Cloned replays, ZCT285 to 292

[dreadnaut]

Hello folks, I have to sadly bring to attention a series of "cloned" replays that we have discovered among the submissions for ZCT285 to ZCT292. These were created continuing from an available replay sent by another pipsqueak, tens of seconds or even a minute through the lap. One similar case happened during ZCT233.

How do we spot these? The check is part of the end-of-race steps, where we review all the replays on the final scoreboard for missing penalty time, suspicious similarities, etc.

Unfortunately these checks only cover the final replays, and require fallible human attention: we only recognised the problem at the end of ZCT292. This means we failed to highlight the issue right away, and let it grow over the course of eight races. While fixing the data is easy, I am sorry to bring you this disappointment.

In the next days we will disqualify all cloned replays, and update track and season scoreboards. Experience points, PTB, and Folyami ratings will probably need updating as well. We will also try to improve the way we check replays, to make sure we don't leave similar problems undiscovered.

We have been unable to contact Mortimer after bringing up the issue, so we still lack full understanding of the situation, and any penalties have not been finalised.

You can find the full list of affected replays in the attached file.

[Duplode]

As a member of Cork's Crew, as well as the one who flagged the problem at the end of ZCT292, I fully accept the findings and regret that this has come to pass for as long as it did. I'll answer any questions you might have about this incident to the best of my knowledge about the facts.

[Matei]

The solution is simple: use "no replay handling". Not the version of Stunts with that, which is of course outdated. This:

https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4471.msg98591#msg98591

There are only a few problems. The simulation uses floating point numbers, so for some reason the replays work properly only with the same compiled executable, but I already provided that. The replays recorded with car 1, which has the stiffest suspensions, still have a few problems, so I recommend cars 2, 3 and 4. As mentioned, the replays are saved like in Stunts.

I will post today on my site the version that also supports SDL 3, thanks for testing.