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[Update: Bliss 2.5.4]

Update: Bliss 2.5.4

New features:

• Track-shot option completed with a button in the panel for easier access and the option to select the image format
  
• Improved visualisation and edition for debugging and manual modes, including insertion of invalid values and custom background scenery
  

Bug fixes:

• Some typos
  
• File format generation and recognition errors
  
• Buttons that weren't supposed to appear
  
• Track-shot image errors
  
• Famous pipsqueaks showing up when not supposed to
  
• Start/finish line on slopes now seen as a fatal-error
  

Download from: http://dimioca.com/bliss
Comments and tests appreciated

Yes, of course. I agree that being able to introduce as many modifications is a good thing... If it's exploitable somehow, why leave it out?  But if the resulting behaviour is abnormal, I think the way to do it should look really different. I've just tested. Bliss does recognise any value past 4 as "chaotic" currently. It does not let it select it, though. Stunts BB1.1 crashes on any "chaotic" value. It says there was an error with a file.

I think I'm goint to make Bliss display an additional option only when debug mode or manual editing mode is set. I also may add the ability to directly enter track/terrain codes and to display the values on the map when they don't have a valid element to show.

Thanks for placing this here, Dreadnaut!

Well, yes, it looks like the different versions of Stunts behave quite differently when one takes the game to the extremes. I can say, because I've seen this in the past, that the memory region where Stunts places the keypresses begins just after the 1802 track bytes. If you create a TRK file with more than those bytes, then the extra bytes will be loaded onto that region. Because Stunts is ready to accept up to 10 minutes of replay info, this means 600 seconds, at 20 Hz, that is 12000 bytes. There doesn't seem any initial condition information anywhere.

Thanks, Dreadnaut!

Now that you mention the chaotic scenery, I don't remember how Bliss behave if you loaded a track that has this byte modified. I want to make sure it doesn't crash or something. I probably took this into account when I first added the scenery selection option.

Uhm... to my taste, I don't like it very much to introduce features that look abnormal. This is why Bliss, by default, does not break up track elements. Because illusion tracks were important in the community, I made it possible to change to a debug mode in which you could do this. While in "manual editing mode", as I called it, you feel clearly that you're working directly with the cables. So, if I enable setting a scenery other than the normal ones, I would like to do it in a similar fashion. I think I could add an option to the scenery selection menu to set other values. I'll consider that.

I believe the behaviour of Stunts with replays deserves its own thread so that people can find it more quickly. I think I'll have the time today to post the updated version of Bliss. Still, there are a few things I would like to do that would require major changes, such as fixing the way the paths are counted and analysed and allowing one to make analysis of a particular section of the track or display all sections in different colours.

Well, in Argentina, we're at the middle of the presidential period, with the Kirchner "dynasty" having ended two years ago. Anger between what many refer to as "the two countries" si weakening finally, as some supporters of the former government are getting used to current reality and some defenders of the current no longer like what they're seeing, which makes people more similary, but times were hard a couple of years ago, like politics were a football game.

Things are more calm in some aspects and tighter in others now. The Kirchners had been fanatising some sectors, calling themselves "leftists" and dubbing their opponents "gorillas" and "neo-liberals", as if any politician had ever been on the side of people. But this propaganda works and the brainwash created the hatred the were incubating. It's better to let some people hate you very much as long as others turn into your loyal followers. That's a good bet for a political party. The new government is not fond of personality cult and populism, so things are calmer in this aspect. On the other hand, no longer throwing money up to the skies for prople to grab and get distracted, budgets have got a lot tighter. For international tourists, for instance, Argentina has turned from very cheap to very expensive really quickly. The government doesn't look as strong as at the beginning, so we're all wondering what will happen in two years. I'm guessing many Argentines of  different political positions are trying to save some money and getting their luggage ready for a quick run XD

Oh, this country, that never treats me well, but teaches me so much!   Some people thank their countries for making them love their flags and I thank mine for showing me how little value a flag can have and for making me a free citizen of the world.

Oh... I know nothing about football except that the ball has to go in the other team's goal thing, but I'm definitely going to watch the World Cup!

Well, found a few more bugs that were fixed. Some are remaining. Track analysis is very difficult to change. Sometimes I don't even remember my intention from some lines. I'm still studying the thing about the premature race ending when there's a curve right after start. As I said in the shoutbox, you were right about the time estimations when a track is incomplete: I had set some maximum values that I believed would never show up and used them as a start for the estimations. Because there were no such estimations when the track was incomplete, the default value was left. I have now made the estimation list unavailable when the track is incomplete.

Another thing I've been working on is track-shots. Bliss already has the ability to take a snap-shot image of the track when you press CTRL+S, but this is not obvious, so I've added a button and a menu to select the image format. Besides, there are some bugs with this in the currently available version. I'll soon post the update.

Graph theory does help with the analysis, but there is a catch. I can tell easily whether there is a cycle, but in principle, there always is for every complete track. Now, I should make as if start and finish were two separate points and I can detect any cycle other than the default circuit. But this isn't enough, because I want to calculate the paths, so what is a path if it contains a cycle?  And this is what I thought was defined and now I see is not. Say you drive from point A to a split. If you take one of the sections and end up returning to point A, then this is a cyclic path, so you should instead take the other section. The problem is, if A was located before a joint and then afterwards you reach such split, it is not clear whether the path is a cycle because it depends on whether you had come from A or from the other section before the joint. Sounds confusing?  With words, it does, but use the analyser on No Kidding, see the path problem and you'll understand exactly what I mean. In other words, it's not just I don't know how to do it, but I don't really know what I'm supposed to do, ha, ha.

Thanks for posting, Afullo. Some of these bugs, we had already discussed. I've already fixed some things, others I had pointed out to you. In general, it's complicated for me to work on the Track Analysis menu because it's a really big not. Maybe I should rewrite it completely. But to be more precise:

- If you design a track with a bifurcation just after the start/finish line (see image), the analyzer said that the track will run fine, but in fact due to a well known bug of Stunts, the race comes to an end in the very first seconds, when the bifurcation is reached.
> I knew about this bug in Stunts, but really hadn't brought to my mind that I could apply it to the Analyser. I guess it shouldn't be too hard. Still, this bug can be avoided. Sometimes, if you start the track by driving to the side opposite the split, you're able to continue driving just fine. Other times, you can drive normally, but when you watch the reply, it finishes prematurely. Maybe I should just make this come up as a warning.

- If you run analysis on a track without winning path, and you access estimated pipsqueaks' times, results are given while it is impossible to complete the race. By doing some computations, it seems that the time is computed as the track would have 100 000 tokens (or 99 999, no precision to determine exactly with the tests done).
> I had not realised this happened. I'll make a few tests and fix this. I wonder why this happens.

- Some typos are present, like "Alipne" instead of "Alpine" in the scenery selection, "Nissasn" instead of "Nissan" in the car selection for time estimates.
> Both typos have been corrected. You'll see them fixed in the next issue

- When a split later joins to a path that is already forked and then rejoins, the analyser does not identify correctly the paths, and as a consequence their number could be computed wrongly. Maybe for particularly complicated tracks it would be easier to write, by basing upon their structure, some lower and upper bounds on that number, instead of the exact value (quantities L and U such that the number of paths N satisfies L <= N <= U); nevertheless to do so, by having L and U in general sufficiently close to N to be information of practical interest, would probably require an adequate amount of not so trivial combinatorics.
> This is very hard to resolve and it's something I found out as I was building the current track (No Kidding). The number of paths is always calculated exactly because individual paths are loaded in buffers, that is, in an array. I believe the difficulty in analysing this type of path lies deeply in the strategy used to analyse them currently, so to fix this, the simplest way would be to rewrite the analyser. This may take a couple of months, ha, ha. Unless I invent a new, much simpler an elegant method.

- By going on Track Analysis and then to See Times, then pressing OK and finally trying to start a New Track, old buttons will appear.
> I noticed this one some time ago. Easy to fix. No problem.

I'm trying to improve mine. I'm sure I can do it, but not sure how much

He, he... hope you guys like this track. I wasn't so convinced at the beginning, but after a few touches, I started to feel it could work.

Fast and tricky are the way I like to make them. I've already discarded a couple of attempts I was making. I'll have one ready soon
This one is good, though. It appeared simpler to me when I first looked at the map, but racing it is fun.

Yeah, the site sometimes goes offline. Is not that they are unreliable. What happens is that the web hosting is free, so one requirement is that I log in to the client area website at least once per month. When I fail to do that, they disable the page until I re-enable it. It's up again now.

Hey, I would like to know these guys. I wanted to recreate the essence of Stunts, but it's a lot of work and I had never given much attention to 3D before. I managed to make a simple 3D rendering engine similar to that of Stunts, but I have a little problem with clipping near the camera.

Nice track!  Time is near up. I figure I could make a better effort still, but I don't know

I like Slowdrive :-D