Racing

This is a server in Armagetron Advanced / Retrocycles. The goal is to race to the winzone. The server keeps track of your best times per map. The fastest time of each player is saved and displayed in-game and on this website. This server has additional features to make it not only more competitive, but also more fun.

Every round, there is a new map. Depending on the estimated length of the map, you get to play a map anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes as standard. In addition, I have implemented the functionality to /skip a map or /extend a round.

At any time, you can choose which maps you wish to play next. You can use "/q" (without quotes), followed by a map name, to specify the next map you want to play. For more detail, see Map Queue.

It is recommended for new players to use the Server Custom camera in this server. However this camera is no longer forcibly applied. For more details, see Custom Cameras.

Auto Acceleration

In past racing servers, you were required to manually hold the brake key to accelerate. That was probably for two reasons: one, most other racing games already require holding an accelerate button; and two it is slightly easier to make settings that behave this way. That is functional, but does not fit well into this particular game's overall control scheme. Many racing games have more complex mechanics where there may be an advantage in precisely timing accelerate and brake presses. In this game, there is no such advantage; the focus is purely on the turning. It's not unusual to have to double-bind (turn twice in the same direction simultaneiously) or even triple-bind (3 times in the same direction). For skilled racers looking to beat their ranks, there will never be an advantage to releasing accelerate and slowing down on a map. If you are trying to learn the map and need to slow down, now the brake button actually... brakes!

While it may not be a huge difference in and of itself, this server enabling respawns compounds the matter. In general, this game mode is focused on single-player play in a multi-player setting which should not provide any advantage or disadvantage to a stable high ping or low ping. Thus, if you have 300ms ping, but it is stable with no other changes or inconsistencies in lag, you should be able to play just as well as if you have only 30ms ping. However, there would be no good way to combine brake-to-accelerate and respawns without putting higher ping players at a huge disadvantage in latency. Conceivably, lag could already affect brake-to-accelerate timing accuracy, even before respawns were introduced.

So, VOV came up with a solution. He made some settings that approximate the brake-to-acceleration behavior with the standard acceleration curve. I think the original intent was to match the original behavior so that a racing server could be migrated to auto-acceleration without affecting existing times, but in practice I believe auto-acceleration replaced both original times and original servers. This was not the first server to have implemented VOV's settings, but neither this server nor any of its rankings were ever on the original brake-to-accelerate settings.

Respawns New

Similar to the Trackmania series of games, you get unlimited retries within each round. In the past, racing servers would only allow 1 try per round, and as a workaround would play the map 3 times to allow retries. This was Now, the server looks at an average time of completion for each map to determine how long a round should go for.

After the time runs out, it does not terminate everyone's race immediately. It stops respawning, and begins a second timer based on the previous "smart timer" written with consultance from VOV.

Map Queue

Add maps to a queue using the "/q" command followed by a map name. It can be a partial match. You can even remove other players queued maps with "/q remove mapname".

Note that this is provided for convenience, and it is expected not to be misused for trolling. Some restrictions have already been applied due to previous abuse, example disallowing queueing from spectator mode, and there are some restrictions on non-logged in users. There were stronger restrictions in the past, especially in racing servers while this game was more populated. However, this game is much smaller than it was and the remaining players generally behave more maturely. Therefore, such restrictions (especially if poorly implemented) can end up being unneccessary in general and annoying at worst.

Custom Cameras New

No longer are you bound to the use of server custom. Instead, you can play with whatever camera you choose.

Why?

Well, with respawns, due to current game limitations, it is no longer easily possible to enforce the camera. Basically, it will only force the camera at the start of each round, and fail to force it after respawns. Although for new players the use of server custom is strongly recommended, you may also use other cameras such as your own custom camera configuration which may be more comfortable. I have raced in servers which used camera angles I did not like, and also prefer using other camera settings in this server nowadays. Also, now that the default camera in the newest versions of clients is "custom" instead of the infamous "smart" camera, racing without any configuration changes will still yield a decent experience, unlike the old days when the "smart" camera would give racing servers a very poor initial impression.