58 replies to this topic

[Lee200]

twinpotter, on May 26 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

If there is more stuff to come from Lee?
I would love to see something along the lines of pit repairs.I know this could be hard to do and maybe impossible,but what a buzzzz that would be.

This was discussed by the patch test team.

Currently, the patch does not do any repairs.  I've spend many hours (well actually several days) examining how repairs could be done and so far I've failed to be able to do major repairs.  I can replace tires and reset the tire temps to ambient, but that's about it without doing a complete ShittR reset which is unrealistic.  it wasn't until the early 1970s that tire changes were more common as the rubber became more soft.  So for our current mods, there really isn't any need from a historical perspective to do tire replacement.

In reality, except perhaps for the '67 Sports Cars, mechanics in '60s couldn't do much other than change the tires during a race.  So having the pitstop patch do repairs isn't all that big a deal.

Now for the future '55 F1 mod where brake fade/failure was a big deal, I can easily add brake repairs to the pitstop patch as I'm the guy who wrote the brake fade patch.  

If we should ever have a '70s mod where tire wear perhaps was also a big deal, I can do tire changes too.

Edited by Lee200, May 26 2014 - 05:24 PM.

[Clutch]

Thanks for this Lee & the Team

Will gladly add this to the 67 Sports cars when i'm next on track.

Weve had so many new tracks recently (all very much appreciated) that its great to get a couple of new utilities in the form of the Weather Patch and this new pit stop patch to add a new dimension to the game! All very welcome and helps keep the Sim alive.

(Set-Up Manager is still a brilliant piece of work too Lee, so thanks for that whilst I'm at it)

[twinpotter]

Thank you Lee for coming back with the clarification and info.
I realise the pit stop repair patch would be not only hard to complete but a little unrealistic for some parts of gpl.

[Lee200]

I'm glad everyone is finding the pitstop patch to be fun.  Yes, I realize that pitstops weren't routine for F1 races in the '60s and that our '67 Sports Car mod is really the only one where pitstops were historically accurate, but the patch is designed for all mods and hopefully will spice up everyone's races a bit.

For leagues, one idea mentioned by one of the testers was that the league administrator could require at least one pit stop during a race even though the cars have enough fuel capacity to finish a full length race.  Again, this is just for fun.

Offline, the AI have bugs which make their refueling somewhat erratic.  For the original gpl.exe and for mods that take AI fuel consumption and tank capacity into account (such as the '67 Sports Cars and '71 CanAms), the AI don't normally need to stop for fuel as they are designed to finish a long race.  For the other mods, IF the AI start to run out of fuel, they will make a pitstop.  However, there is a bug in the code and the AI sometimes don't take on enough fuel to finish the race so they often have to pit again.  Currently, there is no fix for the weird behavior.

Edited by Lee200, May 27 2014 - 03:12 PM.

[Pavel]

Lee200, on May 27 2014 - 03:11 PM, said:

Offline, the AI have bugs which make their refueling somewhat erratic.  For the original gpl.exe and for mods that take AI fuel consumption and tank capacity into account (such as the '67 Sports Cars and '71 CanAms), the AI don't normally need to stop for fuel as they are designed to finish a long race.  For the other mods, IF the AI start to run out of fuel, they will make a pitstop.  However, there is a bug in the code and the AI sometimes don't take on enough fuel to finish the race so they often have to pit again.  Currently, there is no fix for the weird behavior.

Hmm... I always think it happens because track.ini has 'tight' fuel consumption values. During pitstop AI car take fuel to make last couple of laps. But before starting final lap AI car has only fuel to make one lap (till the finish line) so it goes to pits again on final lap. I think it could be fixed with slightly increased fuel values in track.ini. But I never experimented with AI pit stops because my car couldn't make pit stop. But now it make sense to try.

Edited by Pavel, May 27 2014 - 11:52 PM.

[Lee200]

Pavel, on May 27 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

I think it could be fixed with slightly increased fuel values in track.ini. But I never experimented with AI pit stops because my car couldn't make pit stop. But now it make sense to try.

Yes.  It will take some trial and error for each mod and track, but it should be possible to cause the AI to pit by adjusting the track.ini (or mod specific track.ini) file fuel load settings.

Pavel understands this already, but just for every one else's info, here is how the AI fueling works.

1.  The AI use the same fuel consumption that the player car does.  It is based on the amount of horsepower used per unit time.  It has nothing to do with car weight, but typically the heavier cars have bigger engines anyway so they need more fuel.

2.  The AI fuel loads are complicated.  First, there is no limit on how much fuel they can load.  So you can load them up with thousands of liters, but of course that will make them so heavy that they will be too slow.  The secret is to give them just enough fuel, but not too much.

3.  In the track.ini file are the fuel load settings for the seven original cars in units of liters per lap.  These settings are used for those mods that only have seven cars such as the '67s, '65s, and '69s.

If the mod has more than seven cars, each car can have it's own setting too as the '67 Sports Cars have at all the championship tracks.

If a car doesn't have a fuel setting for it in the track.ini file, then its fuel load is based on the Brabham fuel load.  This happens at all tracks that don't have specific fuel loads for the '66 F1s and '67 Sports Cars and '71 CanAms.  Inside the physics are multipliers for each car that are applied to the Brabham fuel load.  These multipliers were designed to ensure that the car will have enough fuel to finish the specified length race at all tracks.  There may be some tracks where this doesn't quite work out, but it usually works very well.  So...if you want to adjust the fuel loads for these mod cars at these tracks, you only have to adjust the Brabham fuel load setting.

Edited by Lee200, May 28 2014 - 06:36 AM.

[jgf]

Very interesting.  Thanks, Lee.  One question - when running a less than full length race, do the AI start with proportionally less fuel or, as in Sierra's NASCAR sims, do they always start with full tanks no matter the race length?

[Saiph]

This patch is great fun if you want to add a bit of variety into your races. It really is the pits!

[Lee200]

jgf, on May 28 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

Very interesting.  Thanks, Lee.  One question - when running a less than full length race, do the AI start with proportionally less fuel or, as in Sierra's NASCAR sims, do they always start with full tanks no matter the race length?

The AI are refueled in proportion to the selected race length.

[Arturo Pereira]

Amazing stuff as usual!! Thank you very much, Lee!!

[Alter]

Hello racers!
Downloaded the final version. Just wondering how I can remove the Beta Version of the patch. Deleting the xml in gem/.../options and deleting and rebuilding gplxx via GEM did not work.

Edited by Alter, May 29 2014 - 10:16 AM.

[ginetto]

Maybe you put a version in GPL/Mods/GEM+/gplxx/... too.
Do a search in explorer to be sure.

[Robert Fleurke]

Have yet to check it out, but thanks Lee and beta-test team! I'm sure we will use it in some testraces, maybe together with the weather patch in some leagues....

PS: as someone mentioned before in this thread, GPL Setup Manager is really a great tool for me....can't say enough about it!

[PHI52]

Great job Lee, Thank you

[ReneLotus]

This patch is fantastic. It adds another dimension to the long SC races.
I tried it out at Le Mans today and added some laps to the normal race length. Then I ran into a little problem.

I pitted on lap 30, but because the throttle is disabled, I couldn't move. If you stand still for a while, GPL automatically retires your car.
Does this always happen after a specific amount of time or is it something that could be edited in the patch?

Otherwise I'll just have to make a few more stops during the race to avoid this little issue