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This thread, I'm starting it after exchanging a few messages with Duplode about Stunts when compared to realistic driving engines. We all know that Stunts is different, but I wonder which characteristics we recognise in Stunts as unique and which of those we really embrace. In contrast, it'd be interesting to mention which ones we wouldn't miss if they weren't there anymore (or maybe we've come to love them all). I'm talking mainly about the physics in the game.

I can quickly think of powergear and how easily it is for a car to be shot very high up into the sky with just the power of its engine. These things, personally, I find attractive and would certainly miss. On the other hand, I would not miss coming from a jump and landing exactly where two pieces of elevated road meet and crashing instantly. I am also unsure about being able to remain upside down inside a pipe or going throw slalom stones or loops, whether I'd miss those or not. What do you guys think?

Anyway, giving my thumbs up to the new set up for 2021!!

Uhmm... yes, I expected it could be possible for Windows to do differently. This is because of a special GNU/Linux-based function I implemented for the UTF-8 update. I've just had some work on the code and I think I solved most of the bugs. One of them, I realised was produced when I fixed another bug. Adding features and fixing bugs creates bugs   I want to get a stable version once and for all. Once I have that, I'll call it 2.6.

EDIT: There!  I quickly uploaded a snapshot of version 2.6 which should fix these things and implement the feature requested by Dreadnaut. It's at http://www.raceforkicks.com/bliss, as usual. Version 2.5.8 will continue to be available until 2.6 goes out of the beta, so you can get both from there. Afullo: since this is a quick snapshot, I don't think we need to update the binaries for the right libraries this time. Once it's stable and no more bugs are found, we can do it. What do you think?

Uh, oh... I went to Bliss to make a few checks to be able to answer your questions correctly and I found new bugs    So, before I continue, these are the new bugs I found. Let me know if you guys observe them as well:

• When loading a track, if instead of typing the file name, you click on a file, blank spaces appear and the track is not loaded
  
• If you load a track by typing a filename, characters only appear if you type while the mouse cursor is over Bliss's window
  
• Once you've typed the file name, if you hit Enter to load the track and the mouse cursor is over the grid, it'll cause the currently selected brush item to be inserted on the track
  
  Besides these, there's what you, Dreadnaut, have pointed out. It's a text bug. Originally, Bliss could only calibrate with the track 4:00am and the Porsche March Indy. Now it can calibrate with any track you want, but unless you have a currently working track on the grid, it will default to 4:00am. If you do have a track there, it'll clearly state "this track with Porsche March Indy", but otherwise, it'll just say "4:00am". It should say it's with the PMIN too. I'll fix that.
  
  About setting RAW to default, I can add that option to the menu. It should be easy. But even though it's not in the menu, that is already available!  Just edit the configuration file. Where it says "format=bliss" or whatever, change it to "format=none" or "format=trackblaster". Let me know if that works for you.

[Thoughts about replayability - off-topic]

I reckon Dreadnaut's replayability rule is a very good example of how rules not necessarily complicate things. Sometimes, they make them much simpler. I'm not defending the rule, I mean, it's fine for me, but not having it is OK too... for me, anyway, a very unskilled pipsqueak   What I'm defending here is myself and my often criticised tendency to implement rules or propose them.

Thoughts about replayability - off-topic
Back to replayability, the fact that Stunts calculates one thing while driving and another while replaying in some situations, makes me wonder what the heck the difference is inside the code. My guess is that some internal variables (coordinates, current speed, for example) in Stunts normally carry digits behind the binary point (in a fixed-point math system) during the game, but when loading, saving or when one continues driving from a certain point of a replay, this mantissa is set back to zero, losing the accumulated error. If the error was high and the car was very near the finish line or something it could crash again, this could lead to instability. Only thing not explained with this is why replays at normal speed can fail even when played continuously from the very beginning.

You guys have really beautiful families and I admire how you manage to protect your children's creativity!

Of course for this to work we need a community where other parents also adhere to the same, so there is no tension between the kids.

This exact thing I've thought of so many times and believed it was virtually impossible to achieve in the current world, but seeing that you can do it, however hard, gives me hope

That is very interesting!
Well, I was born in Argentina. In Latin America, the standard is upon marriage, men's surname remains the same, whereas women's add "de" plus husband's surname. So they keep their single surname, but have to add their husband's at the end. This is gradually, but unofficially, changing especially in the most culturally liberal countries in the region (Argentina being the craziest one in that respect) to just both keeping their surnames. Legally, it's still the other way. On the other hand, children traditionally get their father's surname only, but it's legally allowed to use the mother's name or both. In the past, everybody would go for the father's name, but now, without anything legal to stop it happening, the most common thing is to get both surnames, father's first. I'm personally in favour of just using the best sounding surname of combination thereof possible

I am not married, but my girlfriend (who is Peruvian) is OK with any of these combinations. In her country, adopting both father's and mother's surnames has been the most common thing for a long time.

By the way, my name is Lucas. "Cas" is just the "second half" of it. Very simple

I don't have kids. I hope today's kids can be happy with so little to play with compared to our era. We here met computers and video games, but had a good dose of classical playing before... I think most of us, at least. But nowadays video games seem to be the only thing. Children are the only humans that know why they want what they want. Adults tend to lose that.

Oopsie!  Ha, ha... That happens when you're talking about different generations of computers at the same time 

[updated Bliss 2.5.8 with bug fixes]

I've uploaded and updated Bliss 2.5.8 with bug fixes. It's both up at http://www.raceforkicks.com/bliss and https://notabug.org/xlucas/bliss   Thank you!

It was clear that the trend in computer evolution had to have an end. We just didn't know when the industry would find a point of inflection. Usually, when they can't get you to buy bigger things, they just make them break sooner or invent something different and create a new fashion so that people move to a new item. Computer enthusiasts were many before the Internet-invasion. That brought so many people into our world most being completely not interested in computers in reality, which damaged the quality of the product. Now, all these people are moving the cell phones, but computer programming enthusiasts will remain with computers. I wonder if this will kill the classical computer world or if it will resuscitate it... or a mix of both. In the best case scenario, with the crowd moving to cell phones and less attention placed on desktop computers, the free software world will completely take over and PCs will return to being hacker/programmer/scientist/nerd-friendly.

I first had a 386 with 4MB RAM in 1993. After a year or so, I upgraded it to a 486 with 8MB. Then around 1996, I bought a Pentium 200MHz MMX with (I think) 16MB that I later upgraded to 32MB. At that moment, I got stuck. I had no money and because everybody else was turning to Windows and I was sticking to DOS, it was easy for me to continue using the same computer for many years. So my next computer I bought it when I had a job in 2005. It was a Celeron 700MHz with 128MB RAM. That was already the time of the Pentium IVs, but I wanted a Pentium III or similar because I had ISA hardware I wanted to use (SB AWE 64). DOS compatibility was important to me. My next computer was a used laptop I bought in New Zealand. I don't remember which CPU it had, but it had 512MB RAM in 2009. From that moment on, I stopped learning about new hardware. I just bought what there was at the moment. I've had a new desktop computer in 2012 and another in 2018, plus a laptop in 2017, which has never been my primary computer. The desktop computer I'm using now... I think it has 8MB RAM and four cores and it's AMD. And that's all I know, ha, ha.

Thanks!  I'll download the binary when I finish today's work. About GNU 32bit distros, I reckon at a certain point, it will be very rare to find one. The thing is that, as some projects that are important to a GNU system begin to abandon 32bit, the distribution developers are forced to using old pieces mixed with new pieces and we know how messy that is in an operating system that goes around shared objects. This is one of the reasons why I so strongly oppose shared libraries and 3rd party dependencies... They make it impossible to just keep your binaries in a drive and put them to good use years later. We can still run Stunts easily today because DOSBox emulates a stable system environment. This doesn't happen with GNU... and even with Windows, to certain degree.

In my opinion, the switch to 64bit from 32bit, while based on hardware, has been arguably the least necessary of the changes in CPU evolution. Besides, it is not true that in 32bit mode, you can't access beyond 4GB of memory. You just can't do it linearly, but you can use pages... Only good thing is I don't think there'll ever be a 128bit standard for home computers, ha, ha. Nothing against 64bit mode, of course. I just think it hasn't changed a thing from 32bit and we've had to go through the hassle of the upgrade for years. It's good, but it's the same. That's what I see.

Anyway, I'll confirm when I have updated Bliss packages!

Thank you!  I could try to get cross compilation working, but the libtinfo problem would persist. I think I'll have to create a virtual machine exclusively for that! :S

A few bugs were found and I had to update the binaries. I've uploaded the updated Bliss 2.5.8 to http://www.raceforkicks.com/bliss

The GNU 64bit binary has been updated, but it now requires the newer libtinfo again. The 32bit binary is the same as before, so it still contains a couple of bugs. The DOS binary is not affected as the bugs impacted parts of the program that were not present in the DOS version. The Windows binary is updated and should work normally without bugs.

Yes, it has seen these changes. My thinking is that, as this system counts the cars that are in the first places only, then, the more cars there are (especially, the more fast-cars there are), the more cars will be unused at any race meaning that a greater number of potentially competitive cars will raise in bonus percentage on each race. As a result, at a point, there will be more cars that could work well on a race than can fit in the podium and therefore, at least one of them will raise again in spite of its competitiveness. This means that it may happen than on all races, there are many options, that is, increased diversity.

But there are many variables and it's people who choose cars and we're human... and you know, it's like economists trying to predict what will happen with a Latin American currency! XD

Uhm... what Duplode says is making me think I should always include an original alternative in R4K when the race is based on a custom-made car. I'll implement that.

About adding more custom cars to ZakStunts... it is true that there are so many to choose from now that most are left out every year, but I don't know how the car handicap system would be affected by adding more cars. I suppose it would just tend to make races even more diverse, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking I could make some form of "simulation" to test that, but how is not very clear.