Chocolate Stunts

[dreadnaut]

CommonLoon102's Chocolate Stunts looks like the most advanced Stunts port to suddenly appear on the scene!

While issues and suggestions should probably go to the project repository, let's start a thread here for your thoughts and impressions!

[alanrotoi]

It looks good!! And ghost opponent (a recorded lap!) I love that!

[HerrNove]

> I'm thinking in particular of the "press Q to rewind" feature, which can greatly reduce the effort of replay handling

There is no way to detect these techniques so it's just a matter of honour, but if we allow "press Q to rewind", what is the limit?

Given that various players have said that using savestates is not allowed, I think we should discuss on where to trace the line. Because pressing accidentally "Restart driving" and losing a good segment becomes not OK if others competitors are avoiding that risk.

In my opinion, the moment we allow anything else than the original game, the competition is going to become about who is building with Claude the best computer assistance features. Ghost car with the replay to imitate? A dashed ideal line, à la Geoff Crammond? An overlay with the keys to press, like in Trackmania's streams? Some of these things would take a skilled programmer no more than 1-2 intense nights to create.

So, even if I might try these LLM-made reworks to explore new tracks and enjoy the game, or for competitions where everyone is using it, I hope we as community will say our "НЕТ" to the computer assistance arms race.

[dreadnaut]

There is no way to detect these techniques so it's just a matter of honour, but if we allow "press Q to rewind", what is the limit?

I'm really interested in this discussion, for ZakStunts and outside. There's a range of options here, from HET! + honour to anything goes! There is also historical context: early 'cheating' tricks included adding digital speedometers to cars that didn't have one, for more precise shifting; but upgrades like SuperSight have smaller effects, or improve enjoyment without giving an advantage.

So is there a pragmatic way ahead? Maybe an official build with a small number of improvements? Or do we need to stick to a harder set of rules?

[KyLiE]

I've been waiting for this day, and it is indeed bittersweet. Part of me always wanted Stunts to be confined by its DOS origins. Sure, modifications were possible, even from the very beginning in the form of bypassing the copy protection, but the knowledge that the elusive original source code would never be found gave credibility to competitions and instilled trust in players. It wasn't a guarantee that cheating wasn't possible, but it was something. The fact that no source port existed meant that the effort involved in cheating was so high that it was unlikely.

On the other hand, I've always wanted Stunts to receive the same treatment as some of my other favourite games, like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. Playing natively in Windows with high resolution and high frame rates is a dream come true, but now that the game is open-source and can produce replays that are indistinguishable from the original, anything is possible, including cheating without the same barriers that existed before. It also makes OWOOT competitions significantly harder to implement.

@dreadnaut has already announced that players may use any version of the game to record their replays, but the original game (Broderbund version 1.1) must be used as a reference for validation. There is no reason not to do this because the original game is inferior in almost every way and there is no way of telling which version has been used. We did the same thing with replay handling in the past. There was no way of detecting that it had been used, so instead, it was embraced.

This change in the way we play Stunts competitively amplifies and highlights the speed-running aspect that already exists. This has always been a point of friction for me, which means that racing competitively is now less appealing than it once was, but that doesn't mean it's all over. This is just my opinion and others may feel differently. We will have to wait and see how the racing community responds. Participation might explode or it might dwindle to the point that competitions shut down. Either way, time will tell.

So is there a pragmatic way ahead? Maybe an official build with a small number of improvements? Or do we need to stick to a harder set of rules?

It's fine to specify a set of rules, but if there's no way to enforce them, then you're strictly relying on an honour system, which is fine for some, but not others. This is the foundation that GAR is built on, and while it is successful to a certain degree, it certainly isn't as popular as the main competition at ZakStunts.

[dreadnaut]

@dreadnaut has already announced that players may use any version of the game to record their replays

Er... is that how my post read? I meant "someone might use a different client at the moment, and we can't tell", and didn't want to say "everyone may use whatever they want" as a rule. Second-language issue? Should I rephrase to be more clear?

The 2026 rules were not ready for new Stunts ports, but we'll have to include something in the 2027 version! And it might as well be, "you have to use Stunts BB 1.1"

[HerrNove]

dreadnaut has already announced that players may use any version of the game to record their replays

Er... is that how my post read? I meant "someone might use a different client at the moment, and we can't tell", and didn't want to say "everyone may use whatever they want" as a rule. Second-language issue? Should I rephrase to be more clear?

In your article you wrote "Racers might use different versions of the game (original, SuperSight, Chocoloate?)" which reads to me the same way as KyLiE understood it, especially since the following "must" hints that a successful replay validation is the only requirement.

If you don't want to officially approve the new versions, a rewrite of that sentence is definitely a good idea.