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I was thinking about live races while having breakfast, and this came to my mind. I'll dump it here, not to forget.

Uploading a replay for a race is a multi-step operation, nothing too long, but seconds! are really important at the end of a live race. So what if there was a little program that looks at the Stunts directory, and every time a .RPL file is created or modified, it uploads it to ZakStunts?

The website should have an endpoint to allow automated uploads, and keep only the most recent 15-20 replays to save space. pipsqueaks would have a new page with a list of their uploaded replays, and the option to Publish, Download, or Delete each.

Bonus, a "Team mode" where the list is shared among the members of the team.

Teams are better than great! Join a team

The best way to race in ZakStunts is as part of a racing team! Share tricks, strategies and frustration with your teammates. Mostly frustration. Up to four pipsqueaks to a team, see the rules for more details.

Write here if you are looking for a team to join, if you want to start a new team, or simply to confirm an existing team!

The map for ZCT209 made me think of GTA Vice City, which is one of my favourite "driving games" in terms of car feeling. That, the original Carmageddons, and Nitronic Rush. And then I realised I don't think I've ever mentioned the latter.

Nitronic Rush is very arcade-y, highly maddening, and difficult. There is a recent sequel called The Distance which I have not tried, but have a drive on the original!

[dreadnaut+]

While Zak is relaxing on a tropical island, lying under the sun with a drink with a small umbrella in it, he has given me and Duplode administration rights to the forum

This means we can now access a bunch of pages full of new buttons, and no idea on how to use them. However, we can now see all the private boards, which is quite terrifying to be honest    I thought it would be easy to ignore them, but yesterday I ended up replying to a team thread, just because its title was too similar to one in the public sections.

To avoid further mistakes, and for a clean conscience, I have demoted my account back to normal user, and created dreadnaut+ as an admin. I will only log in with that account if any of the scary buttons need pressing.

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2018)

Who's up for a track? Book your race below.

Tracks for the competition are designed by its participants. If you have an idea for a track and would like to contribute, just choose an available month below!

• ZCT210 (starts Sunday 13 Jan) - Akoss Poo
  
• ZCT211 (starts Feb) - Overdrjft
  
• ZCT212 (starts Mar) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT213 (starts Apr) - Shoegazing Leo
  
• ZCT214 (starts May) - Cas
  
• ZCT215 (starts Jun) - GTAMan
  
• ZCT216 (starts late Jun) - Afullo
  
• ZCT217 (starts Jul) - Duplode
  
• ZCT218 (starts Ago) - [Afullo]
  
• ZCT219 (starts Sep) - Alan Rotoi
  
• ZCT220 (starts Oct) - sd4000
  
• ZCT221 (starts Nov) - CTG
  

There are some great ones in here: http://oldconceptcars.com/

The Lamborghini LM002 had some friends: Cheetah, LM001, and LM004!

It should be now possible to change your login password from the "Edit profile" page.
There is no password reset yet, so don't forget the new one

I've refreshed the rest of the profile information too, and removed "Height" and "Years of experience". The first one seemed a bit random, while the second felt always out of date.

Let me know if you want them back, of if you'd like to add different information!

This might not be very interesting, but it's quite satisfying if you are a data nerd.

You know those little bar charts at the top of the News Archive? The ones that show the number of posts per day — like the one in the attachment.

Well, these used to be little PNG images, created on the fly. But now they are little SVG images, created on the fly

They look exactly the same as before, but they are part of the page (no extra server request), they scale to any size without blurring, and... try to move the mouse over one of the columns!

Posts collected from the ZakStunts shoutbox in May 2018, for easier reading.

Afullo
About the time limitations, I'm trying with MS1.1 and I can go past the 10 minutes replay limit (with the correct displaying of the truncation message):



Note that the replay starts at 0:30.00 and ends at 10:20.30, so the older recording is progressively discarded. Now I'm going to proceed through the 25 minutes limitation, and to see what will happen...

Afullo
I just hit the 25 minutes limit, and the game simply returns the replay screen, like pressing ESC; trying to continue driving from the menu, which is still an active option (written in white and not in blue, differently from "save replay" which becomes inactive after 10 minutes), will result in the replay screen disappearing for a fraction of second, and then reappearing still stucked at 25:00.00... Maybe it has something to do with possible overflow errors: you can theoretically complete a track with a time higher than 25 minutes if you collect proper penalties, but I remember at least once to have seen a minus sign in the total time (elapsed+penalty), which was with all chance caused by a low number of bits for the integers involved...

Afullo
Indeed, in this example (units are 0.05):



I skipped 898 tiles, so I was charged with a penalty of 2694 seconds, or 53880 units. Modulo 2^16 = 65536 this equals -11656 units, or -582,8 seconds, or -9:42.80. This is consistent with the limit: 25 minutes are 1500 seconds, or 30000 units; 16-bit signed integers range from -32768 to 32767, so it would be possible to reach safely 27.18:35, I guess 25.00:00 is simply the nearest "sufficiently rounded" lower number.

Afullo
Just a minor remark: with the terminology used in Stunts Wiki: Penalty_time , I skipped *896* tiles, it is the chain to be 898 elements long.



By leaving the track on tile 1 (I count them from 1, don't knowing whether there is an internal counting starting from 0), i.e. very close to the start/finish line, I rejoined it on tile 898, i.e. the one in position (3,30) on the grid; so the tiles from 2 to 897 were skipped, tile 898 is the re-entry element, and tile 899 is the element coming immediately after it, closing the penalty chain. Note that intersecting another nearby tile, e.g. tile 58 which is one step east to the s/f line, does not result in the chain interrupting, since (by quoting directly from the wiki) if, after performing a penalty-inducing shortcut, one returns to the track and then leaves it immediately, without closing the penalty chain, penalty will be calculated as if all elements between the first leaving of the track and the final re-entry had been skipped, even those crossed upon the temporary rejoining of the track.

Cas
This is very interesting. I think it would deserve a good forum thread so it can be accessed easily. I hadn't sat to think about when the 32767 cycle limit would be exceeded. I think I never drove that long. What calls my attention is that the "last minutes" are kept instead of the first. We know Stunts records the key presses, not the physical status, so the only way to conciliate these two facts would be that Stunts uses an inverse function when going backwards, but this seems to contradict the fact that you can immediately warp to the beginning of the replay. Maybe this is only the case when it's not truncated, or maybe Stunts does memorise the replay initial conditions. Then if the replay could be saved, we'd see an additional field in it, but the key presses are clearly saved right after the track data in memory.

And we begin!

First track of 2018 is designed by Cas, and the title is "very informal slang from my city for so abusive!".
Good luck

Teams are great! Join a team

The best way to race in ZakStunts is as part of a racing team! Share tricks, strategies and frustration with your teammates. Mostly frustration. Up to four pipsqueaks to a team, see the rules for more details.

Write here if you are looking for a team to join, if you want to start a new team, or simply to confirm an existing team!

[Kevin Pickell]

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2017)

Who's up for a track? Book your race below.

Tracks for the competitions are designed by its participants, but mostly by Zak. If you have an idea for a track and would like to contribute, just choose an available month below!

• ZCT198 (starts 14 Jan) - Cas
  
• ZCT199 (starts Feb) - Leo
  
• ZCT200 (starts Mar) - Kevin Pickell
  
• ZCT201 (starts Apr) - Cas
  
• ZCT202 (starts May) - GTAMan15
  
• ZCT203 (starts Jun) - Leo
  
• ZCT204 (starts Jul) - Afullo
  
• ZCT205 (starts Jul) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT206 (starts Ago) - Cas
  
• ZCT207 (starts Sep) - Leo
  
• ZCT208 (starts Oct) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT209 (starts Nov) - CTG
  

As 2017 nears its end, it's time to thing about the next season: what to keep, what to change, and new ideas!

Let us know what you think, for example:

• did you enjoy this year?
• what are you looking forward in 2018?
• would you like to see anything change?

Simple and short, hope it will work well for the GAR side-race.

The leading time code is complex, and now and then makes a few mistakes. I've looked at it before, but now I'm carefully cleaning it up, aiming at something solid enough to assign points automatically at the end of the race —at Zak's press of a button!

At the moment I have a test version on a separate page, which kind-of narrates the leading time race so that one can tell if it makes major mistakes.

Three things:

• if you have a moment, could you have a look at a race using that page, and see if the numbers are correct?
  
• any suggestions about different visualisations? maybe pipsqueaks ranked by leading time, or just the top three, or some kind of table or graph, etc.
  
• mid-year seems like a good moment to discuss possible rule changes regarding LTB; for example, Akoss' suggestion about carrying leading time to the next race, or maybe just having then pile up continuosly, with bonus points being assigned as soon as a pipsqueak reaches X hours?

[Update:]

Update:
Time: Sat 18th February, 20:00 GMT (see row K in the table attached for other timezones).
Track: Dorsal, also attached below
Car: Jaguar XJR9


Original post:

Let's start then with the live race revival! We need a track, and a time.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, this is an endurance race where you have to drive as far as possible on a looping track in 12 minutes, and submit your replay. Between setting up, chatting, driving and looking at the results, it usually takes about an hour. Have a look at the other topics in this section.

Attached is a table to help find the best moment of the day, Saturday 18 February. I'm available all day, from A to K! What about you?

I've done things: http://stunts.hu/

[Saturday 18 Feb]

I'll try again, this time with a date! Who's in for a live race on Saturday 18 Feb?

See the race rules and previous entries.

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2016)

Who's up for a track? Book your race below.

Traditionally there's a guest track every other month (those with a question mark below) but if you have additional tracks, Zak will probably be happy to pick them up

• ZCT186 (starts 17 Jan) - Zak
  
• ZCT187 (starts 14 Feb) - Alan
  
• ZCT188 (starts Mar) - Aburaf (via Cas)
  
• ZCT189 (starts Apr) - Leo
  
• ZCT190 (starts May) - ?
  
• ZCT191 (starts Jun) - ?
  
• ZCT192 (starts Jul) - ?
  
• ZCT193 (starts Ago) - Duplode
  
• ZCT194 (starts Sep) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT195 (starts Oct) - Cas
  
• ZCT196 (starts Nov) - ?
  
• ZCT197 (starts Dec) - dreadnaut
  

[ZCT178]

A temporary thread to keep track of GAR scores for 2016

ZCT178

• 12 Marco
  
• 11 FinRok
  
• 10 Friker
  
• 9 Duplode