Stunts competition archive - About WSC

[Cas]

I'm looking at the competition archive and I want to point out a few things and ask others having participated in WSC myself...

Track 11, called "TIM" does not refer to Time Bandit, but to The Incredible Machine. 100% sure. Also, "MI" does not stand for Mission: Impossible, but for Monkey Island. I remember when that track was running. Not sure about "AR". Airborne Ranger doesn't ring a bell to me, but I really can't think of anything else. "SI" is definitely correct (Space Invaders).

I wanted to know whether the order in which the tracks are numbered is known to be the order in which the races were held. It does look like that at the beginning, but then there are some details. For example, Paleke made series of tracks with names that were related. There are tracks called after continents, tracks called after games, after Argentine pipsqueaks and after food and there are a few that don't follow any rules because they were made during a track design competition in 2006.

I'm pretty sure that track #29, called HOTROD, makes references to the old PC game called Street Rod, also known here as HotRod, but other tracks with names of games appear earlier in the list. Also, Sudoku appears last and probably belongs in the same group too.

The following are Argentine pipsqueak names: Recalde, Cassoulet, Cabalén, Gálvez, González (mistyped by Paleke), Traverso, Reutemann, DiPalma, Rayes and Fangio.
Tracks I know for a fact that participated in the track design contest were: 4AM, NACH1 and ACACIA AVENUE.
I don't remember the tracks TATETI and NAVAL, because they probably came up during my hiatus, but "Ta-te-ti" is how we call the game Tic-Tac-Toe in Argentina and "Naval" clearly refers to "Batalla Naval", that is, the "Battleship" game. So these are board games. Makes sense that they're together.

Anyway, that's the info I have!

[Cas]

Also... I've been carefully watching the replays from WSC and I have come to the conclusion that we have been mis-categorising it. WSC has always been a free OWOOT tournament, not a strict OWOOT one with few exceptions. If it is considered strict, exceptions are way too many. For example, jumping over any stunts was allowed and the road borders found in slopes were considered part of the road when it came to OWOOT. I have updated its status in the Wiki.

There is one statement in the Wiki that I had to change, but I am not sure about the truth of the modified statement. I reckon it was probably Duplode who initially wrote that section, so maybe you'd want to correct it. It said that "[at some point, WSC] was the only active strict OWOOT tournament". I have changed this to "... the only active OWOOT tournament". Is that correct?  I don't know if there were other free OWOOT tournaments running at the time.

[Duplode]

Thanks for reviewing the data, Cas. Here are my two cents on the entries:

• I will update the TIM and MI entries for the next edition of the Archive.
• On race order: early 2005 races (up to AR) were compiled in July 2005 by Krys, so I presume their order is correct. I raced at WSC in 2007 and 2008, so I'm sure the order of those races is correct. The iffiest ones are between late 2005 and 2006, which I compiled in early 2008. I suppose I checked the information at the WSC sites (which were still working back then), though it is not impossible for mistakes to have crept in.
• I don't actually remember it, but I'd guess Hotrod was another of the design competition tracks, or a regular guest track. In the Archive spreadsheet, there is a note, which I presumably added in 2008, saying it was a "2-month long special race", like 4AM, Nach1 and Sprinter.
• Sudoku was a Paleke track, and belongs to the board games set. It was the final, unfinished race of the 2008 season.

On the rules: I remember thinking of WSC as strict OWOOT back when I raced there (though not GAR-strict: wall bumps and, as you note, slope borders were legal). The rules might have changed between 2006 or 2007, or I might just be misremembering things. The closest written evidence I can find is this discussion, though it is not entirely conclusive on the crucial matter of jumping over corks. If I get to recall anything else I'll post it here.

[Cas]

Thank you, Duplode. Just like you, when I raced in WSC (which was between late 2005 and the whole of 2006), I felt that it was a strict OWOOT tournament, or at least, that is the idea that kept in my head. Now I watch the replays and see that corks (both u/d and l/r) are being jumped over and I have to conclude differently. There's a chance, as you suggest, that the rules (which I read and translated from the website as it was after it was abandoned) had been different in the earlier times, when I raced. I should put more attention when watching replays, to which tracks are being raced, to make sure. I'll keep on watching all of them.

About that line that said that WSC was at a point the sole strict OWOOT contest, which I changed to "the sole OWOOT contest"... would that still be valid?

I have made a graphic... not very neat, but does the job... about the different tournaments and how they extended through time. It's similar to how Wikipedia shows the evolution in the formation of rock bands with colour bars for the different instruments and the names of the different band members on a site. I would like to upload it as part of a Wiki article about tournaments in general, but the information I used to produce it is based on the forum and the Wiki and it's not like I've been there during those tournaments, so it will be needing a second look when I upload it. What the heck... I'll put it right here... What do you think?  Some where more intermittent than others, which makes it difficult to make a good graphic.

[Duplode]

What do you think?  Some where more intermittent than others, which makes it difficult to make a good graphic.

I like the idea a lot! Two things I feel might help with readability are adding vertical grid lines (either at regular intervals or at major era boundaries) and  grouping related competitions (for instance, putting pre-ZakStunts tournaments or OWOOT contests next to each other).

[Cas]

Yes, I'm going to recreate the graph in more quality. I had some problems making it because not all tournaments are equally documented. Besides, some competitions were not of the same kind as others. The most significant example is Le Stunts, which doesn't have a specific manager, but is run by the hole community, does not have pre-determined dates and is pretty much unstructured while other championships have been super regular. Besides, rules change from one to the other. The Wiki page on USC has a lot of information, yet it's not clear which kind of rules it had, etc. So it was hard for me to try to categorise. Also, I'm sure some tournaments are considered very important in comparison to others and all this I would like to understand better.

[Duplode]

Also... I've been carefully watching the replays from WSC and I have come to the conclusion that we have been mis-categorising it. WSC has always been a free OWOOT tournament, not a strict OWOOT one with few exceptions.

I have finally got to review some of those replays, and early WSC indeed was very much a free OWOOT competition. Laps from 2004 and 2005 have no loop cuts, l/r cork cuts or solid object trespassing, but other than that pretty much anything goes. Ayrton's Airborne Ranger lap even has an outside dodge of a slalom block!

The only rule change that can be clearly devised from the replays is that flying over u/d corks was allowed in 2004 and forbidden from 2007 onward (for 2005 and 2006 it's hard to tell, as it feels like in those years Paleke had changed his track design style to avoid u/d corks that could be jumped over). There, I believe, is the heart of the matter: historically, jumps over u/d corks were the main bifurcation between OWOOT rulesets, and so they being disallowed in later WSC seasons made us file it as strict OWOOT back then. Conversely, I suspect our current perception of the matter has been tinted by our recent experience with racing under GAR, the strictest rule set there has ever been. It could be interesting to carry out a detailed review of how OWOOT rules have evolved across the years; maybe that would help clarifying our terminology.

(By the way, I have followed your suggestion and softened the language about the rules in the Archive's WSC info text.)

[Cas]

Thanks for checking this. Yes, this was a surprise to me, but I couldn't reach any other conclusion. I agree that the OWOOT concept has evolved during the years and I had been thinking of other ways in which this is true. For example, Marco frequently says that GAR is not OWOOT, but "OPOOT" and this is because the original name of the term suggests something that is no longer viable. Today, OWOOT actually is about pixels and not about wheels.

Also, when I analyse why OWOOT appeared at all, I can't help by realise how inevitable its evolution has been. At the beginning, there was darkness... ahem. That's too long into the past. At the beginning, people played Stunts on their own and so, "cheating" didn't matter. When the first competitions appeared, it became clear that without some restrictions, one could just go around the start/finish line post. The first restrictions must have been very relaxed, like "don't go too far from the track" and while vague, it would seem that humans would all agree about somebody cheating, but sooner or later, some controversial situations which were cheating for ones but OK for others would come up and the simplest way to restrict this was to add a simple rule "Never go off track except at jumps". And how much would it be take to be on the road?  Well, at least one wheel. So that was "One-wheel-on-the-track". But how about magic carpets and taking off momentarily, which is common in Stunts?  Well, then "One-wheel-on-or-Over-the-track". It is all so intuitive that strange as it seems today, these rules became common before free-style was a stable thing.

But it makes more sense to explain this evolution by describing tournaments and their rules chronologically.

[alanrotoi]

As far as I remember the rules name was OWOOTR (One Wheel on/over The Road).

PS: I'm wrong. I checked IRC Competition rules (2003) and it says: "Stay always on/over the track (at least one wheel should be on/over it)"