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A clarification update to the rules page: the section on car coefficients now explicitly lists all possible deductions from the bonuses of podium cars. The rules have not changed; the extra information just documents fully how the bonus redistribution has worked since 2019.

Hi @Duplode the shared link you posted here is set to a localhost

Oops -- I had grabbed the URL from my local test window  Post edited, thanks!

Now available at Southern Cross as well. Congratulations on the release, Zapper!

The rankings have been updated for ZCT286! After waiting nearly four years for the 2000 points milestone to be reached anew, we've now had it twice in quick succession: MiDiaN, with a second place (his best race result so far, and a whisker away from a first win!), has smashed through the 2000 barrier, and is now third in the current ranking! This round has also seen another new entry, with HerrNove joining the rankings -- and already closing in on the 1900 mark. Personal best ratings were attained by Argammon, KyLiE, MiDiaN and Mortimer. Below is the updated evolution chart:

That effect is actually intentional:

https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Illusion_track

I'd say it doesn't really count as a bug in Stunts, as it can't be achieved with the built-in track editor. Rather, doing it requires manipulating the track with custom tools or a hex editor.

Needless to say, it wouldn't be reasonable to demand from SimCar full exploit-for-exploit compatibility with the quirks of Stunts tracks, and so having a normal loop instead of the illusion half-loop is a perfectly fine interpretation. (In fact, as Cas can confirm, ZCT285 was originally meant to have a normal loop there, but it was removed due to concerns about the balance between the cars in competition.)

While the schedule of live races may have slipped a bit since last year (these last few months have been very busy for many of us), there's still plenty of time to set up a nice live racing session in the second half of the year! I know, for instance, that both @alanrotoi and @Erik Barros have ideas for events; also, I would be happy to host a race as well (ideally closer to the end of the year).

After watching the replays, I must admit that I got lucky. Compared to my lap, @MiDiaN and @Duplode did not find the most efficient route over the grass in the beginning and missed the slide jump onto the high corner. Kudos guys, you were undoubtfully faster than me on the road.

I think I'd analyse it a little differently. The shorter shortcut at the beginning (taking advantage of the split for a three-element cut) was effective with the Camaro, but not so much with the Mercedes, for which the cost in speed would be quite big. As for the bridge slide, it feels like pulling it off with the Mercedes would be a lot harder than with the Camaro (which I guess was no walk in the park either!); furthermore, there's a decent chance controlling the slide would require sacrificing speed through the second bridge corner. That being so, I'd say the Mercedes was ahead of the Camaro on a more conventional line, and that @Argammon found ways to make up for the difference and ultimately drive us from the top spot.

Is anyone here who didn't have a version of Stunts in the 90s? I didn't, only found out about it after 200? and initially it didn't seem very interesting because I was using a Pentium II CPU and DosBOX wasn't running fast enough.

Indeed, it could be awkward to run Stunts in early-to-mid 2000s. The native DOS emulation of XP didn't work very well (you needed an extra tool to get sound, and there was a noticeable framerate drop), and computers often weren't fast enough for DOSBox.

(While I had first played Stunts in 1996, in that time frame I came back to the game a few times after relatively long breaks, in 2002, 2004, and finally in 2007.)

Hello and welcome, @TomVDJ ! I don't think I have come across a distribution like that. The distribution in the floppy disk I had in the 90s, in particular, used Broderbund rather than Mindscape, as expected given the Americas/Europe divide you allude to (I posted a bit about that one here). Going by the BAT files you found, it seems the distributors in your case did a fair bit of customisation. It looks like they wanted to present 4D Driving and Stunts as aliases for the same game -- maybe it was part of a bigger collection they arranged?   

Something I forgot to mention: Also for historical reasons, Car Blaster assumes simd is the first resource in the RES file, which isn't the case for some of the custom cars. To avoid any issues with that, you can use one of the newer editors, like CarEdit3.

Car Blaster, being a program from before it was possible to have custom graphics (with unpacked 3SH and VSH files), expects there will be a full set of packed files (P3S and PVS extensions) like in the DSI cars (the workflow in the old days involved editing the RES files and copying the graphics from an existing car). That restriction can be avoided by opening a DSI car and then cycling to the car you want to edit with the shortcuts (F9 and F10, if I remember correctly).

That's beautiful, @alanrotoi ! I'll try and generate a Cartography map as soon as I get the chance 

The D0 address is relative to the location of the simd resource. In the general case, you have to find the offset of simd in the header of the file, and also skip the header. (The "absolute" F6 address assumes simd is the first resource in the file, which is the case for the DSI cars, but not necessarily so for the custom ones.) 

Maybe you can edit the parameter using a dedicated tool (I guess Car Blaster) and then diff the modified file vs the original to check which byte got changed.

Indeed; all commonly used car editors (Car Blaster, CarEdit 3, CarWorks) support changing the dashboard height.

Oh, good to know. In this case I fear it's impossible to provide them the upgrade, barring exceptional efforts. Pity, hope some of them are lurking here and will try out the mod anyway.

Even if the mod can't be used in the competition there, I guess they will enjoy knowing about and playing with it anyway. And who knows, the mod might even change their minds and make them go back to 1991 Broderbund next year!    So I have posted about it. ( @Cas Hope you won't mind me hijacking your thread over there  )

[the historical ranking has a new leader]

The rankings have been updated for ZCT285, and this update is a momentous one!

After 7185 days, the historical ranking has a new leader! With his ZCT285 victory, Argammon has now overtaken Ayrton, with an all-time record of 2365 points. That is a major achievement, congratulations Argammon! 🎉

Another very significant result was by KyLiE, who has reached the 2000 points milestone! KyLiE is the first pipsqueak to newly reach that since Alan Rotoi on ZCT241, halfway through the charge for his first title in 2021. It's also worth mentioning that Frieshansen is a whisker away from the 2000 mark, reaching 1999 points at the end of this round. Looks like we'll see fierce competition ahead! 

There's also a new entrant in the rankings: MiDiaN, who, on an impressive run of three consecutive podiums so far, lands right behind KyLiE and Frieshansen at 1988 points! That is the highest new entry score ever, beating another longstanding record from Ayrton (ZCT052, 1967 points).

(By the way, reviewing the data for these stats made me catch a mistake: I had missed the tie for third place on ZCT062. That means Renato Biker's score after that race, which is the third highest new entry score behind MiDiaN and Ayrton, is 1961 rather than 1951. While the ripple effects of that correction have long since dissolved into rounding error, they do mean Ayrton's former overall record score is 2352 rather than 2351, and so Argammon and Ayrton weren't rigorously tied on the historical ranking at the end of ZCT284. Anwyay, they are not tied now either  )

Personal best ratings were attained by Argammmon, Frieshansen and KyLiE. Below is the updated evolution chart -- also, it feels fitting to have a look at the full history chart now and relish the moment!