Batumi Air Racing

[Nate--IRL--]

 

I had wanted to do some Air racing missions for MP for DCS:-Mustang but I could never get it to work properly, I am hopeless at mission building - so I'm handing it over to the more talented among you to have a go at getting them Working.

 

Note there are Air Racing cones in the works - but you can't add them in yet.

 

Attached are 3 missions

Batumi Air Racing MP - 5x P-51 .miz

Batumi Air Racing MP - 5x P-51 RPM Test .miz and

Batumi Air Racing MP - 7x P-51 .miz

 

The 5 slot missions are a basic track - the first corner of which is a Max G turn that will weed out the less skilful flyers. I have attempted to punish cheating, but not successfully. I've tried docking a lap or reducing the engine RPM as penalties but the implementation is not good.

 

The 7 Slot Mission is a longer track with a loop that will provide for humorous collisions :)

 

There are triggers to reset lap counters to restart races. The triggers are main problem with the Docking Lap penalties - in that the race can be started over and over erratically - This was the reason to try reducing Engine RPM as a penalty - however I could not get this to work for all client in MP.

 

Nate

Batumi Air Racing MP.rar

Edited April 30, 2012 by Nate--IRL--

[Grimes]

Heh, too late to twiddle with it now, but I'll take a more thorough look at it later. But the penalty zones would be WAY easier to implement if we could have rectangular zones... wink wink nudge nudge.

[_Heater_]

fantastic mission, well done Nate ;)

[6S.Duke]

Thank you Nate! :)

[Grimes]

Nate, I've gone under the hood and made some tweaks.

 

Instead of checking dozens of zones for whether or not a player is trying to cheat via shortcuts, I've strategically placed a few zones that act as checkpoints, which the player must pass through sequentially in order for the gate to "count." Currently the penalty for missing a gate is that the player will be forced to turn around and go through the missed gate. However I could easily make it any number of things.

 

I'm still messing with the mission, but I'll upload once I think it works. A problem is I don't have P-51 yet so its impossible to test with AI and just annoying to test with the Toad.

[Double_D]

Nate, I've gone under the hood and made some tweaks.

 

Instead of checking dozens of zones for whether or not a player is trying to cheat via shortcuts, I've strategically placed a few zones that act as checkpoints, which the player must pass through sequentially in order for the gate to "count." Currently the penalty for missing a gate is that the player will be forced to turn around and go through the missed gate. However I could easily make it any number of things.

 

I'm still messing with the mission, but I'll upload once I think it works. A problem is I don't have P-51 yet so its impossible to test with AI and just annoying to test with the Toad.

 

Time penalty count for missing a gate comes to mind..:music_whistling:

[Nate--IRL--]

Nate, I've gone under the hood and made some tweaks.

 

Instead of checking dozens of zones for whether or not a player is trying to cheat via shortcuts, I've strategically placed a few zones that act as checkpoints, which the player must pass through sequentially in order for the gate to "count." Currently the penalty for missing a gate is that the player will be forced to turn around and go through the missed gate. However I could easily make it any number of things.

 

I'm still messing with the mission, but I'll upload once I think it works. A problem is I don't have P-51 yet so its impossible to test with AI and just annoying to test with the Toad.

 

Yep that actually makes more sense than my design. Oh and yeah, the P-51 is te only aircraft nimble enough for this course.

 

Time penalty count for missing a gate comes to mind..:music_whistling:

 

Time penalty to what - there is no timer.

 

Nate

[nemises]

well...you can use triggers and flags to build a logical timer...though it'll only be accurate to the evaluation frequency of the "timeSince" trigger...

 

still, can be done

 

...I built a clock in DCS once using a truck driving in a circuit through a trigger zone repeatedly ;)

[Nate--IRL--]

Cool stuff - as I said I'm very inexperienced in mission building - maybe it'd be worth asking Speed for some scripting assistance?

 

Nate

[leafer]

haha. This gonna get very interesting. Perhaps ED should have an option to disable guns? Some people might start shooting to get ahead. :D

[cichlidfan]

haha. This gonna get very interesting. Perhaps ED should have an option to disable guns? Some people might start shooting to get ahead. :D

 

If a mission can force the civilian check box, then you are all set.

[Grimes]

well...you can use triggers and flags to build a logical timer...though it'll only be accurate to the evaluation frequency of the "timeSince" trigger...

 

still, can be done

 

...I built a clock in DCS once using a truck driving in a circuit through a trigger zone repeatedly ;)

 

Actually I was thinking of using a continuous trigger with the action of "Flag x increase 1" as a stopwatch and then reset it to 0 and add 1 to another counter every 60 seconds. At the end of the race I'd do some flag comparisons to figure out who had the fastest overall time with penalties included. However I am a little reluctant to try it out because there could be issues with running triggers concurrently like that.

 

If a mission can force the civilian check box, then you are all set.

 

It appears to be forced as part of the payload screen, which can't be changed.

[Druid_]

Why not add a penalty gate at end of starting straight that adds say 10 secs to a lap. & if you miss more than 2 gates in 1 lap then penalty is 1 extra lap. Just a suggestion.

 

There is a lua time function you can use if necessary. In fact it would be useful for things like fastest lap, fastest overall & average lap speed.

 

(Must try and get to Reno this September. Hope the FAA/NTSB don't dumb it down too much.)

[EvilBivol-1]

For precise timing I think some kind of lua export data would need to be used. Triggers are checked discreetly at a certain frequency and events that are very short-lived may not be registered quickly enough for exact results.

[Double_D]

Yep that actually makes more sense than my design. Oh and yeah, the P-51 is te only aircraft nimble enough for this course.

 

 

 

Time penalty to what - there is no timer.

 

Nate

 

for example in FSX its a timed race ...and time is either added/removed for missing a pylon...

[Nate--IRL--]

for example in FSX its a timed race ...and time is either added/removed for missing a pylon...

 

I get you - but there is not currently an easy way to implement this in DCS. It will require some work as Evil has eluded to above.

 

Nate

[Double_D]

I get you - but there is not currently an easy way to implement this in DCS. It will require some work as Evil has eluded to above.

 

Nate

 

Cool..would be nice though..I am sure in time someone will come up with something...:thumbup:

[Grimes]

Changed my approach yet again for how I could set this up to account for time penalties. Simply put, there is a precise number of pylons that must be passed through during the race by each player. Each time a player passes through a pylon is subtracts 1 from this total. At the end of the race it checks to make sure you have the right value. If you passed through too many or too few pylons it will asses a time penalty per pylon. If you finished first but with penalties the other players will have to finish before your penalty time is added in order to win the race. I've yet to think about assigning positions for 1st, 2nd, and so on, so its a winner take all at the moment. For example if P1 misses 4 pylons but finishes first and each penalty hit is 5 seconds, P2 will have 20 seconds to get to the finish line before the penalty is accounted for in order to win.

[Grimes]

Alright, I think I got my idea implemented enough for testing. All 5 aircraft should work. Although the player 1 aircraft will have signal flares launch from it every time a penalty is assessed. Everything should work in theory, but my lack of actually owning P-51 is preventing me from putting it into practice.

 

Right now the penalty is 5 seconds for every pylon you miss. The penalty can be easily adjusted as needed. If anyone tests this please try to test the following scenarios:

1. Flying the course perfectly

2. Taking a shortcut or 2

3. Passing through any pylon more than once a lap.

 

You must pass through the "race reset" button for additional races.

 

Nate, if this works out well it will be pretty easy to add additional pylons and only be slightly tedious to add additional aircraft slots. :)

Batumi Air Racing MP_test001.miz

[Druid_]

The only problem I can see Grimes (can't test as haven't DL'd P51) is that its possible to activate the gate triggers without actually going through the gates. For example the tight left hander at 2c could be activated but fly wide right of gate, same again with the right hander at 3a.

 

The only non-lua solution I can think of entails bigger diameter gate_hit trigger zones plus smaller gate_miss trigger zones either side. This means much more trigger checking of course, but hey in the name of accuracy and all that :)

[Nate--IRL--]

The only problem I can see Grimes (can't test as haven't DL'd P51) is that its possible to activate the gate triggers without actually going through the gates. For example the tight left hander at 2c could be activated but fly wide right of gate, same again with the right hander at 3a.

 

The only non-lua solution I can think of entails bigger diameter gate_hit trigger zones plus smaller gate_miss trigger zones either side. This means much more trigger checking of course, but hey in the name of accuracy and all that :)

 

Note that smaller trigger zones don't work as they are only checked at 1Hz - very easy to fly through and not be in the zone when checked.

 

Nate

[Druid_]

By smaller I meant, smaller than the gate_hit zone which must be made bigger and placed after the gate so that it protrudes out from the gates less (minimising false gate hit in turns). Gate_miss gates around the current size should be about right.

 

EDIT: Just played around with resizing and repositioning trigger hit-zones and I think the accuracy is probably enough without adding trigger miss-zones tbh. Just playing with lua now to add some timing to it.

 

EDIT2: The only way to output Lua timing variables to the screen via messages is through Speeds Slmod at the moment. Done some of the work with this using the Lua timer function but have to ask if its really worth it. Do we want individual race times and/or lap times?

 

Grimes, looking at your triggers. Is it possible to hit the same gate twice and miss one gate later on without penalty? I'm just thinking of people going around if they miss a gate and hit other triggers in the process.

Edited May 2, 2012 by Druid_

[Grimes]

Grimes, looking at your triggers. Is it possible to hit the same gate twice and miss one gate later on without penalty? I'm just thinking of people going around if they miss a gate and hit other triggers in the process.

 

Yes but I would think that the self imposed time penalty of having to fly off the course in order to do so might possibly be self correcting. However it would be simple to add in extra zones to assess going majorly off course or to check if they went through a gatezone but missed the actual gate itself. Could possibly introduce altitude penalties for if the player gets too low or too high.

 

Anyone get a chance to test it?

[Druid_]

Yes but I would think that the self imposed time penalty of having to fly off the course in order to do so might possibly be self correcting. However it would be simple to add in extra zones to assess going majorly off course or to check if they went through a gatezone but missed the actual gate itself. Could possibly introduce altitude penalties for if the player gets too low or too high.

 

Anyone get a chance to test it?

I think it would depend on the layout of the course. I was wondering if it might be worth checking that they go through each gate in order. Missing a gate can then display a message "gate x missed, 10 sec penalty" or whatever. I was toying with adding each players lap times/ fastest lap times / race time & fastest race time but it means changing the way you have done the triggers.

 

I don't like the idea of height penalties as going high or diving low is part of the tactics. It also adds the vertical element to the race. Maybe have certain gates with a height restriction to provide some close proximity excitement?

[Spetz]

haha. This gonna get very interesting. Perhaps ED should have an option to disable guns? Some people might start shooting to get ahead. :D

 

I haven't checked, but is there a failure setting that can affect the guns? If so, just have that failure start at 00:00.