Messages

Nice work, thanks! By the way, I probably should try setting a lap time on the "A" track...

Like @alecu , I'm racing with the Niva, a purple one. (I'm fairly sure there is a purple one  If I'm misremembering it, I'll pick another colour in the evening.)

Although dsi's 3d shape dimensions were close to real proportions, it had some gaps/holes on it, an asymmetrical form and the missing of rear wing in CAR1 as well.

Indeed! I finally noticed that early this year, while using Stressed renders to update the car icons used at ZakStunts:

Comunicado oficial: Cork's Crew announces @Mortimer Macmire is joining its ZakStunts line-up with immediate effect, as the team further strengthens itself in advance of the 2025 season. Welcome, Mortimer!

Duplode is pointing out that older seasons appear to have featured version "B" in ZakStunts

Indeed. Here's a rundown of Joe's versions at ZakStunts:

• Sampling some of the old yearly download packages, the ones from 2007, 2009, 2015 and 2022 have the "B" track.
• 2023 and 2024, though, have the "A" track. The change might be related to some other differences between the packages that were spotted last year.
• ZCT118, from 2011, is "B" with some added trees.
• However, the track pack from the old permanent competition, which is from 2002, has the "A" track!

By the way, my Joe's lap for the permanent competition was driven on the "B" track, which I presumably got from a ZakStunts yearly package sometime in the late 00's.

All of this versions contain joes_b.trk:

Thanks @Frieshansen (and @Daniel3D as well); that provides further evidence that the "B" track was distributed with the original 1991 versions at least. There isn't as much evidence about the "A" track. Still, the file timestamps in JOES.TRK tracks from the Mindscape (4D Sports Driving) versions as obtained from the Wiki/pigsgrame.de are contemporary with the version releases, which hints at the "A" track having originated with Mindscape 1990 specifically:

Perhaps it's a good idea to make this discussion more concrete by talking about things we'd actually like to do with B-teams. Please do add your ideas as well! I'll start:

Cork's Crew currently has three drivers active in 2024, hopes to recruit one more in the near future, and has two pipsqueaks that are inactive at the moment. That being so, there is a real possibility that we'll have five or even six pipsqueaks in the same ZakStunts season. Once that happens, I intend to ask for a Cork's Crew II team (not necessarily with that name!) to be registered for our supernumerary entries. That would be a B-team of the "squad rotation" kind (as explained upthread), with no plans to recruit into the B-team.

[each tile has exactly 205 feet]

There is a correction to be made, minor numerically but conceptually relevant, to the discussion about tile length in the opening post here. It's something that has been known for some time, but hadn't been written down yet. Back in the day, I had talked about the tile to feet conversion in these terms:

And now for the interesting stuff, during which I'll use imperial units so the numbers get prettier. Since one mile is exactly 5280 feet, that means one tile measures 204.95 feet, very close to an integer number... since we should expect a slightly higher speed than 245mph due to truncation, it is perfectly reasonable to admit the developers made it so that each tile has exactly 205 feet, or 62.484 meters. That, in turn, triggers a cascade of interesting implications: [...]

There are two naive assumptions in the quote above. Firstly, there is no reason to expect a speed higher than 245 mph, as that is a hard limit which the game imposes by cutting off engine power when it is hit. Secondly, though the feet might feel like a more natural unit for describing the displacement of a car, it turns out the game goes directly from mph speed to displacement in internal units, without feet as an intermediate. The practical consequence is that the conversion factors 1 graphical point = 0.2 feet and 1 mph = 11/30 graphical points per frame are exact, and therefore 1 tile = 1024/5 feet = 204.8 feet. The Car Model Physics article in the Wiki was updated accordingly.

Here is the ZCT278 update of the ratings! Resting champion Argammon has ceded the first place of the current ranking, after ten months in the lead. Mortimer McMire has attained a personal best rating, while HunterBoy344 has joined the rankings for the first time. Below is the updated evolution chart:

This is an interesting track, too! There are meaningful decisions all over, which play out very differently upon changing cars.

I'm trying not to add rules

Me neither! That's why I have described B-teams in the opening post as something that "can be implemented right now, under the current rules"

"Academy" is something that doesn't require any rules or support: teams can already share tips and replays with anyone they want to include in their discussions. If a team asks, we can add apprentices to their Forum section whether they are in a team, or are individuals. (I think that would be more inclusive than having a separate subforum)

We don't need any new rules either to add those people to a separate "academy" team.

"Squad rotation" remains unclear to me. It seems to mix up a concept of "alumni" who would like to remain affiliated to a team even when inactive, and an additional pool of pipsqueaks that can be drawn upon in case of need.

It's really not a mix of those two things. The only time anyone in this thread has mentioned anything like a substitution "in case of need" was when I, in a side remark within the long reply just above, raised a hypothetical to illustrate why such swaps are not expected to be a regular occurrence in this kind of team. The expected "squad rotation" would happen in between seasons, as people start and end longer breaks, like they often do. There's nothing more to it, other than me trying to find a catchy name to sum up the concept. And apparently failing   

The former could take the form of a more visible label for what is now limited to the team history page.

I'm afraid this wouldn't cover it, as there is a difference between historical former members and current members who happen to be inactive. Using Rolling Stunts as an example: Seeker1982 is a former member, having retired from competition at the end of 2020, with the team restructuring itself shortly afterwards. In contrast, KyLiE and Argammon are not former members, but are merely on a break, and can resume their activity in the team at any time.

(For the sake of consistency, I'll refer to the two kinds of B-teams we have been mainly concerned with as "squad rotation" and "academy".)

If I understand correctly, this would have no effect on the main team, so we have a second team rarely whose members rarely participate.

No effect, except for providing the team an easy way to refocus its A-team lineup around whoever is racing regularly in the current season, while still visibly acknowledging its less active members should they show up at some point in the year. (And yup, these little things do matter! They have been a real concern for at least some of the teams.)

Eventually, the number of these members might increase, and we'll need a "Team C".

It looks extremely unlikely for squad rotation B-teams to expand to the point they might give rise to C-teams. For that, you'd need 4 active pipsqueaks plus 5 mostly inactive ones, which is already very far removed from what the team rosters are like currently, and further for these 5 mostly inactive pipsqueaks to show up in the same season. (In contrast, B-teams are a relevant possibility to consider right now because the average size of teams, including members that haven't raced in 2024, is 4.5.)

(Note that the "extremely unlikely" bit is mainly about B-teams of the squad rotation kind, with no recruitment of new pipsqueaks directly into the B-team. Considering the implications of the alternative, though, gives us a nice segue into academy B-teams, so we might as well switch to discussing them for a moment.) 

Collecting apprentices in a Team B would give them a visible label. But should they be a separate team, or a clearly marked "- B" team? I'm leaning towards a separate team, which can make a name for themselves, instead of an appendix of another — here again, I think dynamic over static makes for a more interesting competition.

While visibility would be important for academy B-teams as well, what distinguishes a B-team from a regular team is not the branding, but how it works together with its A-team. In my vision, a B-team is really just an extension of the main team, its members having equal access and treatment everywhere except at the team scoreboard, where their results are recorded separately. That being so, a B-team becoming independent means stopping their free exchange of replays with the A-team, and getting their own team subforum so they can strategise independently. (Note that, a long time ago, we tried to have a "halfway" arrangement in which the B-team was only granted partial access. I believe that initiative was doomed from the start just for being too complicated.)

I get your point about teams making a name for themselves. For similar reasons, I personally wouldn't feel at ease with recruiting newbies directly into a B-team that I ran while being unable to offer them a clear path towards either the A-team or independence. One way I see to avoid such concerns, and keep academy teams faithful to the purpose of engaging newbies and encouraging new teams to come up, is a time limit: an academy team has full access to its parent team for one season, but must become independent after that, with its members either staying together or joining other teams if places become available.

(How do you distinguish an academy B-team from a squad rotation one? While we might think of some objective criteria based on years of experience or XP of the members, I think it would be much easier to just do it by consensus, as whether a team is an academy one should be obvious by looking at how it was formed.)

On the other hand, I'm not convinced about in-season swaps between affiliated teams. This would be equivalent (maybe with a delay) to having larger teams. It would increase complexity, give an advantage to big groups, and reduce the value of consistency. We'd have more people feeling like they don't contribute to the actual score of their [main] team.

While I find such systematic in-season swaps between squads an interesting idea to consider, I see how they can be a bridge too far, as a fuller commitment to enlarged teams.

Note, though, that systematic swaps are not a requirement for either squad rotation or academy B-teams. On the one hand, I think it would only make sense to promote someone from a squad rotation B-team if something unforeseen happens during the season that stops one of the A-team pipsqueaks from racing for the rest of the year. On the other hand, one year is a perfectly sensible window of apprenticeship, and it is reasonable to expect academy team drivers to stay there for the length of the season.

While I get the "being part of my team" feeling, I feel this might ossify teams, which are most fun when they are dynamic and impermanent.

[...]

Overall, what is more fun? Two big teams with cooperating A/B(/C?) groups that have been around forever, or half a dozen teams growing and changing, all competing with each other and making history for themselves?

It certainly is lovely to see new teams forming, and new configurations of pipsqueaks taking shape. Such things, however, require people to actually want to become founders, or to leave their teams for a new adventure. These are ultimately individual choices, be it on the personal level or the team one (say, if a team voluntarily decides to split in two). Using the rule book to break up teams, or to set up roadblocks for people who have different priorities and wish to keep racing together, is unlikely to achieve much other than making people unhappy.

Hi Mortimer, welcome to the Forum! 

Of course I only read this post so I don't know if this is already brought up, but isn't it possible to use the rating from the Folyami Project? So if you have a "team" of 6 people the four highest rated pipsqueaks of that team can score for the a-team and the other two score for the b-team.

I hadn't thought of a promotion system between A-teams and B-teams, in part because the primary use case I had in mind were casual "squad rotation" B-teams, which are perhaps easier to run if there is as little structure as possible. A carefully implemented promotion system, though, could be compatible with the spirit of that idea. Furthermore, as you say, there are quite a few interesting things about this arrangement: aspects of both "squad rotation" and "academy" teams are incorporated organically, there is no risk of the relationship with the parent team freezing into a permanent hierarchy, and there is an additional incentive for the A-team/B-team pair to work together.

(It's worth noting that there is a real choice underlying that last point: a B-team system with a less permeable separation might, by encouraging B-teams to become independent, work as a new team incubator, which could be a worthy goal in itself.)

Specifically about Folyami, one arguable weakness it has for this purpose is that inactive pipsqueaks are dropped from the current ranking but do not lose points. That being so, someone who were to race once every four rounds would stay continuously in the ranking and, if maintaining their usual level of performance, keep a largely stable rating -- and thus potentially remain forever in the A-team. A partial workaround might be allowing each team to assign one or two pipsqueaks to the B-team, so that, if someone knows in advance they will only race a few times through the season, they don't need to take a slot in the A-team.

(An example of a ranking from an earlier era that handled inactivity in a different way is SWR. It had an activity coefficient, and so there was a cost for missing races even before getting dropped from the ranking.)

The other big question in a Folyami-based system, I think, would be how often to carry out the promotions and demotions between the squads. Doing it every race could get awkward to keep track of, while only doing it at the beginning of the season might deviate from the spirit of the proposal by keeping things too static. Perhaps exchanging pipsqueaks every four rounds, in line with the Folyami inactivity windows, would be a good compromise.

(I moved this thread to the Portal subforum, as that's where we have discussed cross-competition ideas in the past.)

Cross-promotion of competitions is surely a worthy cause! Generally speaking, though, I'd note that some of the more concrete benefits, like regular bonus points for taking part in a different competition, have the downside of putting people with limited time to race in a more unfavourable position. Such problems might be mostly avoided with "softer" perks, like a reserved guest designer spot or an end-of-season prize, or with clearly delimited bonuses -- say, a special, sponsored live race which grants extra points in R4K.

Could there be some kind of "balancing", so that strong pipsqueak who often finish third-in-the-team would move from the primary to the secondary team, where their points would be accounted for?

Not too sure on how I feel about such dynamics, but perhaps it could be an option if a team finds that a sensible thing to do. This arrangement might also arise in a different manner, if a team chooses to recruit into the B team and then decides to send a pro to give them some company. Interestingly, if the "third" pipsqueak has a companion or two within a B team of that kind, the B team might be emboldened to become independent!

Would you see them gaining points as normal?

I think so, though the implications would be different depending on what the B teams that actually arise will look like. Considering the three kinds of B teams we have mentioned so far: A "squad rotation" B team would likely have its season scoreboard exploits limited due to not racing with its full roster 100% of the time. A "cantera" B team might offer interesting competition below the top of the team scoreboard. It is only the "balancing" B teams, I think, whose performance might raise a few eyebrows.

@Cas Indeed, B teams can be made into "canteras" ("academies" or "school teams" are okay equivalents, I think). The use I had primarily in mind for them, though, stems from different assumptions, even if some of the goals are the same.

Instead of preparing newbies for the main squad while keeping a prestige-based separation, a team might wish to grant full trust to its new recruits from the start by bringing them directly into the main squad. The purpose of the B team, then, would be freeing up places in the main squad, by accommodating members on long breaks or light racing schedules (without having to kick them from the team, or to rely on an ambiguous "unregistered member" status).

Having "cantera" B teams is, in principle, a possibility in our competition as well. To prevent the relationship between the squads from freezing into a permanent hierarchy, though, I feel it would make sense to have some kind of time limit -- for instance, a rule specifying that a school team (defined as a B team with a large enough share of newbies) should become independent by the end of the season.