09-04-2023, 03:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-04-2023, 10:26 AM by JoyfulPanda.)
This is “Timeless IndyCART” - a mod package for ICR2. “Timeless IndyCART” is a collection of mod options for driving an Indycar season that mixes drivers and circuits from across the history of both CART and Indycar. With the current season winding down, on Labor Day weekend, and the package being in a place where I feel like its share-able as a “stable” version, this felt like a good time to post this.
Feedback is more than welcome.
Due to its size, I could not upload here, and the best solution I could find was a Google Drive link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...drive_link
If anyone has better/alternate suggestions on how to host/share, I'd also love to hear those.
Introduction
Last summer I was getting the itch to spend some time in ICR2…but I had run old seasons from my youth (e.g., 1995) many times, and I wasn’t super excited about the contemporary grid or calendar. Then came the idea to create a season that included drivers and circuits from all different eras.
After working on it on/off for over a year now, I thought I’d share with you guys here.
What is “Timeless IndyCART”?
The goal is to provide a realistic season using the longest tenured drivers in the history of the sport (or, those with particular importance in the history of the series). It is not an All-Star grid - although most of the greats tend to last a long time, you will not see Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya, Alex Zanardi - despite those drivers of course being greater than Graham Rahal, Ed Carpenter or Raul Boesel. Because a “realistic” season wouldn’t have all-time greats in every slot on the grid.
In addition, the package includes:
To be clear - this package pulls cars and tracks created by other modders. Full credits are included in the package files for all of the great work that was done on these. I’m not trying to take credit for others’ work, just trying to share something I enjoyed putting together and have enjoyed driving. If anyone feels they were not properly credited please don’t hesitate to let me know.
This package uses cars from: Oliver Karaula, Junae Ludvig, Tom Smith, and Dave_S
This package uses tracks with contributions from: Pavel 69, BobLogSan, Mistycreek, Tjerk de Heer, Tony Krist, Oliver Karaula, Brian Fox, Sander Maas, Checkpoint10, Dennis, Samsepi0l, Tim McArthur, Brett Shannon, Bob Seaman, and Tom Smith.
Again, full credits are included in the README.
Usage
After downloading the package, to use you would need to do the following to set up:
After the package is installed, you can start the season as you normally would by selecting "Championship Season." However, when starting a race, you would make sure to select the appropriate carset for running of that race. If you don’t want to swap carsets between races, you can use the TL_BASE - which attempts to be balanced across all tracks. However, it’s HIGHLY recommended to at least swap between TL_OVAL and TL_RS for oval and road/street respectively, as it has a huge impact on the experience/immersion.
If you want an even more accurate performance, you will use TL_SPWY, TL_BR, TL_ROAD, TL_STRT, and possibly TL_PWR - a carset selection guide for each track is included.
More on Driver Ratings and Track Ratings
Driver ratings were constructed by:
Performance account for difference in qualifying and race performance - so strong qualifiers like Will Power will appear on pole more, without being too overpowered in the actual race.
When constructing ratings of the AI, there are three main axes that need to be balanced:
Alternate Liveries and Drivers
A collection of alternate liveries and drivers that I was considering for use are included in the package. Ratings for all drivers on all different circuit types are included in the driver_ratings folder. The full set of 38 opponents is never used, but you can expand the field sizes on certain tracks if you want to race them all.
You can also use carset re-ordering mods to move drivers up/down, however BE CAREFUL - if you are swapping between carsets for each race, the drivers must maintain the same exact order for their points to be accurately reflected in a Championship Season.
Comments on the Calendars
As mentioned above, all calendars are meant to be realistic in terms of the dates of each event, and the overall pace of the season (no long stretches of off weeks, spacing races as to not clump 10 events in 10 weeks).
Also as mentioned above, there are varying lengths of calendars, for your choice depending on your preference. There are lengths of 16, 18, 20, 24, 28 and 30. Each length has a BASE calendar - which is just the X most used circuits in the series’ history (with some adjustments for balance), while the ALTERNATE calendar attempts to include considerations of geographic/market balance, which would come into play for a real season.
All calendars are split 50/50 between Road/Street and Oval circuits. In addition, while less strict, some choices were made to prevent being heavily out of balance between Fast ovals vs Bull Ring ovals, or Permanent Road Courses vs Street circuits.
Future Hopes/Dreams/Plans
Of course I am not guaranteeing I will ever get to any of these, but the things that are on my list of “To Dos” next for this package:
Cars
While the current set hits all the marks that I was hoping to achieve when selecting liveries, I’m hoping to dive into some livery editing at some point to upgrade the set with the following:
PRIORITY 1
#44 Target for Jimmy Vasser. Given Will Power’s claim to the #12, Vasser is left with few good options. However, the #44 he ran in the Indianapolis 500 would allow him to run the iconic late 90s Target livery that he was most known for.
PRIORITY 2
PRIORITY 3
PRIORITY 4 - Maybe?
Circuits
I have a lot to learn about circuit editing, and I’m not sure if/when I will find the time and motivation to dig into this. But there are 4 circuits that would appear in the calendars if they had usable versions:
PRIORITY 1
PRIORITY 2
Continuing Ratings Improvements
I’ve run these packages already myself for about 10 races - and they seem pretty good so far, but there’s endless opportunities to improve my understanding of how these ratings work within the sim, and I know they can be better. I have some avenues of future exploration already.
Grid Changes Over Time
As time goes on, drivers will move into the field bumping others. But there aren’t that many coming in the near future. Assuming he continues to be a full-time competitor, Alexander Rossi will graduate to the grid at the end of 2025. The soonest another driver would enter the grid after him would be 2028.
Realistic Circuit Weather based on Event Date
I already have all the weather data gathered that was used for constructing the calendars - this process would require creating weather patterns for the dates in which the events are going to be run. So for many circuits, there would need to be different WIND and TEMP values, depending on the calendar being used.
Feedback is more than welcome.
Due to its size, I could not upload here, and the best solution I could find was a Google Drive link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...drive_link
If anyone has better/alternate suggestions on how to host/share, I'd also love to hear those.
Introduction
Last summer I was getting the itch to spend some time in ICR2…but I had run old seasons from my youth (e.g., 1995) many times, and I wasn’t super excited about the contemporary grid or calendar. Then came the idea to create a season that included drivers and circuits from all different eras.
After working on it on/off for over a year now, I thought I’d share with you guys here.
What is “Timeless IndyCART”?
The goal is to provide a realistic season using the longest tenured drivers in the history of the sport (or, those with particular importance in the history of the series). It is not an All-Star grid - although most of the greats tend to last a long time, you will not see Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya, Alex Zanardi - despite those drivers of course being greater than Graham Rahal, Ed Carpenter or Raul Boesel. Because a “realistic” season wouldn’t have all-time greats in every slot on the grid.
In addition, the package includes:
- Meticulously crafted driver ratings for each time of circuit.
- A set of recommended calendars, with realistic dates and pacing for the season
- Tracks with tweaked performance ratings to balance performance of the field at 100% strength
- Selection of liveries/numbers for each driver, with a good deal of thought put into it to keep unique numbers for each, while including as many of the most iconic liveries as possible.
To be clear - this package pulls cars and tracks created by other modders. Full credits are included in the package files for all of the great work that was done on these. I’m not trying to take credit for others’ work, just trying to share something I enjoyed putting together and have enjoyed driving. If anyone feels they were not properly credited please don’t hesitate to let me know.
This package uses cars from: Oliver Karaula, Junae Ludvig, Tom Smith, and Dave_S
This package uses tracks with contributions from: Pavel 69, BobLogSan, Mistycreek, Tjerk de Heer, Tony Krist, Oliver Karaula, Brian Fox, Sander Maas, Checkpoint10, Dennis, Samsepi0l, Tim McArthur, Brett Shannon, Bob Seaman, and Tom Smith.
Again, full credits are included in the README.
Usage
After downloading the package, to use you would need to do the following to set up:
- Select the Calendar you want to run. There are calendars of varying lengths from 16 races all the way up to 30. If you’re unsure, I recommend the 20_BASE calendar as a starting point. After selecting your calendar, you need to overwrite the existing CALENDAR file, either through deleting the existing one, and copy/pasting your preferred calendar and renaming it CALENDAR, or through copy/pasting the contents.
- With a calendar selected, you need to ensure all the required circuits are in your TRACKS folder. All tracks listed in any of the calendars are included in the package, so you would just need to copy/paste the appropriate tracks from the mod package into your TRACKS folder. If you have an existing copy of a certain track you can of course use it, but the copies of the tracks included in the package have been specifically balanced for use with the Timeless carsets.
- Finally, copy/paste the carsets into your CARS folder.
After the package is installed, you can start the season as you normally would by selecting "Championship Season." However, when starting a race, you would make sure to select the appropriate carset for running of that race. If you don’t want to swap carsets between races, you can use the TL_BASE - which attempts to be balanced across all tracks. However, it’s HIGHLY recommended to at least swap between TL_OVAL and TL_RS for oval and road/street respectively, as it has a huge impact on the experience/immersion.
If you want an even more accurate performance, you will use TL_SPWY, TL_BR, TL_ROAD, TL_STRT, and possibly TL_PWR - a carset selection guide for each track is included.
More on Driver Ratings and Track Ratings
Driver ratings were constructed by:
- Measuring historical results of all drivers across their careers, and constructing a realistic mapping of how they’d all compete against each other in the same era using statistical modeling
- Measuring performance of cars at different rating values live in the ICR2 sim.
- Consolidating these two by combining the impact and variance of ICR2 ratings and the mapped/projected performance distributions of the drivers.
Performance account for difference in qualifying and race performance - so strong qualifiers like Will Power will appear on pole more, without being too overpowered in the actual race.
When constructing ratings of the AI, there are three main axes that need to be balanced:
- The overall strength of the field. This was balanced around the fastest car in a session - targeting the estimated expected performance of the fastest car in a field at the circuit in the 1995 era. At 100% strength, expect to see the top opponent setting a time very close to the 1995 season levels. Of course, many circuits were not run in 1995, so there was some math (regressions) done to estimate how the 1995 field would perform on average at a circuit.
- The relative strength of the drivers - how often each performs better than the other. This was a combination of the projection from historical performance and the projected impact of ICR2 driver ratings differences. The average driver in the field is expected to be at about 500 / 500 / 500 in terms of power / traction / drag.
- The spread of the field - how tightly packed will the field be? For example, in the 80s, it would be the norm for only a couple of drivers to finish on the lead lap at the Indy 500, while now its normal for almost the entire field to be on the lead lap. In my experience, the ICR2 sim does not handle a tight pack very well, so this package targets a field spread closer to something you might see in the late 90s. Expect 5-10 lead lap finishers on 100% distance races on most oval courses, for example.
Alternate Liveries and Drivers
A collection of alternate liveries and drivers that I was considering for use are included in the package. Ratings for all drivers on all different circuit types are included in the driver_ratings folder. The full set of 38 opponents is never used, but you can expand the field sizes on certain tracks if you want to race them all.
You can also use carset re-ordering mods to move drivers up/down, however BE CAREFUL - if you are swapping between carsets for each race, the drivers must maintain the same exact order for their points to be accurately reflected in a Championship Season.
Comments on the Calendars
As mentioned above, all calendars are meant to be realistic in terms of the dates of each event, and the overall pace of the season (no long stretches of off weeks, spacing races as to not clump 10 events in 10 weeks).
Also as mentioned above, there are varying lengths of calendars, for your choice depending on your preference. There are lengths of 16, 18, 20, 24, 28 and 30. Each length has a BASE calendar - which is just the X most used circuits in the series’ history (with some adjustments for balance), while the ALTERNATE calendar attempts to include considerations of geographic/market balance, which would come into play for a real season.
All calendars are split 50/50 between Road/Street and Oval circuits. In addition, while less strict, some choices were made to prevent being heavily out of balance between Fast ovals vs Bull Ring ovals, or Permanent Road Courses vs Street circuits.
Future Hopes/Dreams/Plans
Of course I am not guaranteeing I will ever get to any of these, but the things that are on my list of “To Dos” next for this package:
Cars
While the current set hits all the marks that I was hoping to achieve when selecting liveries, I’m hoping to dive into some livery editing at some point to upgrade the set with the following:
PRIORITY 1
#44 Target for Jimmy Vasser. Given Will Power’s claim to the #12, Vasser is left with few good options. However, the #44 he ran in the Indianapolis 500 would allow him to run the iconic late 90s Target livery that he was most known for.
PRIORITY 2
- #1 Pennzoil for Rick Mears for a split with the #1 Gould
- #23 Duracell for Raul Boesel. Although he never ran this number/livery combination, Boesel’s most emblematic livery by far is the Duracell, and the #23 Duracell car was run at times for other drivers.
PRIORITY 3
- #60 Quaker State for Scott Brayton
- #16 Argent for Danica Patrick
PRIORITY 4 - Maybe?
- #? McDonald’s for Sebastien Bourdais - would be great to run the livery from his dominance in Champ Car - but reshuffling the numbers to make it work is tough/annoying.
- #26 Klein Tools for Dan Wheldon - while scored as his most iconic car, bumping Paul Tracy off the #26 leaves him without anywhere good to go…and I’m relatively happy just using the #98 he won the 500 in.
Circuits
I have a lot to learn about circuit editing, and I’m not sure if/when I will find the time and motivation to dig into this. But there are 4 circuits that would appear in the calendars if they had usable versions:
PRIORITY 1
- Iowa. I know there are some versions floating around the forum, but I couldn’t find one that was currently workable with AI.
- St. Petersburg. Again, I know there are two versions in the archive, but the AI needs some work before its able to be included in the package.
PRIORITY 2
- Barber. I know there’s a base track that is available in the archive, would need AI and objects.
- Indianapolis Road Course. This one seems the farthest from reality…like I said I’m a beginner on track editing and I have no idea how much we can use existing IMS circuit builds to create the Road Course.
Continuing Ratings Improvements
I’ve run these packages already myself for about 10 races - and they seem pretty good so far, but there’s endless opportunities to improve my understanding of how these ratings work within the sim, and I know they can be better. I have some avenues of future exploration already.
Grid Changes Over Time
As time goes on, drivers will move into the field bumping others. But there aren’t that many coming in the near future. Assuming he continues to be a full-time competitor, Alexander Rossi will graduate to the grid at the end of 2025. The soonest another driver would enter the grid after him would be 2028.
Realistic Circuit Weather based on Event Date
I already have all the weather data gathered that was used for constructing the calendars - this process would require creating weather patterns for the dates in which the events are going to be run. So for many circuits, there would need to be different WIND and TEMP values, depending on the calendar being used.
