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Strong of my new internet connection, and ignoring the sun outside, I've tidied up the various Stunts-related code I had and moved everything under the 4d-stunts GitHub organisation.

The only two public projects are Restunts and the Portal API client, while ZakStunts website, forum, etc remain private for the moment. Happy to add anyone who want to take a peek, or get some grease on their hands.

Now if I hurry I can catch some of that sun before it sets☀️

[Track of the Year 2024]

In 2024, at the end of each race, we asked participants to rate the track from 1 to 5 stars. Single votes and averages have been hidden during the season, but here we are for the grand reveal!

The Track of the Year 2024, with 16 votes and 4.3 stars on average is...
— ZCT281: Eternal Wait, designed by Akoss Poo

Runner up:
4.2 (13 votes) - ZCT270: Swiftshire, by Alan Rotoi

Pretty good ones:
4.1 (14 votes) - ZCT279: Shortwave, by Frieshansen
4.1 (13 votes) - ZCT277: SC2K, by Erik Barros
4.1 (12 votes) - ZCT272: Spiral Architect, by Duplode

And the others:
3.9 (12 votes) - ZCT278: Ghosted, by dreadnaut
3.6 (12 votes) - ZCT280: Marginal, by Zapper
3.5 (15 votes) - ZCT273: Kelvin, by Daniel3D
3.5 (13 votes) - ZCT276: Bonkstad, by Shoegazing Leo
3.5 (12 votes) - ZCT275: Keep Calm and Avoid Palms, by Cas
3.0 (13 votes) - ZCT274: Mirage, by Argammon
3.0 (12 votes) - ZCT271: Dopamine Pathways, by Overdrijf

Thank you all for casting your votes, great to see good numbers across all tracks! Final ratings are on the track list.

Any feedback on the voting system itself is welcome! (see also: 2023)

Should we do anything? Throw your ideas in this thread, however weird they are!

- a special race
- a season with only custom cars
- a season with 25 cars
- a season with 25 (shorter) tracks
- a season of tracks from previous years
- a season with two tracks every month, a new and an old one
- we find old pipsqueaks and force invite them back

Looking ahead 🔭
With a large enough telescope, I'm sure we could see ZakStunts 2025 from when we stand today. They are a bit small, but I can see tracks. Can't tell if they are twelve or more 🤔 What to you think?

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 2024

The track was meant for a three way battle between Indy, Lola and the Thunderbird, but the Indy ended up winning the previous race (sorry!) and I got the bonus wrong for the Thunderbird... The Stratos got a +5 because I enjoyed using it during the test run.

Anyway, the track is in part inspired by Overdrijf's The Journey, also designed for the Lola, and it steals the hairpin/banked road corner from Erik's great work on ZCT277, as a way to slow down even the fastest cars. I'm tempted one day to build a variation for a live race.

The title comes from the landscape, but also from GTAManRCR, the original author for this month 😅

(previously, in 2023)

Minor update: the shoutbox now understands links to forum attachments, so you can upload an image here, copy its link, and use it in your shoutbox messages. That should reduce relience on external image hosts, which are bound to disappear or lose images.

Today I spotted this series of articles (oldest at the bottom) about reverse engineering the DOS game F15 Strike Eagle II — just a year older than Stunts.

Lots of interesting information in there. and the author also mentions Restunts!

Can't believe we didn't have one yet!

Thanks to @alanrotoi for building four versions of the Melange, over 20 years, so that he could have people race them against each other last Sunday!

I think we should have more links out to cool resources!

With that in mind, I've added a links page under the portal, and the first handful of websites that came to my mind. We need more though!

Ideally, that page should include only links to websites that:

• talk about Stunts, or Stunts and DOS games, or close enough
• we know of, admire, have interest in
• are a work of love

I would exclude soul-less directories, anything even remotely spammy, but also super-experimental stuff that might disappear at any time.

This thread is to discuss the page, but more importantly to suggest links to add! Would be great to hear why a website deserves to be on our list, and to have a brief description I can add to the page.

Thank you all!

I'm considering options to make the "Latest news from the ZakStunts crew" easier to find, link, etc. At the same time, I'd like to give articles more visibility. The result might be a series of pages that feels like a blog (yearly archives, pages for single articles, etc).

Admin news have a long history though, and were initially very frequent and brief. Maybe those belong in the shoutbox archives, where they are today. What is a good criteria? Size, starting from a specific year?

Some stats on admin news items for you:

You cannot view this attachment.

Code Select Expand

SELECT year(published_on) as `year`, count(*) as `posts`, MIN(LENGTH(content)), MAX(LENGTH(content)), AVG(LENGTH(content)), SUM(LENGTH(content)) FROM `zak_newsposts` GROUP BY `year` ORDER BY `year` DESC;
If you are wondering, yes, the length jump in 2017 is my fault.

The live race calendar for 2022 was a great success: we had three well attended and exciting events, a record in recent years!

Do we want to run something similar next year? Or do we want to try four events this time?

Records? We are made for breaking records. But I'm going to leave this to you folks this year. After a great 2023, what's the plan for 2024?

Would you like to join a team, move team, or start a new one? This is the place to discuss and look for friends
It's also the right thread to confirm existing teams, or any other changes. (see also 2023)

Admin change: this year I will not confirm members who have not raced for years until they reappear on the scoreboard. Change is the only constant 😈

[Track of the Year 2023]

In 2023, at the end of each race, we asked participants to rate the track from 1 to 5 stars. Single votes and averages have been hidden during the season, but here we are for the grand reveal!

The Track of the Year 2023, with 15 votes and 4.1 stars on average is...
— ZCT260: Sheepshank Knot, designed by Cas

Runner ups:
4.0 (16 votes) - ZCT263: Secret Level, by Alan Rotoi
4.0 (16 votes) - ZCT269: Yella Valley, by dreadnaut

Pretty good ones:
3.9 (15 votes) - ZCT262: Coastal Revenge, by KyLiE
3.9 (15 votes) - ZCT264: Fo(u)rtified, by dreadnaut
3.8 (17 votes) - ZCT266: Crazy Valley, by Daniel3D
3.7 (15 votes) - ZCT265: Sinkhole, by Shoegazing Leo
3.6 (16 votes) - ZCT258: A Blast from the Past, by JTK
3.5 (16 votes) - ZCT261: Thiers, by Krys TOFF
3.5 (15 votes) - ZCT268: Penrose, by Frieshansen

We liked these less:
3.1 (17 votes) - ZCT259: The Hare and the Hedgehog, by Argammon
3.1 (15 votes) - ZCT267: The Britney Spears Movie, by Overdrijf

Thank you all for casting your votes, great to see good numbers across all tracks! Final ratings will appear on the track list tomorrow.

Any feedback on the voting system itself is welcome! (see also: 2022)

[Responsive layout]

There are many improvements that could be made to the website, but so little time. I'll make a list of things on my mind here, in no particular order. Looking for suggestions on what to prioritise, but also things I've missed and fresh ideas!

Responsive layout
The website does not get along with narrow screens. That's OK for pages full of tabular data, but it should be possible to at least navigate the important pages without zooming in to tap on tiny buttons.

This goes well with...

New navigation menu
The left hand menu has not changed in 10+ years and it's not friendly to newcomers and experienced users alike. There is space to start from scratch with a better navigation structure. Do we want pages that summarise a whole season? Collections of tracks?

Merge historical data
Replays from 2001-2003 are still in separate structures, and are not included in a number of stats and pages. I've been thinking about migrating all replay data into one table, but it's tricky and needs a lot of time. Maybe something for the season break though?

Merge news posts and articles
Reading guest news posts in the past years has been one of my joys. I'd like to give them more space, and make them easier to add and browse. But articles are great too! Should we merge them into a blog-like structure?

Improve personal profiles
More stats! Tables with correct data! Looking for ideas and visualisations here.

Driving school refresh
See existing forum thread.

Newbie friendly home page
The website is optimised for pipsqueaks who know what's going on, but we could improve how we welcome new visitors, starting from the home page. First-visit panels could also add some context to data-intense pages. Any feedback from recent starts?

This is also related to...

User settings
Some customisation would be nice, and who knows, maybe timezone support?

Open source
There is much to be gained for ZakStunts and the community from opening up the source code, from interface components to tricky calculations. This might be a long process, as we need to clean up security bits first.


And you, what would you like to see?

New thread for guest articles! (see 2023)

Yes! We want to read your take on a race!
Choose a track, keep an eye on the race for that month, and send a short and informal news piece once it's over. No marks! A friendly editor!

Guest articles should be submitted a few days after the race ends.

• ZCT270 (ends 10 Feb) - ??
  
• ZCT271 (ends 9 Mar) - ??
  
• ZCT272 (ends 6 Apr) - ??
  
• ZCT273 (ends 4 May) - ??
  
• ZCT274 (ends 1 Jun) - Cas
• ZCT275 (ends 29 Jun) - ??
  
• ZCT276 (ends 27 Jul) - ??
  
• ZCT277 (ends 24 Aug) - @Erik Barros
  
• ZCT278 (ends 21 Sep) - ??
  
• ZCT279 (ends 19 Oct) - ??
  
• ZCT280 (ends 16 Nov) - ??
  
• ZCT281 (ends 14 Dec) - ??
  

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2023)

Want to design a competition 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!

Note: tracks must be submitted at least one week before the race starts, to leave time to review them for common issues and unwanted cheap powergear lines.

• ZCT270 (submit by 7 Jan) - @alanrotoi
  
• ZCT271 (submit by 4 Feb) - @Overdrijf
  
• ZCT272 (submit by 3 Mar) - @Duplode
  
• ZCT273 (submit by 31 Mar) - @Daniel3D
  
• ZCT274 (submit by 28 Apr) - @Argammon
• ZCT275 (submit by 26 May) - @Cas
• ZCT276 (submit by 23 Jun) - @Shoegazing Leo
  
• ZCT277 (submit by 21 Jul) - @Erik Barros
  
• ZCT278 (submit by 18 Aug) - @dreadnaut
  
• ZCT279 (submit by 15 Sep) - @Frieshansen
  
• ZCT280 (submit by 13 Oct) - @Zapper
• ZCT281 (submit by 10 Nov) - Akoss Poo

I have a chart in mind, a visual representation of how bonuses affect cars in a race, and relative to each other. I'm trying to understand if it would be a useful widget next to the race car list, but building a prototype would take time, and I've not had enough for several month since I've had this idea, so I'll put it our there.

- On one axis there is driven time, on the other car-relative time.
- Each car can be visible or hidden, with probably the top six cars enabled at the start (more might be a mess)
- The chart can be toggled between full and Amateur scoreboard
- Each car is represented by a colourful line, which plots the driven-to-relative function: a sloping line with the angle depending on the car bonus
- The trick is to choose the range so that it includes the top 3-6 replays on the scoreboard; you'll be able to see what result you need to achieve with each specific car, or how close you can get, on a continuum range

Can you see it? Does it work? Could anyone attempt to sketch it a graph tool?

A wish: any chances to see a tool that reads a Stunts car files, and produces a side view as an SVG image?

We need to start somewhere: https://github.com/dreadnaut/stunts-cars/

Comments, suggestions, thoughts: everything welcome!

I'd like to archive the historical driving school, and replace it with something more modern.

What would people, in particular amateurs and recent joiners like our DosGameClub friends, like to see?

Here's a list of possible topics I compiled a decade ago 😅