Odessa Keys: to Brake or Not to Brake?

[science]

I'm racing again! Yay!
Anyhow, the last turn before the starting grid I just lay on both airbrakes to stay off of the walls. I seem to recall (perhaps in my dreams) a way to make it through with just a little alternating of the right then left airbrake. Am I right, or should I just lay on them?

[JABBERJAW]

off the last jump before those turns, hold back on the pitch and go off the track to the left. YOur ship will stay in the air and with a little practice you will be landing right in the energy pit. A couple slight brakes and you can come out unscathed, much faster than taking those turns. If you travel too far in the air(to the end of the energy pit), the wuss wagon will pick you up. It is possible to land on the right section of the track opposite the energy pit, but isn't any faster.

[Lance]

.
damn. extreme gaming. i dunno if i'm ready for this. i just stand on the brakes for a bit and let off on the left one to go down the right side, but it's easier to go into the pits. just seems slower to go through them. i can see that i am really going to have to master the jump-over-everything-possible technique. presumably it will work in Rapier class also?
.

[infoxicated]

Jees, doesn't anyone stick to the tracks any more?

Maybe along with the Piranha selector and controller selector I should do an "I'm a cheating gypo and take every shortcut I can find" selector. :roll:

[Lance]

.
could be, Rob. i'd probably be more comfortable with no shortcuts, but i am forced to admit by my own logic that anything possible in the game that is not an exploitation of what is clearly an unintended flaw should be allowed. i may be opening a huge worm can here, but i'd like to see the standard and only tables be stick2trax, while arena challenges could [among other things] be used for 'Anything goes' challenges. we wouldn't really need to demand videos for adherence to stick-to-tracks because we already have the honour system for the times. on the other hand [goddammit, i hate dilemmas], the wipeoutzone tables ought to represent the absolute pinnacle of possibility for world records. as usual, there would probably be a demand for separate tables for 'Anything goes' and for 'Stick to tracks'.
.

[infoxicated]

Of course - it is a little late in the day to reign in the rules and regs as to what is deemed acceptable.

The honour system works for me, and I'm happy that with Wipeout I'm always competing more against myself than I am against anyone else. Which is just as well, given my position on the tables. :oops: :)

Still, I think I'd feel kind of robbed if I ever managed the perfect phantom lap of Porto Kora, but somebody who'd pulled off the hard-right-at-the-jump trick was ahead of me. :|

[JABBERJAW]

joel, I used to do a quick tap of both brakes at the same time. Why would they program the ship staying up in the air more when you are off the track than when you are on it? It should stay in the air the same amount of time. Actually now with assayeah's technique of "staying on the ground" the big jumps may be outdated. Then you'll need won't need stick to the track anymore, but no braking on speed up pads :D
I like the big jumps, but only as long as you can't go through walls, that is kinda stupid.

[Lance]

.
but wouldn't Asayyeah's technique be too limited for us to worry about general application? he said that it only works on Piranha [and maybe he also said only in phantom?]? and only in 2097? if that is so, then times for all other circumstances and versions would still be improved by shortcuts.

it might seem late in the day, but in real-life racing, when competitors discover techniques that distort or flout the original intent of the rules, the rules are altered to specifically eliminate those techniques. we've seen this in Formula I, NASCAR, and everywhere else. the WipeoutZone is about as close to official as one can get in the world of the legacy WipEout games. if anyone could establish a standard, we can; we even have original designers of the games as members. who could know the intent of the game designs better than they do?!
.

[JABBERJAW]

It works in xl as well, but not as much. I knocked off 2.1 seconds on talons reach. 1:18.0 down to a 1:15.9 and could do a little better. The first race cut I cut off much more off the first downhill than the second one. As far as the jumps are concerned, it would almost be impossible to determine. Some areas are clearly made to jump over and some are not. How much of a cutoff on a turn to call it unfair. Most of these shortcuts do not work on vector or venom and even less work on everything but wipeout 3se. If they had just programmed the walls to be solid, and had no invisible walls, there would be no cheats. Where there wasn't a wall, you could cut off the corner and where there was you would hit it. This would be a suggestion for the next game they make. Nobody wants no shortcut jumps and have the ship stick to the track like it does in fusion. there just needs to be better programming for this sort of thing, without going to far one way or the other.

[science]

Maybe I'm sleepy, but I completely missed what you were saying to me in your second to last post Al. As for assayeah's technique, I've yet to go through that post. I guess I should read it, huh?.
As for the old debate of cutting corners vs. stick2trax, it's been debated to death. As long as the shortcuts are available and reasonable, they're going to be taken. It's too damned late to enforce a stick2trax policy on the times tables. That would mean a lot of people would have to dump their current times and start over again, especially people racing on faster leagues. Rob, I don't really understand why you detest clipping off a corner to the degree you do. When I'm flying through p-mar at phantom speeds, should I slam on both airbrakes so that I don't overshoot the series of chicanes I have to go through at vector class? If it's available and it'll shave a few tenths of a second off of your laptime, and most importantly, it's reasonable, then what's the matter with it? It's not ruining the game, and anyone can do it and really ought to. We're not talking about Mario Cart here where you can jump over walls and end up at the finish line. You're not flying off the track and respawning half way back around. They are, for the most part, realistic shortcuts. Sure, it's a shame that some of the walls aren't solid and can be clipped off, but it's also a shame that some of the legitimate racing lines have to be avoided because they contain invisible walls.
Perhaps in the next wipeout, these things will be taken into consideration. If the developers stop and think, "I dont want players to be able to jump over this part of the track" an obstacle can be placed there to prevent pilots from taking advantage of it. If the tracks are well designed, there won't be a problem. However, as I said earlier, reasonable shortcuts should be considered a bonus, not cheating.

I hope that wasn't all babble. I need sleep. Sweet sleep.

[Task]

Actually, even using obstacles to stop people from skipping sections of the track is a bit of a dirty hack. The _true_ solution here is to use the thing that was invented soly to combat this kind of problem: Checkpoints.
You have to pass the checkpoint, or your lap is invalid. End of story. The checkpoints _should_ be placed at the ends of the track, so you have to cover all the intervening ground, however you cover it is your choice. If the fastest route happens to be ATVing it up a hill and down the other side, then you leave the track to do that. If the track designer doesn't _want_ that to be the fastest route, then you put a damn checkpoint inbetween somewhere so that the hill cannot be used on a valid lap.

It's all very simple, really. It's purely a mis-sight in the game design and shared fault with the track designers.

I just hope that they learn something from these mistakes and do a better job next time.

In the meantime, there's simply nothing else to do but to accept that anything the game engine allows that wasn't an unintended bug or explicit cheat is a valid and acceptable way of playing. Anyone who wants it to be otherwise is merely strongly wishing that an already great game was even better. Something we're all quite guilty of, I'm sure. 8 )

[infoxicated]

Rob, I don't really understand why you detest clipping off a corner to the degree you do.
I don't detest gliding over the chicanes at P-mar when the speed class allows it - far from it.

What I detest is folk who play at rapier or phantom who do what I said above - veer hard off of a jump in order to cut out a sector of the track. Doing it off of the jump at Portokora can absolutely slash your lap time, but the time has absolutely no relation to the path of the track. If you've cheated, you know you've cheated - things like that cant be done under the illusion that it's possible in the game therefor it must be fair.

For a good lap at Manortop you have to learn to cut the corners, following the path of the track without being picked up by the wuss wagon, so to say I detest cutting corners is a bit of an overstatement. As the man said above - checkpoints would ensure that you've followed the path of the track, which is the ethos of all fair and good racing competition IRL and virtual.

OT: for some reason, while I typed in "wuss wagon" the part of my brain that's usually working behind the scenes leapt into my consciousness and suggested the following: "You know, a good name for an Atomic Kitten tribute band would be Nuclear Pussy." as if it was important. WTF is that all about... I detest Atomic Kitten and all they wail for. :-? :o

[JABBERJAW]

As long as they keep the big jumps in I will be happy. Like joel said, put walls in where you don't want them to cut, but definitely leave room for some of these type of shortcuts(not going through walls though). I don't want the ship to stick to the track. 3se is the only version where you can do that stupid cut of the track because they made it too floaty. Because of this floatiness it also wrecked mega mall and sampa run for this version. They should have kept the physics of the japanese version.

[Lance]

.
Rob, that sort of subconcious wackiness happens to me a bunch. sometimes it kinda makes sense if i analyse it.

sometimes it doesn't. ;)

---------

i've always respected Odessa Keys. now that i've been playing XL because of the new records tables, i've begun to actually like it, not just respect it. [this liking has stiLL never occurred for Stanza Inter!]
.

[zargz]

INFOx:
Maybe along with the Piranha selector and controller selector I should do an "I'm a cheating gypo and take every shortcut I can find" selector.

LOL yeah! :D :D :D :D

SCIENCe:
When I'm flying through p-mar at phantom speeds, should I slam on both airbrakes so that I don't overshoot the series of chicanes I have to go through at vector class?

that particular p-mar jump is a lack of design - should b an upphill fr the jump then downhill to the right turn tunnel with glass wall.

SCIENCe:
We're not talking about Mario Cart here where you can jump over walls and end up at the finish line.

well almost, science. especially on the classic trax on se (i e terramax that i lUv but dont play 2much on se)

TASk:
Checkpoints.

great thinking, task

INFOx:
For a good lap at Manortop you have to learn to cut the corners, following the path of the track without being picked up by the wuss wagon, so to say I detest cutting corners is a bit of an overstatement

well, at higher speeds u CAN turn right of the jump (fly over the fat cat) and skip the turn :( 2big of a cut 4me thats y i dont post 4that track .. Xept 4that an Xellnt track. also, imo, design flaw. ez fixed.

man, do i need 2be on the test pilot/design team 4the neXt wo! u hear thAt infoxx??!!


there's no1 who 'detest clipping off a corner' more than mE but after being all fired upp about/of it now i agree with 'jumpers' - the cuts R there nothing 2do about it Xept a better follow up game.

[Lance]

.
jumping over the fatcat, zargz? is that SE or regular?
or can you do it on both?
.

[JABBERJAW]

I'm not sure if I go over or near the cat, but you can land somewhat before the first of the s-turns. It's better to land somewhere in the middle of the straightaway so you can line yourself up for the s-turns.

[science]

there is no fence where you land on that "shortcut". why do you suppose that is? surely it wasn't intended by the designers...nope :wink:

[Lance]

.
there is a fence down further, though... where i have crashed into the end of it under full hyperthrust all too many times.
[in lower speed categories. doubtless Phantom class would bring even more challenge to my abilities]
.

[Asayyeah]

i am starting Marnor Top with icarus , last night, the S-turns are very hard to find the perfect trajectory, i don't know if it's the correct ship to do good times on Manor?

[science]

Assegai is really the more appropriate ship for manortop. If you get enough autopilots, you can barely squeak by in icarus in SR, but in TT Assegai has it hands down.

[zargz]

.
jumping over the fatcat, zargz? is that SE or regular?
or can you do it on both?
. se 4sure .. probably possible in regular also dunno :o

[JABBERJAW]

You can make that jump on all 4 versions. Assegai actually is faster than Icarus if used correctly even on single race. I'm pretty sure that 1:54.2 can be beaten. On the japanese version however it would not be faster.

[science]

I think I played manortop all I ever want to during that little exchange. You'll have to be the one to beat it. :wink: