Offline Series General Chat

[RuralKadoodle]

Time for some more fun questions:

- How do you guys decide which team(s), car(s), driver(s) become part time or share a seat in your series? Especially if your series is fictional so you are not going off of any real life series or drivers.

- Do you guys create rivals by random accidents drivers have on track (or if you are driving when a car hits you) or do you pre-plan some of the 'drama'

- How do you decide when its time to 'retire' a fictional driver? Personally I have a hard time with this becasue I make such iconic diver names associated with a brand I don't want to let go even if the amount of years going by would be more realsitic to have them pass the torch soon lol

- Do you guys have any drivers sit time out due to injuries (or even deaths) depending on how bad a wreck was?

- For drivers who have bad ratings to you eventually adjust them or have a method that decides if they 'get better' or 'worse'?

- What about 'cheating' or 'controversies'? Do you have teams that get docked points for cheating or something else on-track related that could cause points/race suspensions? How do you/would you find a team cheating or determine if one was? We know in any form or racing the grey line is always pushed to the limit. Would be interesting if you noticed a car was doing too well in a race you could 'inspect' it and find out if its car ratings were higher than the default ones. Only way I could think of this happening was you created a 'cheater' car file with the cheat ratings with a random file copy command could add that car file to your roster at a very very low chance or something (or maybe there is another way to do it). Then if that driver happened to be cheatign you'd have to notice as the race control too so sometimes a driver/team could get away with it lol

I know this is a very late reply but i only recently found this thread and I love talking about this stuff so again sorry for the conversation disruption-
1 - The series I used to run was based out of an app called Amino, and due to that the way we decided teams and drivers were full-time, shared seats, part-time, etc. was how active they were on the app. If they were a very active member they had a secured seat in the series and wouldn't really lose it for a long time, but would see a decline in performance if they became less active.

2 - I did a mix of this, such as with the "War At Daytona"(Season Opener) I had a lucky thing happen where the leader never slowed down for the caution and finished the race 1 lap ahead of everyone for some reason which made it a "driver" v "field" drama, as they were them promptly DQ'd, along with this we would commentate the races and point out the little scuffles to where we had rivalries start in the series, along with rivalries that carried over from the other Misc. League series(s) on the amino(misc. leagues were run on NR) so for instance there was crossover drama from the Truck series(my series) and the Cup series. Along with this right before Youtube took down the original channel with my series on it due to copyright issues(its a long story but i got fucked over pretty bad) there was a plan to have a big safety scandal where the Series Director named "Bob Jackowski" was going to get injured in a testing accident as he was a former driver himself and it was going to be a whole thing.

3 - Now I didnt get to do this in the CSTS due to it being a short run for the series but in my mock series i have run, I usually decide when to retire a driver through a combo of old age, lack of performance, and things like sponsors and funding. For instance one driver i've always had a hard time with decided if he should be retired or not is a driver that has been in every single one of my series that have made, "Sid Allen" who is actually my late father which is probably the reason why its so hard but anyways i've always had a hard time with it and usually I have him retire from full time competition like Mark Martin.

4 - We had this happen in the CSTS where a driver got a pretty bad injury after having a Dale Earnhardt Esc. wall hit at Coca-Cola, and due to this the majority of the time afterwards his truck was being driven by fill ins.

5 - Depending on the driver and what series it is I do adjust them, for instance with every one of the Field Filler sets ive done i always run a full season for that year with the period correct tracks and then rate all of the cars using NRatings and stuff to give it accuracy. Usually what i'll do is most cars stay the same but some cars that are doing especially bad? If they get more sponsors of funding behind it, or become a car thats higher up the totem pole on the team or affiliate ladder I bump up the rankings a bit to reflect that and vice versa.

6 - Yes! but sadly the finish to the CSTS war at daytona is about all i've done, but if I ever make an offline series i've always planned on doing that for some cars that run oddly well and such, and if I can get that sort of random "cheater car" thing to work on one of my series I would jump on that as that would be cool as hell.

alright done
sorry for the text bomb and late response-

 

[stevenmerzlak]

I wonder for those of you who create fictional series, how do you start, especially with drivers teams? The hardest part of starting a fictional league for me is creating a believable backstory for each team, driver, etc.

So how do you all establish the "baseline" for your series whether through lore/backstories, sponsor/team/manufacturer lineups, driver names, etc.

I'm personally thinking of taking a page out of FARC and using fictitious makes and models for my series, but I will likely use real sponsors and brands otherwise.

I started at the very beginning and worked my way forwards. It's been a MASSIVE amount of work, but it's really cool and rewarding to see the amount of organic lore the series has.

I use real sponsors and makes, but some models are fictionalized. For example, Dodge never left in ISCRA, so I have the Mirada, Daytona, and Intrepid running through the real-life gap in the 80s and 90s. The names come from a name generator and whatever sounds good in my head.

 

[Mystical]

I know this is a very late reply but i only recently found this thread and I love talking about this stuff so again sorry for the conversation disruption-

Its never too late to reply, new commentary is always welcome in discussion threads

 

[Ceej]

So how do you all establish the "baseline" for your series whether through lore/backstories, sponsor/team/manufacturer lineups, driver names, etc.

My suggestion is to start with a blank slate cast and run through a few quick seasons to get some history and hierarchy established, then expand on lore as you see fit as the series continues.

 

[RuralKadoodle]

I wonder for those of you who create fictional series, how do you start, especially with drivers teams? The hardest part of starting a fictional league for me is creating a believable backstory for each team, driver, etc.

So how do you all establish the "baseline" for your series whether through lore/backstories, sponsor/team/manufacturer lineups, driver names, etc.

I'm personally thinking of taking a page out of FARC and using fictitious makes and models for my series, but I will likely use real sponsors and brands otherwise.

What i've done for a lot of my stuff has just been get a roster and simulate a few season, or alternatively go from real life and choose a year and insert the characters in amongst the actual drivers.(What I did for ALT98 a series that I also failed to get started)

Usually I go from a real year and just either insert the fictional drivers or replace the actual drivers with the fictional drivers, as it can really make it interesting, especially if you put tthe names and teams in a wheel and just go off.

But really you can do anything from what i've seen with different Mock Series(s) and leagues.

 

[Mystical]

So couple months ago I mentioned I'd start incorporating my Series with a card generator and use those decks as a way to randomize certain elements. I used Tabletop Creator to make the templates for my deck and where I import all my art assets. For this first deck I converted all my NR tracks. After I had the card images I can import then use them in TableTop Simulator. In the past I used a file generator tool to choose my tracks for a schedule. Now I can shuffle a literal deck of tracks and randomly draw them to see what comes up.

Sure, I could just create a text randomizer in excel and make a list but thats not as fun lol. Plus I need the art of the tracks anyways for the track schedule sheets I make so these cards still serve a purpose for that as well. Currently my deck is 617 tracks, that includes any day/night variations of a track. No real duplicates of a track unless I have a newer version and still validating it. Some of the cards have a 'no track preview' meaning they've not been raced on before/fully validated yet. Its a way for me to also have a green checkmark on tracks that work and new ones that pop up in a scheudle I need to fully test first before getting the track screenshot. Whenever I add new tracks to my deck I can just insert them in and expand the deck pretty easy too.

In the future I plan to make a deck of every car in the seires that way for unranked races I can randomly choose the roster for races for example. Since Tabletop Simulator is a literal simulator I can pretty much do whatever I want with my deck of cards and lay them out in any fashion or make multiple duplicates of them too so I could just have a table with a visual tracker for stuff if I wanted.

 

[DaleTona75]

I think I'm finally in a place where I feel I can start my long overdue mock season project. I have 99% of the Cup cars I need collected (bar a few backmarkers whom I can easily paint myself) and now just need to dial in tracks.

Busch Series has more gaps in terms of small teams, but most don't really matter, and I'm not certain if I want to include Busch/Trucks. Part of me wants to save them for later, but I also know that if I try to retcon them in say 3-4 seasons in, it will cause a lot of headaches, so If I don't include them, I might just not bother out side of random exposition for certain drivers.

I would do ARCA but thats stretching it a fair bit, though it is one series I can more easily fit in later down the line, and outside of a few prospects here and there, most notable drivers won't really have much of an impact on ARCA, so I wouldn't have to go as hard into retconning.

Likely will run a Test Season to work out all of the bugs, and make sure everything is straight to ensure that there is nothing broken or awry.

 

[stevenmerzlak]

I think I'm in a bind with ISCRA. I'm realizing I won't be "catching up" to the modern day, which was my goal when I scrapped everything I had done and started over. My professional creativity comes from doing modern stuff, however, and doing a bunch of cars from the early 80's isn't really exercising my creative juices, so I want to get something new and modern going.

I've had everything planned out for the history of ISCRA, down to mods, manufacturers, and title sponsors:



The thing is... we're 40 seasons away from being where we are in real life, right now, at a rate of 2-3 seasons a year. I sure don't plan on doing the 2023 season in 2036, so I'm thinking about scrapping my pre-made plans for the future, letting things play out as they happen in the game, and "rebooting" the modern stuff that I did from 2017-20 with a new name and history.

Thoughts?

 

[Mystical]

Are you think of just simulating to catch up to modern times or you mean just create a new series with history and start 'playing' in the 2017-2020 era.

 

[stevenmerzlak]

The latter, just starting something new in the 2023/24 season and going from there. It'd be a completely different series at this point, but actually using the drivers that I've already created and gotten attached to.

 

[Mystical]

Yeah I'd say race what you want. If you feel like going back in time could just do it like when Speed channel used to broadcast "Nascar classics' and just do a single race you feel like as a 'rebroadcast'. You'd still have to make a carset painted for the era but wouldn't need to do entire seasons and could have some variation of drivers/schemes to cover several years in the same era.

 

[Mystical]

Love some input/brainstorming:

As some of you know my ICR Series is comprised of Divisions and the series itself can contain an unlimited amount of drivers. As drivers compete and do well in a season they move up to a higher division. The cars that perform worse 'de-rank' and are moved down to a lower division. That is the general gist of how my series works. Think of it like a league or online multiplayer ranked matchmaking system,, where better you do harder competition or if worse you do the more sloppy and less skilled the races will end up being.

I've been loving how its been working out. Its fulfilled all my core goals:

• Every car I paint can be raced with, doesn't matter if I have 200 #4's I can still have them compete
• No time-frame limits, I can start a new season or finish one up when I feel like it. Not contained to 'yearly' real world timers so I never feel like I am getting behind in the 'years'
• The skill level of drivers will always create dynamic and exciting races at any level, especially when new good cars start in a lower division and watch them succeed or struggle

Now for the question/realizations I've had:

What if a driver retires or a driver swap for a car occurs (single car or a team) where will the car go for a different driver?

How should I handle their car? Does the car itself almost have like an 'ownership' or 'charter' score where it will allow it to stay in a higher division with a new driver in it or should that driver have to go back to the base division level and work their way back up? I was debating a car is half of the division rank the current driver is in. So for example a driver retired and they ended up in division 5 of 9 (5th highest division) whats left over is the car will allow the next driver that enters it to start in Division 3 of 9 instead of 1 of 9 (at the very beginning).

Also what about teams of cars? Say 4 of the 5 cars on a team are doing well. Like they are all racing in division 7 of 9 or 8 of 9 but one driver and their car is stuck in division 3 of 9. Should I have a way to get that driver and car 'promoted to a higher division? I was thinking maybe the team cars that the driver is bumped up into get a points penalty at the start of the season or the driver who gets a temporary bump up has to pay a points penalty if they fail to stay in that division after the first season they are in it. I definitely want some kind of drawback so teams aren't just taking spots from other deserving drivers/teams but having a larger team I feel should have some sort of bonus if managed correctly. I feel the penalty to get their driver in the same division as fellow teammates would be fair competition as those other teams/drivers would have a head start in the points standings for example so it would balance itself out and prevent any abuse. Another reasoning for this is if a team or single car team expands to more drivers they have a way to get those other cars moved through the series faster.


Rookie Stripes, how could I incorporate it?

This is more of a want than a need but I do like the idea of having rookie stripes, it just looks cool and is a way to denote new driver. Problem is my series is built upon every season and division moving up (or down) being 'new'. Its like when the Truck Series had their first season, since technically every driver was new that season they all didn't have rookie stripes right? I was thinking if not the stripes denoting a new driver maybe I use them for when a driver is bumped up to a new division by their team paying the penalty so it essentially denotes that driver doesn't technically 'belong' in the skill bracket they are placed in until yet proven after the season. Anyone else have other ideas how I could add 'stripes' to the series?

I could have stripes for every driver that didn't move up or down in a division and only non-stripe drivers would be those that didn't move in a division after a season but logistically that is WAY too much to track for how many cars are getting injected into this series month by month lol. Another idea is every new entry gets stripes until they have completed' X' amount of seasons but again, that would be quite a lot to track car per car seeing how many seasons they have left before it gets taken off.

 

[stevenmerzlak]

ICR reminds me of promotion & relegation in soccer. They don't really have markers on their kits when they go up or down and I don't see why the cars should either. That just seems like a lot of work that you'd have to undo immediately afterwards.

I like the idea of the team determining what series they run in, so if they get a new driver they stay at their current rank, but they may fluctuate up or down depending on how the new guy does.

FWIW, when I was working on ISCRA on ICR back in 2021, this was how I did my rookie stripes...

 

[Mystical]

Yeah I use the spoiler for the winner's million/hotstreak already so I'd make use of the bumper area most likely if I was to implement some form of using the 'stripes'

 

[stevenmerzlak]

How do you guys track your stats? I've been using a lot (like... a lot) of spreadsheets with each driver's results, so that I can calculate counting stats, averages, and whatnot, but it's been a real pain keeping everything up to date and formatted correctly. Right now I'm playing around with PostgreSQL to create a database that links everything together, but I don't think this will do what I want it to do.

 

[Mystical]

I just have in excel sheets all the driver names and the races/points they earned and whether they advanced, stay, or deranked. Then I have a master excel sheet for the leaderboards that track every driver thats completed at least on official race all their points, wins, and championships. It then will calculate their skill rank.

Outside of that I don't do any crazy stats tracking like on top 5's, average finishing, etc etc. If I was retired and had more time then maybe I'd go all out with more in depth tracking but since I don't really need those stats for anything I don't worry about it. I used to use score4 or RPM back in the day which did give more detailed breakdowns but its just easier to copy paste race results in an excel sheet and update it than having to rely on a 3rd party program.

One thing I do have tracked is every car/driver I've created has a ticket in my issue tracker and I can generate 'reports' from this SQL database. So for example I currently track car make and car #'s so I can see a detailed breakdown of what car #'s are used most and what manufactures how the most/least cars for example. Allows me to make sure I add more cars to less used car #'s or manufacturers since I like variety.

For example car makes:


note the '-' are tickets for ' a repaint or alt scheme and I omit those so the same driver doesn't make an additional count.

 

[RJSIMRACING]

How does a series become Official?

 

[Mystical]

How does a series become Official?

I have thread here for the details: https://www.adrd-forums.net/index/threads/official-vs-unofficial-offline-series-sections.53/

 

[RJSIMRACING]

Thanks

I have thread here for the details: https://www.adrd-forums.net/index/threads/official-vs-unofficial-offline-series-sections.53/

 

[RJSIMRACING]

What do y'all use for recording races, I tried to use clipchamp but it just made Nr blink.

 

[Mystical]

OBS is what I use to record, really reliable and can retain decent quality while compressing them enough. I do re-run all all the recordings through Davinci Resolve for Youtube fo the graphics and editing. Also for archive purposes render the raw footage to compress them down in file size even more while retaining the original recording quality.

 

[RJSIMRACING]

OBS is what I use to record, really reliable and can retain decent quality while compressing them enough. I do re-run all all the recordings through Davinci Resolve for Youtube fo the graphics and editing. Also for archive purposes render the raw footage to compress them down in file size even more while retaining the original recording quality.

Thanks

 

[Mystical]

Outside of all the overhauls I've done to my series with the division/ranks rebrand been looking how to make the actual broadcast graphics tie in for each race as well without having to spend so much time in post-production (less video editing = sooner I can spit out the videos = more time allocated to getting next season ready and can race more). Right now for the starting grid I have to replace all the driver cards for the animation then export it for my final video composition export. Also when the race ends its usually just me going to pit road or doing donuts if I was the winner and video ends. I plan going forward (once this current season finishes uploading to YouTube) to show the post-race results.

Found a quick way to generate a race results images from excel from my Leaderboards excel sheet which has all the driver names, manufacturer images, and car number images. For example took some random race results from a Novice division:



All I do is take the race result driver names from the exported NR2003 html as a list and tell excel to sort my leaderboard to match those names in the same order. Then its a quick copy paste to generate the image I can use on the forums or in my videos. I'll probably spruce up the sheet a bit more bot got the design at least 80% there messing around with it today.

I'm still figuring out how I can do this same sorting method to make a horizontal (very long horizontal) image so I can have it animate as a ticker for the starting grid so I can still use my driver cards that show the rendered paint scheme. Worst case I can use the vertical look but would really like to keep using the driver cards if possible as it makes the starting grid lineup graphics look nicer.

 

[stevenmerzlak]

After three years I finally figured out how to create a database for series results in MS Access:





I also wrote some super basic union queries to pull some of the results I've been looking for:

The next step after this is to figure out how to combine & summarize data so I can put everything in a Racing Reference-esque table. SQL really isn't as hard as it looks!

 

[DaleTona75]

Been back at work theory crafting a way to create a NASCAR Thunder style Rags-to-riches carer mode in NR2003, and I think I finally have hit on something that may work for me.


The numbers shown here are very rough, and will be refined through playtesting. The intent is for early career to be focused on finishing races and staying clean while slowly building your team, with money snowballing as your team expands.

The Race Payouts are the base prize money numbers. As in real life, the lions share goes to the top teams, with a 6th place finish only earning half of what the winner takes home. Depending on a races status the base payouts can have modifiers applied, representing certain marquee races having bigger prize pools. Finally there is bonus money on the line for leading a lap or completing one of the bonus tasks.

But while the prize money seems somewhat paltry, the bulk of your income will come from sponsorships. Sponsors are split into 3 categories, each with their own payouts depending on placement. The numbers shown are the money achieved for completing a sponsor objective. I'm still working on the base payouts, and likely will have extra objective money that is earned at the end of a contract, as well as loyalty bonuses.

To truly replicate the feel of tarting out the old Thunder games, I have decided to mate two ideas I have had floating around. First is the erroneously named equipment ratings, which allows for my team to "purchase" a setup for that week. I will have 6 setups ranging from bad to good, with better setups costing more to run. Alongside that to simulate R&D, I have relented to the idea that I'll have to drop AI difficulty to represent that my car is getting better. The difficulty used depends on the strength of an equipment stat compared to track type. If I have a 74 engine, then I will be running 90% AI difficulty at speedways. But when I go to a short track, the calculations will run off of my chassis rating instead.

Traveling will cost money, with races on the west coast costing significantly more than those close by. Along with that I will have to pay to repair any damage after the race, another reason to focus on keeping it clean. Finally 150 dollars is subtracted from the prize money earned every race, representing fuel/tire costs, Pit Crew Salary, and entry fee.

Even if you are not racing, you will still earn 25 dollars as passive income, which can be handy if you run out of cash.

So that is what I have so far, what do you all think?