Topics

New year, new thread, new improvements! (See also: 2025)

Let's open with PTB support:

- there's finally a place for it the database
- Podium Time Bonus points appear on track and season scoreboards ✅

To get PTB in I had to tidy up the way we handle all bonus points, which cleaned up a few things, and now Leading Time, Time Difference, and Endurance bonuses appear in the right seasons through history. For example, 2024 includes LTB and TDB.

[Track of the Year 2025]

In 2025, 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 2025, with 14 votes and 4.4 stars on average is...
— ZCT291: The Fjords by dreadnaut

Runner ups:
4.3 (15 votes) - ZCT285: String Theory II by Cas
4.0 (19 votes) - ZCT288: Machine Generated Slope by Shoegazing Leo

And the others:
3.9 (15 votes) - ZCT282: No Rails by Argammon
3.9 (15 votes) - ZCT284: Goin' Down the Fast Way by Alan Rotoi
3.7 (17 votes) - ZCT293: Symmetry by Mortimer McMire
3.6 (16 votes) - ZCT290: Abandoned mine by Alan Rotoi
3.6 (15 votes) - ZCT283: Shadowplay by Duplode
3.6 (15 votes) - ZCT287: A Walk in the Park by Overdrijf
3.5 (15 votes) - ZCT286: One of These Days by Erik Barros
3.4 (18 votes) - ZCT289: Lord of the Rings by Frieshansen
3.4 (14 votes) - ZCT292: Skilious by Zapper

Thank you everyone for casting your votes during the year. Record participation this year, with many tracks getting 15 ratings or more!

Final ratings with little distribution charts are on the track list (will appear after 31st Dec)

Feedback on the voting system itself is always welcome! (see also: 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 2025)

The time has come! Announce your new rosters, confirm your existing ones, crawl out of the freezer and thaw that old team under the coming 2026 sun!

On the back of the auto-generated car pack, I thought I would automate filling in the seasonal Stunts pack.

There is a base file, to which we add the custom cars. Today it includes stunts_k and the audio fix for skid sounds on grass. I prefer to use a vanilla build, because there are many restunts-based ones, and  they move fast these days.

What else should be in the base package, that someone interested in Stunts should have?

While Bliss has made working with tracks much easier, I still find mouse-driven editors slow when I'm designing a track a want to experiment rapidly.

I thought it'd be nice to have a simple language and a program that can convert it to a track on the fly, taking car of the boring bits such as adding the opening and closing bits of an highway or a banked road. The right next tile can often be inferred from context: a tunnel after a banked corner needs a ramp down first.

The syntax would look something like this:

Code Select Expand

start [ asphalt | dirt | ice ] < north | west | south | east >

[ n ] [ asphalt | dirt | ice ] [ straight | wide ( right | left ) ]

[ n ] banked [ corner ] < left | right >

[ n ] chicane < left | right >

[ n ] loop | cork [up] | slalom | tunnel | highway

And a snippet of track would look like this:

Code Select Expand

start west
3 straight
corner right
banked corner left
straight
jump
wide jump
cork up
tunnel

banked corner left would generate a banked ramp to the left, and a banked corner. Then comes straight, which means the program adds a banked ramp down, and a straight piece of asphalt. jump creates a ramp up and one down, wide jump does the same with an empty tile in the middle. cork up add a spiral ramp, and the following tunnel brings us back at ground level with a ramp down, and adds a tunnel. Etc, etc.

Make a change in the middle (e.g. add a stright) and the program would regenerate the track moving the necessary tiles.

I imagine a two pane editor, with the text area on the left, and the generated track on the right. When you are happy you can save the track, move to Bliss or another editor, and fill in the rest of the details.

Leaving it here for posterity, 'cause I'll never find the time to write it 🤷

Let's split out this discussion from the rules thread 💥

All the custom cars this year saw some good action and podium results, including (finally!) the Mercedes DTM. Looking at previously used cars there, none stand out to me as "oh, we should really bring that back this season", although we could pick one out of Melange, Lola, or the Ford truck!

That could mean four or five new cars to shake up the selection. Some slow competition for the LM002 would be nice.

What do you suggest?

Inspired by previous successful seasons, let's get the live-racing calendar lined up!

I propose four events for 2026: first weekend of March and August, 3rd weekend of May and October.

For experience, two organisers for each event works best. So if you are interested in running a live race but you've never organised one, sign up in this thread and we can pair you up with more experience folks for support!

Possible calendar:

• 28th Feb / 1st Mar - @alanrotoi  and ??
  
• 16th / 17th May - @Overdrijf  and ??
  
• 1st / 2nd Aug - @Cas and ??
  
• 17th / 18th Oct - ?? and ??
  

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2025)

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!

The dates in the list below are submission dates: one week before the race starts to make sure there's time to catch any pitfalls. The first race of the season starts on Monday 12 January.

• ZCT294 (submit by 5 Jan) - @CTG
• ZCT295 (submit by 2 Feb) - 🎁 25-year anniversary event
• ZCT296 (submit by 2 Mar) - @Erik Barros
  
• ZCT297 (submit by 30 Mar) - @Frieshansen
  
• ZCT298 (submit by 27 Apr) - @HerrNove
  
• ZCT299 (submit by 25 May) - @Zapper
• ZCT300 (submit by 22 Jun) - 🎁 300th track special event
• ZCT301 (submit by 20 Jul) - @Shoegazing Leo
  
• ZCT302 (submit by 17 Aug) - @Argammon
• ZCT303 (submit by 14 Sep) - @alanrotoi
  
• ZCT304 (submit by 12 Oct) - @Overdrijf
  
• ZCT305 (submit by 9 Nov) - @Victor Narl
  

New thread for guest articles! (see 2024)

Yes! We want to read your take on a race!
Let's try this again: we'd love to read your experience of racing at ZakStunts, in the form of brief race summaries at the end of each track. 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. No slop, we want your words, as rough as they might be 🙏

• ZCT294 (ends 8 Feb) - ??
  
• ZCT295 (ends 8 Mar) - ??
  
• ZCT296 (ends 5 Apr) - ??
  
• ZCT297 (ends 3 May) - ??
  
• ZCT298 (ends 31 May) - ??
  
• ZCT299 (ends 28 Jun) - ??
  
• ZCT300 (ends 26 Jul) - @Cas
  
• ZCT301 (ends 23 Aug) - ??
  
• ZCT302 (ends 20 Sep) - ??
  
• ZCT303 (ends 18 Oct) - ??
  
• ZCT304 (ends 15 Nov) - ??
  
• ZCT305 (ends 13 Dec) - ??
  

Hello folks, I have to sadly bring to attention a series of "cloned" replays that we have discovered among the submissions for ZCT285 to ZCT292. These were created continuing from an available replay sent by another pipsqueak, tens of seconds or even a minute through the lap. One similar case happened during ZCT233.

How do we spot these? The check is part of the end-of-race steps, where we review all the replays on the final scoreboard for missing penalty time, suspicious similarities, etc.

Unfortunately these checks only cover the final replays, and require fallible human attention: we only recognised the problem at the end of ZCT292. This means we failed to highlight the issue right away, and let it grow over the course of eight races. While fixing the data is easy, I am sorry to bring you this disappointment.

In the next days we will disqualify all cloned replays, and update track and season scoreboards. Experience points, PTB, and Folyami ratings will probably need updating as well. We will also try to improve the way we check replays, to make sure we don't leave similar problems undiscovered.

We have been unable to contact Mortimer after bringing up the issue, so we still lack full understanding of the situation, and any penalties have not been finalised.

You can find the full list of affected replays in the attached file.

[no single solutions]

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

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 is not.
  
• No off-topic, spamming, etc. Those messages will be deleted without warning.
• No attacks, no recriminations

Hello folks! As you have probably noticed, all bits of stunts.hu are back online.

We had requested a PHP upgrade, but instead of receiving the usual reply "sure, we can do it on this day, is that OK?" the email said "sure, we've just done it!"

Website, forum and wiki were actually ready, but something else went wrong on the hosting side, and they could only fix it this morning.

All back to normal at this point ✅

Glad it happened at the start of a race, and not at the end! Given the downtime was less than a day, there are no changes to the race schedule.

Now, on to enjoy PHP 8.4 features, clean up some more code, and possibly getting a new version of phpStunts out — it's about time.

[only with losing all your team points]

Today, the ZakStunts rules include these two points:

- You can join any team if allowed, but if you joined one, you can't leave it through the year, only with losing all your team points.
- When you join a team, and you didn't have one before all your previous results count as the team's too.

Emphasis mine

I suspect that these rules exist because ZakStunts track team membership at a season level. In part from our previous discussion about non-scoring team members, and prompted by myself and MiDiaN swapping places, I'm wondering if we should switch to tracking team membership per-race, and amend the rules above so that points scored for a team stay with team, or remain unassigned

I would update the team section in the rules as such:

We encourage you join or start a team. It greatly improves your racing skills, and your motivation to race.

- A team consists of minimum 2, maximum 4 pipsqueaks.
- You can join any existing team, as long as its members agree.
- You can also form a new team: you need at least two members, a team name, and a logo. Let us know in the forum's Team Zone.
- Points scored while part of a team will count for the team championship, and remain to the team if you leave mid-season.
- Team members may share their knowledge or replays, but it's forbidden to race in the name of another teammate, or to use a part of your mate's replay for continuing.
- Team members can request a private "team section" on the forum.
- You can request to leave a team at any time.

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!