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Topics - Daniel3D

#1
Stunts Chat / 4D Sports Driving Master Tracks I
March 15, 2024, 04:15:00 PM
Sometimes you stumble onto something nobody knew yet.
This is one, some time shortly after the release of the Amiga version a track pack was released for the Amiga scene.

The exact details are a bit vague, maybe we discover some more about it. But we have the tracks (well duplode found the tracks, I just found a reference to them)

So here they are.
#2
I have a extensive track collection. But it's difficult to navigate.
Suggestions or track donations are very welcome.
Please tell me if they are suitable for NTT and what type of car.   8)
#3
I am working on a more structured competition setup for CCC and NTT.

For the coming CCC races I have.
  • Alan's muscle car pack tier 1.
  • GT3 + CERV + F40
  • Indy noPG + Lola + Penske

Other ideas are welcome.
Also, please suggest existing or donate new tracks in the other topic.
#4

Christmas is coming.

The holiday season is about to start and the ZakStunts season comes to an end. The dark days of winter are upon us and the long wait until the next ZakStunts season will begin.
But there is LIGHT, a Christmas miracle.. The Kevin Pickell ghost of Christmas Past saw the light and fixed the bug..

For this holiday special event race the Powergear bug is no more. What will this mean for the game? Is it still fun? Where did the rum go? Come and test your favourite car.

Download the carpack and play on your copy of the game or download the CCC-game-pack on the CCC website and just start racing. The race starts in a few hours. Until January 7th. See you on the track and MERRY CHRISTMAS
#5

Main topic in the CCC section.
Christmas is coming.

The holiday season is about to start and the ZakStunts season comes to an end. The dark days of winter are upon us and the long wait until the next ZakStunts season will begin.
But there is LIGHT, a Christmas miracle.. The Kevin Pickell ghost of Christmas Past saw the light and fixed the bug..

For this holiday special event race the Powergear bug is no more. What will this mean for the game? Is it still fun? Where did the rum go? Come and test your favourite car.

Download the carpack and play on your copy of the game or download the CCC-game-pack on the CCC website and just start racing. The race starts in a few hours. Until January 7th. See you on the track and MERRY CHRISTMAS
#6
Quote from: dreadnaut on November 23, 2023, 10:44:18 PMLet's restart this discussion :)

After looking at various ways to adapt the bonus set, I'm starting to think that large bonus changes or veto rules on PG cars would create a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we push them low enough, they will only win by surprising everyone with an unexpected powergear lap. They will only ever be PG cars, no more driving the Indy on a flat fast track, or enjoying the Vette on a tricky twisty road.
.....

What if...
What if Kevin found the bug while working on it and fixed it. Then it would have been just a decent race game and would this community probably not exist.

But still..  I wondered for a long time what the game would feel like without PG, with all car's like the Carrera , Powergear Bug free.

I don't want to change or replace the original car's, not in the game or in ZakStunts. But I do want to experience the game as originally envisioned. The post I quoted above made me pursue this more actively.

After reading the wiki and talking to Duplode I realized that the answer was there all along. The powergear bug is triggered by the Mass parameter of the car. If you change the mass and dependent parameters by the same ratio, you have the same car, but Powergear Bug Free.

Easy said, not so easy to do.
Mass is connected to the Torque Curve, so if you change the mass 10% then all 103 torque points have to be changed 10% as well. Torque is connected to aerodynamic resistance (aero drag) and has to be adjusted the same 10%. To aid in this, CAS made a simple program that will adjust all parameters based on old and new Mass.

Although rounding differences do occur, we have managed to make a pack that is for 99% or more the same in straight line performance and flat track top speed (except for PG effect).

So for everybody and especially for Dreadnaut,

All original cars, Powergear Bug Free.
#7
Alright, the first race was a success, so here comes another,
A track made by CAS, Town in the rainforest
The Ford Thunderbird is chosen by Argammon

The race starts directly after the CCC.

The first race under the new name,,
You cannot view this attachment.
#8
Ok we are back at the custom car championship with a more modest setup.

3 cars, fast track and hopefully a lot of fun.
The race opens in a few hours. and will run for 2 weeks.
last day is a quiet day, Replays and points received in the last day will be revealed after the deadline,

That is all i have to offer for the moment. Im going to get some sleep now.

See you on the scoreboard,
#9
Alright... I created a basis for a NoRH competition.
You cannot view this attachment.
Rules are as follows..
Drive the track according ZakStunts rules.
Penalty time is not allowed.

Replay Handling is not allowed obviously, usage of below attached STUNTS version is mandatory.

The Car selected for this race is the Melange. (included in the package)

You can participate in two ways
  • by uploading your replay file in this topic.
  • by uploading it on The Stunts NoRH competition website

    If you use the forum the I will upload the replays for you.
    EDIT:site link updated to new location.




#10
Mod edit by Duplode: The discussion about which version numbers to use for the Stunts NoRH Edition led Daniel3D and me to come up with a system for catalogue numbers that can potentially be used by other custom versions. An outline of the system and the catalogue itself is now available at the (still incipient) DESC number Wiki article, with "DESC" being short for "Distinct Editions of Stunts Catalogue".

Quote from: dreadnaut on April 03, 2023, 12:21:01 PM
Quote from: Daniel3D on April 03, 2023, 09:15:50 AMV1.3 communicates not compatible with other versions more than anything else.

V1.3 communicates increment over the existing versions.

If I were to release a version that disables the "Restart driving" menu item, what would that be? It can't be V1.3 as well, even if it builds on V1.2, but it also cannot be V1.4, because it does not include the changes in V1.3. By choosing V1.3 you take "ownership" of the sequence, for something that in my opinion branches out of the main "Stunts", into an exciting experiment.
QuoteLet me chew on it for a bit..
Ok. It was Duplode that came up with a global version concept to address them.

It could be added to the official releases to help identify them. So i will mention what they could be (in communication and documentation, not to change the game version itself)

It's basically a [project number][year counter][version counter]
The initial release being year 0.
It would look something like.

BB and MS are project 1
Amiga is project 2
PC-98 and FM towns is project 3
My initial rebuild is project 4
Ferrari edition is project 5
NoRH version is project 6

So an added global version
BB 1.0 would get 1.0.0
MS 1.1 would get 1.0.1
BB 1.1 would get 1.1.0
MS 1.1 would get 1.1.1
Amiga would get 2.2.0
98 would get 3.3.0
FM would get 3.3.1
Rebuild becomes 4.31.0 and 4.31.1
Ferrari becomes 5.31.0 and 5.31.1
NoRH 6.33.0

#11
Stunts Modification Projects / STUNTS - NoRH
April 02, 2023, 08:20:30 PM
Edited to place the reasoning behind this version in the correct context..

The NoRH version is actually a fact.

In the current original versions of STUNTS it is not possible to verify the use of the continue driving option in the replay menu, which is known as Replay Handling.
In other words, it's very easy and tempting to use. There is no risk and possible high reward.
That means a NoRH competition had been solely built on trust.

So, I have been asked several times if there was a possibility to build a version with the Continue driving option disabled. The answer to that is simple, yes, the option can be disabled. But that doesn't change anything if you can just use another version.

Making changes in the code and compile the game makes an executable that is relative easy to analyse and edit. So that was also something to keep in mind and not easily tackled.

The goal was to create a version of stunts that had;
  • The continue driving option disabled
  • A change that made Replay files incompatible with previous versions,
  • Make it difficult to reverse engineer.

In other words. Raise the threshold to cheat in a NoRH race as high as possible. Within the confines of DOS. With some technical support from Duplode and a small test team (Argammon, Alan Rotoi, CAS and Erik Barros) We have come really close to that version.

I think we have gotten far enough to say "We can now organize NoRH competitions for real. With the knowledge that it's not likely that there will be cheated"

It is not possible to remove all the ways to cheat. It is still a DOS game, after all, and there are emulator functions and external tools that can be used to counter the limitations set in this version. But by removing the option from the game, nobody can claim it an accident. Cheating in this version is never an accident, but a deliberate action with appropriate consequences.

So, With that out off the way...

Anyone up to the challenge of a NoRH race?

Stunts-NoRH.zip download mirror







#12
Alright,, Some things have been happening lately.
First off, I have been busy lately. Mostly private things. So most of my projects are on hold. But when I have some time but no computer at hand, then I like to read the disassembled stunts code a bit. I try to get a grip on the game structure and how it works..
I (Daniel) was talking to Daniel (Argammon) the other day about the FM towns version and the differences between that version and the DOS version 1.1. 
One of the differences he noticed was the limitation in Replay Handling. Where the DOS version gives warning after rewinding a replay but lets you continue, the FM Towns version does not let you continue unless you are at the very end of the replay.
You cannot view this attachment. 
I remembered where that message is located in the code, and after researching the FM Towns game files, I thought I had figured it out. I was not sure how to continue from there, though, so I contacted Daniel (Duplode) about it. With his help, I found the best way to do this.

First: Remove "Continue Driving" from the game completely.
Second: Change the game to make the version unique and incompatible with others.

This was not easy. It took several weeks of hard work, several failed attempt and a lot of testing. With the Restunts repository and work in the tool made by Daniel (Dstien) known as stressed we have finally done it. A NoRH version of stunts!!


  • Daniel's Stunts Initiative
  • Proudly Presents !!
  • 4Daniel's Sports Driving
  • Version 1.1a  -  NoRH
                       
You cannot view this attachment.
You cannot view this attachment.
You cannot view this attachment.

I just need to finish off some details. And then it's ready to publish.
I still have to make the option disappear..
It doesn't work any more, i swear, but you can still see it...
#13
General Chat - DSI / Site updates.
February 26, 2023, 08:32:17 PM
Hi everyone.
The custom cars championship started on CAS his project Easy Tour.
For the ideas that I had CAS made several updates that made the tryout season possible.

Easytour is meant to be customizable, that makes further development a bit more challenging.

Because I do want some changes I asked CAS if I could branch the site and ask for help.
Duplode came to the rescue and has made a few updates.

Changes at this time are therefore not part of easytour, they can be adopted by CAS of course.

Besides a few changes on the admin side the most important thing is a working scoreboard with points  8)
#14
Stunts Chat / Stunts YouTube Channel
January 20, 2023, 11:27:32 AM
Alright.. The channel is alive. We worked hard behind the scenes (making use of Telegram chat) to make it happen. One voice for  Stunts and Community related content. Good existing videos may be added, and networking with external content creators is being worked on.

Of course, it is a community channel so everyone may create content bits or help with ideas. If you want to make a whole video, let us know we will help where we can.

Take a look yourself.
Check out our channel
#15
After reading Duplode's post about the coconut car is followed some of his links en got lost in the archives.

I was reading a random page (petrol Pete's) and read about how the early 'permanent' competition is supposed to work.
At least in his opinion.
It's a nice window in the early days that i miss in the Wiki.
Here is the site of Petrol Pete..

This is what he says:
QuoteCompetitions and Challenges
Here's the list so far: (copy the source below as an example for your upload)
Peter Fortman / Petrol Pete - paf4@po.cwru.edu
01-31-96 - PAF-TRKS.ZIP Just try and beat these! :)
10-21-96 - ORIGINAL.ZIP
Andre Doff - adoff@ibm.net
10-06-96 - TB.ZIP (B)eat this ;-) !
10-06-96 - Valhalla
Auke Damstra - adamstra@pi.net
07-01-96 VALHALLA
Markus Nagelholz / Mark Nailwood - nagel@dbai.tuwien.ac.at
02-14-97 - PAF-TRKS.ZIP Incredible highscores for baka/barrier/bars/default1 !
02-14-97 - TB.ZIP Fascinating highscores for all 'all*'-tracks !
02-14-97 - VALHALLA.RPL A replay from the King of Valhalla !
Above is a list of people who are interested in "competing" against another person. This can be done by comparing the high score list and the replay. You will be able to submit your .hig and .rpl files via e-mail into the incoming directory and other people can download them from compete/ and try to beat their scores. What I suggest is zipping up the .hig and the .rpl file and a some sort of text message indicating who you are, your e-mail address, the date, and any sort of taunting message you like. ;)
You can access the directory listing of this section, which probably includes files more recently added in the compete directory.

I highly recommend zipping them up with a PKzip compatible compression utility together into one file. I am going to suggest a naming scheme. Let's say that John J. Doe submitted JJTRACKS.ZIP which included tracks and high score files. Later, John Q. Public downloads those tracks, and beats all the high scores and saves replays of his triumphs. He wants to submit them to this archive, so others can be amazed as his prowess and technique. So he names the file as such.

jjtracks.961231jqp.zip
jjtracks is the set of tracks this refers to,
96-12-31 is the upload date
and J.Q.P. are his initials.
He submits it as an e-mail attachment and in the e-mail message writes:
John Q. Public / JP - <a href="mailto:jqp@isp.com">jqp4@isp.com</a><br>
<a href="compete/jjtracks.961231jqp.zip">12-31-96 - JJTRACKS.ZIP</a> I beat your score on EVERY track, JJ! Ha!<br>
JJ. Doe sees this soon after John Q. Public sends his e-mail since the maintainer of the Stunts archive only needs to save the attachment in the right directory and cut and paste the above into the web page. (hint hint)
So JJ doesn't sleep for three nights and furiously tries to outdo John's high scores until he finally beats one! It was his first track, JJDOE001.TRK. After watching the replay of his flawless run, he saves the replay and zips up the high score file and the replay as a file called
jjdoe001.970104jjd.zip

He submits it as an e-mail attachment and in the e-mail message writes:
John J. Doe / Doe-Boy - <a href="mailto:johndoe@whoami.com">johndoe@whoami.com</a><br>
<a href="compete/jjdoe001.970104jjd.zip">01-04-97 - JJDOE001.ZIP</a> (from JJTRACKS.ZIP) Those were just test runs... try and beat this!<br>
So then John Q. Public, beats the high score in jjdoe001.970104jjd.zip that very day and sends a file with a line in the message body of the e-mail like:
<a href="compete/jjdoe001.970104jqp.zip">01-04-97 - JJDOE001.ZIP</a> (from JJTRACKS.ZIP) Ha.  That was pathetic! I beat that on my lunch break. <br>
And so on and so forth... get the idea?
When these files are downloaded, most programs which can't handle more than 8.3 will take the last extension and use the first eight letters of the file. This means you should be careful when you download more than one file with the same first eight letters if you don't have Win'95. But, in most cases, you'll want to download only the most recent anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem. When you have uploaded a "challenge" I will look for the informational text inside the zip file. What would really help me is if you included a line in the message body like those above.

You can access the directory listing of this section, which probably includes files more recently addd in the compete directory.
#16
Februari 6th 2023 the battle begins!!!

EDIT//
Alright,, I didn't make that deadline.. But February 24th it starts.

The lineup is a Special one this time because ALL CARS HAVE POWER GEAR!!!
Not all PG is the same, but the new point system takes care of that.
This race is not about the overall fastest time, but points are given based on the fastest time per car.

You can drive:
Ferrari GTO   |   By DSI
Acura NSX   |   By DSI
Porsche March Indy   |   By DSI
Corvette ZR1.     |   By DSI
Xylocaine XF.    |   By Crazy Jimmy
Packard Eight   |   By Alan Rotoi
Ford Crown Victoria   |   By Alan Rotoi


So, buckle your seatbelt. And start driving..
#17
General Chat - DSI / Season 1 : The Saga begins.
January 01, 2023, 01:10:53 PM
Happy new year, everybody!

Time to look to the future and make some plans.
Unfortunately, not everything is in my control and I want to start this season's competition right. So that will mean some delay.
(no pressure CAS, it's not that important)

I run this competition because I like to race under these rules.
(they will be tweaked a bit, a bit more simplified)
I would like others to join because that is more fun.

Things I would like to add/change for the next season.
  • A scoreboard with points that automatically hides double entries.
  • A history and seasonal scoreboard.
  • An option similar to R4K that you can specify an RH or NoRH race.
  • An additional choice of CR (crash recovery or light RH) intention matters
  • A separate option to specify if you drive owoot, normal or BE (bug exploiting)
  • More diverse carpacks.

Because this brings a lot of variables the point system needs adjusting.
The choice options is for a part to see what style is driven.
So a RH/BE (zakstunts style) is less impressive as the same time in NoRH/owoot (R4K style)
I favor CR/normal myself, as you can probably guess.

This season will start with Zakstunts scoring. I may add things similar to last year afterwards or just as statistics. I don't know.

What I do know is that I will start with a race with only PG capable cars.
Because I realized that I never drive them in competition, and I have the power to remedy that.

Stay tuned.
See you soon.

Daniel3D
#18
Stunts Meetings / World STUNTS meeting 2023
November 19, 2022, 02:10:59 PM
Quote from: Argammon on November 19, 2022, 11:44:01 AM
Quote from: Daniel3D on November 19, 2022, 10:54:38 AM
Quote from: Argammon on November 19, 2022, 10:46:31 AM
Quote from: alanrotoi on November 18, 2022, 12:58:59 AM
Quote from: CTG on November 18, 2022, 12:29:33 AMBöbszlee, Akoss Poo, Usrin, Lupuszka, Kahdra, Zak McKracken, Umberto Ácsó, Bonzai Joe, Dinmor, JTK, KHR, Lise...

Keeping aside family pipsqueaks (Manowar, Eddie Brother, La Popis) I met Paleke, Goyo, Gutix and Lukas. I thought the list was larger.

Nobody :(. Stunts meeting 2023?

Yes please:..

Let's organize one properly this time.
Amsterdam is a easy to reach location through Schiphol.
Is Berlin also good to reach? Or other cities?
Someday during the summer probably, or is an out of high season Saturday a better choice to save money?

Maybe we should make a topic with a poll for it..

Just thinking out loud..

A separate topic is a good idea. Let's find out who is interested. :-)
I agree. A new topic on the right place.

Two things we need to get an agreement upon.
When and where  8)
#19
Season's Chat - CCC / 11 - Chicane - Ferrari Frenzy
November 06, 2022, 08:29:31 PM
Last race of the season and it is going to be a blast.
I selected 7 beautiful Ferrari's from the car collection for you to drive.
With a good track by CAS to go along with it.

The now classic F40 by zapper and the rest of Ryoma. Most have not been tested in competition so well see how they work.

Contrary to my plans for next season, I did select a big carpack.
But I compensated a bit by extending the time with one week.

Competition ends December 4th.. Why? Because it's my Birthday.  8)  8)
#20
Season's Chat - CCC / 10 - Drain - Oltimer race
September 30, 2022, 01:43:21 PM
Scene for the movie GREASE
Quote(car engines start)

Hey.

The rules are, there ain't no rules.

To the fourth bridge and back.

First one back wins.


New race..
Unfortunately, I have not much time to update everything. But below a new car pack.
I'll update the site in detail as soon as possible, but the race can start in time.