Short Grand Prix

[Sida79]

1. It looked like you got worse to me
2. Red Bull!
3. Er... well, I used it for the last 10 races so if you won there - you won
4. Alex's lag still sucks!
5. Go Paul
6. Marek... it's like Cyrex2 - only worse!
7. Denby - pleasantly surprised, even a win!
8. Hans & Noa - great to have you as regulars guys

- damage sucks
- KERS needs tweaking
- no combining of Elo, I wouldn't have exerimented if I knew you'd want that

@cyrex - you already had a job dude, find one for me
@paul - true
@alex - could be.

[przemator]

[LBStrange]

Hey good fun last night, i seemed to strike a bad patch after taking my third win, and I let Srdjan come back on me with points. Going into AbuDhabi I had a 4pt lead over him but managed to grab an easy 5 sec win to secure 2nd overall.

How often we doing this...between each NSGPOC season?

[Alex Reeves]

Suggestion : In order to test people's tolerance for other times, how about we run this regularly at 2100GMT on Saturday? That seems to have been the best "alternate" time when we were looking into this last time, and we can use that to work out if there are others who could make a different time.

Thoughts?

[Sida79]

Hm, according to Elo I suck, or have just barely managed to avoid "suck" by the end

Here's my theory: Kolowski woke up one morning and decided to run a little preparation for SGP by practicing, oh, I don't know, 100 laps each track?
But after he finished with the first 4 or 5 tracks he realized he got a little ahead of himself and just did 20 laps on all others...

@Logan - ah yes, the skill you showed while pushing me off the track whose quali I dominated and then dominated again on replay was insane, it was a real tremendous fair play victory the like of which has not been seen from the glory days of Schumacher, it literally brought a tear to my eye

[Alex Reeves]

Wow.... the champ seems imtimidated! Could it be a changing of the guard???

You think you went bad.... look at my stats! Although I just got totally beaten up in the second half - basically if I qualified mid field, I was guaranteed to get shunted by everyone. Although I think my winning margin in Singapore was the biggest win of any race - there's something about me and that track with the online car that really gels...

With no damage I'm certain we'll both be more competitive. Przemek has definitely brought some good game to the table though, he's looking a lot like Soltys did in his early days. Game on!

[Sida79]

@Alex - I wasn't the fastest driver anyway, it's not my fault you guys lacked enthusiasm (missing races for you, losing form in Brad's case, just plain quitting for Soltys who could have easily won the champ)

What my joke was reffering to was how I could not even see Kolowski (that's how much he ran away) in the first races and then later on he started qualifying much lower which was... strange Your quali seemed bad too, which was... strange as the lag and stuff should have only gotten to you in the races, no?

The bad thing might be that I suck, but I already knew that (I'm like 5 seconds behind on online records in my best effort + nobody really practiced in order to be more competitive during the course of the champ. until now anyway) but I got some positive findings in the 2nd part of the season too... the part where destroying your oponnents pays off much more than being fast?

Oh, and the thing about you and Singapore has a name, it's called: me slamming into a wall while leading and Przemek was not as competitive because we've run Singapore before he joined and had lots of practice on it. The others - you would have beaten anyway

As for the SGP timing - I'd prefer it if it was mid-week (any time). NSGP every few days would be a lot nicer to me than NSGP for hours at a time

[przemator]

Suggestion : In order to test people's tolerance for other times, how about we run this regularly at 2100GMT on Saturday? That seems to have been the best "alternate" time when we were looking into this last time, and we can use that to work out if there are others who could make a different time.

This seems like a good idea. We can race on Saturdays at about 20/21/22 GMT. Of course, we are not going to race a full season each time. This was a one-off event and I am very surprised that nobody really complained (well, Sida did). I think 6 races is quite optimal, since then we do a full season in 3 weeks. Alternatively we may agree to race from 21:00 to 22:00 for a full hour.

With Elo being the core feature of the SGP, missing a race or even a whole event shouldn't make people lose their interest in the following events.

[Alex Reeves]

@Sida - I've never really been that good at 1 lap qualifiers. My strength has usually been in consistency and good pit strategies, not lightning quick laps, so this format doesn't really suit me. Plus, I don't play as much as I did when S1 was on, I lost interest for a while but am now getting back into it. I think you've been consistently faster than me for a while now.

What's interesting for me is that we've managed to get a group of quick and well-matched players. I just wish the game code didn't add complications, and that we could get online code that ensured a fair fight for all of us. Hopefully Si is seeing this and watching, and noting that there's a core following behind the game and enough interest to warrant a sequel where he can enhance all of this (hint, hint!)

[przemator]

What's interesting for me is that we've managed to get a group of quick and well-matched players. I just wish the game code didn't add complications, and that we could get online code that ensured a fair fight for all of us. Hopefully Si is seeing this and watching, and noting that there's a core following behind the game and enough interest to warrant a sequel where he can enhance all of this (hint, hint!)

I think, for the online game to be truly fair, there should be only one "true race", on the server/host side. Do you know what I mean? Everything that would happen on the server side, would take effect for all clients/participants.

For this to work, the games on the client sides should take latency into account and simulate expected future car locations. For example:

• It takes 0.5 second for the signal to get from the server to Alex.
• Then it takes another 0.5 second for Alex's response to get back to the server.
• This means the server gets a response from Alex for things that happened on the server 1 second ago.
• This means, that for Alex to make sensible decisions, his game should simulate what can happen in the next second (it should not show what has happened 0.5 s ago, but what will happen in 0.5 s, when his response reaches the server).
• For this to work, there should be some AI algorithm that will predict where the cars will go. Maybe it could be the very same system that controls COM racers.

So, to sum things up, this is how the online mode should look like for me: (Lets say Sida is the server and Alex is the client)

1. Sida sends the current game state to Alex. It takes 0.5 sec to reach Alex.
2. Alex gets the data. He knows that it is 0.5 sec old and that it will take another 0.5sec s for his response to get back to Sida.
3. Alex's game predicts what can be the car positions 1.0 sec from now.
4. So, what Alex sees on the screen are not the actual car positions, but a prediction/simulation.
5. Alex's response reaches Sida, and ideally, it should corespont with current situation on the track.

Phew! I hope somebody manages to read and understand this....

[Alex Reeves]

As for the SGP timing - I'd prefer it if it was mid-week (any time). NSGP every few days would be a lot nicer to me than NSGP for hours at a time

The problem with midweek is that people are much more likely to be working etc... but hey, pick a time and see how many people can show.

[Alex Reeves]

I think, for the online game to be truly fair, there should be only one "true race", on the server/host side. Do you know what I mean? Everything that would happen on the server side, would take effect for all clients/participants.

Yes. This is what most other online games do with a dedicated server system. I found some great links about how valve and others do this a while back and sent them to Si - that's how I learnt that the online setup is a peer-peer mesh rather than true client/server. Peer-peer mesh should be quicker, but it also means that you can't have some of official server and use a "tick" based system for prediction etc. The mesh solution is hurt by differences in latency, that's basically what we're seeing. Now if only we could break the speed of light, that wouldn't be a problem....

The other way to make it truly fair would be to go "Trackmania style" and turn off collisions. But then it's a time trial contest, not a race. That's a different style of racing again, but it does eliminate the possibility of others impacting your race.

[przemator]

Yes. This is what most other online games do with a dedicated server system. I found some great links about how valve and others do this a while back and sent them to Si - that's how I learnt that the online setup is a peer-peer mesh rather than true client/server. Peer-peer mesh should be quicker, but it also means that you can't have some of official server and use a "tick" based system for prediction etc. The mesh solution is hurt by differences in latency, that's basically what we're seeing. Now if only we could break the speed of light, that wouldn't be a problem....

The other way to make it truly fair would be to go "Trackmania style" and turn off collisions. But then it's a time trial contest, not a race. That's a different style of racing again, but it does eliminate the possibility of others impacting your race.

Is NSGP online mode really done via p2p mesh? what if two guys have private IPs and they can't see each other?

I think a grand feature would be the access to an official dedicated server run by Simon, for the cost of, say, another $5. Login/Pass required, and everything synchronised on the server side. Of course, even without such costly option, I don't see why regular users should not have the right to run their own dedicated servers, that would run on a client-server basis.

BTW, can anyone explain this to me: Me, Marek and Rob did some racing on friday. When Rob and Marek hosted everything was fine. But when I was the host, only Rob could join and Marek could not. After joining he got instantly disconnected every time. How is that possible?

[Alex Reeves]

I think a grand feature would be the access to an official dedicated server run by Simon, for the cost of, say, another $5. Login/Pass required, and everything synchronised on the server side. Of course, even without such costly option, I don't see why regular users should not have the right to run their own dedicated servers, that would run on a client-server basis.

Been there, done that - see http://www.newstargames.com/newstarf...=11177&page=13 from post 191 onwards.

Private IPs will talk via an Internet game through NAT. The only way you scenario could happen is if two people joined an internet game benid the same NAT device. This would probably not not anyway as the joining system would fail. The online code isn't good - we've done well to achieve what we can with it so far!

[przemator]

SHORT GRAND PRIX
2011-01-22 MEETING RESULTS

Well, a truly devastating turnout which tempered my enthusiasm towards organizing next events. The canadian guy didn't show up, only 4 guys in total.

Here are the results:

Australia
1. Kos
2. Kolowski
3. Krzeminski

Malaysia
1. Kos
2. Kolowski
3. Krzeminski

Germany
1. Kos
2. Krzeminski
3. Kolowski

Italy
1. Kolowski
2. Kos
3. Krzeminski

Monaco
1. Kolowski
2. Kos
3. Bubich
4. Krzeminski

Turkey
1. Kolowski
2. Bubich
3. Krzeminski

I think I will do the next event when there is no OC race, for any reason. Also, I think we shouldn't treat the results above as a part of any championship. They will serve as a base for rating calculations.