Area 23 Track Designs COTA Update

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Ackbarfan

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rossmcglathery
Aw, COTA, I actually am really loving seeing the cars on the track. I think NASCAR Road Courses work well on stuff designed for F1. Would be crazy to see these guys at something like Barhin.
 

J.R. Franklin

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Yup. Crashes for me too.

My guess is that the author of this track has a special shared folder with new files added to it necessary for the track to work. This should never be done by track builders. Tracks should not require a special shared folder to work. Any files that were needed for the track to work should be in the folder of that specific track and not added to a special shared folder.

If this is not the case here, then my second guess would be that there is a 3do that is causing the crashing issue.
 
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garrett1127

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OK, I have the revamped shared folder, that's not the problem. Had 38 opponents selected, crash, cut it down to 10, ran fine, 20 ran fine, 30 ran fine, 34 ran fine, that's as far as I got just now. Will look into no of cars allowed vs pit stalls.

Just looked at the track ini file, it has pit stalls 0 thru 37, so I guessing 36 opponents will be your max without crashing.

Just ran with 37 drivers and myself, then 38 drivers and myself, didn't crash, so I reccond I don't know squat.
 
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J.R. Franklin

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Tom (aka Garrett1127) did a good job of narrowing down one of a few issues with this track.

It appears that the track will likely only be able to hold 33 stalls. The track.ini has stall coordinates for 38 stalls, but there are really only 33 "usable/functional" stalls. The top of the track.ini indicates: max_starters = 43 cars. 43 cars will not work in this track as currently set up.

Looking at the track from the helicopter view, there are 4 stalls at the entrance of pit road that are located behind pit wall. So essentially the cars cannot get out of their stalls onto pit road and they would not be able to get into their stalls when trying to pit. (see picture below where the #07, #4, #99 and #5 cars are all behind the pit wall - they can't get out or get in. Those are stalls 32, 33, 34 and 35.)

So for the track to work, you will need to change the number of max starters to 33 in the track.ini. Change that line: max_starters = 43 to max_starters = 33

The guys at Area 23 Track Designs don't appear to have fully tested their track before release. They should probably go back and make a formal fix and re-release it.

(My initial diagnosis in my post above was flawed because if it was a case where the track would require a special shared folder, the track never would have loaded in the first place.)

*** Upon further review of the track.ini and without wanting to spend the time to open the track up in Sandbox and perform a more thorough autopsy, there is a pit_1 section that has several pit stalls with the same coordinates as stalls in pit_0. The bottom line is that despite my suggestions above... the track is still flawed as it is currently set up. ***

NR2003ss001.jpg
 
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Rob D.

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Changed max starters 33, and track loads fine. Thanks for that.
According to the video and description, the track is supposed to support a full field, so I didn't even think to look at max starters.
 

garrett1127

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Thanks J.R., I even got it to work in my GTP install, had to copy in all the pta stuff from the very first cota track done long ago.
 

bamaracing

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Beautiful track but i will stay with COTA 21 until they get it fixed. I tried add the stall # to 40 but like JR said they can't get out from behind the wall.
 

J.R. Franklin

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The stalls as currently configured look to be plenty long enough. If they were to take the time to do so, they "might" be able to get 40 cars on that Pit_0 pit road without any of them ending up behind that pit wall. The average length of a pit stall is 10 dlongs for the A.I. to comfortably get into and out of their stalls. You can probably push that down to 9 dlongs and be okay although that would make those stalls tighter and a little harder to get in and out of them during a full field pit stop... but you might be able to fit 38-40 stalls in. Otherwise, if shortening those stalls down to 9 dlongs doesn't get it done, then to get that pit road up to 38-43 stalls, they would probably have to modify some things in Sandbox, like removing some pit walls and extending pit road.
 

garrett1127

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Only thing I don't like about this track is why some of the track side cars and trucks buried halfway in the ground. Kinda ruins the whole effect for me.
 
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J.R. Franklin

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Only thing I don't like about this track is why some of the track side cars and trucks buried halfway in the ground. Kinda ruins the whole effect for me.
Tom, I hate to say it, but it really looks like it was a rush job. Really no attention was paid to all the details. Kind of disappointing to be perfectly honest.

I want to see new people creating tracks for this sim, but if they want to produce quality content, they need to spend the time on ALL the aspects of track work.... and there are many. Then TEST... TEST... TEST. Get some beta testers that you trust and make sure that your tracks have been fully vetted before you release them to the public. There's really no excuse for this.
 
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garrett1127

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I would attempt to fix it but I don't need another project to take up and learn all the ins and outs. I'll leave it to you and your mates, you guys are way much smarter than me.
 

Randal Coleman

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It will be fixed for sure, it was tested in a league and it ran fine but it didn't have a full field, the ini for the stalls was missed. When people said they was trying to run full fields and it was crashing it dawned upon me that it could of been a ini thing and then I saw it. I'll also reach out to Alex as well about some of the trackside things.
 

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