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I think we're done with season 2021 - dries forehead. I quite enjoyed this season, many interesting tracks and challenging races. I chose to spend less time on racing, and that showed on the scoreboard, but I had fun! A few new faces around, with interesting stories—hello! And so many cool things happening with cars and reverse-engineering. That feels like the way forward to me, rather that try to build something new that behaves like Stunts.

Next couple of weeks, I should complete what's needed for the Amateur system. There's a bit more work than I expected, as I have to rewrite much of the scoreboard calculations while keeping the previous seasons working. Hopefully it won't be necessary, but there could be an week of delay starting. But thanks to Cas and KyLiE, Race4Kicks will be there for you

Now, what about you?

• What did you enjoy in 2021?
  
• What felt less interesting or exciting?
  
• What are you looking forward to in 2022?
  

[Track of the Year 2021]

In 2021, 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 2021, with 12 votes and 4.3 stars on average is...
— ZCT244: Crazy Eight, designed by Daniel3D!

Well done Daniel3D, it was a fun track with many options, carefully designed!

Runner ups:
4.2 (13 votes) - ZCT236: Lightning by Alan Rotoi
4.2 (12 votes) - ZCT243: Atlas Air by Duplode
4.0 (9 votes) - ZCT242: Full Fontal by Overdrijf

Pretty good ones:
3.9 (8 votes)- ZCT241: Emptyness by CTG
3.7 (13 votes) - ZCT234: Lockdown, Worry and Fear by Akoss Poo
3.6 (12 votes) - ZCT237: Marshland by dreadnaut
3.5 (15 votes) - ZCT235: Mirror Lake by KyLiE
3.5 (13 votes) - ZCT238: Symbolic Link by Cas

We enjoyed these less:
3.4 (14 votes) - ZCT245: Amateur Hour by Zak McKracken
3.3 (12 votes) - ZCT240: Lignano Pineta by afullo
3.1 (10 votes) - ZCT239: Urtutako Glaziarra by Shoegazing Leo


Final ratings will appear on the track list in the next days.

Any feedback on the voting system itself is welcome!

Hello everyone, it's time to think about teams for the next season!
Would you like to join a 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, and any changes.

[three]

Let's try something different for 2022!

We will have three live races in 2022, the dates are decided and listed below. I am looking for 2/3 volunteers for each race. They will design the track, sign up pipsqueaks, and find the best time during the weekend. At least one of them should be around to run the race itself.

First volunteer in each race get to name it!

2nd or 3rd of April - Race A
Organised by: KyLiE, ...

2nd or 3rd of July - Race B
Organised by: Cas, Overdrijf, ...

1st or 2nd of October - Race C
Organised by: dreadnaut, Cas, ...

We will advertise each event a month before the race weekend, to refresh everyone's memory.

Last track of the season, maybe we'll see a slower car on the podium?

New thread for guest articles! (see 2021)

Who wants to write race summary posts?
Just 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!

• ZCT246 (starts 16 Jan) - Duplode
  
• ZCT247 (starts 13 Feb) - ?
  
• ZCT248 (starts 13 Mar) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT249 (starts 10 Apr) - Alan Rotoi
  
• ZCT250 (starts 8 May) - ?
  
• ZCT251 (starts 5 Jun) - KyLiE
  
• ZCT252 (starts 3 Jul) - ?
  
• ZCT253 (starts 31 Jul) - ?
  
• ZCT254 (starts 28 Aug) - KyLiE
  
• ZCT255 (starts 25 Sep) - Cas
  
• ZCT256 (starts 23 Oct) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT257 (starts 20 Nov) - ?
  

New thread for the guest tracks! (see 2021)

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!

• ZCT246 (starts 16 Jan) - CTG
  
• ZCT247 (starts 13 Feb) - Duplode
  
• ZCT248 (starts 13 Mar) - dreadnaut Daniele3D
  
• ZCT249 (starts 10 Apr) - Akoss Poo
  
• ZCT250 (starts 8 May) - Alan Rotoi
  
• ZCT251 (starts 5 Jun) - Cas
  
• ZCT252 (starts 3 Jul) - Leo
  
• ZCT253 (starts 31 Jul) - Daniel3D KaoS
  
• ZCT254 (starts 28 Aug) - KyLiE
  
• ZCT255 (starts 25 Sep) - dreadnaut
  
• ZCT256 (starts 23 Oct) - Overdrijf
  
• ZCT257 (starts 20 Nov) - Zak McKracken
  

This thread might be more speculation than anything else, but let's say we could build a tiny patch for Stunts 1.1, what could be important and feasible?

Small things that I can think of, from reading what people have been working on:

• Fix left/right difference in cornering grip, possibly bringing back the 1.0 behaviour
  
• Moving the "Restart driving" menu entry further down the list
  
• Customize the colour of the dashboard needles
  

Might not even require a full-recompile? Is something like "Stunts 1.1 - patch 1" close enough?

News from tomorrow's ZakStunts
They say the future is just over the horizon. In Stunts however, there's a pesky fence that stops you from getting there. But you can use it to drive your car on water, that's science fiction!

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 2021

[Overview]

I have been thinking about a new car swap / backup tool, probably DOS based, but I don't know if it'll ever rise near the top of my long list of projects. I shall dump my ideas here, in the hope that they will be useful to someone, one day.


Overview

The tool I imagine is called CarPark, because yes. When launched without parameters, it shows a text-based interface with a single scrollable list of cars, where each line contains the abbreviation and the full name of a car.

Cars come from both the Stunts directory and a second directory, which acts as backup area. Duplicates are removed, but remembered. If a car is stored in the Stunts directory, and therefore active, there's a symbol at the beginning of its line, for example an o.


Keys

Cursor keys and j/k can be to move a selection bar up and down the list.

Space acts as toggle to add and remove cars. Press it while the selection is on a car from the Stunts directory, and the o symbol becomes a -: the car is marked for removal. You can't mark the last car for removal. Press Space on a car that is only stored in the parking lot, and a + appears on its line: the car is marked for inclusion in the active set. No files have yet moved at this point!

You can also use a and d to always add or remove a car. They make it easier to add a bunch of cars without worrying about any already selected cars in the middle of the list: jajajajaja, in Hungarian style.

The bottom of the screen shows current numbers: active cars, to add, to remove. Next or below that is the list of available keys: [a] Add  [d] Remove  [Space] Toggle ....

If the number of cars that are active or to-be-added goes above the maximum allowed (32?), a  message appears next to the counters, and saving is disabled.

If the number is OK, pressing Enter applies the changes: cars with a + are copied from the parking lot directory to the Stunts directory; cars with a - that are *not yet* in the parking lot are moved there. The program could then close, leaving a success message on the prompt. s could be an alternative key to save without quitting.

Pressing Escape will close the program, no changes will be applied. There could be a confirmation prompt if the list includes any + or - rows, to avoid losing changes.


Command line options

It might be easier to start with these, to have all operations ready in a testable way.

• /backup will copy all cars that are in the Stunts directory but not in the parking lot directory to the latter;
  
• /backup-all will copy all cars to the parking lot, overwriting any already in there;
  
• /add NAME [ NAME ...] will look for cars in the parking lot, and copy their files to the Stunts directory; the program will output one line for each car, something like + NAME OK or x NAME Unknown, or x NAME Too Many cars
  
• /remove NAME [ NAME ... ] will look for car NAME in the Stunts directory, move their files to the parking lot, or moving them there if they don't exist
  
• /import <directory> will look in the specified directory for full sets of car files, and copy them to the parking lot
  
• /enable <filename> will read car abbreviations from the file, and copy their files from the parking lot to the Stunts directory; unless all the listed car are missing from the parking lot, it will delete/move all other active cars, leaving only the selected set.
  

Imagine running carpark /enable zak-2022.txt and having all cars ready!


Notes

There are operations on multiple files here, that should be handled in a safe and possibly atomic way. Moving car files should copy them, and only delete the original if all four files have been copied successfully.

There are some tricky situations when the two directories contain different versions of the same car, i.e., where some files are compressed in one but not in the other. Overwriting a car should ensure that all files belonging to the previous version are removed. When we check if a car already exists in a directory, we mean "exactly the same files", and might need to skip the car and show a warning.

The tool could include CAR_<abbreviation>.TXT as an optional file in the set that defines a car. It would be copied around with the rest if it exists. This would give us a vague standard for documentation. Code for an optional file might be a pain to implement though.


(By the way, I've discovered [ tt ] for monospaced text!)

We already know that they way newbies are calculated is a bit broken, and the number of months a pipsqueak has been around is not a good measure of their skills.

How can we improve the system?

Note: this is not about a full split into pro and newbie divisions. That has been tried before, and reverted. A separate competition can rise to cover that role, if needed, and if someone starts it.

Hello Cas and KyLiE,

I was considering re-adding the list of active races to the stunts.hu portal, at the very top. Would you be able to add something like the track.json on ZakStunts? It can be a file or a script as you prefer, as long as it outputs the same format.

This is how ZakStunts generates it:

Code (php) Select Expand


    $current_track = Tracks::getCurrentTrack();

    $track_name = "{$current_track->name} - {$current_track->title}";
    $track_url  = "http://zak.stunts.hu/tracks/{$current_track->name}";
    $author     = $current_track->author;
    $deadline   = date('r', strtotime($current_track->end_date) + 86399);

    header('Content-Type: application/json');
    echo json_encode([
      'competition' => [
        'name'     => 'ZakStunts',
        'url'      => 'http://zak.stunts.hu',
      ],
      'track' => [
        'name'     => $track_name,
        'file'     => $track_url . '.trk',
        'url'      => $track_url,
        'deadline' => $deadline,
        'author'   => $author,
      ]
    ]);


I've been having some fun with the "art of rally" demo. Got down to 4:01.8 on the track available.

It reminds me a bit of Stunts as you need to really learn the track to do well, to tap-tap-tap the steering to keep the car on the road, and... to set the graphics to lowest so that I can have an OK frame-rate on my 2015 laptop! And then it looks like this... 

Thinking about teams, I was wondering if there are any improvements we could make to the way they work. Random thoughts I've had follow, let's see what sticks

Members and participation:
- Limit teams size to three members (currently four)
- Race participation counts for at least one point (currently only the best two results count)
- One member can, optionally, be an "intern"
- The intern should be a newbie at the time of joining the team
- The intern can only be in that position for X (12?) months
- Intern participation counts for at least 2 points

(alternatively, teams of two members, plus an extra slot for the intern?)

Newbie teams:
- Double points to a team of newbies?

Teams tracks:
- A member designs the track
- Another writes the summary at the end of the race
- Extra points if... something on that track?
- Optional?

Let me know what you think, we have ~6 months to come up with something

[Wrong way! (error 404)]

When you try to reach a page that doesn't exist, on ZakStunts, you get an error message with the title
Wrong way! (error 404)

It would be nice to have an image there as well, so I hereby open the Wrong Way screenshot competition!

You have until the 24th of April to upload your best Stunts screenshots, in which the game is showing its standard "WRONG WAY" message.

- Screenshots should be posted in this thread as attachments.
- Max two screenshots per person; if you come up with a better one, edit your message and replace the attachment.
- Keep the replay around, in case we need a different resolution later.
- If we get many, there'll be a shortlist and maybe a round of votes to choose the winner. Maybe not
- If we get many great ones, I might add them all on rotation.
- I think in-car camera screenshots would be better, but prove me wrong!

The winning screenshot will appear on the error page, with the name of the pipsqueak who took it

I have mirrored dstien's SVN repository for restunts to BitBucket, both to have a backup and for ease of access. I don't intend for any work to go ahead on it, but it's useful to point at files.

https://bitbucket.org/dreadnaut/restunts/
https://github.com/4d-stunts/restunts

Hello pipsqueaks! I was planning to have a working version of this for tonight, but since it's not ready I'll post a screenshot and tell you about it

If you take part in a race, at the end of the race you will see a new prompt where you can rate the track just completed. It only appears if you submitted a replay, and it disappears after 2-3 weeks if you don't rate the track.

My plan would be to the hide these scores until the end of the season, when they become visible on the season's track list, and the highest ranked becomes the Track of the Year.

There would be no way to change your score after submitting it, or maybe it would "lock" after the same 2-3 weeks period. It could be visible, only to you, on the track page. Something like " [your rate] " and, after the end of the season,  " [your rate] [average rate] ".

Optional feature: when you rate the track you can also enter a short comment or review, that remains on the track page.

Suggestions? Shaking of heads?

Live race scheduled for Saturday 19th, 11:00 to 12:00 GMT, which means:

    Melbourne - Sat 22:00-23:00
    Adelaide - Sat 21:30-22:30
    Perth - Sat 19:00-20:00
    Budapest / Rome - Sat 12:00-13:00
    London - Sat 11:00-12:00
    Rio de Janeiro - Sat 08:00-09:00
    Buenos Aires - Sat 08:00-09:00

Cas dreadnaut will post track and car on Friday, sometime during the day

What would you like to see on a team's page?

I'm working on something... see attachment

We've had quite a few new names on the scoreboard recently. Should we look forward to some new teams? Or old teams coming back with a vengeance?