Possible Rule Changes?
4 years ago
Florida, USA

Hey all,

New mod/overlord here. I bothered Ewil enough about making the console versions of TD6 viable to run that he's letting me moderate the game. There's a few things I wanna clarify, change and polish including rules and timing.

Both of the console versions of TD6 are very similar to the PC version, but have minor differences (Max bets, night racing) and also experience slowdown on real hardware. My in-game time for my any% run is 1:22 but the realtime is 2:25 because the slowdown means that in some places, 3-seconds take place before the ingame timer counts up 1second. The car is, of course, moving slower as well, but it's not viable to have them on the same board.

Seeing as there's a couple of semi-recent runs I wanted to see how the community feels about a couple of changes I'd like to make.

For one, would the PC guys be open to timing by IGT? This would be an easy thing to go back and change as TD6 actually adds up IGT for you at the end of each tournament. So it would take me maybe 10 minutes to retime existing runs. The downside of this is that it does take away the element of speedy menuing. The upside is that it might let people get faster times through upgrading, and also allows for easier breaks if someone ever wanted to attempt a 100% run (I might do so, soon)

Second order of business: In game settings. There are currently no rules dictating what ingame settings runners may use. There is a game difficulty setting, a traffic on/off setting and a cops on/off setting. I know traffic and cops get everyone, but I'm wondering if people would like to make them optional. Game set to no traffic/cops would allow for more pure driving skill to come through. However, players looking for the best routing for 100% runs might find that leaving police and traffic on creates more obstacles for the rubberbanding AI to crash into and make them more money, allowing for interesting tournament routing as you'd be able to skip around the way the current WR does in new ways.

I intend to make the game difficulty setting up to the user as "any%" just implies "beat the game" and doesn't have a difficulty attached to it.

Now, third order of business: ILs. Do we want to separate console/PC ILs? I believe that the in-game timer is more or less fair to both parties given that I beat or came close to many WRs held by wacfwaef during my PS1 run but also had trouble on other ones. That said, the PS1/DC do have slowdown which makes it possible to adjust in some places. It's up to you guys whether we split them or not- I'd prefer to leave them all together as the game is already small.

Let me know what y'all think!

Edit: I have also added a couple of categories. All Challenges will be what it sounds like and has categories for each class of car. Cop Chase has subcategories for Stop the Racer, Stop the Bomber and 100% runs. These are PC only for the time being because of the lack of in-game timer in these modes.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
wacfwaef likes this
Portugal

I did a 100% run but I fucked up on recording, it was just streamed on twitch

Florida, USA

Is there a vod?

Louisiana, USA

Hi kacey,

In 2011, I guess you could say I hacked the PC version of Test Drive 6. I made the racer cars impact resistant (so cops/traffic is not an issue anymore . . . they can be there or not be there, it makes no major difference), increased the acceleration, maximum speed, inertia, road grip, etc., to enable a player to experience this game (in the PC version, at least) on a whole new level. I have two example (single track) runs to provide. They are in the new version of this game (Test Drive Remastered).

Newcastle FWD (best lap 22.56 seconds, best 3 lap time 1:11:00)

EDIT: (The sound somehow got offset from the video, so I decided to imbed my current best time in this track . . . ) Hong Kong FWD (1:03:03)

These are the only videos I have uploaded which show me using my hack (and I have NEVER seen anyone else do this before); you can see a more complete list of the times I achieved in Test Drive 6 (the original game) with this hack in a table format at r/speedrun. https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/dil5g5/test_drive_6_remastered_hong_kong_fwd_track_in/

As you can see from my best times WITHOUT the hack, I am (I guess I could say "was", as these times were from 2011) good at this game. All of those times were achieved in HARD difficulty with traffic and cop cars ON. (That's why I got fed up with it enough to become desperate enough to find a way to make the cars impact resistant.)

I think that since "Test Drive 6 Remastered" PC version is free, I feel that old fans of Test Drive 6 may find my PC hack to provide a new experience in the game. As opposed to the Nitro Oxide boost (and related?) cheatcodes, my hack provides enhancement in all areas of the cars' capabilities. This allows more CONTROLLED and balanced supercharged cars.

So what I am saying is, if there could be a new column for time records in which "anything goes", then it might bring in more competitors. We can in effect advertise "Test Drive 6" to younger gamers and regain the interest of gamers who were around when Test Drive 6 came out.

You don't have to allow this, but I just want to let more people know that racing at ridiculous speeds can actually become an art -- not just pure chaos.

I don't "expect" a decision on this immediately. I am mainly making this post to let you (and the other gamers) know that this hack exists. I will let you all decide what you wish to do (or not do) with it. In that regard, I can provide you with more details about the hack later, if you are interested to try it out yourselves.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Kacey likes this
Florida, USA

Interesting read. I'l look into it a bit more next time I sit down to do speedrun things, but I've been on a bit of a hiatus.

Louisiana, USA

Oh, I can understand that! Take your time! Two weeks after I wrote that, I uploaded a video with me racing in England FWD (youtube.com/watch?v=bvPDWaOA8H8) (AVERAGE speed was 275 MPH, my personal best) and "stopping the racers" cop chase (youtube.com/watch?v=DWeQ09u0E0M) (nothing special except that all 5 racers and I had supercharged cars, but you can guess that since I made ALL cars impact resistant --at least towards the traffic and traffic cop cars-- putting this spin on the game makes stopping the racers a different challenge).

Italy

Hi Kacey, can you add at the runs: difficulty, traffic and police settings?

EDIT: also with/without upgrades

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Louisiana, USA

[quote=AQLGamers]Hi Kacey, can you add at the runs: difficulty, traffic and police settings?[/quote]Due to video editing, there is no way that a mod can verify with utmost certainty of all of the settings. It's not that they mistrust you (by default), but there are a number of reasons why it's impractical.

I don't think there is a way to differentiate whether:

  • Traffic is CLASSIC or AVOID. Only if it's ON or OFF (which only applies in the PRACTICE menu).
  • Difficulty in tracks without traffic cars (Pelton Raceway, Ireland, etc.) is EASY, MODERATE, or HARD -- because the way this game works, the better you race, the better the CPU racers are, period.
  • Difficulty in tracks with traffic cars (Paris, Rome, etc.) is MODERATE or HARD -- because I doubt the mods want to memorize how many cop cars are in a track for the respective difficulties and quantity of traffic cars, of course. (As I said above, difficulty really doesn't affect CPU racer performance in the bigger picture.)

Therefore, it would seem that if they wanted to add new columns ("Individual level categories") (OR simply make more non-sub category variables) regarding difficulty, traffic, and cop settings, it would be for:

  • Difficulty: EASY or HARD (including moderate would be overkill . . . most people who want to compete will ignore moderate difficulty, just as most people are pretty much ignoring all classes of cars except for Class 4 on this speedrun page). Applies to RACE MENU and PRACTICE MENU tracks (only for starting position and # of cops and traffic cars -- if traffic and cops are ON, of course).
  • Traffic: ON or OFF. Only applies to PRACTICE MENU tracks.
  • Cops: ON or OFF. Only applies to PRACTICE MENU tracks.

But I think it's more important that: There should be an "Individual level category" for FORWARD and BACKWARD tracks, rather than having that as a sub-category variable. Reason: Obvious, currently people have less motivation to submit BACKWARD runs, because they are not seen on the View All Individual Level Leaderboard.

I think the mods don't have the time to verify the Difficulty, Traffic, and Cops settings for this specific game -- which I believe is the reason why this hasn't been implemented into this game's leaderboards. (I mean, why else is there the ONE explicitly expressed rule that in the case of circuits, the best lap counts, rather than them having a variable for "Best Lap Time" and a variable for "Total Time" for circuits -- and why they accept a recording of just one lap in the circuits as well.)

But I believe the following procedure can be followed to separate Forward from Backward tracks, as they are technically DIFFERENT tracks, as far as speedrunning is concerned.

[Center]Individual Level Leaderboard[/Center] (Do the actions in the following order to avoid losing previous run submissions.)

To save typing and reading effort, let:

  • Individual level category be abbreviated as ILC

  • Navigate to the Variables tab under Edit game.

  • Edit the variable whose values are Forward and Backward (by clicking on the top-right vertical ellipses symbol) and the variable whose values are Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4 and make sure their Category is set to "All Categories". (Obviously their Level is already set to "All levels".)

  • It looks like In-game time is set to every category in the game (including Any%'s), so obviously that (variable?) is fine.

  • Uncheck "Use as a sub-category" for the variable whose values is Forward and Backward.

  • Navigate to the Categories tab under Edit game.

  • Rename the (only) ILC that you all have from "Best Time" to "Forward", "FWD", "Forward tracks", "Forward Direction", or "FWD Direction", etc.

  • Add a new ILC with the same title, but with "Backward" or "BWD".

  • Edit all runs in the leaderboard in the "Forward" ILC which are Backward runs. Simply click the first (Category) drop-down and select the "Backward" category that now has been added. This will successfully transfer a run from the "Forward" ILC to the "Backward" ILC. No data (like date submitted, who submitted, who verified, and when it was verified), will be changed/lost.

(NOTE: This will have to be done for all Obsolete runs as well, so that they don't appear. So there are of course more runs than initially expected to transfer!)

*Lastly, uncheck the Forward value (under the variable which has it and Backward as values) as the default value (so that there is NO default value selected).

  • Delete that variable. (Which also deletes its two values, Forward and Backward.)

  • CHECKPOINT So now there are two ILCs (two columns) on the View all ILC leaderboard, where each row header is still the track name. So we have an (18 row)x(3 column) "table".

[quote=AQLGamers]EDIT: also with/without upgrades[/quote]I agree with this (for those who are really passionate about this game would appreciate measuring skill levels with EVERY type of condition this game has to offer -- but where do the mods draw the line? I mean, you could even make a drop-down in the run submission for which cop car did they use in a cop chase!), but considering that with the exception of the Egypt track, no one else (besides me) has submitted runs in tracks which can only be raced in the practice menu (e.g., Switzerland for Class 4), I think it's not needed.

But I think if this With/Without upgrades feature were to be implemented, it would have to be implemented in EVERY individual level (track name) SEPARATELY. So that the user cannot possibly select "With upgrades" from a track which can only be accessed from the PRACTICE menu (which is of course doesn't allow upgrades).

And I know it might "give away the secret", but maybe it should be that a user is required to show the upgrade level purchased and/or adjustments of those upgrades? (For the main purpose of other users who suspect others of cheating/hacking the game a chance to see if it is actually possible to achieve the time that they did?)

Speaking of which:

I'm still in favor of a column (or two columns, if Forward and Backward are separated) for a WITH HACK section! (Because, again, it's an entirely new gaming experience with this game and could help it regain popularity.) (If this was implemented, the variable whose values are Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, Class 4 would not apply, because cars from ANY class can be hacked to outperform a fully upgraded Class 4 car any day of the week. So perhaps the HACK can be implemented simply by adding a value named "Class 5", "Class X", or "Hacked Car" to the list of values under the already-existing car class variable.

(After my previous post, I of course (for those who search YouTube for Test Drive 6 videos often enough) did England FWD and Paris FWD!)

England FWD

Paris FWD

**Hong Kong FWD

(And I didn't upload a video of it, but I got a new best lap of 21.83 in Newcastle FWD!).

(And of course, I am playing in the Test Drive 6 - Remastered mod with these runs, so maybe (since that is gaining popularity), the mods should allow submissions of both, but the user would be required to select if it was in the original version or remastered version -- make that a variable on the leaderboards.)

Edited by the author 3 years ago
AQLGamers likes this
Italy

In Tournament 100% and Any% will be cool adding difficulty and with/without upgrades variables. In next days I will do run on Hard difficulty, classic traffic, without upgrades.

Personally, i don't like the "remastered" version of TD6.