Making a better Time/Score Attack Mode for Assetto Corsa

[John Peat]

I've moaned a fair bit about the problems with AC's Time Attack mode (it's easily gamed and the difficulty is all-over-the-place) - it also occurs to me that I can - thanks to it being moddable - create a better one tho!

It would be easy to create a more traditional 'Time Attack' whereby you get a set amount of time at the start and a set amount at each 'checkpoint' with the point being to get as far as possible before you run-out of time (getting some sort of score to prove you did it)

I thought I might be a more ambitious tho - I've started to thing-over a 'Score Attack' system whereby you are rewarded with points based on the speed you cover each sector - points which may be affected by a multiplier which increases lap-by-lap or for as long as you don't put wheels off-track or - well - whatever we like, really!

Does that sound interesting to anyone here?

Anyone got any ideas on what they'd like to see in such a thing or obvious pitfalls I've maybe not considered?

I've already started work on the plugin but I could use some feedback on whether people like the sound of either of those ideas before I get too-involved with it!

Thanks!

 

[John Peat]

Not sure if silence means people misunderstood my question or don't like the idea of Time/Score Attack.

Purely from a player's perspective, what would you expect from a Time Attack or Score Attack game mode?

What sort of things should it encourage/reward - what sort of scoring would you like to see?

 

[Georg Siebert]

Hi John, I read your post this afternoon, like I do with every OP here in the AC forum.

In general, it is true that most people don't respond well to the current Time Attack mode. For myself, I've played racing games for 15 years now and tried it for the first time yesterday. It appeared as just another game mode, as rather arbitrary, in the vein of Ridge Racer or NFS. I personally care more about issues, as why are the damper values not displayed in Nm and what is the Coefficient of Lift on the rear wing of the Exos S1 for a particular Angle of Attack.

Now with a bare bone career mode implemented, this mode has even more prominence, for better or for worse. I don't really care about the career itself, so that doesn't bother me much really. Having said that, a career and a scoring mode within it complement the game itself nicely and is just another offering for drivers to do while simply playing the game. The career is not mandatory, which is a breath of fresh air and a brake from the now norm within the games industry.
As Kunos already stated, just like the cars, tracks & apps, the career and its modes are moddable and I'm looking forward for the pleathora of solutions our mod community will offer to eliviate this problem in the future.

cheers

 

[John Peat]

I must admit I've been wondering how far you could 'mod in' a game mode and what I'm hoping to do is create something you can use in either "Hot Lap" for solo or "Online Practice" for multiplayer competition

The downside is that it's SLOW work developing for AC - the API/other stuff is a bit shaky, some stuff doesn't work and developing mods for a game is always hard (no debugging, lots of reloading and a fair few crashes)

I'll report back here with the ideas I've developed tho - and I'll post any 'work done' into the modding section so people can try it out perhaps?

 

[Georg Siebert]

[...] and I'll post any 'work done' into the modding section so people can try it out perhaps?

Yes please

if you upload a career mod (or even a alpha/beta product to elicit feedback), use our resource manager as usual under the section "AC Career" - link.
If you don't want to upload something, yet have a specific idea you want gaged by others, you can start your topic here.

 

[John Peat]

As I had a working basic app I went for the form - tho as it's not really just about the Career (I hope it will work online too) I posted it as a general App

http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/score-time-attack-mod.3770/

It's early days - right now I'm just surprised it even works for anyone but me ;0