not really convinced of it being enough of a factor in practice to make a more complicated carryover rule worth the trouble. Fundamentally, under the current rules PTB +2 is very hard to achieve, even with carryover. Looking back at the first nine races of the season, a total of 396:01 earned in a single race (what you'd need to get PTB +2 with the maximum carryover of 131:59) was only reached three times (Alan on ZCT282, Argammon on ZCT285, and MiDiaN on ZCT289). That being so, taking advantage of the wrinkle to systematically reach 2.5 points every two races seems far from trivial under the current rules. (That said, if we're ever going to lower the thresholds to make PTB easier to reach, this issue will definitely need to be accounted for.)
(As for HerrNove's proposed solution, it has the merit of being a localised change with little risk of upsetting the balance of the system. However, it might be rather anticlimactic to fight all the way for the final 264 hours and only get 0.5 point in return. Also, I wonder if e.g. 10 hours of carryover should have the same penalty as 100 hours.)
https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4495.msg98527#msg98527
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_motocross
a panel of judges assigns each contestant a score based on a 100-point scale, looking for difficult tricks and variations over jumps.
I should not have a say about the rules for 2026, at least not for those affecting the season's standing.
But I thought I would mention that I agree with
@MiDiaN and
@HerrNove that it
feels strange that it is sometimes beneficial to voluntarily stay just below the 1-bonus-point threshold. However, I also agree with
@Duplode that the effect likely does not have much practical relevance over a whole season.
In any case, how could the system be "fixed"?It would be an easy fix to either remove carryover altogether or to allow carryover for all hours. As hinted at by
@dreadnaut and
@Duplode this would remove the strategic metagame almost entirely. In particular if all hours carry over one could as well just track the total position time over the whole season.
Alternatively, quoting
@MiDiaN's idea here, it may make sense to only award the big pot if a pipsqueak obtains 528 hours without the help of carryover. I must say that I am leaning towards this idea. Two bonus points are massive, essentially meaning that a second place plus the bonus is better than a first place together with just 0.5 bonus points.
: Argammon September 27, 2025, 08:45:03 +02:00It would be an easy fix to either remove carryover altogether or to allow carryover for all hours. As hinted at by @dreadnaut and @Duplode this would remove the strategic metagame almost entirely. In particular if all hours carry over one could as well just track the total position time over the whole season.
Indeed. A full removal of carryover is something I don't see happening, as it would make the system unrewarding for the lower positions, which were arguably the main motivation for the change from LTB to PTB. Unrestricted carryover is somewhat more feasible, but it would dull the tactical aspects of the system.
: dreadnaut September 25, 2025, 09:12:30 +02:00I think exploits are possible if you look at a single pipsqueak. But when you have a system of competing pipsqueaks, connivance notwithstanding, efforts balance out to avoid the extremes.
And because the "exploit" is publicly visible, it becomes part of the stregic game: "it looks like someone is holding back, ah, let me ruin their plan by doing this other thing!"
It's worth expanding on this point with reference to the concrete system. Under the current rules, if you have reached PTB +1 but have no path to PTB +2 within the current race, any further PTB chasing you might engage in is,
in principle, only for the sake of fun and entertainment, and as far as the season scoreboard goes you are free to relax. On the one hand, that potentially makes PTB battles less exciting than they might otherwise be. On the other hand, one of the complaints about the 2020-2024 LTB system was that the lead battles were getting too intense for the involved pipsqueaks, so maybe there's an upside to a bit of relaxation!
In the above, I have said "in principle" because there's at least one exception: if your opponent can reach PTB +2 in the current race, stopping them from doing so is a big incentive to stay on the PTB fight! To some extent, that applies even to PTB +1: if, over a pair of races, you can turn your opponent's +1 and +1 to +0.5 with carryover and +1, that's half a point taken away. (PTB +1 is, of course, harder to prevent than PTB +2; nonetheless, such a scenario can realistically happen if, for instance, your opponent joins the PTB fight later in the race, or if you're battling over the lower PTB positions.)
For the moment, my favourite way to address the wrinkle, if we were to address it, would be something
@HerrNove suggested many months ago: add one more intermediate PTB goal before the final one. In the context of the current system, that would be PTB +1.5 at 396 hours, with no carryover from the 264-396 hours range. While this wouldn't actually remove the wrinkle (that would require eliminating partial carryover, a change with its own downsides, as noted at the beginning), it would give pipsqueaks who consistently reach 300+ hours per race a goal more attainable than PTB +2 with which to counter an opponent who attempts the tick-tock strategy we've been speculating about.
Adding PTB +1.5, though, would be a significant change, which would likely call for further adjustments in order to preserve the balance of the system. For that reason, I lean towards keeping the system more or less like it currently is for 2026, and then, with a further season of practical experience and observed scenarios to analyse, consider the merits of a bigger revision for 2027.
Orthogonally to the other proposals for PTB I would suggest to not carry over the time bonus across seasons: at season start every driver should be on a blank slate. Moreover, with inter-season carryover, on the final race of the year drivers with nothing at stake would be incentivized to alter their replay posting habits to try to carry as many hours as possible to the new season, i.e. staying just below the 132.5 or the 265 threshold. A ruleset should not force the competitors to pursue these strange goals.
: HerrNove November 02, 2025, 10:20:40 +01:00Orthogonally to the other proposals for PTB I would suggest to not carry over the time bonus across seasons: at season start every driver should be on a blank slate.
I agree, and I'm fairly sure we won't have that. Inter-season carryover was an acceptable compromise under the old LTB rules, but it really isn't so with PTB.
: HerrNove November 02, 2025, 10:20:40 +01:00at season start every driver should be on a blank slate.
https://matei.one/invidious.php?v=l5II1EUWbL0
Let's pretend that the world is great,
and everybody gets along, and there is no hate,
and if you make a mistake, you get a clean slate,
Let's get this thread moving again, focussing on PTB improvements — if any.
And for the car selection, there's a new thread (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4540.0).
No carry-over from 2025 to 2026 makes sense to me. Podium time is easier to correct, so a full reset gives the new season a clean slate.
Seeing no further comments, my plan is to confirm the 2025 ruleset, including PTB as-is. Leading hours will start from zero with the first race of the season.
: dreadnaut January 07, 2026, 12:10:22 +01:00my plan is to confirm the 2025 ruleset
Ex post facto? :o ;D
I mean, for 2026! 😅
: dreadnaut January 07, 2026, 12:10:22 +01:00Seeing no further comments, my plan is to confirm the 2025 ruleset, including PTB as-is.
That's a sensible choice.
While I'm on record (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?msg=98874) in favour of keeping PTB as-is for this year with an eye to possibly tweaking the system for 2027, I also wanted to do some analysis of the 2025 PTB data and bring it to the table so we'd have a better picture of how well it worked and potential things to improve. I'm sorry I couldn't come up with that on time for this thread, off-Stunts matters to deal with made it hard for me to sustain focus over these last few months. In any case, I'll work on it as soon as feasible.
(Another thing I was thinking about a few weeks ago was yet another approach to try keeping powergear cars in check. It's fine to leave that for the next preseason as well, if it still makes sense by then -- I do think, after all, that we're slowly but steadily learning how to live with PG under the current rule set.)
I propose a slight change to the next PTB rule:
"pipsqueaks who get less than 1 bonus point in a race carry unused hours to the next one."
Instead of "less than 1," change it to "less than 2," and also add the ability to award 1.5 PTB points per race.
PTB +1.5 is a possibility on the radar (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?msg=98874) for 2027 at least. The system as it currently exists is relatively stingy about points given in order to limit the impact of PTB, both in terms of points accumulated (to avoid PTB deciding the championship on its own) and of spent focus (so that people don't have to defend positions every single week throughout the year to have a fighting chance at the season scoreboard). The flip side is that, given how PTB +2 is currently so hard to achieve, the system could become more dynamic by adding PTB +1.5 as an intermediate step. Since granting more PTB points would have an impact over other aspects of the system, though, IMO additional changes should be considered alongside it to preserve the overall balance.
I don't know. The core of the rule is to help in the same level to top pipsqueaks and also those who follows. Top pipsqueaks will have 2 points more often than the rest so the whole PTB wouldn't have mean to be.
: alanrotoi January 18, 2026, 02:53:52 +01:00I don't know. The core of the rule is to help in the same level to top pipsqueaks and also those who follows. Top pipsqueaks will have 2 points more often than the rest so the whole PTB wouldn't have mean to be.
That is a factor too. More points granted overall means bigger gaps between the involved pipsqueaks. Another aspect of the system for which this concern is relevant is carryover. One of the reasons carryover stops at PTB +1 is that it is primarily meant for those fighting for the lower PTB positions, rather than for the lead.