B-Spec Grinder 2.5.2: Automate Remote Races

  • Thread starter yonis
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I have to agree, this is really awesome. Switched it on last night to see how it goes overnight, unfortunately, was halted with a server issue this morning. Did me earn a bit of money beforehand, though. But now it won't restart, gets up to starting race, and then it goes straight to race ended. That's the process it seems to repeat now. I went to gran-turismo to see whether I can manually start a race, and it seems the drivers of two of my friends have gone missing, tells me no drivers found (and they're definitely still shared). Could that have something to do with it? I was able to manually start a race with picking drivers from my other friends, and that seems to work.
 
I noticed something today and it made me come up with a suggestion for the author...

Get rid of the option keep 0 drivers free. You can't receive prizes from a Bob that is currently in a race, and if all of your Bobs are in a race, you're **** outta luck and can't get your money from anybody. To make it worse, you can't even take him offline so that you can collect the money after he's done with the current race!

You can see what this could lead to...imagine having a large enough network of friends running the autogrinder that your Bobs are ALWAYS in use and so you can never get your money!

By always forcing at least 1 shared Bob to always be free, it would work like this:

1. Player puts all 6 Bobs online.
2. When the player is ready to collect, he takes 1 Bob offline.
3. Now that only 5 Bobs are online, only 4 of them will ever be in use.
4. Player takes the free Bob, collects the money, takes him offline.
5. Player puts the Bob he took offline in step 2 back online.
6. Repeat from step 2.
7. ???
8. Profit!

The only problem I see occurring is a case where it ALWAYS ends up being the same Bob that gets left free. Are you able to see how much money a friend's Bob has uncollected? It might be worthwhile to make it leave the Bob with the most money free.
 
Get rid of the option keep 0 drivers free.

I'd be opposed to this. It's not the default (and that is good), but it should still be an option. Some of my friends want me to use all their shared drivers, and it equally means it's easier for me to fill up 16 slots. Options are good, and it does come with a warning. If your friends neglect your wishes of leaving one of your Bobs available, tell them off!
 
"Some of my friends want me to use all their shared drivers,"

OK, and some don't. And you can't differentiate. So if you oblige your friends who want that one extra driver, you may be causing many others to be unable to host, which exponentially reduces opportunities for everyone else, too.

It's just not worth it. It's not like it's so awful to have merely 5 of your drivers raced at any particular time, and this encourages working together.

You're right that it comes with a warning. I suppose that's probably good enough, but I really think it's not cool to disable this just because 'some' of your friends prefer it that way. That could potentially impact dozens of people.

Not like it's that big a deal... it's just video game money.
 
"Some of my friends want me to use all their shared drivers,"

OK, and some don't. And you can't differentiate. So if you oblige your friends who want that one extra driver, you may be causing many others to be unable to host, which exponentially reduces opportunities for everyone else, too.

But if you have some friends who want to have one driver available, then it doesn't really hurt anyone to leave on the default, as opposed to set it to 0. We actually switch it around as we see fit. But we're all appreciative of the option to set it to 0.

It's just not worth it. It's not like it's so awful to have merely 5 of your drivers raced at any particular time, and this encourages working together.

You're right that it comes with a warning. I suppose that's probably good enough, but I really think it's not cool to disable this just because 'some' of your friends prefer it that way. That could potentially impact dozens of people.

What do you mean? To disable what? I'm opposed to disabling the option of allowing 0. I'm opposed to setting it to 0 if some of your friends clearly want drivers available, I'm for having the option to set it to 0 within the widget, if and when your group of friends see fit.

Not like it's that big a deal... it's just video game money.

Still.
 
Yeah, I'm gonna have to say I think we should always have at least one driver open. Right now all 6 of my drivers are taken and I can't do anything. That's taking 15 potential slots from others. I'm not complaining, cause my drivers are making money, but I want to be able to host races for others.
 
Yonis,

What can I say, you sir are a genius and this widget is the best thing since sliced bread!!!! It is proably the single best thing I have seen on gtplanet since coming across this site. If you don't already have a premium account I would strongly suggest to the mods that you be given one and this thread be made a sticky asap.

Just some feedback: I am using Version 1.1.1 and am in Australia, so I assume I am using Australian servers. The widget has been working flawlessly for the past 10 hours. I hope there are other Aussies who can post some feedback as well to just see if any connecteion problems exist here or what servers we are using.

In regard to the "0 driver" option, I would insist that it be kept as is, because everybody should have the option to use the widget whichever way they wish.

Moondance
 
i -personally- think it should leave 1 driver minimum open, but thinking about it more, even if all 6 of your own drivers are being used, the widget just sits there until the moment 1 becomes available.... so if anything, it's sitting for a whole whopping 20-25 minutes at most waiting for a driver.

i'm loving this thing so far... less than 5 hours and it's already made me over 1 million credits... yeah, i know, nothing like grinding a-spec, but this way, the game is playing itself, and the tv isn't being used up all the time like when i was doing the grinding myself.
 
Re: removing the 0 driver preference. I already tried that and people didn't like that, so I put in a warning when you try to set it to 0 and save. I think that should be sufficient.
 
Re: removing the 0 driver preference. I already tried that and people didn't like that, so I put in a warning when you try to set it to 0 and save. I think that should be sufficient.

Great work, Yonis this is awesome.

I don't want the 0 option removed because I can see situations where 0 would be warranted/useful. I guess we just need to be careful. If a lot of friends are online, it may be wiser to keep it at 1. When less friends are online, then 0 is not likely to be as much of an issue.

Just some thoughts.
 
Re: removing the 0 driver preference. I already tried that and people didn't like that, so I put in a warning when you try to set it to 0 and save. I think that should be sufficient.

Granted, you can't please everyone, and I am very thankful for your awesome tool. The measure you've taken, with the warning, is pretty reasonable. I think it would be better to make it possible to identify precisely who you're willing to take all the drivers from. That would resolve everything.

But it's not a big deal.
 
As I'm running 13 of my own guys non-stop*, I'd like the zero option to stay. 👍

* 03/05/11 17:22:14.518 to 03/08/11 22:59:04.477 (77.5 straight hours! :eek:)
 
i'm loving this thing so far... less than 5 hours and it's already made me over 1 million credits... yeah, i know, nothing like grinding a-spec, but this way, the game is playing itself, and the tv isn't being used up all the time like when i was doing the grinding myself.

I actually used to do that minimal intervention thing with letting Bob grind the Dream Car Championship, but this one's even better, despite the lower payout. You just switch it on and forget about it, or you're doing nothing at all. Still pays out more in the end than endurance races. And I've got to say, watching Bob doing the Dream Car Championship (if you then had nothing better to do) is boring as hell, watching the remote races you host, however, can actually be quite fun.
 
watching the remote races you host, however, can actually be quite fun.

Until your Bob get stuck with the Aston Vantage in Trial Mountain! :ouch:

The widget rocks, looking forward to the updates. How could I paypal the dev a beer...:dopey:
 
Be very careful, PSN will be down in an hour.
*EDIT*: Its down now. You cannot remote race using the widget for the next 12 Hours.
 
Strange behavior noticed.

Yesterday I had set version 1.0 of the widget to work since I was having some TEMPORARY SERVER ISSUE with 1.1.1. I thought it was working fine when later that morning I logged into the gran-turismo website and saw that I was in the middle of a race. As I logged into the GT website to check on progress throughout the morning, I noticed that the website always showed my driver to be in the same race, at the same exact point (24/25 laps), with the same driver, etc. Groundhog Day all over again and again. When I got home, my PS3 wasn't even signed into the PS3 network, then again, I think there may have been some maintenance going on yesterday.

I closed everything down, re logged into PS3, relaunched GT5, relaunched the widget 1.0 version, and this morning it's still going strong.

Really really odd. Kinda makes me think that PD's website isn't without issues since it kept showing me to be in the same race over and over.
 
I should add that this is really weird. I reloaded the widget and there was no issue. Of course, I logged off of my main account to collect B-Spec winnings on other accounts. I will update in about 10 minutes as to if there is a change.
 
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