Waiting Game @ CodeMasters - 1st - ?st/nd/rd/th February 2016

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Hi all! There was/is supposed to be released a patch for DiRT Rally today (Monday 1st February), which also will patch up quite a bit of the issues with the RaceNet issues we've had (no car setups, no mechanics etc.). However, if sessions are made before the patch, it will not get fixed.
The plan was for the patch to be released today, but it seems like it's getting postponed. I will make sessions and rallies from the day the patch is released, but for the moment, it seems like we are playing the waiting game!

 

[Mark Sheepwash]

And still no sign of the patch regarding the logging of stage times properly.....
The other annoying thing from a league perspective is if you have a long rally and service is say every 2 stages, you can't save and exit between stages - only once the service is available. You can Alt F4 in between and will resume correctly but it's still pants. I assume we won't see any new content until after the console releases either........

 

[Mark Sheepwash]

Patch 1.03 is now live not many fixes.......

Hello all! At just gone 11am today, we released a patch for DiRT Rally. Here's a rundown of the patch notes:

• Performance when Weather is set to Low should improve.
• Leagues will now use a set of stock engineers. The option to use Career Engineers as an option will be going live on the website later today.
• There are various tweaks and fixes for the audio in Sweden.
• Rallycross tracks have been allocated more memory, to prevent cases where they forget to load.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/310560/announcements/detail/954003998766374214

 

[Mark Sheepwash]

And now they've posted a video for new content in April. No new stages though

 

[Queequeg]

No new stages though

What? The one thing everybody wanted

 

[Arne Dopudja]

If you want to prevent altF4 exploits, best option is to choose SS1 for a checkpoint. It will reser to SS1 no matter where you are.
If you dont use any checkpoints, old system is used.
Why cant they make a system like daily where altf4 means retire, is beyond me.

 

[Mark Sheepwash]

If you want to prevent altF4 exploits, best option is to choose SS1 for a checkpoint. It will reser to SS1 no matter where you are.
If you dont use any checkpoints, old system is used.
Why cant they make a system like daily where altf4 means retire, is beyond me.

Hi mate if you mean having a service at Stage 1 - I've done that and it doesn't make a difference.
If you have a rally and say have a service after 2 stages you can only save and exit at the service point. BUT if you do the first stage, let the system post the time to the leaderboard, wait for it to load the second stage and then Alt F4, when you resume it does start at the correct stage (ie.e at the second stage).
When doing the club or league stages I like to practice each stage individually and then go straight in to do the stage proper - but having to do the Alt F4 thing is a pain but a workaround.
If you have a service after each stage then save and exit is available. But we all want longer rallies and longer service points yeah?

 

[Arne Dopudja]

They added more functions. Service is now separate from setup. What you say with service area save and exit is true but alt f4 is plain cheating. If the league organizer wants you to train stages, they would simply allow stage repeat and you could legally do it. So to counter that, CM added a third option called Checkpoint which acts as a backup restore incase your game crashes or you press alt f4.

My post was aimed at the organizers to save them time for testing. You can put checkpoint on whichever stages you wish and upon alt f4, game returns to the last saved checkpoint.
For super serious league, checkpoint should be only on SS1 as any alt f4 will reset to that stage no matter where you were so you would have to drive everything again just to improve the time on SS10 for instance.
For semi serious leagues, checkpoints can be set on stages with the service areas, so it will effectively save on the last service you did.
Save and exit saves on your current service but even if you alt f4, the save is overwritten with the latest checkpoint.

For my league I do replicas of real WRC events with half the distance and Wales had a portion of 80km without services (8 long stages) and we had to do it in one go. But whoever wanted to play dirty could just alt f4 and get each stage perfectly or stop in the middle and continue the next day. No wonder some of the top guys had no mistakes through the whole season.
Now these days are gone and everyone will have to drive to the service in order to save and exit. I doubt many guys will want to restart to SS1 to sweat like pigs for 2hrs again and make mistakes on different parts and then wish they didnt exploit.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I didn't get these options until now (maybe some cache thingy playing me), we will most certainly use the checkpoints on each stage in the club. Because, well, it's the club. It's supposed to be fun. Of course there might be cheaters somewhere, but let them be asses then. I don't care.
Also, with the error 41 problem still there for some drivers, I'm not sure if one checkpoint only for RDRC is the right way to go either, but that issue, we'll figure out in race control

 

[Arne Dopudja]

For club it would be sensible yes.
RDRC could go with a checkpoint on each service.

I can post my itineraries for the previous season. No sweden and finland yet, but it might be helpful for you as i have put about 1-2hrs in building each rally and then another hour on top to write a "story".

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Arne, have you found any way to get the stage-times out of the results?

 

[Mark Sheepwash]

@Arne Dopudja thanks for that mate wasn't aware of the checkpoint options. Like you say if you have multiple stages without service you have to do them in one hit and like you found others were using the exploit! Though not technically cheating as they were posting times first before Alt F4 and not to re-run stages just doing it to save and exit to practice the next certainly gave a huge benefit and advantage!

@Ole Marius Myrvold for stage times I've knocked up a little spreadsheet - all you have to do is put the first stage time for SS1 in which is the actual time taken and then inputting SS2 and taking SS1 away give's you the actual time taken for SS2. For SS3 it's SS3-SS2 and so on. I can PM you if you want it.
Obviously for about 10 drivers it isn't so bad but a league of around 30-50 will keep you busy

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

@Ole Marius Myrvold for stage times I've knocked up a little spreadsheet - all you have to do is put the first stage time for SS1 in which is the actual time taken and then inputting SS2 and taking SS1 away give's you the actual time taken for SS2. For SS3 it's SS3-SS2 and so on. I can PM you if you want it.
Obviously for about 10 drivers it isn't so bad but a league of around 30-50 will keep you busy

You might get a PM But 50? I honestly hope for 70+ drivers

 

[Arne Dopudja]

Sadly the only way is the painfull deduction way... pretty sad.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

well, one could spread the pain / joy / workload and hand copies of the spreadsheet to 12 reliable players and have each one do one stage, then pass it on to the next one. Everything beyond 25 results or so really is a pain to do twice over let alone three times, it will kill all the fun for the chap organizing the roadshow.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

also, mark produced a great roadbook for our little six-player tournament, maybe that could be taken up as an idea, too, it's really useful to prepare for an event (mentally or doing virtual practice)

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

also, mark produced a great roadbook for our little six-player tournament, maybe that could be taken up as an idea, too, it's really useful to prepare for an event (mentally or doing virtual practice)

Already got that, and other stuff from other people on PM Had so much tips, guiding, help etc. already that it's unreal!

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

C-O-M-M-U-N-I-T-Y


from time to time this word comes out of fashion, only to bounce back younger than ever.