rec.autos.simulators

With the wonderful new availability of online racing in GPL, it strikes
me that I am probably not the only recent newbie to online racing so I
figured it might be a good idea to list a few tips I've picked up in
the last week and a half of doing almost nothing but online GPL racing.

I've played Quake and it's siblings online for many years, and have
been a auto racing sim fanatic for even longer, but I have never raced
online against human oponents before, and now find myself jumping into
this arena, racing against real people and the experience is very different
from racing against computer drivers, it requires some additional skills
that I never needed when not racing real people. I remember some tips
like this at the time when the Nascar2 online beta hawaii started, but
that was a long time ago, and I think this would be a good thing for us
to discuss with this new influx of online racers.

Hope these tips help out other newbies like me and that we can keep our GPL
online racing sessions fun for all.

1. Before you connect for online racing make sure you have the
core.ini file from Alison's web site as well as reading the info on her
site about GPL online racing, it explains many of the things that
will improve your connection. http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison/gpl/

2. First, remember that you are now racing against HUMAN drivers, not AI.
Humans don't have the AI's almost psychic ability to get out of your way
when you are passing them, conversely HUMANS also have a much harder time
going out of their way to avoid crashing into you if you do something stupid
like park your car in the middle of a blind corner.

3. While connected to the server, in the***pit type ALT-L to see what
your latency to the server is. If it is above .500ms or so, be aware that
your car will appear to the other drivers to "warp" all over the track, from
side to side even disappearing at times, and so you will have to be *extra*
careful to not get too close to the other drivers otherwise your slow
connection to the server will cause a crashes with other drivers that
would otherwise be perfectly fine passes. You can probably still
take part in the race, just give people a wider berth when passing them
and move a bit extra offline if you're a back marker, to let the faster
cars pass without your warping crash them.

4. In practice sessions, when you come out of the pits, it takes almost
no extra time to type "PIT OUT" before leaving the pits, it lets someone on
a hot lap know you are going to be joining the track at slow speed and
to look out for you. Also when coming out of the pits, try and stay out of
the racing line until you are up to speed, the out lap doesn't count
for time anyhow, so try and do what you can to not ruin someone else's
hotlap, if most people follow this you will benefit in the end too.

5. At the end of practice session, please exit your car to let the race
start, one way I do this, is when I escape back to the pits, I enter
"Car Setup" and check my fuel level one last time to make sure I have enough.

6. At the grid for the start, calm yourself down, concentrate on a clean
first lap! I cant say this enough people. It does no good to have huge
pileups at the grid or first corner. Your tires are cold at the start and
you have a heavy fuel-laden car. Your oponents are humans that don't have
the AI's ability to avoid you, and they may be experiencing LAG which will
also affect their reaction time, so try and be extra careful on the first
lap, it makes the race much more enjoyable when you don't get caught up in
crash after crash on the first lap.

7. Once the race is underway, if you spin out, as you rejoin the track,
look in your mirrors, don't just jump right into the racing line, slower
than the people coming up on you, and cause another wreck. Rejoin offline
until you are up to speed.

8. Use your mirrors! if it is more than a few laps into the race and all of
a sudden there is a car coming up on you very fast and the flag guys
are waving a BLUE flag at you, this probably means that the leader is
behind you to lap you, he is definitely faster than you and will pass
you eventually anyways, so why not move offline or slow a bit and avoid
the risk of crashing both of you out. This is especially important if you
are lagged and "warping" since to him you will look like your car is
moving all over the track from side to side even disappearing at times.

9. If you are the leader coming up on backmarkers treat them as
HUMAN beings, not AI who will know you are there and immediately move
over to let you lap them. Give them a chance to see the BLUE flag and
that you are much faster than them before you run up to close and cause
a panic crash or try and bully your way through.

Before I ramble too long, overall people just try and treat online races
like they were REAL life races, don't treat Shift-R as crutch but as a thing
to use only when necessary and your racing experience will be evem more
rewarding, give people courtesy and they will usually give the same back,
don't yell at someone for an accidental crash, it just makes things worse
and ruins everyone's good time, most of us out there racing GPL online are
still learning the tracks and how to handle the cars, so let's keep the
atmosphere a nice and courteous one so that GPL can grow into a great and
fun online racing community.

I am truly *amazed* and thankful at the awesome experience of GPL online
races, and that we can do this at relatively low cost (phoneline + ISP).

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

I said in another post earlier today that I've probably had over 1,000
online races (CPR, POD, MTM2) so I thought I'd comment on your points.

You're right. On each one.  :-)  Especially #6. SO many times you will see
people try to win the race on the first lap, and especially the first
corner. Always leads to wrecks. It's important to stay calm and under
control at the start with the field so condensed. All your tips are
important for new online racers to read.

I have to say though that, so far, I've been disappointed with the online
quality of GPL compared to some other recent sims. It's still too early for
me to make up my mind, I need to do more testing, but so far the results
haven't been all that good.

David G Fisher
DmndDave

Yes, I think that's true, but it does come off as an excuse to me.  If a
racing
game now does not have good online play, that is a real disadvantage -
whether
it's because they couldn't manage to implement it well or becuase they just
didn't try, who cares?

Papyrus did a couple of things to decrease my expectations of gpl online
play.
First, they 'talked down' the online play, as if it were just a hack in the
first place.
Second, they mentioned in the manual how precisely the other drivers'
actions
could be watched, i.e. watching the other driver turn their steering wheel.
I just
don't think that much communication is a good idea for internet play.  It
decreases
the maximum number of players for a given bandwidth.  Besides, nearly
insignificant details are swamped by latency problems on the Internet.

*BUT*

My experience playing gpl online has been reasonably good, after all.  The
high bandwidth requirement forever prevents having more than 2 or 3
players on a modem host, I can't think of a game that has been different
in this respect.  Usually, other players actually look like they're driving
aroudn the track rather than warping from point to point.  All in all, gpl
online seems to play alot like other games - usually fairly good, and
rarely perfect.

rob.

<snip>

Yeah I've seen some spotty GPL multiplay on some of the servers too,
but at least coming from my experience with Quake/Quake2 internet
multiplay, it seems to be too many people with high latency/slow connections
trying to play on servers that have too many players for these slow
connections, and the computer with the slow connection looks to be having
a hard time handling all the network data from the many users on the server
hence the "warping".

On Tim McArthur's server I've raced in some races with up to 20 people
at once, I don't experience any problems on my ADSL connection,
but every once in a while I will see the one guy who is warping all over
and when you ask them their latency they say its like .800ms and they are
connected in from somewhere in Antarctica :-)

At least in Quake2 online anything over .500ms is way too lagged for netplay,
especially in games with a lot of players, so I am tending to think the
GPL netplay will improve as more localized servers pop up that will allow
people to find a local server with low ping to connect to, rather than everyone
in the world ALL connecting to the ONE server that is full all the time,
and their slow connection can't handle all the data.

Hopefully VROC will allow us to categorize our hosting sessions by location
and racers can check different servers for which one they have a decent
ping at to connect.

Thats what I'm hoping at least, if not then I'm already enjoying the close
racing I'm able to do at this time with ADSL connections to these servers,
so I will still not be too disappointed.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

Good post John.

John Burrowes

Edmonton, AB,

Not to make excuses for Papyrus, but I recall reading somewhere that they
really just intended multiplayer support for LANs and did not think that GPL
could work at all on a typical Internet connection. It took some effort by a
few people there to tweak it enough to run over a modem line at all. I agree
that there're problems, but it might be the best they could do -- there's a
lot of data that has to be shoved back and forth due to the complexity of
what they're modeling!

--
Doug Gordon
(remove "nospam" from e-mail address)

One good tip for this - when you cross the line if your pitboard shows
the person behind you as "-1 lap" but you yourself have not been
lapped, the guy behind you has just been lapped. Whoever comes along
to pass you next will most likely be the leader. On the grid or during
practice try to get an idea of what car and helmet colours the front
guys have, so you can recognise them when you try to pass. Letting the
leaders through quickly and cleanly is a fundamental requirement of
racing (outside of the US anyway!), but moving over only to find the
guy behind was for position deserves a king size DOH!

Absolutely. You may be winning but have no right to shove a backmarker
off - he is involved in a race too, and may be needing every ounce of
laptime to catch whoever is in front. Both drivers need to be
sensible, and the leaders can't expect the backmarkers to slow right
down and ruin their race.

Cheers!
John

On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 18:20:37 -0400, "David G Fisher"

What has disappointed you David, do you mean GPL itself or the quality
of racing seen? I personally think the racing has been excellent, and
with people getting more consistent and comfortable with the cars,
plus the advent of VROC, leagues and lots of cable modems to come I
think the future's looking pretty fun :-)  Just makes me unhappy that
the UK is prehistoric regarding cable modems, ASDL etc :-(

Cheers!
John

John Wallace heeft geschreven in bericht

I read somewhere that in 1967 you were not required to move over when being
lapped. He really has to pass you. Cannot remember where i saw this though.
Maybe it was 4 wheel drift, but since that is in narrative style, it's hard
to find back anything in that book.

Bart Westra

While this may technically be true, and it might even be a good tactic
in a race against AI computer players that are trying to lap you,
in an "online" race against HUMANS with the chaos and lag it involves,
I think it is a much better idea to allow the faster driver by, after
all if he is fast enough to be lapping you he will probably get by
eventually anyhow, but chances are that the attempts to block or not
leave room, will probably end up in both you and the leader of the race
going off the track in an unnecessary crash.

I really encourage people to make room in online races, I even make room
in a fight for position sometimes, I would rather lose the corner and make up
the position on the straight than have contact and collide with the wall
and have to sit there losing even more positions waiting to rejoin ontrack
as the rest of the racers go by.

People just have to understand that online racing takes a change of attitude
from what we're used to from racing against the "almost-perfect" AI.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

I do agree and within my abilities try to race like a gentleman.

The blue flag was interpreted in this thread as an obligation to move over,
while historically it was only a warning that someone is about to pass you,
perhaps in case you are to busy to look in the mirrors. There was no rule
saying that the slower driver has to move over within a certain time or so.
At least that was what I have read. I don't think that back then in 1967
slow drivers would defend fanatically against being lapped. Better stay on
the track being lapped than go off both.

Bart

'John' Joao Silva heeft geschreven in bericht

Hmm, I've never heard that. Maybe that is correct although logically
(Captain) I can't see the sense in it. There is no advantage to the
car being lapped in keeping the leader behind him, and in fact having
a faster and agitated car behind you could be pretty worrying lap
after lap. With nothing to gain I'd let him through, even if the rules
didn't require it.

Cheers!
John

Quite right, Bart.  Here's a quote from Chris Amon on this subject,
discussing being passed by John Surtees at Spa:  "...He came by me and
there was nothing I could do about it.  I guess nowadays someone in
that situation would just block the other guy, but we didn't do that
sort of thing back then; it would never have occurred to any of us.
Leaving aside any question of ethics, if you touched wheels with
someone at most of the tracks we raced on, chances are you were going
to hit a tree or a house or something..."

Ian

% While this may technically be true, and it might even be a good tactic
% in a race against AI computer players that are trying to lap you,
% in an "online" race against HUMANS with the chaos and lag it involves,
% I think it is a much better idea to allow the faster driver by, after
% all if he is fast enough to be lapping you he will probably get by
% eventually anyhow, but chances are that the attempts to block or not
% leave room, will probably end up in both you and the leader of the race
% going off the track in an unnecessary crash.

If you are being lapped you should never block!  This isn't NASCAR where
it's important to stay on the lead lap for the next caution!  The
reverse is also true.  Just because you are trying to pass a backmarker,
you have no right to bull your way through.  Take into consideration
that there may be a drunken driver just in front of the guy you are
trying to pass (look ahead).  You may just bully your way through to
smack into someone else.  Besides, remember there are certain areas on
the tracks where it is just impossible to move offline and really
survive.  

Last night I had someone getting ready to lap me and while I was waiting
for a chance to pull offline, they got impatient and ended up smacking
me, just as I was moving offline.  They hadn't been there long, so it's
not as if I had been blocking (and they didn't come up that quickly
either).  So both parties need to be patient and cautious!

% I really encourage people to make room in online races, I even make room
% in a fight for position sometimes, I would rather lose the corner and make up
% the position on the straight than have contact and collide with the wall
% and have to sit there losing even more positions waiting to rejoin ontrack
% as the rest of the racers go by.

Very true!  If the guy is pushing you that hard, odds are they are gonna
overcook it soon, so just let them by and give them enough rope.  You
should be back around real soon....  And if they don't mess up later
down the track, then they were probably faster than you anyway.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=