Stunts goes Dtm

[Overdrijf]

EDIT Januari 8th 2019: I made a slightly improved version. The updated version is in the DTM 1.1.zip, the old version in DTM 1.0.zip. Behavior is exactly the same, it's just minor graphics and text fixes. Post #24 contains a bit more info about the update.



That's right, I am at it again. Coming in with not one, not two, but three new cars: the Stunts DTM pack. The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft is coming your way. Bam.



A rivalry for the ages comes to Stunts. An Audi, a Mercedes and a BMW will battle it out. These beauty's are modeled and named after the cars from the 1990-1992 era, when these brands first crossed paths in the German touring car circus, but their performance has a little 2012-2018 era mixed in, as well as a healthy dose of "this way it's more fun". They come fully loaded for high speed racing around dynamic tracks, with the crowd favorite 5-speed gearbox and carefully tuned performance.

So they're fast, and they're fun, but one car could have done that. The point of this pack is how close these three are in performance, with a shared identity but a little flavor of their own as well. They can be raced against each other in a single race, in an IMSA Cup style format (who knows, one day) or, and this is the cool part, under a single coefficient in Zakstunts. Three cars for the price of one, races with four or five eligible cars in total. On most tracks the difference between optimized laps with all three vehicles should be less than half a second per minute of race time. So do you try to find how to get that small bonus, or do you count on the one you feel best with to take you home?

So, here are the specs (tested on BB 1.1):

BMW M3 E30 DTM:
Engine specs: DOHC inline 4, 2300cc
Torque peak at: 8100 rpm
Max horsepower: 370 HP
Transmission: 5-speed
0-60mph: 3.15s
0-100mph: 7.30s
Half mile: 17.50s
Flat track top speed: 186 mph
Real top speed: 199 mph
Strong suits: High speed acceleration, handling feedback, top speed, bugs, sharpest automatic gears

Mercedes-Benz 190 E DTM:
Engine specs: DOHC inline 4, 2500cc
Torque peak at: 8100 rpm
Max horsepower: 392 HP
Transmission: 5-speed
0-60mph: 3.15s
0-100mph: 7.30s
Half mile: 17.45s
Flat track top speed: 188 mph
Real top speed: 196 mph
Strong suits: Mid speed acceleration, handling, overshifting, smoothest automatic gears

Audi V8 quattro DTM:
Engine specs: DOHC V8, 3600cc
Torque peak at: 8100 rpm
Max horsepower: 474 HP
Transmission: 5-speed
0-60mph: 3.15s
0-100mph: 7.40s
Half mile: 17.60s
Flat track top speed: 190 mph
Real top speed: 197 mph
Strong suits: Very high speed acceleration, flat track top speed, jump distance.

The cars are in the attachment. I look forward to hearing what you think of it. Jetzt geht's los!

Note 1: This post was brought to you with the help of Duplode being awesome, and giving me advice, mostly on shape design with Stressed. The cars wouldn't have looked like this without him. The tools I used are Car Blaster by Mark Nailwood, Stressed by Dstien, a little bit of Anim8or and my trusty GIMP for image work.

Note 2: I redid a lot of things a lot of times, so it took quite some time to get to the end result. This did result into me getting some insights into the physics of Stunts, things that may or may not be known already to some people. I will share these insights in the appropriate thread somewhere in the coming weeks, with demonstration cars.

Note 3: I don't have names in mind for all the paint schemes, but #9 on the quattro is definitely called the Proudi.

[dreadnaut]

New cars!   And I'm quite impressed by those front grills!

I'll have some time tomorrow and I'll try them out. The three-side race sounds perfect for R4K, if Cas is interested.

[Overdrijf]

New cars!   And I'm quite impressed by those front grills!

Thanks. Going over reference pictures I quickly felt that was a part I could not ignore. I'm actually not all that much of a car person outside of Stunts (my secret, it has been exposed!), but since doing this I insta-recognize these brands everywhere. Thanks to Duplode the cars now actually look like this ingame (the picture up there is composited of course, but nothing has been touched up) rather than just in Stressed.

I'll have some time tomorrow and I'll try them out.

The three-side race sounds perfect for R4K, if Cas is interested.

Certainly, especially since Cas was planning on using a lot of custom cars this season. I'm already looking forward to it. Although to be fair he just did a car designed by me, he just did a short car, a high grip car and a fast accelerating car, all of which these cars are as well, to some degree.

Overall, since I'm making the comparison now anyway, I'd say these three are more balanced, more thought out and suited for more tracks than the more specialized kart.

I'm also curious what people will think about the internal differences in how these cars feel. It's subtle, but the Audi does feel calmer and more IMSA-like in handling to me compared to the more pocket rocket like BMW.

I hope these will put as much of a smile on your face as the looks of the latest Zakstunts track did on mine.

[Duplode]

The DTM set is now available from Southern Cross 

[Cas]

Sorry guys that I did not reply quickly on this one. It certainly is a great idea to try this car set in R4K   I still have to create a comfortable way for the cars to be downloaded if they're custom made, from the R4K site. I'd like a "download car for current race" button or something like that, but as simple as it sounds, there are some catches. Of course, the cars are already here and in Southern Cross and I can host them too. I just would like for the "access" to them from R4K to be more direct and "elegant" at the same time, ha, ha.

As I was telling Overdrijf via PM, my idea is that the next race should go from the 1st to the 25th of November and, from now on, all races be 1st -to-25th of each month. So this season would have only these three races. For the next season, I'll try to have a more robust system ready, so that, for example, season results can be calculated. As usual, I have many "half-ideas" that I hope to make full by the end of the year.

[Overdrijf]

We're ready to go on November 1st.

I'm already curious what kind of section times the different cars will get. After the racing I get to do the analyzing.

[Overdrijf]

What has a monocle but no speed limit?

Die Ottobahn!



(Track available now, scoreboard opens tonight.)

[Cas]

It's open now!   This will be the first multi-car race in R4K. Let's see how it works out. I found a couple of bugs in the website as a result of the track update, which I expected. Now they're fixed.

[dreadnaut]

What has a monocle but no speed limit?

Oh, that is brilliant! I'm busy for the next week or so, but I'll defenitely race on this one, and try all the cars!

[Duplode]

Trying out the Mercedes on Die Ottobahn, I noticed the colour of the steering wheel dot. was changed. I wasn't aware that was possible (and I somehow hadn't noticed the Kart used that effect as well). How did you do it? 

(By the way, I encourage you all to give it a go there. These cars are a blast!)

[Overdrijf]

Trying out the Mercedes on Die Ottobahn, I noticed the colour of the steering wheel dot. was changed. I wasn't aware that was possible (and I somehow hadn't noticed the Kart used that effect as well). How did you do it? 

(By the way, I encourage you all to give it a go there. These cars are a blast!)

That's in the STDB[NAME].vsh file, together with the gearbox knob. You can change the color and the shape by altering dot and dota, the mask. I'm not sure if you have to change dot1 and dot2 as well, which are some sort of small palette files with the dot inserted in the background. I did change the dot in the background to match the new one, just to be on the safe side.

If you want to make the dot a bit bigger, like I did, you'll (of course) also need to resize the image to some size you know the mystery bites for (the stuff you see below width, height, X and Y when looking at this in Stressed, for the uninitiated). I think I got these of a gearbox, or maybe an ins2. It seems to work quite well, the invisible parts of the image don't seem to interfere with anything.

[Duplode]

Oh yes, dot and dota -- I had forgotten about those. Perhaps I should try and make a new car to get a refresher on things The mystery bytes detail is also interesting, thanks.

[Overdrijf]

Perhaps I should try and make a new car to get a refresher on things

Yeah, you probably should. Totally for your own good, not at all because I want more new cars.

[zaqrack]

Astonishing work (and track) here, pipsqueaks

[Overdrijf]

Thanks. That means a lot, coming from someone with as large a track collection as yours.



I think I just figured out why the front wheels of the BMW are sometimes slowly moving to the left of the vehicle on long playing sessions (an issue that didn't become visible until going for the same NoRH lap over and over again): there's some coordinates slightly off in the wheels, must have happened in the final bottom plate fixes.

It's hardly a fatal bug, but it's now the first item on the list of things to fix in a potential version 1.1.