ZCT257 - Otto's Christmas

[alanrotoi]

What's the car of the month? Who will win? Why is so flat? Why is so snowy? Is it a Persian Gulf man-made island? Why you can't reach two gift boxes?

[Overdrijf]

Why you can't reach two gift boxes?

To be fair, I figure you can probably loop-jump onto one of those. The other one could maybe be done with a lucky magic carpet? It's getting back off the boxes that's tricky.

[Argammon]

Just wondering: Is the Melange more than 30 percent faster than the countach? 

In other words, which car is best for this track. I bet the experts like Alanrotoi already know! 

[alanrotoi]

It seems this time Zapper is the expert. He brought both cars, Melange and Countach.

[Daniel3D]

I hope the countach. Gets rid of it for a while..

[Argammon]

I really did not want to do it, but I could not resist! I drove my first Zakstunts lap since 2006. 

That was a long break! On the other hand, it would be a bit strange to attend a WSM after such a long stretch of inactivity, right? 

And since I am bored, here are some predictions:

Winning Car: Lambo
Winning Time: 2:00:70
Winning Driver: Alanrotoi 

Edit: I am really unsure about the car. I guess it could as well be the Melange...

[Overdrijf]

Between this race and ZCT215 Watetris I'm starting to think ice and small corners benefit fast, high grip, high acceleration cars. If I want a fast non powergear race I should build a slow track. Counterintuitive, but does kind of make sense.

(That doesn't mean it's definitely Melange this month. It got two podium places last race and used a temporary bonus to do that. Based on that it should be pretty much out of the running.)

[Argammon]

I really did not want to do it, but I could not resist! I drove my first Zakstunts lap since 2006. 

That was a long break! On the other hand, it would be a bit strange to attend a WSM after such a long stretch of inactivity, right? 

And since I am bored, here are some predictions:

Winning Car: Lambo
Winning Time: 2:00:70
Winning Driver: Alanrotoi 

Edit: I am really unsure about the car. I guess it could as well be the Melange...

@Duplode: I am curious, did you drive 2:00:65 because I wrote 2:00:70? Or was my guess just amazingly accurate?

[Duplode]

@Argammon Not planned -- mind-blowingly good guess indeed! 

[Duplode]

As seen on the shoutbox, here is a top 6 Cartography animation! For future reference, and in case any of you wants to try making animations, below are the settings I have used for this video:

Code Select Expand

-- Cartography sidepane options:
-- "Wider track" style preset
-- Grid lines, but no indices
-- Map bounds: 0-29 horizontal, 0-26 vertical
-- 80 pixels per tile (80 x 27 = 2160, 4k resolution)

-- Annotation commands (paste on the Annotations text box):

Text " Speed (mph) and gear" @1.9 25.5 *0.75 #white
Car @1.5 24.5 *0.75 #fff917
Car @1.5 23.5 *0.75 #02ccfe
Car @1.5 22.5 *0.75 #dfa5dc

Text " Speed (mph) and gear" @19.9 25.5 *0.75 #white
Car @19.5 24.5 *0.75 #01ff07
Car @19.5 23.5 *0.75 #f5054f
Car @19.5 22.5 *0.75 #feb209

Text "ZCT257: Otto's Christmas, by Overdrijf      ZakStunts 2022, Round 12" @0.9 1.5 *0.75 #white

-- Flipbook commands (paste on the Flipbook text box):
-- Note: the SPEED-PAD magic string is not available on the 1.0 version of Cartography released in early 2022.
-- For the moment, you can use SPEED instead; the only difference is that the text alignment won't be perfect.

Trace :"02-ROT.dat" ! #fff917 ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "Alan Rotoi    {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @1.9 24.5 *0.75 $75}
Trace :"01-DUP.dat" ! #dfa5dc ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "Duplode       {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @1.9 22.5 *0.75 $75}
Trace :"03-ARG.dat" ! #02ccfe ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "Argammon      {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @1.9 23.5 *0.75 $75}
Trace :"06-KYL.dat" ! #f5054f ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "KyLiE         {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @19.9 23.5 *0.75 $75} & {Text "{{GAMETIME}}" @13.5 5.5 *1 #white $50}
Trace :"04-ZAP.dat" ! #feb209 ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "Zapper        {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @19.9 22.5 *0.75 $75}
Trace :"05-FRE.dat" ! #01ff07 ~0 0.05 {Car} & {Text "Frieshansen   {{SPEED-PAD}}   {{GEAR}}" @19.9 24.5 *0.75 $75}

-- Time to generate the frames on my computer: 868.020s

-- ffmpeg command for building the video from the frames

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i backdrop.png -r 20 -i '0%04d.png' -filter_complex overlay -shortest -vcodec libx264 -crf 15 -frames 2625 -r 20 foo.mp4