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My replay for ZM73 won't send, constant error

Looks like someone typed the car IDs on the control panel before the morning coffee  It should be working now, please retry.

That was not the period of the fiercest battles of Unskilled Stunts Championships. I can't remember this track built by me more than 20 years ago by me, but maybe I'll check it later this week.

I remember this as one of the first races from seasons past that I had to go searching for back when I started dealing with the Competition Archive. It's nice to have it open for racing again

For the third and final round of Season 4 we will visit Krakow, a track originally designed by @Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister for @CTG 's Unskilled Stunts competition. Krakow was originally an IMSA race; accordingly, the car pack this time (attached below and available from the site) comes from the IMSA neighbourhood:

• @alanrotoi 's Baronetti A-70
• @Overdrijf 's Audi V8 Quattro DTM
• Ryoma's Lancia LC1
• @Zapper 's Mazda 787B IMSA/Group C

In keeping with the original design vision, the driving rules will be loosened for this race, like they were for Sweden-3 last season: no tunnel checkpoints, no need to finish under the banner, and any line is okay as long as there is no penalty time.

To avoid a clash with the ZCT296 deadilne, this round will end one week later than the usual, on 2026-04-11 23:59:59 UTC. It's not a given that we'll do this every time in the future, but with this race being the last one in the season it was an easy enough adjustment to do.

Now, fasten your seatbelts!

In case someone wants to continue the challenge with the "no-limits" ruleset, here my two-tile DWS lap. Williams, 31.80 sec (34.98 with car modifier).

Actually, let's go ahead and put them all here. The three laps are attached below: Victor, 35.50/39.05; Alain, 40.20/44.22; RC Bandit, 41.75/45.93. Plus my freshly driven 33.80/37.18 contribution to the genre  (For the sake of completeness, the TWOTILE2 Indy demo from the opening post would have been a 35.10/44.23.)

I also believe this track is not very suitable for the Superkart, due to its sharp and icy turns.

This is an interesting take on the track! The received wisdom used to be that, given the Kart's low top speed and very high nimbleness, a purpose-built track for it should, in order to have depth, be very twisty and full of sharp turns (ZCT131 is a good example). Your reading of the track suggests perceptions are shifting -- which is kinda what I wanted to nudge with the track, after all 

[NRL]

Results are confirmed! Congratulations to @Victor Narl the winner, and to @Spoonboy right behind (cool to see a side jump over the lake gap!). Car-wise, I'd highlight the experience of trying out the Ferrari 158 -- looking forward to further explore this very distinctive machine!

Preparations for Round 3 are underway, and if all goes to plan it will be up at some point this Sunday.

Season 4 standings after Round 2:

• NRL: 20 + 17 = 37
• SPO: 16 + 10 = 26
• ALA: 12 + 7 = 19
• DUP: 8 + 9 = 17
• STC: 4 + 1 = 5
• ROT: 0 + 2 = 2

All right, then, we are going to apply the extra rule for this race as described in the opening post. Thanks @Erik Barros and @dreadnaut , and all of you for the input -- and apologies for the inconvenience and soon-to-be-excluded replays. I'll try to have it all sorted out by the morning (there's still plenty of time before the Chinese Grand Prix start, after all  ).

Edit: The list of replays is now updated. The three replays that had to be excluded will be visible again after the deadline, in a separate list.

There's just one thing that I can't help but doubt: why are the rules being written down only now, when the race has already picked up steam?

We do try to deal with such issues when reviewing the track before the race, but we're only human and will miss things sometimes. And when we do miss them, I guess it's better if someone calls it out in the first week, thus giving us a chance to have a conversation and figure out together what to do, rather than merely resigning ourselves to, for instance, the fate of spending the following three weeks perfecting a single shortcut in a track fully shorn of its depth.

Anyway for a future track we could set the difference between solution 1 (replay 1) and solution 2 (replay 2). The p962 replay (which the fastest way is going a lot of time in wrong way) I think we could add a special rule every time it shows up. But in the Indy replay we could check if it's necesary or not.

It is indeed tempting to look for a general rule to deal with "solution 1". I remember @afullo made some interesting suggestions about that in the past. Something I once considered was "It is not allowed to drive in the wrong way while doing a dual-way switch", but I'm not super comfortable with making it a general rule because there are interpretation subtleties. (For instance, does cutting through grass for a few frames in the wrong direction count as wrong way driving?)

All we need to do here is bring back the "Dual-way switching is not allowed for this track" rule, like in the December race, for example.

ZCT296 was intended as a dual-way track, and, as @HerrNove highlights, by now there must be plenty of dual-way switching replays on other lines. The issue is that on tracks with long dual-way sectors it's hard to, without special rules, prevent shortcuts that oversimplify the track and destroy its intended concept. In these cases, historically we have tried to only restrict as much as necessary to avoid making the track trivial. Sometimes fully forbidding DWS will be the only way (see ZCT293 or, for an example further in the past, ZCT127), but in other cases we can get away with less intervention -- after all, as @Cas notes, DWS is part of the game!

I think I uploaded (but not published) a DWS replay on Tuesday, just after my GAR. If so many people saw that path I guess there's not much credit to claim.

Disallowing DWS means for me that a week's worth of work goes to waste. But it was a risk I was aware of when I decided to bet on this line. Since we are in the first week, and there is precedent, I guess the track's author should decide.

Does your replay cross the yellow line twice, as the demo ones I posted, or does it use some other kind of DWS line? (As mentioned above, I don't think we need a full ban of DWS on this track.)

I found the fastest way first, I would advise admins to provide proof because I sent a replay for review to https://zak.stunts.hu/index.php?page=rplinfo AKA rplinfo online earlier this week. You can check it!

I want my guinness :beer:

The site doesn't keep logs of RPLInfo checks -- but no need to, anyway, I believe you Cheers! 🍻

As not uncommonly happens in this genre of track, there are some cheap "two tile" dual-way lines possible on ZCT296. (IIRC the last similar case was in ZCT259; see the discussion we had back then.) Two demo replays are attached to show what I mean. Should we add a special rule for this race to prevent such boring lines? (I feel we should: while it's not a given this sort of thing will dominate the race in three weeks time, better safe than sorry IMO.)

My suggestion for a rule, if we add one, is something simple to follow and no more restrictive than necessary: after the dual-way split, it is not allowed to turn around and go back past the bridge, across the yellow line in the map below. (This would be similar in spirit to what we did for ZCT256).



Cc @dreadnaut and @Erik Barros

One way to read this track is as an experiment to see what a fast track for the Superkart could be like, in contrast to the default expectation for a Kart-specific track to be all sharp and twisty. The rest of the cars were picked for having family resemblance with the Kart, more so in this or that aspect for each of them -- and I'm still surprised at how close the balance turned out to be!

Was my experiment a success? You have until Saturday to find out!

Now properly documented https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Stunts_Tracks_(playlist)

The rankings have been updated for ZCT295! In this round, Victor Narl has joined the current ranking, starting above the 2000 points mark already! Personal best ratings were reached by MiDiaN and Zapper. Below is the updated evolution graph:

KyLiE

1. 1:19.85
2. 2:32.80
3. 3:46.95
4. 5:00.05
5. 6:12.55
6. 7:25.90

8:00.00 approaching the exit of the southwest banked road, right before the tennis court.

Laps:

1. 1:19.85
2. 1:12.95
3. 1:14.15
4. 1:13.10
5. 1:12.50
6. 1:13.35

Jumps: 96

fsfddsfdfdsd

Edit: Somehow the attachment was transmigrated to the post below after the fact; restoring it here for clarity.

Duplode - Black (that is, the bottom left one)