Announcing NSGP - Fastest Racer alive competition

**Alex Reeves** · 12-27-2011 10:22 AM

Announcing a new NSGP Competition!

With the 1.34 release, we now have the ability to record offline lap and race times. Using this, I want to propose a new competition to truly discover who is the fastest NSGP Racer Alive! Any racer may participate - the beauty of this as a competition is that timezones and online rules don't matter. People who are in the NSGPOC can use this as a chance to practise and refine their race strategies, while people who can't make the NSGPOC can still regularly participate and be part of a genuine competition. Plus the offline cars are faster, so the races are quicker!

The format of the competition is as follows :

2011 Driver List must be used (can use quick race or a season - your choice).
May choose any driver to replace from the 2011 list - so I expect to see a lot of red bull cars chosen...

Race conditions will be as follows :
Fuel ON
Tyres ON (you may use the same tyre type for the entire race, no mandatory tyre use rules)
COM Racers ON
COM Difficulty - Extreme
Damage ON
KERS ON (KERS is quicker in race conditions, and there's no way to police it being off...

)

Race Length will match the NSGP OC race lengths. If playing a season, adjust the Options appropriately for each race. So for Bahrain and Australia, it's 15 and 30 laps. Malaysia and China are 20 laps each, Spain is 23 laps, Monaco is 25 laps. I'll copy the list from the NSGPOC schedule shortly. Turning on debug mode is allowed, but ONLY to prevent rain (use CTRL-R). Anything else will be considered cheating and dealt with accordingly. Play nice!

How the competition works :

1. Turn on race logging in the settings.ini file for your NSGP folder.
2. Set up the race as per instructions above.
3. Once your race is complete and the top 10 racers in your race have finished (yes, you need to wait!) press F8. This will take a screenshot of your finishing position. Please also save your replay by starting the replay and THEN Pressing F1. Note that this is different to the online save method.
4. Email the race result .csv (in your Replays folder) and your screenshot (in your screenshots folder) to nsgpchamp@gmail.com. Only one entry per person is allowed, so once you've submitted, you can't submit an improved race. If your run is as a quick race, state in your email which driver you were. Do not edit the .csv file yourself!
5. I've built a tool that can take the race results and merge them into a simulated race file, to compare lap and race times for all players (fun with spreadsheets, yay!). After every week, I will write up a simulated race and rank all racers. Note that the tool also has a number of anti-cheat mechanisms in it, in case the results have been doctored (also, we are relying on an honesty system here!). If any of the results seem suspicious, you will be asked to submit your replay file as an extra verification step (that's also in the Replays folder). Failure to produce a replay to back up your times will result in a DQ.

Scoring will be based on the standard F1 top-10 rankings ie.
1st 25
2nd 18
3rd 15
4th 12
5th 10
6th 8
7th 6
8th 4
9th 2
10th 1

In addition, there are Bonus points for the top 3 lap times
Person with fastest lap - 3
Person with next fastest lap - 2
Person with next fastest lap - 1

Race Schedule :

Race schedule will follow the NSGPOC Championship dates. All entries for a particular week must be submitted before the starting race time of the NSGPOC race that week (ie. 1000BST on the Saturday race day). However, as the NSGPOC has already started, the following dates apply for the first rounds :

Bahrain and Australia - 1/1/2012 1000BST
Malaysia and China - 4/1/2012 1000BST
Spain and Monaco - 7/1/2012 1000BST (NSGP race start time)

Future races will match the NSGPOC start times.

If you're competing in this competition, please leave a message below with your Offline Racer name and Nationality. Then boot up NSGP, go race 15 laps on Bahrain and 30 laps on Australia, and email your results up to nsgpchamp@gmail.com. It's that easy!

Any questions, put them below.

Enjoy!

**Alex Reeves** · 12-27-2011 10:22 AM

Sample Race Entry

Racer Name : Spin Dizzy
Nationality : Australian

**przemator** · 12-27-2011 10:43 AM

nice idea.

you say "COM Racers ON", but in offline mode you can't turn them OFF. i think it would be nice to enforce Extreme level, so that the COM racers are not just spectators.

**Alex Reeves** · 12-27-2011 11:06 AM

Yep - I realised that, updated the post to reflect this.

**peter-27** · 12-27-2011 02:58 PM

Racer Name : Peter Santamaria-Woods
Nationality : Indian

**Rodney** · 12-27-2011 09:32 PM

Driver: Rodney
Nationality: British

**Alex Reeves** · 12-27-2011 10:20 PM

First results received for Bahrain! The battle is on!

**Alex Reeves** · 12-29-2011 02:42 PM

Entry details tweaked - anyone else going to jump in on this idea?

**przemator** · 12-29-2011 03:56 PM

1. you could fix the race schedule, as it is too small to read (why not make it a regular image instead of an attachment?)
2. you could post best laptimes/total times to date, so we know what are we up against (of course, do not publish screenshots or csv, cause they could serve as cheat help).

i got my bhr ready for upload, just have to make australia, which has been a total failure, it starts raining all the time for me. once when it didn't, i hit a wall and gazed at the screen in confusion for a couple of seconds, so the race was ruined too

.

**peter-27** · 12-29-2011 05:07 PM

It's a good idea but i'm still arguing with myself about if i'm going to enter or not.

Last time i raced the offline car it made me slow online ...

**Alex Reeves** · 12-29-2011 10:42 PM

Originally Posted by przemator

1. you could fix the race schedule, as it is too small to read (why not make it a regular image instead of an attachment?)
2. you could post best laptimes/total times to date, so we know what are we up against (of course, do not publish screenshots or csv, cause they could serve as cheat help).

i got my bhr ready for upload, just have to make australia, which has been a total failure, it starts raining all the time for me. once when it didn't, i hit a wall and gazed at the screen in confusion for a couple of seconds, so the race was ruined too

.

1. I don't know why the forum shrunk that image, for some reason embedding an image into the post doesn't work for me. I see that the way it was done for NSGPOC was to link to an external image site - I probably need to so that.

*edit* Done.
2. The point of the competition is that it is a little bit like a silent auction - you won't know if you've got the winning time until the race is run. At the moment there are only 2 entries received for Bahrain (one of them is mine, which I did before I received any other entries, for fairness!) and 1 for Australia (again mine, it's a cracker time and yes, rain was a PITA in setting it!). If people want benchmarks, then you should aim to be to be under 15:00:000 on Bahrain and under 14:30:000 on Australia. I will also say that the two times for Bahrain are amazingly close together and would have made a cracking race had it been done in real time. Malaysia and China will be a bit more variable, but based on your own calculations, all the other races should be around the 15 minute mark or below as a baseline.

**Alex Reeves** · 12-30-2011 12:24 AM

Yeah... Weather is a little frustrating for this - it would be really nice if there was a switch to turn off rain!

**Alex Reeves** · 12-30-2011 01:01 AM

Also another gotcha - be careful if you're doing multiple runs using quick race. The .csv will overwrite your last run if it's done on the same day and the same track. If you do a really good time, you might want to move or rename the .csv before having another crack at it.