I just thought i'd take a few moments to let you know what changes are coming on the X-System.

When Sam is back from holiday on Thursday i'm going to begin the final debug for the crash bug. It's imperative to solve this before moving ahead with any new features on the software, but i'm a bit stuck to debug without Sam because he has the server access to a few things I need to know.

During this debug cycle i'll be removing the report submit button from in game. You still raise your reports on the server and file them, but you will need to log into your MyCTRA page to actually submit it. The hope is that this will encourage a few more of you to check your replays before submission.

I then need to develop a back end feature, to delete old replays that have no report attached.

We'll then be opening the Single Seater 2 server with Fox and Formula Junior (FJR).

Then the next big new feature is coming. We're going to run a weekly competition where everyone gets a chance to compete. Your best 3 race finishing positions on each server will be used to score your weekly cup points, we also hope this will help to populate some of our less used servers. You'll get more points when more people are racing, but in essense these points will be entirely based upon position.

Your points from each server are then added together and each a winner based on your highest licence level is announced. So as I am a Platinum (4), National B (2), and Blue Roof (2) racer my licence level is 4.

Licence Level
0 Copper / Clubman / White Roof
1 Bronze / National B / Yellow Roof
2 Silver / National A / Blue Roof
3 Gold / International B / Red Roof
4 Platinum / International A / Silver Roof
5 Titanium / Super Licence / Gold Roof
6 Unobtanium / ? / ?

With this system everybody has something to race for, and of course, those with disparity in their licences may want to work on unlocking more servers.

After that no major changes are currently planned until phase 2 is started.

I'm thinking of changing the grouping system a little, and instead using a new overall status level 'Group'. Your group would be comprised by adding together all of your three licence points, with B&J licence points divided by four:

pts = ctraLicence + ssLicence + ( bjLicence /4 )

The total of your licence points would then be used to put you into a group

Under 5,000 = Group 1
5,001-10,000 = Group 2
10,001-20,000 = Group 3
20,001-50,000 = Group 4
50,001+ = Group 5

that sounds awesome..........

can you also add a system so that every platinum racer has to drive with a minimum of one flat tyre!

sounds great

Lookin forward to the weekly competitions! That will be fun!!!

Quote from Becky Rose :

I'm thinking of changing the grouping system a little, and instead using a new overall status level 'Group'. Your group would be comprised by adding together all of your three licence points, with B&J licence points divided by four:

pts = ctraLicence + ssLicence + ( bjLicence /4 )

The total of your licence points would then be used to put you into a group

Under 5,000 = Group 1
5,001-10,000 = Group 2
10,001-20,000 = Group 3
20,001-50,000 = Group 4
50,001+ = Group 5

This would be massively biased toward CTRA licence because it has been established for much longer. Have you thought about simply rebasing everyone's points on the three licences to 100 to give a percentage rating? Like this:

Points = (CTRA Lic pts / Best CTRA Lic pts)*100

Repeat for the other 2 categories. That would give an overall score out of 300, or you could weight the groups, so say CTRA is multiplied by 150, SS by 100 and BJ by 50.

Using this you would need to be a front runner in all three categories to be in the highest group, which I think is what you are trying to achieve?

EDIT: Oh yes, and SS 2 opening soon - excellent!

Quote from Becky Rose :

During this debug cycle i'll be removing the report submit button from in game. You still raise your reports on the server and file them, but you will need to log into your MyCTRA page to actually submit it. The hope is that this will encourage a few more of you to check your replays before submission.

I do check the replay before I submit (or not) a report, but it happened once that I couldn't file a report because by the time I tried to do it (4 or 5 hours after the race) the replay had dropped from the bottom of the replays list. So it'd be cool if the replay selection screen had a "Other..." button working like the one for the reported driver, at least as long as the replay still exists in your archives.

Quote from FL!P :

I do check the replay before I submit (or not) a report, but it happened once that I couldn't file a report because by the time I tried to do it (4 or 5 hours after the race) the replay had dropped from the bottom of the replays list. So it'd be cool if the replay selection screen had a "Other..." button working like the one for the reported driver, at least as long as the replay still exists in your archives.

I've just made a change to the way the MyCTRA page lists replays, where you go to edit an unsubmitted report. It now lists all replays in a drop-down list, from the server on which you originally raised the report (Race 1, Race 2 etc) and on the date of your original report (0000 to 2359). This should conquer the problem you experienced

Thank you! But there's still a problem: if the event occurred say at 22:00, the replay will be available in the drop-down menu for only two hours. I think it'd be very handy to also have a simple text field where one could type the name of the replay. If it's found on the server, fine. If it isn't, then it's too late or the user mistyped the replay's name.

Thanks for listening anyway!

Quote from FL!P :

Thank you! But there's still a problem: if the event occurred say at 22:00, the replay will be available in the drop-down menu for only two hours. I think it'd be very handy to also have a simple text field where one could type the name of the replay. If it's found on the server, fine. If it isn't, then it's too late or the user mistyped the replay's name.

Thanks for listening anyway!

I'll try to explain a little better...

It's important to store a report as soon as possible after you've witnessed the offence that you wish to report, even if you don't choose the exact replay that the offence occurred in. In the server, the last 25 races are listed. That works out at around 5 hours for a busy server, and even longer if the server falls silent for a while, during which time you can select either the exact replay, or a replay from the same day that the offence occurred. So, basically, as long as you select *a* replay before 5am the following day, you will be able to choose the correct replay later.

As long as you choose a replay from the right *day*, you will be able to change the specific replay in your report to any other replay from that same day using MyCTRA. After a month, all replays that have no reports referring to them will be culled from the server, so it's a good idea to pick the right replay within the first month

[edit] I will look at making it possible to hand-select a replay from all of the replays available on the server.

Quote from SamH :

I'll try to explain a little better...

Thank you for your patience!

This may be a little off topic but since we're talking about the replays and submitting reports, are you guys aware that the download link sent to your email address doesn't work if you click it? At least it doesn't for me.

For example I got this link emailed to me: http://www.raceauthority.com/r ... FE1R+08+Aug+2007+1858.mpr. Clicking that will bring up a CTRA help page. Of course I know that if you replace the + with %20 it will work, just mentioning it here so you guys can fix it so that it gives you the correct link.

Thanks obsolum I will look into that later today. I've just uploaded a new version of X-System that hopefully doesnt have the memory leak. As far as I can see the problem lay in a 3rd party module, the one that handles our SQL access. I've been speaking to the module author, Bruce, and he thinks he found the problem. So far it all seems good but we wont know for sure until the servers get a bit busier.

Becky and I have reassessed disk usage and replay longevity. We've decided to reduce the amount of time allowed to raise a report to a total 2 weeks. Now, if after 2 weeks no reports have been raised against a replay on the server, it will be deleted.

Where there is a report, but the admin has dismissed it, those replays will be deleted after 4 weeks. This allows time for racers to dispute the admin decision.

Replays on dismissed reports aren't deleted, it was a lot of flaffing around to add something that, when you consider the dismissed reports themselves will be removed after some months (not coded yet, probably 3) then replay will get deleted automatically then anyway.

Anyway that's all bye the bye, X-Purge was completed today and is on the server - immediately saving us over 4gb of disk space

I took a look at the replay folder, and it seems we're running over 5000 races a week, thats over 700 races PER DAY on the CTRA system . Now that's a cool stat that i'm actually quite proud of .

The X-System crash bug appears to be cured, we'll know for sure tomorrow when we see if it's crashed or not, and the single seater 2 server opens tonight.

The submit report button is no longer available in game, you can raise and file a report but to submit it for admin review you must go via the website.

This means there is just two changes to make before I take a breather (although I think Sam is still going to be doing some web page based stuff like userbars, lap records page etc).

We'll soon be reducing points earned for people racing on a server that is too low for them (an old thing I didnt want to do when X-System returned as I felt it was unfair on the single seater drivers who had no higher servers to race on).

Then the new weekly competition.

After that I take a break (or rather, I start working on STCC stuff) whilst Sam works on the web page and then we get back together to do it all over again for phase 2 .

Quote from obsolum :

This may be a little off topic but since we're talking about the replays and submitting reports, are you guys aware that the download link sent to your email address doesn't work if you click it? At least it doesn't for me.

Strange, they work fine for me.

thats awesome! Can't wait!

Quote from FL!P :

Strange, they work fine for me.

Yeah, I figured it might work on some browsers. But I don't think that's really a valid format for url's

Quote from Becky Rose :

I took a look at the replay folder, and it seems we're running over 5000 races a week, thats over 700 races PER DAY on the CTRA system . Now that's a cool stat that i'm actually quite proud of .

Wow, amazing! Congratulations! Well done figuring out the crashing bug, too.

Quote from FL!P :

Wow, amazing! Congratulations! Well done figuring out the crashing bug, too.

The funny thing is, out of curiosity I had a look at that 'other' large race licence authority, and they had 804 events compared to our 700 or so. Thing is, their total is lifetime and they started before us...

Quote from obsolum :

Yeah, I figured it might work on some browsers. But I don't think that's really a valid format for url's

Thank you obsolum, i've addressed this bug and it should now be working .

Quote from Becky Rose :

The funny thing is, out of curiosity I had a look at that 'other' large race licence authority, and they had 804 events compared to our 700 or so. Thing is, their total is lifetime and they started before us...

Just out of curiousity which one is that?

Quote from Becky Rose :

The funny thing is, out of curiosity I had a look at that 'other' large race licence authority, and they had 804 events compared to our 700 or so. Thing is, their total is lifetime and they started before us...

Maybe they're running longer races? Anyway, I don't care about other race license authorities. The CTRA SS is a dream come true.

I don't know how their stats are worked out, but it seems strange that there are 932 winners in 804 events .

I suspect that is multi-class races.