Stunts 30th anniversary | Ferrari Edition

[alanrotoi]

btw, is it possible with opponent blaster to make an opponent enough smart/fast to take power gear with indy?

[Cas]

If I remember well, previous analysis had shown that AIs "cheat" in Stunts. They appear to have their own physics. That is, instead of being a routine that "presses" and "releases" the same keys as we, the routine directly controls the positions and velocities of the car. It does it in a way that makes it look like the opponent is subject to the same forces as the player (for example, slowing down before corners), but this is really not so. In other words, I'm suggesting that power gear likely doesn't even exist for the AIs.

On the other hand, I know little to nothing about the opponent file format, but if it's flexible enough, it might allow for a car to do things that are actually impossible for a player to do with the same car. So maybe an AI player could be made to "appear" to use power gear. My guess is that this isn't possible either and that the format is "maximised" for Skid Vicious, but I really don't know this.

[Daniel3D]

The problem with the AO (automated opponents) is the absence of an AI.
Speed is set per element type. So it will treat all ramps the same. With the side note that the AO does look ahead a little bit.
It has algorithms for speeding up and slowing down.
If it looks ahead but can not adjust its speed quick enough, the AO will crash or go off the track (and probably crash).
If a track keeps those things in mind, you can boost the AO quite a bit.

(at least that is my conclusion after careful analysis)

[Cas]

The thing is whether the maximum is already what Skid does or not. I don't know this, but what I think is, if it could be faster, it would've been made faster, so probably, it can't.

[Daniel3D]

For stunts 1.0 opponent blaster was made.
http://stunts.kalpen.de/zip/ob.zip
But blasted opponents are prone to crashing.

[alanrotoi]

From Kevin Pickell's (Lead Programmer of Stunts) interview:

Q: We already know about who the opponents are in real life. Why are them so weak and dumb in the game?

A: They wanted them to be vastly different, originally they were only slightly dumber and slower but the company wanted to make them more different and the only way was to make them even slower and dumber.

[Daniel3D]

Still Skid is about the fastest you can make a opponents that still manages to finish.
But for a flat track I think you can improve quite a bit.

[Cas]

Precisely, I think Skid is the "unbounded" version of the AI. The other opponents are more restricted. Now, surely there is a way to make a faster opponent, but...

1 - Maybe this can't be accomplished by just modifying the opponent files and it could be that some value has to be changed in the executable, for example, to multiply the speed of opponents
2 - If one way or the other, opponents were made faster, I think this would cause them to visibly violate the game physics, to race in a completely unnatural way, etc.

Of course, trying is never bad. Even if we don't end up with a faster opponent, the results of experimenting with the files are surely going to be interesting. To make a truly better opponent, a new AI would have to be written. That is super hard to do as a plug in, because it wouldn't be a menu plug in, but a race-time routine.

[Daniel3D]

If you make them faster, they can't adjust for track changes. For example.
When you make a long straight followed by a ramp and a sharp turn, Skid will always overshoot.

[Cas]

Yeah, I guess the AI is very simple. It doesn't consider the car it is using and doesn't try to guess what is going to happen.

[Daniel3D]

It does look ahead, but only two or three track pieces. I believe the AO (it's an Automated Opponent and not an AI in my opinion) reaction is around the same distance as the corner sign.

Therefore it can't have to high of a speed setting because of reaction time and acceleration/break time. (Acceleration, break and top speed are equal to player. Grip is not)

[Cas]

Yes, AI wouldn't be the right term. "Artificial Stupidness" would be too harsh, though, ha, ha, so your "AO" sounds better to me. To keep the letters, I was going to suggest "Artificial Ingenuity", but I'm not sure about the meaning of the second word in English. In Spanish, we have the word "ingenuidad", which means something like weak criterion or inability to understand nuances and to forsee the very forseeable. But in English, there's the word "ingenious", with a completely different meaning, and sometimes I suspect that "ingenuity" comes from "ingenious", so I'm not sure.

[Daniel3D]

"ingenuity" comes from "ingenious"

Yes, "ingenuity" comes from "ingenious",

[Ryoma]

I think the mt32 doesn't work.

[Daniel3D]

I'll look into that. Need to update the package anyway since we have reached maximum car capacity.
I want to try to make the F1 cars appear chronological.