Project Cars Stoopid Challenges

[mark7389]

rex said:

Finally managed to get a few laps in at Monza. My implant course is taking up a lot of time with reading. Happy to see that not too rusty and close to the quicker guys.

Mark. Are the handicaps going to be adjusted after each round. There still killing me.

Yup the handicaps will be adjusted as each trial finishes, so those of you who have put in times for future races, that's cool, but the time may adjust as the handicap gets amended after the previous trial finishes. Keeping up with all this, there'll be a test later......

[mark7389]

xjay1337 said:

I'm defo going to get on it tonight for a little bit.

As a request could the minimum round length be changed to say 10 days rather than 7 days? I struggle to get on with my new job...

It's a tricky one, 2 weeks seems too long, 1 week can make it feel like a bit of a drudge, and I like to finish it on the same day every week so everyone knows what the score is.

Let's stick with 1 week for this championship and we can have a 1 week or 2 week vote for the next one.

[mark7389]

xjay1337 said:

Done some laps.

Have to admit, the handicap needs sorting to make it more even for the faster and slower 20%. I'm sure the 80% in the middle is fine.

It's kind of swings and roundabouts, if you have a bad race then you don't get many points for that race but your handicap goes up for the following race. I've tried to dampen out the oscillation (do you like that, sounds like I know what I'm talking about) by discounting the 2 worst results but there's always going to be the possibility of a freak result.

For example if someone turns up and just does a token lap or two in one race (might hate the car or the track) and then for the next race puts in 50 laps they may end up 5 seconds ahead of everyone.

Overall, to win the much-prized virtual gold championship cup, consistency is the key :-)

[mark7389]

OK, so there may be a problem in paradise.

In theory, the only reason it wouldn't send a lap:-

1) Can't connect, either your broadband or my broadband. I've turned on a monitor that sees if I drop any packets at my end. Possible.
2) You're in the wrong car and on the wrong track. N/A, big red cross in the corner that you would have noticed and it wouldn't have sent the first lap.
3) Driving aids. I can't actually tell if you have an aid on or off, I can only tell from the data if it kicks in. So if any aid that you're not meant to have on triggers even for a millisecond then the lap doesn't get sent. Seems to be happening to too may people for this to be an option.
4) Something wrong with the code, most likely option, but also the trickiest to resolve.

So, we're into troubleshooting mode, and I need clues.....

Clue 1 :- Sends lap 1 and then subsequent laps fail to send

Any extra information anyone can give would be appreciated, especially the message on hover over the failed to send icon.

[mark7389]

OK, sorry about this, I'll have to look at the code, if nothing else I'll add some more meaningful text on that hover so that we can get a bit more of a clue what is going on

[mark7389]

xjay1337 said:

Technical terms, sign of a true techie

I just find it a bit of a hard pill to swallow when I set a good time but the "handicapped" time is totally unreachable - 3 or 4 seconds faster than the best time set!

Regarding the technical issues, I think looking at the PC Lap Updater it said that TC was available however it appears that it isn't?
I have no idea but my Updater has been working fine.
However I don't set the aids to real, due to my own racing preferences, I manually set everything to off.

I know what you mean, it's a bit of a different approach with this. If everyone was putting 100% effort into every race then the maths says that everyone should be dead level (barring a small multiplier being applied to give a slight advantage to the faster drivers). However in real life that doesn't happen, people might hate a car, have a busy weekend and only be able to put in a couple of laps, etc, etc and that leads to pretty much every race there being at least one driver that's a bit out of whack.

Don't forget you can always toggle the handicap off to give you that warm, fuzzy feeling.

I might give some thought to having 2 parallel championships, one with handicap on and one with it off. My only concern, is that would devalue the handicap championship and from a personal point of view, I enjoy being in the mix for the championship even though I'm certainly not the quickest.

[mark7389]

This is data for Matt S. You can see in the last race he way outperformed his average by a good 3%, and gave everyone a good kicking. However his handicap now drops from 3.6% to 2.6%, so he should be brought a bit more back into the fold

[mark7389]

I'm thinking that the problems we had over the last week with laps not sending were related to driver aids. I couldn't find anything specifically wrong with the code, but I've re-written it anyway. It may be to do with that in the past we have had people seeing different aids available under the real setting even though they're in the same car. Anyway in order to make it absolutely clear as to why a lap isn't being sent the aids that have been triggered can now be permanently seen on the screen, not just flashing up intermittently in the speedo area, and we'll have more info to go on if a lap isn't sent.

New version of PCLapUpdater should install when you next open it up.

[mark7389]

born2bslow said:

I'm having my usual install issue, tried deleting deployment file and removing old version but no joy. It keeps saying the temp file that's unpacked is in use...anyone got any ideas?

If it helps, it's not extracting, the deployment folder is empty...

Edited by born2bslow on Thursday 13th April 21:56

I've emailed you a zipped version of the whole program but if I remember rightly from previous times it's more of a windows profile issue and that doesn't help much, but anyway......

[mark7389]

Just for xjay1337, don't say I never do anything for you :-)

We now have a non-handicapped version of the site! Basically everything carries on just as before, but if you so wish you can turn handicapping off under the hamburger icon and it all changes to as if handicaps never existed. The championship becomes based on raw times and there's now 2 congratulatory winner tweets that go out at Wednesday at midnight one for handicap and one for non-handicap.

The setting you pick now sticks so you don't need to keep changing it on login.

Those of you, like me, who like the handicapping system, then it's just as you were.

I should make it clear, everyone is automatically in both championships, it's just 2 different views of the data.

Hope you like it, this should be the best of both worlds.

Edited by mark7389 on Friday 14th April 08:38

[mark7389]

xjay1337 said:

Very impressive Mark
Thanks! Haha :-) about to fire up this morning.

You don't get a virtual gold cup though, because to be honest it's going to be a pain in the arse to sort out, soz about that.......

[mark7389]

xjay1337 said:

Oh, well in that case, I resign!!


Had some issues with the PC Lap Updater App not updating, it went to 100% and then sat there, had to force close, uninstall and re-install.

Also, currently shows my fastest lap in game as a 1.36.454, but on the portal, it's showing 1.36.455

Most likely anti-virus quarantine, let's face it I wouldn't let you run some unheard of executable downloaded from the internet either.

FYI your actual time is 1.36.454590 which should be 1.36.455 to 3dp which is what is showing on the website

[mark7389]

Well 10 out of 10 for effort, 0 out of 10 for talent, 114 freaking laps and still bloody useless, aaaargh

[mark7389]

Northern_Monkey said:

Had planned a session tonight but mind isn't on the job at hand so i'm done for this week - not sure if the handicap is done automatically but no need to change mine based on my limited laps

It's just a press of a button, which I'll do in the morning

[mark7389]

Well, the double tweet for handicapped and non-handicapped worked, but to be honest I might as well have saved myself the bother, as they just said xjay1337 is winning everything.......

Handicaps have been updated and on to race 4 of the championship :-)

[mark7389]

born2bslow said:

Windows repair tool didn't work, currently creating a windows10 installation media thingy to try to repair windows or re-install...

I really don't want to have to nuke my PC...

Run it on your son's pc? Old laptop knocking about? Failing that Windows reset, had to do that loads of times recently until I found out it was a hardware issue, not software

[mark7389]

Getting a bit competitive this one, over 200 laps logged, 0.3 secs separating top 4, and xjay1337 hasn't even turned up yet.

[mark7389]

Derwins Revenge said:

I tried the Audi combo a while back and it didn't really gel. Is it too late to swap? Beamer at Snetterton, Audi at Silverstone would be perfect...

I'm happy to swap but obviously I'll have to clear down all existing laps. Opinions?

[mark7389]

I'll be swapping at about midday today if I haven't heard from anyone that they'll be distraught if their lap time from sessions 35/36 get deleted.

[mark7389]

OK, the majority has spoken and decided that it will be better racing if the cars were swopped for sessions 35 and 36. So any existing laps have been deleted and the cars switched.