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Martinsville Speedway 2012 - Chase Edition |
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Martinsville really doesn't need much introduction, one of the few remaining short tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule, the Virgina paperclip has had yet another update for Nascar Racing 2003 Season, bringing the track up to 2012 spec, and now again Chase spec.
Updates since Martinsville 2012:
- Updated appropriate paintwork to Breast Cancer Awareness Pink.
- Added "Chase" start/finish paint.
- Adjusted pit road rules to 2012 spec - due to game limitations it is set to 35 pace speed and 35 pit road speed.
- Visibility of the video screen and train can now be switched on/off from the "Animated Objects" tickbox in the
game Options menu. Wall damage remains regardless of this setting cos it's just a dam cool feature.
- The AI have received a bit of spit and polish from JR. There is also an ALT_track.ini which makes the AI brake later and deeper into the turns, see readme for usage instructions.
- This update was completed the week before the actual event, so may not be 100% accurate in places
Updates since Martinsville 2011:
- A.I. completely overhauled and re-scripted from scratch by J.R. Franklin - 5 months worth of work!
- Updated all wall advertising to reflect 2012 Spring race (as accurately as we can).
- Updated and added all trackside billboards including new ones in turn 2 and turn 3.
- Added the RV Deck on the back stretch and replaced the wooden fencing with a chainlink one.
- Added the hill behind the back stretch, railway tracks and associated features.
- Updated, modified and added trackside surrounding land, trees, buildings and campsites.
- Re-scripted the video screen.
- Corrected incorrect weekend switch values to many infield objects.
- There are also many many other updates and modifications of the track, most have
either been forgotten or are too minimal to detail here, there's also an Easter Egg or two.
IMPORTANT IMFORMATION REGARDING THE A.I.
The A.I. for this track were constructed using a default papy_ai.ini, the default
fast setups for each physics (CUP, GNS and CTS) and the opponent strength set at
97%. Ratings for the car sets used in testing and in developing the A.I. for this
track are from the NRatings program using the MasGrafx Full Season V3.1 formulas. We
went to great efforts to make the AI and racing as realistic as possible. At the
same time, we also took some liberties with the A.I. tools available in the
track.ini to enhance the "fun" factor. We're confident that you'll enjoy the offline
racing experience against the AI the way we have set them up for you.
We also made an effort to get the A.I. to have an occasional random wreck that would
bring out some cautions to further enhance the realism. In trying to achieve this,
we first went through the entire track and made sure that the proper surface
designations were in place to allow for cautions when wrecks and spinouts occur. In
addition, we had to "push the envelope" a bit with the settings in the track.ini.
This required getting the A.I. to race a little tighter, change lanes and be a
little more aggressive. As a result, the end user may experience an early wreck or
2 between the A.I. at the beginning of a race. This is because at the start of a
race, the pack is at its largest and tightest. Testing revealed that once a couple
of early wrecks occurred, then the A.I. seemed to settle down and spread out.
However, once another random wreck occurred, the restart would re-tighten the pack
and as the saying goes....."Cautions can breed more cautions". Kind of like real
life racing!
To enjoy the best results, we recommend that you use the default fast setups
provided with the track and car/truck sets containing ratings as described above.
Your results and A.I. behavior, however, may vary depending on the type of mod used,
the ratings of your specific car set, different setups used, driving style, skill
level and countless other variables that make it practically impossible to predict
the results that you will achieve while racing on this track.
We hope that you enjoy the racing experience!
J.R. Franklin
Notes:
On All Trackside Objects the entire track, including grandstands, infield objects, people etc. etc. is dynamically lit. This means the items are lit from the Sun (like the cars and track surface/walls), so if they are not in direct sunlight, they will have a shadow either cast on, or casting from them, this may take a while to get used to, but it's worth it.
The Sun and lighting of the track has been adjusted to make the track feel like a late afternoon race, the sun is quite low in the sky behind the main grandstand that in turn casts a huge shadow over part of the front stretch, this shadow has been made up of textures and shadow maps so depending whether you have shadows turned on, will depend how it looks. If you experience low fps, first of all try turning down trackside objects to Some (which will turn off the dynamic objects), then if things don't improve, turn off ground shadows from everything apart from cars, that should be enough, if not, turn all shadows off, you'll loose a lot of immersion, but at least you'll be able to race.
Pace Car & Cautions:
The Pace Car is located in pit stall 8, this is normal and the stall is unused by player/AI.
This was done to fix the many bugs that effect the original track, including Pace Car deployment and when/how he picked up the leader.
When the caution comes out, 99.9% of the time the Pace Car will wait for the leader to finish the lap he is on before going out, instead of flying out randomly like he does on the original track, hopefully this should avoid the check up wrecks that have happened previously when we raced here.
Pace Speed is 35mph, Pit Road 35mph speed - don't get caught overtaking into the pits!
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KNOWN ISSUES AND NOTES ABOUT THIS TRACK
Depending on your graphics card and computer setup, the groove may appear to slip into the track surface. This is a process known as automatic LOD percentage adjustment that some graphics cards employ to boost performance and there is nothing we can do to control it. This process will vary from machine to machine and maybe even race to race. This tearing is only viewable on very wide angle camera shots from outside the track and is not viewable (so far anyway) while driving.
The track features some eye candy and easter eggs which have never, as far as we know, been tried in this manner before. The track is extremely detailed in both textures and surrounding landscapes so you will likely need a fairly modern PC to run this track with all of it's "bells and whistles" on. This is because almost all trackside objects use Dynamic Lighting on "All Trackside Objects" graphics settings and some of the objects have been created using non-standard methods.
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CREDITS:
The following is a list of the people who contributed to this project:
J.R. Franklin: Project development, graphic detailing and immersion, object editing, textures, horizons, start grids, Lps, AI (Artificial Intelligence, i.e. the computer controlled cars), surface grip levels, quality assurance and testing.
Wayne Faircloth (of 62 Racing), Danny Coral (The Bullring), Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Sam Lincoln for the base setups included in the track. All setups are publically available and were downloaded from the internet with the exception of the ones made by Wayne Faircloth which were made specifically for this project.
Windy City Racing - the train track and associated objects was originally from Windy City Racing. Although they have been considerably modified to work in this project, the credit for these items is still applicable.
To anyone else whom we may have unintentionally neglected to mention but contributed in the creation of objects that have been borrowed from other NR2003 tracks for this project, we sincerely apologize. Although you were not mentioned individually, your contributions to NR2003 and this track are greatly appreciated.
We owe a debt of gratitude to each of you for your contributions, time, support and help.
Be sure to checkout NR2003 Tracks - http://www.nr2k3tracks.com for all your up to date Nascar Racing 2003 Season mods and tracks, please report any issues with the track in the Martinsville 2012 forum thread there.
If you appreciate our work, please consider a small donation to help with the costs of keeping the Smiffsden server running, thank you.
DOWNLOADS:
Martinsville_2012_SDT_CEv2.7z (7zip Archive 21.4MB)
MC_CE_Fix.7z (7zip Archive 3.7kb)
(Track.ini fix only needed if you downloaded Martinsville_2012_SDT_CE.7z
see the SRD Forum for detail by clicking here.)
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