Really bored of people ruining online racing

You are welcome it's a great piece of software.

I was trying to find information on the plug-in, the team assuming you have one and how the idea came about. Also have you had any interest or comments from Kunos?

 

There is not really much information about the history of the plugin around so let me post the short story of the plugin:

I started messing with AC Server UDP plugin development when I rented a VPS in the final months of 2016 to try to improve racing on my server, but I soon stopped cause I had no money to keep the server running and other things drove me away from AC and gaming in general. Plugin was left there in a dusty folder of my PC till the final months of 2017 when I started again driving on AC.

I am not really into league racing and just love casual open public server racing when I have time. When I resumed with AC, I still noticed many things that I didn't like on public servers (the same that pushed me to develop the plugin in first place). Since I still had no money/time to host a proper game server (I only have a very cheap VPS for testing right now), I decided to revive the plugin and to publish it to the Community hoping that others would run it so that we could all get a cleaner environment for racing.
The money idea came along the way of this new development wave, as reputation points were too arcadish and it was increasingly hard to justify to myself why would someone was losing rep on a collision that he didn't cause (I think that crashing my Fiesta on a dire boar in January 2017 and having to pay 1600€ of damage also helped me to realize that this would be a realistic way to simulate the "environmental rating" of real life ).

The team is me and myself (it's hard for me even to find a test driver most of the times as it's a seriously boring work). Kunos hasn't made any comment to date (I didn't expect it actually, the plugin was only published in October 2017 and I am sure many people don't still know that it exists).
Let me thank all the people that give it a go and are running it on their servers so far .

 

Wow, that rennsimulanten BMW M235i R server is an absolute joke. Started another race there tonight in last place, was hit two or three times over the first lap.....and once again I was dumped back into the pits. The admins over there really need to sort themselves out, because at the moment the settings are ridiculous.

 

Can I ask about the 'race restart' mechanic in KMR? When drivers are already fined for incidents, it seems like double punishment to auto-restart as well. Just that it punishes everyone, also those that stayed out of trouble. On the server I raced on last night, after the second restart, "half" the field gave up and left. So instead of a nearly full grid it became a race where everyone quite quickly was driving more or less on his own.

 

Well you've done a great job. Yes I'm not keen on having to pre-book and be available at a specific time, I prefer to just go online and race when I can find the time. I've always thought people are to defeatest regarding solutions to bad driving on open servers, your plugin goes further than any ideas I'd dreamt up.I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

 

Admins can set a maximum number of collisions during the first lap over which the race should auto-restart.
If the race starts over, then there is a new fee to pay even though the race entry fee is generally low (this is made to responsibilize drivers or they'll just do it again).
I understand that it can be annoying for those who had a clean start (that happens to me too) but generally, if there are many collisions in a single lap, people in the midpack are playing wreckfest and the race quickly deteriorates (that is to say that there will be many people around that are frustrated and a lap back which is a special recipe for more carnage).
If you believe the collision number is too low, you can ask the admin to rise the KMR race autorestart setting even though I think that allowing such dirty racing to happen in the first lap backfires quickly.
About people leaving the server, you also need to consider the drivers quality not only the quantity. You will not be able to get proper racing in a server where people do more than 40 collisions the first lap.

 

Normal entry speed is well over 120km/h. If you look correctly i got speed over 10km/h down below normal cornering speed before actually making contact. Also, would YOU overtake a most likely totally new guy on the outside? In 98% of cases they go wide every single corner..... not a logical solution.

The problem is, you do not know what guy/girl is going to do. Usually i get it correct, this youtube is perfect example of someone i was unable to judge what he would be going to do now. Actually he was more or less stopping in corner entry. Well... i did not expect that

You cannot wait two corners, since you loose about 10 seconds in two corners which such people..(yes they are that slow).If you check carefully, i gained over 4 seconds on well... actually not even one corner since the rest is simply flat out. One other factor.. when you are right behind, you get stuck since they swerve and go flat out on corner exit making it very difficult to pass clean without collisions, since you cannot know when they hit the accelerator. They usually use TC so they do not spin out on bad driving.

Imagine a driver behind you at nearly same speed.. you build 3 second lead in 6 laps and then..... such guy comes a long....... only to avoid is going to full stop, that is simply not going to happen when you are racing, you will try to pass at the very first opportunity as fast as possible.

 

Thank you, I see the sense of that.

The problem in this instance was that it was mainly the clean racers that lost patience and left. So from what had looked like it could be an interesting race where about eight drivers had competitive qualifying times, only two of us stayed for the third restart, and it more or less became a hotlapping session.

Would it be too harsh if the driver(s) responsible for the lap 1 wreckfest were kicked, not only fined? At least then it would seem more worthwhile for the drivers still on the server in terms of the chances of the next restart being more succesful?

 

KMR isnt able to establish responsibility for the crash (neither is MR).
Who should get kick if the guilty party cant be identified?
At this stage only a human can determine who was the guilty party

 

To clarify: I saw in the chat window that 'driver XYZ was fined $$$ for first lap incidents' (or words to that effect). My suggestion was to kick XYZ instead.

 

But it also means that driver ABC (perhaps a completely innocent party who XYZ crashed into) would also be kicked.

 

.....which is exactly what happened to me on that BMW M235i R server. That is not a KMR server, but it illustrates the problem when setting penalty/kick options.

 

As others said kicking right away would be risky without assessing the responsibility of the driver.
However I have an idea about how to deal with collisions and I will start exploring its feasibility next week (I was planning to start working on it today but unfortunately my chinese smartphone didn't react too well to my attempt to unlock its bootloader when I was attempting to fix another issue this morning, normally running just an oem unlock shouldn't really brick the phone but now it's blinking on the no command screen and no keypress combo helps, probably related to the blinking part which looks like a bug loop, shame on me for not resisting the itch to fix the issue in first place).

 

Maybe this example is more clear, the one at SPA if apparently not very obvious:


Guy being lapped is at about 112% of fastest race lap. And actually lapped within 10 laps after race start. The driver at nr 10 position exits T1 so slow, it looks like he is moving over.....
That is why i still hope.. one day.... a ghost car system will be implemented...

 

This one is probably the most common type of incident other then being smashed from behind, certainly I’d say the most common type in league racing. Guy in front was on the racing line and turned in to the apex unaware of anyone around him. One one hand he should have known you were coming, on the other you could have waited till the next corner as you would have been way closer to begin with. He didn’t give any indication at all that he knew you were there. I’ve been on both sides of that type of incident more times then I wish to admit sadly

 

Yes, that happens all too frequently online. You would think that anyone in a race would know to be aware that there are other drivers on the track, but some people seem to be in a kind of "cocoon of invisibility", where other track users simply do not exist. On a side note, I returned to that BMW M235i R server last night, and thankfully managed to avoid getting teleported back to the pits or being kicked. Nevertheless, the standard of driving was generally pretty bad. Ricky appeared for one race, and then decided he had better things to do!

 

Here is a race with AI at Nords over 2 laps, shame they are so slow and predictable making it more like mixed class traffic . In general what I see in MP its lots of people simply over driving at Nords especially, they are not in control and also not very aware of cars around them and this is a track that exposes both poor control and race craft very well. Kunos can program AI to drive considerably better and be more aware then most in a pub server, some say the ai is bad. I think its just slow and too predictable but your likely to get a better race then all but good league fields in MP. Still I would rather race just 1 other good guy then a full field of AI.

If you lose 10 seconds on someone in 1 corner how you possibly cant find a way past cleanly I have no idea, surely anyone I can gain just a couple car lengths on exit is easy pickings. If they are that slow your usually better off not trying to dive bomb them, the reason they are so slow is because they already brake too late. Miss the apex and lose all that time, its impossible to lose even .5 of a second on entry its all lost apex to exit. If someone misses the apex all you need to do is stay behind on the race line, brake earlier, hit the apex and pass them easily on exit.

There are those that are impatient and for some reason seem to believe any slower cars ahead of them must move aside, when its for position there is no such requirement. If its for position and your needing to pass much slower cars why are you so far out of position? if the slow cars are not on the lead lap then they need to not defend the position but its still the car behind needing to do this cleanly. If its for position they have full rights to chose their racing line and you need to find a clean way around them, once overlapped both need to leave racing room but if this takes 1 corner or 10 laps it really doesnt matter. If you dont pass someone clean for position then you should say sorry and let them back past again to redress your error.

No better example can be set by the faster guys then always doing their best to pass all cleanly, its also amazing how much more respect you get from people you dont push off the track at any opportunity. This means they will tend to give you more respect if they see you are about to lap them, make them crash each time you catch them then you really cant expect them to not panic when faster cars approach or even care more then you did last time you passed them. Show others the respect you want them to show you and this means passing everyone as clean as you can. If your real worried about losing time behind slower cars your racing, make sure you out qualify them and they should not be an issue.
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Then how did you possibly get so wise? Maybe your just a natural talent or you just talk a lot of crap you know very little about.

 

@martcerv - could you give details of the aggression and skill levels you had set for the AI please and if you use Content Manager (which everyone should ) the variance of levels as this will put into context "AI being slow"
Salute
Friar

 

AI was 100% with variance of 1 and aggression at 70. Could make them more agressive but they just get in eachothers way more and you can see even in those 2 laps a few of them didnt make it.

CM tended to mess a few things up for me and even though it does more I dont really need the extras it does. The stock launcher is what I mostly uses even though I have the donate version.

 

@Bas B is very good leading & bomb diving blue flaggers driving perfectly on the racing line.

Is it a case of underdriving or overdriving the car?

It's fascinating for sure.