Cars and rules for 2026

[dreadnaut]

Second quarter of the ZakStunts century 🐲
25 years means a lot of stories and traditions, trophies old and new, and a few dusty corners. It also means the 26th year is coming up fast! Are you ready? 😱

While the game stays the same, the Competition is open to rule changes. This thread is here to collect and discuss suggestions, and also to decide which custom cars will be allowed for the coming season.

See also: Cars and rules for 2025

For those who have not been part of one of these threads before, let me summarise the process:

• Pipsqueaks bring up ideas, questions, problems. A brief explanation is enough, a bit of data is welcome.
• There are no single solutions to a problem, there always many options that we discuss with curiosity about other people's experiences and opinions.
  
• We keep in mind the principles of the Competition; I suggest reading along the chain of previous threads to get an idea of what's an acceptable proposal, and what is not.
• We try to find consensus on a very small set of changes: we can't make a lot of changes at the same time, or we'll have no idea what worked and why.
  
• Some ideas will not gain traction, and that's alright.

Now a few rules to have a productive thread:

• No AI generated content in this thread; machine translation is fine, slop is not.
  
• No off-topic, spamming, etc. Those messages will be deleted without warning.
• No attacks, no recriminations

[HerrNove]

I'll start by giving my strong support for the Hexa as new car. Impressing performance and visuals, partially compensated by the difficult reading of the steering indicator.

Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.

I liked all this year's cars so it's hard for me to suggest which should drop to make place.
But maybe Esprit and Diablo tend to overlap a little bit too much, and my beloved Oxia should not become a regular presence to keep its magical aura. Mercedes DTM can go if it manages to win a race, otherwise I'd be happy to give it a second fourth chance.

[Matei]

Idea: all cars available and no rules. Why bother with rules?

https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4312

https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Zapper%27s_car_pack

And:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun

The basic method used to construct such a set of inputs is to record one's input while playing the game on an emulator, all the while saving and loading the emulator's state repeatedly to test out various possibilities and only keep the best result.

Stunts is so advanced that it can do this even without an emulator.

To make this more precise, the game is slowed down.

DOSBox-X can do that, I don't know about DOSBox, but my game can obviously do it with a few modifications and:

https://github.com/schellingb/dosbox-pure

Using the core option Save States Support, rewinding can be enabled.
Keep in mind that rewind support comes at a high performance cost.

I never tried DOSBox Pure, but so much for NoRH (it was outdated anyway).

[Duplode]

Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.

I'd love to see the Citroën XM in competition! It's a well-balanced car that could be a good representative of the "proper slow car" tier (example stablemates: Trueno, Thunderbird).

Idea: all cars available and no rules.

There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.

[Spoonboy]

Also curious about Mazda 787B, Lada Niva and Citroën XM. I have not tried any but I feel they'd be nice novelties.

But maybe Esprit and Diablo tend to overlap a little bit too much, and my beloved Oxia should not become a regular presence to keep its magical aura.

I tend to agree with @HerrNove. I love the Oxia, but its brilliance has meant it has dominated a lot so far this year. Much as I love driving it, it is becoming more of a workhorse for me, rather than a fun toy!
As such, it should probably have a rest.

The DTM has similar amazing all-round performance, but as has been mentioned elsewhere, it has yet to get a win so could maybe be given rather chance to shine.

The Niva was fun in the night-time Live race (anyone who hasn't tried this track and custom cockpits, do it!). It drove the nicest of the three. This would be a great slow car, if it could be seperated enough from the LM002.

I haven't tried the XM, but it sounds interesting.

As for the Mazda 787B, it is a beautiful, fast and stable rocketship, and would be a great addition. But as we have found when it first appeared, unless we lose some other original cars like the Jag or P962, we risk saturating the roster with similar cars..
But it is awesome

[Matei]

For the idiot who deleted my latest message: when I mentioned that people who finish in the shortest time (recorded by the game, that is) are considered to win is a stupid rule, I referred to this:

https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4482.msg98492#msg98492

If you really must know, I spent 6.5 hours trying to pull off a power gear lap with the Corvette.  That doesn't include the time I spent driving other cars.

Time to realise that I wasted too much time here too. Bye.

[edit]
Further reading, just found in an article published today.

https://trenduri.blogspot.com/2025/08/incrancenatii.html

Translation from Romanian:

I was sitting the past few days to think that we, as a people, have a characteristic that is radically different from other peoples: banter, humor. Honestly, I have never seen such an appetite for making fun of everything.
[...]
Mostly, this characteristic is essential in detecting non-Romanians.

[/edit]

[HerrNove]

Idea: all cars available and no rules.

There is a way to make all cars available: set a fixed -100% coefficient to anything outside the 16-car list for the year. I'm not really joking: this might actually be a useful way to keep cars away from the competition proper while still allowing people to drive for fun with them.

I'd love to see that! But only if @dreadnaut can implement it without going crazy. I guess this would create many special paths in the code (e.g. you must not add the time to the car podiums, you cannot generate a car icon, etc.). You also cannot "just" set a coefficient, you have to ignore the time outright to avoid it skewing the diagrams.

[MiDiaN]

I'm happy with the rules as it is! As for the cars my personal wish is that Mercedes stays, because I enjoy driving it the most

@Matei, are you planning to join the competition next year? I haven't seen you on the scoreboard yet so I'm curious why you are posting here. Hope I get a chance to race against you!

[Argammon]

I thought I would make a "good‑faith" effort and explain the Hyperion view on power gear in my own words. The Hyperion members and I express ourselves very differently, so perhaps I can shed light on points that got overlooked in the "Plaidoyer: Maintaining Fairness and Skill in Stunts" thread due to the sheer number and length of posts.

Before doing so, I'd like to note that many of my points have been raised before by @Duplode in previous cars and rules threads — for example, here:https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4335.0. It may still be worthwhile to collect the key arguments here.

How I viewed ZakStunts

 My view was simple: ZakStunts is a speedrun competition to achieve the fastest possible in‑game time (taking car coefficients into account) without resorting to external tools. The most important tool, of course, is the internal replay viewer.

The Hyperion view

Hyperion drivers see the current system as problematic because it fails to balance power‑gear cars effectively. When PG cars win, they often do so by a large margin, making it impossible for a non‑PG pipsqueak to compete meaningfully that month.

The evidence

 

• When PG cars win a track, the gap to the best non‑PG car is usually much larger than the gap between two top non‑PG cars. Compare ZCT283 (Diablo vs Lotus) with ZCT284 (Corvette vs Audi) for example.
• This imbalance is less severe with the Indy — for instance, ZCT281 (narrow loss to the Jaguar) and ZCT265 (narrow win over the Carrera).

These are only examples — a proper statistical review would likely confirm the trend.

My interpretation of the evidence

The Indy is less of a problem because it is both easy to reach PG with and capable of PG slides.

Other PG cars, such as the Corvette, can go unused for long stretches, letting their coefficients build up. Once a track appears where a PG lap is possible, that inflated coefficient gives them a major advantage. This doesn't happen with non‑PG cars like the Countach, whose performance is close enough to its peers (the non-PG cars) that usage naturally keeps coefficients in check.



Why this is problematic

When someone lands a PG lap, particularly with the Acura, Corvette, or GTO, drivers who can't or won't PG are effectively out of contention. This doesn't necessarily mean a non‑PG driver would have won otherwise — but it does mean the competition becomes two different races on the same track.

Do we need to fix this

Yes. Even though I've benefitted from the current system, I believe it doesn't balance PG cars well.

However, I'd like to hear from as many drivers as possible, especially the "silent majority." Rules should be shaped by broad consensus, not just a vocal few (that would include me  ) .

What could be done to fix the problem

To answer that question, we would first have to agree on the shared goals. Below, I list some goals I believe many of us could agree on. (?)

 

• Reduce the large time‑gap advantage when PG cars win.
• Limit "PG surprise" wins that split the competition into separate PG and non‑PG races.
• Avoid banning PG cars entirely — many enjoy them, and some PG laps are genuinely beautiful (e.g., ZCT260, ZCT264, ZCT284).

One idea: assign fixed months to a few PG cars and apply the coefficient system only to non‑PG cars. For example, March → Corvette, July → GTO, December → Indy. The Acura would then have to wait for the next year.

PS:

Some of you might think that I have written this to please @Alain il professore. To those I would like to point out that I have written nothing that I do not believe in. This is my view of the situation.

[alanrotoi]

@Matei I think @KyLiE said 6.5 hours in the 28 days of competition so it's less than 1% of the month. Don't make it personal. The worst arrogancy is when a pipsqueak says i.e. "I did it in half an hour" when you clearly know (after many years in the game and the community) that it was a work of many hours. Somehow some pipsqueaks (and not pipsqueaks too I can see now) feels better saying they invests almost no time racing.  That attitude deserves some insults but you only get from me a "poor guy".

I saw the same attitude or speech in other gamer communities where you build the expertise playing and playing. These kind of arrogant commentaries aren't welcome. Let him spend his time as he wishes.