Misc True to Life AI 2013 Season 1.4

[w1n1x]

Seriously buddy? What did I just tell you to do...?

There's a "Frequently asked questions" section on the overview page..... *sigh*

As I said I'm quite tired so be don't attack me immediately.Seconldy why make an update while you can see more in the race,It's not an offence just a suggestion, making more updates cause you see eg:Ferrari won the free practice isn't good. It would be less work if you would just update the database after seeing the race.

 

[snthennumbers]

Okay cool thanks. I'm not using Mr Pibb's 2013 mod so I don't need your database right? So that means I just use the safety car fix database and not yours?

You got it

 

[whitewash]

Is it me or does this mod give retarded amounts of extra grip? It now feels like F1 2011/Mario Kart, Im able to take turns at ridiculous speeds without even trying. The worst part is that the AI doesnt seem to be able to do the same... If anything it had to be harder to beat them, not easier.

 

[w1n1x]

Is it me or does this mod give retarded amounts of extra grip? It now feels like F1 2011/Mario Kart, Im able to take turns at ridiculous speeds without even trying. The worst part is that the AI doesnt seem to be able to do the same... If anything it had to be harder to beat them, not easier.

Wrong,I hadn't encountered any problems so far.I could go as fast as in real life with using the DRS only in those 2 places even in qualifing.You just screw up something i think.

 

[Riley Preston]

Hey, are you sure I don't need your database? AI still seem to be backing out of overtakes a lot. All those lines of code you listed in your first post, what file(s) are they in as I'd like to be able to change the values around and try some things (I might be a good tester). How would I go about opening them?

EDIT: I'd also have to agree that the player now has too much rear grip, how can I reset this to default?

 

[snthennumbers]

Hey, are you sure I don't need your database? AI still seem to be backing out of overtakes a lot. All those lines of code you listed in your first post, what file(s) are they in as I'd like to be able to change the values around and try some things (I might be a good tester). How would I go about opening them?

EDIT: I'd also have to agree that the player now has too much rear grip, how can I reset this to default?

The database, amongst other things, controls individual driver aggression and global modifiers for aggression (and other parameters) for each difficulty level. I have increased global aggression modifiers for Expert and Legend, as well as individual drivers. This is done in the ai_driver table. However this only results in minor effects to overtaking attempts. Overall, the AI seems to be coded more for self-preservation rather than reckless aggression, and I haven't been able to find a way to counteract this without resulting in the AI frequently crashing into the back of the car ahead.

Grip levels have not been adjusted in such a way that rear grip is blatantly higher than front grip. It was all adjusted keeping the default scale. By default, rear grip is higher than front grip by 10% (front 1.0, rear 1.1). The highest difference between rear grip to font grip with my CTF files is at Hockenheim, but this is a mere 0.005 (half a percent difference). Abu Dhabi and Brazil are similar, but only 0.003 (1/3 of 1 percent difference). This is negligible at best and was done so that people using gamepads did not suffer with grip issues needlessly.

Finally, answers to your questions about editing files can be found ON THE OVERVIEW PAGE.
I did add to the Frequently Asked Questions section an answer to editing AI files, so thank you for pointing that out.

You seem to be in the vast minority of people who think grip levels are unbalanced, so be sure you've installed my files correctly...

 

[Riley Preston]

I've been playing with a lot of the values in the ai_config and putting some extreme values in there and surprisingly they make very little difference, in most cases I can't see if it has changed anything at all with the ai!

 

[Isaiah Uy]

The database, amongst other things, controls individual driver aggression and global modifiers for aggression (and other parameters) for each difficulty level. I have increased global aggression modifiers for Expert and Legend, as well as individual drivers. This is done in the ai_driver table. However this only results in minor effects to overtaking attempts. Overall, the AI seems to be coded more for self-preservation rather than reckless aggression, and I haven't been able to find a way to counteract this without resulting in the AI frequently crashing into the back of the car ahead.

Grip levels have not been adjusted in such a way that rear grip is blatantly higher than front grip. It was all adjusted keeping the default scale. By default, rear grip is higher than front grip by 10% (front 1.0, rear 1.1). The highest difference between rear grip to font grip with my CTF files is at Hockenheim, but this is a mere 0.005 (half a percent difference). Abu Dhabi and Brazil are similar, but only 0.003 (1/3 of 1 percent difference). This is negligible at best and was done so that people using gamepads did not suffer with grip issues needlessly.

Finally, answers to your questions about editing files can be found ON THE OVERVIEW PAGE.
I did add to the Frequently Asked Questions section an answer to editing AI files, so thank you for pointing that out.

You seem to be in the vast minority of people who think grip levels are unbalanced, so be sure you've installed my files correctly...

Can you please put a version of your database which includes HRT and unmodified driver names? since some of us dont want to make it a 2013 season.

edit: i tried playing without the database and the drivers are not that aggressive

 

[Riley Preston]

Can you please put a version of your database which includes HRT and unmodified driver names? since some of us dont want to make it a 2013 season.

edit: i tried playing without the database and the drivers are not that aggressive

I agree!

 

[whitewash]

The front grip has been greatly increased, its really easy to notice. The car now has legendary turn in both in slow and fast corners, I was able to go through the S complex in Suzuka/Silverstone and USA track with unbelievable ease. On some tracks the AI is somewhat competitive (still a few tenths slower but its closer) but in many others its about 0.5 - 1 sec slower.

I dont think I messed up the installation, I just reset the game back to original using Steam and then just copy/pasted the files except for the database.

 

[Riley Preston]

The front grip has been greatly increased, its really easy to notice. The car now has legendary turn both in slow and fast corners, I was able to go through the S complex in Suzuka/Silverstone and USA track with unbelievable ease. On some tracks the AI is somewhat competitive (still a few tenths slower but its closer) but in many others its about 0.5 - 1 sec slower.

I dont think I messed up the installation, I just reset the game back to original using Steam and then just copy/pasted the files except for the database.

I've got the same thing, I think he's just increased the grip by a little bit on the player's car and you can really feel it. I'm just going to not use the files which cause it.

 

[whitewash]

I've got the same thing, I think he's just increased the grip by a little bit on the player's car and you can really feel it. I'm just going to not use the files which cause it.

Which ones are those files? I would also like to try the mod with the original grip levels.

 

[Riley Preston]

I'm pretty sure that it is the files in the 'cars' folder of his mod but I'm not sure what else those files change in the mod.

 

[Blakx]

Those are the CFT files. These changes the grip levels, aero and the gear ratios.

 

[Riley Preston]

Those are the CFT files. These changes the grip levels, aero and the gear ratios.

Sweet! I don't need them!

 

[snthennumbers]

Here's what happened with the CTF files:
Johnny Dangerously adjusted the aerodymanics of the cars, along with gearing (for Player and AI) in an effort to achieve closer to real life top speeds across all tracks. He then felt the car was still too "understeer-y" so he increased the front grip levels by 0.05 (originally front grip is 1.0, he changed it to 1.05). This caused an imbalance in the car as the front had notably more grip than the rear which lead to a number of people saying the car felt very difficult to drive.
So rather than reset the grip levels from Johnny's CTF files back to Front 1.0, Rear 1.1 as they are by default, I went the other route and added grip to the rear to re-balance the cars (front 1.05, rear 1.15).

This did result in a number of tracks where the Player had a seemingly "invisible" advantage over the AI (see the overview page for a list of the tracks where I've corrected this issue), despite the AI and Player having the same grip levels of 1.05 / 1.15. Now, I have not tested at Silverstone, nor at Suzuka, and done very little testing at USA.

I have been continuously looking for feedback on tracks where you find you're notably faster than the AI, so that I can correct these issues on a per-track basis. What you have to realize is that there is not one "universal grip level" for the Player and AI across all tracks. CM seems to think that there is, but you'll find that you are notably faster than the AI at specific tracks even with the bog-standard CTF files in place.

With that being said, I'll certainly look into Silverstone, Suzuka, and USA to determine if a Player-Grip-Level change is needed there, so thank you for pointing those out!

Eventually, given enough feedback, we should be able to get a really good set of CTF files together which creates very close competition at each and every track.

Once again, I'll pose the question (seems I need to do this on every page of this thread lol):
Are there any tracks where you (the Player) find you are notably faster than the AI, seemingly for no reason?

 

[whitewash]

Alright, makes sense. Its indeed a very good idea to lower the top speeds to match the ones in real life, however doesnt increasing the grip levels generate way faster cornering speeds compared to real life? Maybe instead of increasing the AI grip level on certain tracks to match the player's you could do the opposite?

I dont know anything about modding, just my 2 cents.

 

[snthennumbers]

Alright, makes sense. Its indeed a very good idea to lower the top speeds to match the ones in real life, however doesnt increasing the grip levels generate way faster cornering speeds compared to real life? Maybe instead of increasing the AI grip level on certain tracks to match the player's you could do the opposite?

I dont know anything about modding, just my 2 cents.

The grip level increase from 1.0 / 1.1 to 1.05 / 1.15 is only a 5% difference. Yes it does effect cornering speed, but I find this leads to more realistic laptimes on the whole. Would you disagree?


I'm basically looking at it from this perspective:
Make the AI faster with more grip than default everywhere so we have a decent "starting point" to work with. Then if the Player is still notably faster than the AI, I now have more "wiggle room" to adjust the Player with.
To put it another way, and we'll take Hockenheim here for example since it's an extreme case, if the AI was running around Hockenheim with 1.0 / 1.1 grip levels, I would have to adjust the Player's grip levels down so low in order to make the race competitive, that the Player's car would feel very "slippery".

The last thing that should be noted (as it is in the overview page), is that the AI races with the default car setup given to you. Once you start adjusting your car's setup, you wind up with a notable advantage over the AI. So my goal in adjusting only the Player's grip levels on a per-track basis is so that the Player does, in fact, need to put at least some effort into setting up their car in order to be competitive, rather than blow away the competition. Needless to say finding a good balance point is difficult as everyone sets up their car differently, and uses different driving assists.

But like I said, I'm always looking for feedback on tracks so we can all figure out the best grip levels for the Player so the Player has a great, competitive, hard fought race each time.

 

[snthennumbers]

Can you please put a version of your database which includes HRT and unmodified driver names? since some of us dont want to make it a 2013 season.

edit: i tried playing without the database and the drivers are not that aggressive

I won't be doing that since this mod is more geared towards the 2013 season, and I don't want too many different databases to manage.

However, here is a simple solution for you to adjust aggressiveness:
Open the database and go to the ai_driver table
In the "name" column, towards the top, you'll see row entries for "Legend", "Extreme", "all-rounder", and "poor" (Legend is Legend, Extreme = Extreme, all-rounder = medium, poor = easy).

So if you drive on Legend difficulty, you'll see the global modifiers for aggression, mistakes, etc. are all set to 0.9
Set these values (for whichever difficulty level you play at) higher. For instance in my 2013 database, Legend is set to almost all 1.0's instead of 0.9's which is why you see the AI being faster and more aggressive with my database in place.
Extreme I believe is set to all 0.8's...so if you play on Extreme difficulty try raising aggression to 1. Be careful with the speed_in and speed_out parameters as these will make the AI faster. Set them too high and you'll basically turn Extreme difficulty into Legend difficulty.

Cheers!

 

[Blakx]

I am faster than the AI in Spa, makes winning there very easy (using default set up). Maybe you could look into that?