Time Hop List Races and rosters

[PeterR]

Hi Russell,

In the process of getting our pilots interested in Hop List Races, one suggested having timed races where everyone doesn't have to be online at the same time. Instead, the pilot would race the course for the best time. Then, the top 10 or whatever could be displayed with a chat command and/or displayed at the end of a run (and I'd like to have a ^^HopTimeRaceTop10^^ variable for the remoteaccesspublic page).

Since FSHost doesn't currently support user logins, the roster could still be kept using the pilot's name though it wouldn't be secure (i.e. someone could impersonate an existing racer on the roster). Not a big, though because if an imposter gets a better time, the actual pilot that has that name will look even better!  

Of course, we'd still need a chat command to start the race. That'd be a good option to have for the regular Hop List Race too so the server admin wouldn't have to be present.

[Russell Gilbert]

Good ideas, Peter.

Thanks!

Russell

[jonf]

Peter,

If you (or anyone else) has some good hop lists for races between 1/2 hour and 1 hour I'd be happy to swap with you. I've got descriptions of some really great races posted at http://www.flightbase2000.com/raceserver.html
Just click the link in the first paragraph to see the list. You can either just make your own hop list from the web page descriptions or send me a message and I'll email them to you.

Thanks,
Jon

[jonf]

Russell,

In addition to Peter's request I'd love to be able to have a feature so that every night at midnight the race ends, a winner declared for the day and a new race automatically selected (to be chosen from a seperate list. not all our hop lists are good for races). This would allow me to continue with our daily races, have then run all day (thanx for posting the great idea Peter!) then automaticaly end and start a new race for the next day, all without an admin

[PeterR]

Thanks for the link jon. I'll be happy to share races with you. We're just starting discussions about them.

Russell, I have a funny feeling that racing is going to be a hot item in FSHost. Adds excitement to the sim!

[PeterR]

Does FSHost cache Hop Lists (regular or race ones)? One way to have different races each day would be to use the equivalent of a cron job to overwrite the file. However, if the file is cached, then it wouldn't work.

[Russell Gilbert]

All great ideas guys, which I've added to my "great ideas" list :-)  Keep 'em comin'

When you tell FSHost to use a new Hop List (or when the program starts up), it loads the Hop List data into memory and uses it from there until you tell it to use a different list.  So unfortunately, overwriting the file wouldn't work.  But I think the idea of having some sort of timed schedule, as we've discussed before in another thread, is a great solution to that particular problem.

Russell

[Russell Gilbert]

I should also add that I've been planning for a long time now to have a place on this web site where people could upload and swap Hop List files.  It's on my to-do list also, after I get 2004 support finished :-)

Russell

[PeterR]

All sounds great, Russell!