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Hey, I'm noticing that the new cars still don't have images. I realise it's not that much hassle to manually create three or so images once a year, but if you'd like, the code for automatic car image generation from Pretty Garage is available. Not sure if the server can run CGI binaries.

[Alpine Lake]

For the first time, this is the race calendar in R4K to be filled. Anybody wanting to post a guest track can reserve any of the available slots. Next season, we'll evaluate, depending on how this goes, what we do about this. Experimental for now

== 2025 ==
January - Alpine Lake (Cas)
February - Village (Victor Narl)
March - Just Left (KyLiE)
April - Adagio for Wheels (Alan Rotoi)
May - Speedway (Ayrton)
June - Smile! (Igor)
July - Reserved for Management
August - Taken (Erik Barros)
September - Reserved for Management
October - Taken (Duplode)
November - Taken (Spoonboy)
December - Reserved for Management (special event)

While we have featured tracks made by non-admins several times, there hasn't been much regularity to this and seeing that in ZakStunts, the table fills up quickly, I was thinking we could open to something more planned. I had a word with @KyLiE and we agreed we could try this season opening half the races to guests to see how it results and then we'll see what we do the following seasons.

Now, with R4K being mostly OWOOT, there are certain guidelines that must be followed when designing tracks, mostly to prevent repeated verification problems and to ensure that, since no shortcuts can be taken, the (almost always unique) path to follow is comfortable and fun to race, as we've made many mistakes in designed in the past and learnt the hard way!  Also, we have fixed cars per race, so that's another thing to take into account.

The following points, for example, are worth considering:

• Guests would choose the rule set, which would be either OWOOT or Free OWOOT. Could be something else, but I think if that's the idea, it's better to first propose and we'll review it
• If (strict) OWOOT, care must be taken that tunnels and slaloms not be placed at locations where pipsqueaks will be likely to overfly them by accident, which would result in a rejected replay
• Guests would also choose a car or set of cars. If it's one car, we're more likely to give it the green if it hasn't been used previously in the same season. Also, in R4K, we don't tend to favour very slow cars, but everything can be discussed. If more than one car, make sure they are comparable in their capabilities, as we don't use a car handicap system
• A race of some 1:30 to 2:30 is ideal. If your track results in a shorter or longer race, we may still consider it, but we may ask you to edit it a little bit. If you want to organise something special, let us know in advance

So... my idea is that we'll open to guests races run on even months, except that of December, which will be exchanged by November. I have already received one request to post a track this season, from Victor Narl, so I'd be reserving a race for him. I'd like to know if some of you guys are interested in participating   Also, any suggestions or ideas to add on top of this or change it are welcome. What do you guys think?

So here it is. A fast-paced track, the way I like it, especially designed for the Williams!    Come and post your comments here

It's been some time since we use the forum for R4K and I think it's time to give it a push!

So.... we've started season 2025!  Happy New Year, everybody!

We're welcoming the year with the inclusion of a new guy in the garage: the Williams Renault FW12C, by Alan Rotoi!  It's been a pleasure to design a track for it. Hope you guys enjoy it 

I've received many suggestions of improvements and ideas for the tournament, several of which have come from Victor Narl. I will try to implement what I can and would like to be giving the site a facelift at some point through the year. Anyway, any other suggestions, feel free to post. If they're on the forum, it's easier to not forget

So here I am, introducing a project I have worked zero on... Yet, I've thought a lot about it for quite some time and now I have simplified it in my mind to the point that I think it will be pretty simple to implement. I've PM'd Daniel3D to give me a hand with it. Daniël, hope you have some time

Anyway, it goes like this. I want to impact the ReStunts code again, but in a modular way. Instead of inserting code that does something, I want, at different points in the code, well chosen ones, insert code that only calls an interrupt, say int 93h (the year I had my first PC). It'd pass the data segment and a function ID to it. The function ID would just be a number that would change depending on the position in the code. Say, 1 for the beginning of the main loop during the game, 2 for the moment when you've just crashed, 3 for the point when the track has loaded and you see the road for the first time in a race, etc.

Then, this variation of the binary would of course crash unless this interrupt gets bridged. Initially, I would just apply a null "jumper" with a tiny TSR and control-test the mod to see the game runs normally. After that, I'd begin creating functions that act according to the points where the call was made. The one I'm most interesting in making first is a mod that will output the current car and paint-job at the start of a race or where you select a car, and then output your position and orientation during the race in real time. This would be saved in a file that can be picked up by my engine, so you can use it to play Stunts. I'll later add network capabilities there so the engine can actually show the other live pipsqueaks (as "ghost" cars).

That's not the quick-to-implement part, of course... The quick part is creating the PolyMod. The mods that will plug to it are another thing, but... once the PolyMod works, we no longer will need to tweak the main code and we'll be able to make a TSR where you can plug and unplug mods without disrupting other mods. So that's my idea. Any thoughts are appreciated

I'm reproducing here an idea I've had while discussing tournament rules via PM with Victor Narl and also commenting in Telegram. This is something I'm considering for Race For Kicks, but could be useful for other competitions or events of more than one race, so I'm share it in case anybody may find it useful or would like to comment on its potential (positive or negative) effects. I'm curious about anything you have to say about it.

The idea is simply that, in a given competition of more than one race with a point system for individual race and a final season scoreboard, each pipsqueak gets their points doubled for the race in which they've achieved the most points.

The guys in Telegram have compared it to ZakStunts discarding rule, a relation I hadn't thought about. It does sound common in its way of being applied, but I think the effects are very different.

My intention is that the doubling rule will have virtually no impact on pipsqueaks that usually are in the podium or near, but for pipsqueaks that are capable of more than they usually give, but normally don't do their best because their season position is discouraging and there's no incentive, pipsqueaks typically in the middle of the scoreboard, it may be very relevant. For a pipsqueak like this, it would always make sense to put more effort in an individual race because a single result better than any other previous result in the season will pay much more and give them a chance to change their seasonal standing.

So, any comments or idea on it are appreciated

Today, in late 2024, I've come across another discrepancy that fills me with questions. I was reviewing Permanent Competition replays in R4K and decided I'd post my own in Joe's, where I hadn't posted one before. After I made a nice time and tried to upload it, I got an error telling me it was the wrong track. So I looked and it seemed it was the same. Also, Duplode had posted a replay there and it was OK. So I downloaded the track that's in R4K and compared it with my local one and found something very interesting. I'm sharing with you the two versions here and I'll call them version "A" and version "B".

So, they different in the central section. Version "B" can be identified, among other things, because there's a jump with a barn in it, so we could say "B" stands for "barn". I've observed the following:

• My 1.1 copy, which I downloaded from R4K as Stunts 1.1 standard, includes Joe's "B". If you download Stunts from there today, that's what you get
• The one presented in the Permanent Competition as of today is Joe's "A"
• ZakStunts as of today in it's current year distribution of Stunts includes Joe's "A"
• Duplode is pointing out that older seasons appear to have featured version "B" in ZakStunts
• My old copy of Stunts 1.0 included version "A"
• The old Kalpen's tournament page includes the two diskettes of Stunts 1.1 and the version there is Joe's "B"
• In the WIki, the article about versions features a copy of 1.0 that does not include any version of the track
• Also in the versions article, the copy of Stunts 1.1 includes Joe's "B"
• In the same Wiki page, the copy of 4D Sports Driving from 1990 features Joe's "A"
• Curiously enough, also on that page, the 4D Sports Driving copy from 1991 includes Joe's "B"

Tell me guys if you're still not confused

Anyway, this is a very interesting thing because both versions appear to be old an they are both good tracks. It's not just "noise" that makes them different. I'd like to see if we can track down where these versions come from.

I'm posting this here because it is not "besides Stunts", not specifically related to a particular tournament and not "Stunts chat" because it says "not related to competitions" and this is related to competitions It not necessarily is about teams, but it well might.

This is an idea I briefly commented in the B-team thread. My idea is, with the purpose of raising interest in the different events and tournaments, including ZakStunts, R4K, CCC and the Live Races, what if we somehow coordinate to either issue points or some kind of status or benefits on each event to pipsqueaks who've participated or who have reached a certain position or result in other events?

This could include things like:

• One extra point in R4K if you've participated in the most recent Live Race or another tournament during the last month
• Generally, a benefit regarding choice of car or posting your own track or an additional one at one or more tournament if you've had more "participation point" added from all events than everybody else that month
• Points or some other benefit outside ZakStunts related to being part of a certain team in ZakStunts or just the recognition of teams across events in some way
• A single special yearly event of a type we still have to invent in which the most participating pipsqueaks of all events will receive some tribute or will be able to have a special place
• Other ideas of that sort

These are just examples of things of this type that could be done. I don't mean any of those specifically to be implemented, but you get the general idea and could come up with other similar examples and perhaps we can pick the best of all and do something. What do you guys think?

Pretty much a last minute post, but here it is... One could say that we've been planning this event for a few weeks, but in reality, it wouldn't have been planned if it weren't for the custom cars we'll use... if it weren't for so many successful live races we've been to before... if it weren't for the forum, for the community... if it weren't for Stunts and DSI... Right from the very beginning in 1990, at first, there was nothing, and next instant, there was the first byte that lead to The Big Bang Race!



The particles from the CMB will reach us this Saturday 25 at 19:00 UTC. Count on you guys here!

Organisers: Cas + Erik Barros

Like you guys know, I'm a GNU guy, yet I don't like hassle. I use GNU because of the freedom it gives me, really. And among that freedom, there's the great variety of flavours it has to offer.

I've been using Mint as my primary system for several years. I had been through some distro hopping before that, with different desktop environments in Ubuntu as well as Fedora and OpenSUSE at different points. And at work, I've been using mostly Rocky Linux, CENTOS and some Ubuntu Server, but those I use without GUI.

So now I thought it was time to go back for a while to some distro hopping and hopefully settle for a different distro this time. My first try was the new Debian 12. I saw many are endorsing it as the best Debian so far. My impressions these days with Debian is that it really is the very stable system you expect, which I love from it. Because it's stricter than other popular distros as regards software freedom, it does come with some difficulties:

- Hardware support is not as good. I haven't been able to get my desktop webcam working on it, although its microphone does work and my Jabra USB headset is also unsupported. Trying to find external driver has been futile and honestly, I don't know how to install external drivers. I understand this and highly respect Debian, but I admit it's annoying.
- For some reason, FAT32 hard drive partitions are mounted read only, yet this does not happens with USB drives. I don't know why. Trying to change this doesn't seem to work. So my bootable DOS partition, that I can use with FreeDOS, can't be written to from DOSBox while in GNU/Linux. Not a serious thing. I can just copy Stunts and other games to my ext4, but... it's a curious issue.
- Of course, no "universe" respository. That's Ubuntu stuff. So many programs, including some that are free software, cannot be found by apt. No problem, I download them from source, but this isn't something for everybody. I figure it must be possible to add Ubuntu's repositories to Debian, but what's the point of having Debian if you do that?  Ethical things.
- By default, libtinfo likes to get installed at version 6, but there's still software that looks for version 5. You have to manually tell it to install version 5 as well. Made me waste some time, but not a serious thing. Again, not something for everybody.
- A difference from Ubuntu and Mint, but once you know it, it's no problem at all: here the default user isn't a sudoer and you can't make it one. You can create new sudoers, but your installation-time user is not one. No problem, you can just do "su" in the command line and that's it. Just don't forget you're root.

A strange issue that's to be attributed to GNOME, not to Debian, really, is that, for some weird reason, the dedicated arrow keys are not recognised in DOSBox while in GNOME. If I log out and log back in in MATE, also in Debian, the problem disappears. Also, I understand GNOME wants to be special, but not being able to minimise your windows takes some getting used to.

So now I've downloaded a new ISO of Mint with MATE to have in one of my partitions and my new distro hopping test will be with Arch. Some months ago, I've been considering to try OpenSUSE again and see what's new with it, but I want something I have never tried and I think Arch could be my thing. The only thing I don't like from it's concept is the rolling release idea, but everything else is very much in line with my preferences, so I'll give it a try soon   I've already written it to a USB

I'm thinking that we all have one or a few tracks of our own that we're particularly proud of or that played a significant role in the community, maybe tracks that are referenced in different circumstances. In my case, 4:00am is clearly my favourite and because it's been around many times, some time ago, I decided to create a Wiki article specially for it: https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/4:00am

Talking with Alan Rotoi about one of his tracks, I thought I'd make a thread for us to tell about our best tracks and possibly to promote special articles for the few best.

Going back to my own track, I created 4:00am around 2006 because I was participating in WSC and Paleke had had an idea of making a track design contest. Each pipsqueak could submit up to two tracks, if I remember correctly, and then, everybody should vote for their preferred and second preferred track excluding their own and I think the first one would get two points and the second, one point, from each pipsqueak. Adding up, you'd get to sort posted tracks in order and the top four would make it to the tournament. 4:00am was one of the winners.

When ZakStunts opened to posting pipsqueak's tracks for all months, I posted 4:00am, which was well received. Later, it was featured in R4K, which wasn't a problem since the racing format is different. When I started distributing Bliss, I included the track initially as the default track you'd use to estimate your coefficient, but then, after organising Race For Immortality, I switched to the Bliss track, yet kept distributing 4:00am in the package. Recently, when DOS Game Club and our community met and the Leaderboard was created, I also posted 4:00am there.

So how about you guys?

As I mentioned in the thread about Pretty Garage, I'm ready to develop the part that interacts with repositories. This is not something only for the Car Archive or sites like Mark's Stunts Custom Cars or Southern Cross, but it can also be very useful for tournaments. For example, Daniel3D has expressed his interest in implementing this for CCC and ZakStunts, which every season has a set of allowed cars, could provide a list of allowed cars that way. In R4K, it depends on the race, but there could be a list of cars that can be downloaded there too, although it wouldn't be as important.

I call these lists CRIs because that's what they are, car repository indices. The format could be any we agree on or there could be several, as Dreadnaut said they could in the other thread. What's important is what information at least has to be present in the lists. For my garage program and probably, for any garage program, what seems important to have is a list of the IDs of the cars with their names and the list of the file names each car includes. This latter could be the car files themselves or a zip file containing them, but the program interfacing with it should know which file or files can be downloaded. There could be more info, but it's not necessary.

I can make my program able to read more than one format, but I'd like to agree on at least one to know it'll help. Dreadnaut gave an example of a YAML file for an individual car configuration, with much more information. I wonder if it'd be good to have a file that just contains the whole config for all cars in blocks, or to separate these two things, have the individual configurations as one file for each car and have the car list only have the basic info. I think that'd be better, but I'm open to ideas. If the list is YAML too, it could be as simple as something like this:

Code Select Expand

---
car:
 id: PMIN
 name: Porsche March Indy
 files:
  - CARPMIN.RES
  - STPMIN.P3S
  - STDAPMIN.PVS
  - STDBPMIN.PVS
car:
 id: CDOR
 name: Melange XGT-88
 files:
  - CARCDOR.RES
  - STCDOR.P3S
  - STDACDOR.PVS
  - STDBCDOR.PVS
.
.
.
I would be writing a very simple parser that only reads this, of course, so if somebody would add some extra YAML thing, such as a multi-line or quotes, or a car has "file: PMIN.ZIP" instead of "files:" and a list, then it'd break. I don't want to write more code than necessary, so that's what I would like to agree on these details. What do you guys think?

[Pretty Garage 1.2 - 2025-01-18]

Pretty Garage 1.2 - 2025-01-18
Feel free to try it. The program will try to auto-detect Stunts and your garage, but you may still want to edit pgarage.cfg before running the program. Some things can be configured while you use it. Let me know if the controls are intuitive to you.

Previous versions download:
2024-02-10 - 3 times
2024-03-08 - 6 times
Old pgarage.com - 3 times


--- Original post ---
Enter Pretty Garage
As I have been mentioning in the forum and Telegram group, I'm currently working on a new garage program. I'll call it Pretty Garage because in contrast with Simple Garage, its focus is more about the looks and comfort, although I can tell you it's simple too.

The current state of development is advanced, except for one very important feature that hasn't been implemented yet: automatic generation of car images. I left it for the end because it takes time and the program can be useful even before it has that.

So, what this is about is a visual program that you can use to move cars between Stunts and one or more garages, create groups, etc., the things that Simple Garage does, but visual. My idea is for the car lists to display a little image of the car to the left of the car name and information. For now, that side is empty. I'll prepare an alpha version and compile it and then share it with you guys, in case you want to test it. I don't think it has too many bugs. It's very stable for an alpha, but you never know.

Repositories and CRIs
One feature I'm going to include and is not implemented yet is the ability to access online car repositories. With the soon-to-come Car Archive, I think it'll be best to cooperate and see how much we can help one another in this. Anyway, my idea is to make Pretty Garage capable of reading different list formats. The program would periodically download what I'm calling "CRIs". CRI (Car Repository Index) is not a file format, but a type of file that contains certain information. It could be formatted as whatever can contain that. I'll probably make Pretty Garage support about three formats. The CRIs would provide a list of car IDs, their names and the files included in the package, so that the program knows those cars are available at that repository, then it car request the car files if the user wants to download them.

Closing
I'll soon be posting it and surely this first post will be edited to accommodate a link or package, then any discussion about the software can continue through the thread. Let me know if there's any feature that you guys consider very important or any question

Hey, guys. We've been previously discussing the possibility of switching to another form of chat or improving it in a way that will make us use it more. At the same time, the Telegram group came up and also, we experimented with Element. Our official chat, we still use, mostly for live races and to gather to wait for the end of ZakStunts races, but sometimes, it and the forum won't let somebody in when there are many already online.

So my question is why each of us uses or does not use the chat at any one time and how important it is to us to have an official chat. I'm not the one running it, but I do care about it, so I'm willing to help if we can do something about it.

Personally, I like about the official chat that it's part of our community, run by community members and that, potentially, we can have access to older chats, we own the data, there's no spyware involved, etc. I find it very "family-like" when we gather there for a live race or to wait for race results and I enjoy that. What I don't like is that I sometimes can't log in if there are many people connected, that there isn't a way to use an external client and that, I think, it's not possible to share files and images there, but none of those is a serious matter to me. However, because the Telegram group exists and I can open that immediately and I see many other folks use it, I tend to get directly to it instead of going to the chat, but I would really like for that environment to be "ours".

About Telegram, I like that I can get to it very quickly, because I have the client on my computer and that so many of you guys use it and that we can share files and photos quickly. I don't like that it's spyware, like mostly every commercial chat nowadays, that it doesn't use a standard protocol that would allow me to easily find another client personalised for my tast, that we never know when we might lose the chat text and we can't easily export and store all that in a way that we can comfortably analyse it later.

I liked Element too, although, even being free software, it is spyware too because it relies on Google reCAPTCHA and similar stuff, but it is much freer (is it spelled that way) than Telegram, but well, it wasn't well embraced.

Although it's not my case, I realise that probably, being able to run a chat platform on your cell phone is a reason why many of you feel comfortable with Telegram better than Stunts chat, but I don't know.

Anyway, what are your reasons?  Would you, like me, like that Stunts chat were comfortable enough so that we can just use it all the time instead of Telegram?

What I can help with is this: I could develop or help develop a web based chat that looked more like something modern and very Stunts-looking, with some perks that would facilitate Stunts-related activities. I can make my source completely open if I do and give it so it can be modified, enhanced or whatever and put where you think is best, maybe to co-work with the current chat or whatever. Would that help?  Or otherwise, I'll help any way I can that's good.

Also, for those of you who're heavy cell phone users, are web-based platforms comfortable to pull up and use or are they a lot less comfortable than native apps?  I have no idea about how to program cell phone applications. But who knows... maybe, say, there is some software that allows to convert web-based code into compiled apks?  Anyway, I'm here offering any help I can give if needed. Cheers!

[Introduction]

Introduction
  I'm very upset because I lost everything I had written when I was trying to upload the image file by dragging it. Recommendation: if you're going to include an image, do it first, then type!  Otherwise, just do it by "browse" button. Avoid dragging.

Now to the point. Feel free to skip sections that you're not interested in. I guess some of you will want to know the whole thing, but most will want to skip the part of the coordinates and angles, so I've marked those as "hardcore".

What this is about
I've been working on a project to create a bridge between ReplDump, which extracts detailed information from replays, and R5E, my graphics engine. This idea came from Daniel3D and Duplode has been helping me by providing ReplDump source code and explaining the game structures. I'm thinking now that the possibilities here are so great that this definitely deserves a thread.

My work today
So... this evening I began by looking at my R5E code and realising I haven't commented it well enough. After an hour or so of examination, I found where to plug my new code. I created a new routine to allow for loading of car shapes. Until now, the engine was working exclusively with track element shapes. The difference is minor, but a special routine was necessary. I tested and it works well. It now renders cars at any desired paint job. No wheels for now, though.

You'll notice that some track elements, such as the tunnel, result in glitches. This is because, while I'm using a painter's algorithm, same as Stunts, it's impossible to guess the exact details of another such algorithm and some of the shapes rely on these details. This can be solved by switching to Z-buffering or by recreating some of the track elements in a way that won't produce the glitches. But let's leave that for later.

Beginning to explore the output of ReplDump (hardcore)
With this working, I started to examine the source Duplode gave me, with the game memory structure and creating test replays to carefully analyse the binary that comes out of ReplDump. I quickly found where the current car coordinates are. However, there are two sets of them, very similar, but not quite the same. Don't know why that is, but taking the first set should work. Right after that, comes the rotation values and there's a funny comment in the source code stating that this is a source of confusion. After some work, I found out why it appeared confusing.

Explanation of the angles used inside Stunts (hardcore)
Stunts works with Euler angles in the same order as my engine, which is the most logical thing to do in a cars game. But it has some curious quadrant representation. First of all, azimuth, that is, the rotational dimension that's change with yaw, always takes precedence. This value is always zero or positive and goes from 0 to 1023 on a full turn. It grows counter-clockwise. Now comes the interesting part.

Banking/roll is the last angle and 0 is what you get when the car is standing. If you roll to your right, the car will bank left and this value will get negative until you're upside down at -512. You'd think that it'd now wrap around, but no, it continues to grow negatively for another quadrant and when it gets to -768, it becomes +256, which means 90 degrees of banking right.

I've saved the middle one for the end of the explanation because it's what I believe caused most of the confusion when this was first inspected. Say you're approaching a loop. Your pitch is 0 because you're standing on the ground, but then you begin to climb and pitch grows positively. When you're around 67 to 70, you're climbing at a typical ramp angle, which I think is 30 degrees. When you get to 90 degrees, this value is +256. What happens past this seems crazy, but is very simple if you think about it. As the car continues through the loop, it's not really climbing anymore. It's pitch is now decreasing, but its yaw and roll have suddenly both been inverted. This has to happen because azimuth is the main angle. So now pitch keeps going down and it becomes zero again when you're upside down. As you keep on moving, it becomes negative because now you're going downhill, even though inverted. Then you reach the point when you're looking straight down and roll and yaw suddenly get inverted again and pitch is still negative, but begins to grow until it reaches zero again at the end of the loop.

What we will be able to do with this
Being able to connect these two tools means a lot. I means, for example, that we will be able to take a set of replays run on the same track and render a video of all cars of different players together, running on the track in high resolution. It also means we can place a camera anywhere we want on a track and create a replay from a perspective that wouldn't be possible natively in Stunts. Needless to say, we'll be able to generate pictures combining cars and track elements in hi-res very quickly. It also is a first step in doing something useful with the engine for the first time!

Questions or suggestions?  Shoot. Also, I'll keep you posted on whatever news come up!

Hi!  Here I come with another track the style I like to make them. It's not one of my best, but it'll be fun. It's a little long, yet I think shorcuts will make this not long at all. It's more like a roller coaster than an actual track and from the top down, it looks pretty much like one of those scout knots, hence the name I gave it.

I think PG can be exploited, but not to an extent that will make a car competitive just with that. I'm still thinking of the bonuses.

Hey!  The new forum looks good   I was using a dark theme on the previous forum and now that's gone. I was wondering if there's a possibility of adding a dark theme here.

I'm looking at the assembly source code. We've already been working on it to make the needle colour mod and the contents are pretty clear locally, but I'm very lost as regards the general structure. I'd appreciate if you guys can point me out in the general direction. It'd help me locate some things and organise.

I can see that there are a number of segxxx.asm files, which contains most of the code. For each of these, there's also a corresponding segxxx.inc. But there's also dseg.asm and dseg.inc, there's custom.inc, segments.asm, structs.inc and dseg.map. I think the map file, like the obj files, is something that's produced during compilation and can be ignored, but the other files, I'm not quite sure what they represent. My main question is here is: where is the code start?

We have a new race.  This time, our guest track is by Alan Rotoi!  Waiting for those Porsche March Indys. I'm just about to post a replay myself!