Bring back TWRC!

[Rasaq]

Let's have http://www.trenchwars.org/twrc/ going on throughout the week? Great website. Looks like a lot of fun. I wasn't around for this when it was active, so I'm not sure of the success it had, if any.

[MegamanEXE]

BEWARE: MAJOR POST INCOMING

Here's some background information about the history of TWRC and my history in it as I remember it. This post is aimed at both Rasaq, and anyone that wants to learn about TWRC. The reason that I decided to write this monolith of a post is because I feel that TWRC is a forgotten piece of Trench Wars history. Few people who play Continuum today remember much, if anything, about TWRC, one of the most ambitious projects that TW ever designed. Some people have written histories of Trench Wars, so I decided to write a history of TWRC from a racer's perspective - there is probably someone here that can give a different perspective on TWRC.

I raced in TWRC many years ago. In fact, I was one of TWRC's most active supporters and racers. I'm still registered in the standings database if you search for my name on the TWRC website. I'll give some of the history that I can remember about TWRC because I loved it so much - it's probably the one thing, if anything, about TW that I have ever been seriously passionate about.

The story started sometime in 2004. TWRC was the first major attempt at a full racing league. F1spirit and other racing arenas represent earlier attempts at making racing arenas, but TWRC was the first complete league structure, featuring bots for automating races, which allowed for a much more comprehensive racing experience. Bots would run races and record standings, and as you can see on the TWRC website, racing statistics would be saved to the TWRC database. It took a lot of planning and work by many skilled and talented people to conceive and start this league.

The centerpiece of 2004 TWRC, and the reason that it was so advanced compared to previous racing efforts, was the automated scoring system. The automatic scoring system relied on a series of stationary flags along the racetracks arranged as checkpoints across the track. The bot would monitor when flags were taken, and by whom, using individual priv freqs, to determine where racers were during the race. This was a radical improvement over other attempts at racing events because a staffer could, in essence, just press a button and run a full race, with scoring automatically recorded. This made running an official league race ridiculously simple to manage - no harder to host than a game of bug. This simplicity on the hosting side, and complexity on the client side, was set to make TWRC the next big phenomenon in TW. Theoretically.

Unfortunately, TWRC was not fated to be the massive success that it was planned to be and should have been. The problem that TWRC ran into was that the bots sometimes wouldn't work during a race. For some reason, as the last news post on the TWRC website shows, the bots would sometimes not register when a person took a flag. This would cause problems during race scoring because the bot would think that someone skipped a checkpoint and wouldn't start scoring them until they ran around the track for a full lap and passed the missed checkpoint. The worst problem that arose here was when the bot broke between the last checkpoint and the finish line - the 1st place racer would pass the line, but the bot wouldn't register that they had finished the race.

Rodge_Rabbit, Arilou Lalee'lay, and the other TWRC devs and ops worked incredibly hard to fix the bots and used the league races as beta tests for the changes that they had made. Apparently the problem was some kind of server lag between a person claiming a flag and the server registering that the flag was claimed. Unfortunately they couldn't fix the underlying problem, so TWRC was abandoned without completing the fully planned 2004 racing season.

I remember that TWRC was popular among many players, and many people, myself included, of course, were sad to see it go. It was an incredibly active league because it drew all kinds of people: both people who were veterans to other TW leagues, or newer players like I was at the time.

As for my story at that time, I had recently started playing Continuum (I started in 2003) and by that time claimed TW as my home zone. I joined TWRC just as it opened to the public because I thought that it was interesting. After a little bit of practice, I quickly found myself, somehow, among the best racers in the league. In fact, I recall (maybe inaccurately) that there were only two people that won any races in the 2004 season: me, and a player, I believe named Giraph, who was my biggest rival and friend during the season. TWRC races were generally a contest to see which among us two would be the winner. I also recall us two being called "legends" of TWRC, which I, today, look back on wryly: the point of legends is that they are remembered long after their time for their accomplishments. Whatever I accomplished in 2004 TWRC, though, nobody but me remembers.

I have some screenshots from 2004 TWRC on my old computer back at home. Next time I have the opportunity I'll try to fire up that dinosaur and get some of those screenshots posted here.

After 2004 TWRC, the TWRC tracks remained popular as manually hosted racing events, much like f1spirit, racing2, etc.

2004 was not the end of TWRC. In 2008, H.M.S. Stargazer became the head of the new TWRC operation. The 2008 season of TWRC, which started in early 2008, was entirely new: it would use the 2004 TWRC ships and tracks, but the races were scored manually, instead of by bots, with the standings being recorded manually to the TWRC website. This presented new challenges compared to 2004 TWRC: obviously, it was much more labor-intensive because it required multiple human officials to keep track of all of the racers. Yet, this was much more successful than 2004 TWRC because the manual control allowed for better control of the racing league.

2008 TWRC operated in a seasonal format. Each race in the season would have a qualifying race before the true race. The qualifying race was made up of all the people signed up for TWRC who showed up to race. The top finishers of the qualifying race would be entered into the final race.

I also remember 2008 TWRC being very popular and successful among the TW population. It drew a wide, active fanbase, most of whom didn't even know what 2004 TWRC was, and didn't know the origins of the TWRC tracks, and some of whom were pure newbs to the zone who were attracted to racing.

In the 2008 season I was much less dominant, mostly because I didn't have the time to commit to practicing and racing for that season. I only managed to attend a few races of that season. Still, I managed to race consistently and placed in the top for each race that I entered. I ended up finishing the season in 4th place, behind 3 people - Crunchy Nut, Tres, and Turban, probably not in that order - who had attended every single race that season. If I had had the time to finish all the races, I could have broken into the top 3. Still, I am proud of how well I did considering how few races that I actually attended. The league also had showings from many of my good friends. H.M.S. Stargazer, Crunchy Nut, Tres, Turban, Fusha, FozzY2K, and many other of my friends either operated the league, or competed in it.

After the 2008 TWRC season, there were calls to organize a 2009 TWRC season. There was even a TWRC forum section, which appears to have been deleted. I remember H.M.S. Stargazer saying that 2009 TWRC would start after that season's TWL series ended. However, TWRC was apparently forgotten after that time.

So now we come to the present day. TWRC is dormant once again. I think that one of TWRC's biggest strengths was that it was attractive to, and drew, people from all kinds of skill sets. People experienced in TW leagues, people with no previous league experience, and people with scant experience in Continuum period, all came together to race in one big, fun league. Although familiarity with Continuum's physics is a major advantage to racing, the main difference between TWRC and basically any other league was the much less apparent skill gap that plagues all other leagues and has contributed to the stagnation of TW leages and Continuum as a whole. Playing in TWLB, for example, requires years of experience playing basing with equally skilled teammates. A newer player, with no league experience and paltry Continuum experience, obviously has no chance at success in any kind of TWL situation. Yet that same player has the ability to compete and have fun in a TWRC race because there is no complicated combat involved - it is simply flying around as fast as possible. No fighting patterns no memorize, no ship specific skills, no major plays to learn. Yet, as simple as it sounds, TWRC was, and still can be, very competitive, because almost anyone that plays TW now could join TWRC and still have fun among TWRC veterans.

The major drawback to TWRC is the major staff effort that it historically involved. With 2004 TWRC, it was the devs and ops trying to fix the bots, and working manually when things went wrong. With 2008 TWRC, the massive effort was on the part of the scorers and operators, who had to put in a lot of effort to work together to manage the races and overall league. Can present day TW staff manage a new TWRC season? I don't know, but I would be wlling to become a TW staffer specifically to help run a new TWRC season, and do everything possible in my power to support it, because I had so much fun with the league in the past that I want other people, especially newer players, to experience the same competitive, yet fun, league that I did.

So there it is. TWRC was my passion both times it ran, and it was successful both times, but circumstances forced TWRC to stop prematurely and sadly both times. I want TWRC to come back again because I loved it and I feel that it would be revitalizing to TW as a whole.

tl;dr twrc is gud

[Rasaq]

Wow... I read some of it, skimmed through the rest. They could easily use a safezone line for checkpoints like !slide in EG to fix the issue with server lag and greens, right? Was that ever attempted?

[Rasaq]

Wow... I read some of it, skimmed through the rest. Maybe if it was to ever run again they can figure out the coding for EG's !slide arena. Never any issues there with checkpoints.

[MegamanEXE]

I don't think that that solution was ever attempted. I'm assuming that EG's race code was made after 2004 TWRC was abandoned.

I assume this because of the massive effort put into the league. Many people worked on planning the league, coding the bots, drawing graphics, designing tracks, etc. A fix to the bot to monitor people by safezone lines instead of flags would have been a relatively simple change, very easy considering how many people were working on the bots. They wouldn't have abandoned all of their work if it could have been fixed that easily.

If TW staff were to try to revive TWRC, they might be able to figure out a way to integrate new techniques for tracking racers with the old race statistics system. I don't know if the old bot's code was saved, so it could be as simple as adding in the new code. But I expect that they would have to create a new TWRC bot system entirely from scratch.

Of course I support TWRC and I want it to start again, and I think that it would be possible to fix the problems with TWRC, but I don't know if the current TW staff has the ability or willingness to commit resources to it - either bot coders to work on a new bot system, or manpower for manually scoring.

[Shaddowknight]

It woildnt be hard to set up a bot to run time trials. Fusha had actually done something of the sort in Surfbalance (his first module, something simple to use as a starting point)
I can think of a few other ways to track players locations, but not record timing with what I habe available to me (I dont actually code bots, but am knowledgeable in our bots' Scripting language)
What other stats were used and do you know how they were calculated?

[MegamanEXE]

I don't remember much about the old system because I didn't dev it but IIRC it had

- a registration system to keep track of who was signed up and eligible to race, and who attended each race
- the saving of race results, this may or may not have accessed the TWRC site to automatically record race results and season standings. I know that in 2008 that the TWRC staff messed around with the TWRC online statistics manually, which is what is currently displayed when you look at TWRC standings on the TWRC site.
- what position each racer finished and what their overall time was at the finish
- keeping track of record times for each track in a !topten format
- keeping track of each racer's personal record times for each track

The system was pretty comprehensive, it wasn't just a timer. Someone needs to see if the 2004 TWRC bot code still exists somewhere because it would be a big help to coding a new TWRC system.

[Shaddowknight]

The java/sql stuff for twrc bot is still in twcore, but it appears to be the 2008 info. However, If the info was ON twcore from 2004, all revisions should be able to be seen enough to know the original 2004 code and what all has been revised

[Wazzaaa.nl]

Yes I agree, hes right 100%

[mtine]

I was willing to do this manually, just to get silenced by HMS and MM God. They don't want this to be hosted, and I can't do it without at least 2-3 staffers.

[Rasaq]

BUMP!

[Left_Eye]

I will see what I can do to get TWRC back up and running. I was in the process of doing it earlier this year when HMS decided to take it over and yeah... you see how far that went. :-P

[Ephemeral]

How does this help TW keep new players? Is it not a real stretch to justify yet another event (and one that has known issues and staffing requirements) when TW is losing population? The ‘we should be all things to all people’ era failed to even maintain population for the zone, what would change with this event/arena that would help TW grow?
IMO it is time for a focus on those things that will increase the number of new players sticking with the game; we should not be distracted or seduced by things that have already previously failed at this.
eph

[Bosshawk]

i have recently begun hosting:
Calgary
SStone
Indy
Rally
Watkinsglen
in the last while.... great graphics and alot of fun... definitely worth the download...

theres a few guys who request it from me often and love going from race to race and sometimes ill run 3 or 4 in a row at night when guys are up for it...

I had thought it would be cool to run some mini racing cups i hadnt realized that there was whole racing leagues during my hiatus away from the game...

anyone interested in racing more... leave me a message in game if you like or mssg me if you see me on if you want me to host some races...
ive found some of the newer people are liking the races!
cheers!


PS: on a sidenote: with big map downloads... good to promote the "ssdr" for people to be able to do fast downloads of our maps and have their TW maps updated so they dont have to update them in game so much or when they go to a new TW arena its already there!