Re: [Torcs-devel] System stability and changing gears in TORCS.

Timing seems to be better now at real time, (still haven't tested the
simulation while sped up again) I may have compiled the wrong version of my
source. Also, I think I figured out why the vehicle was sometimes float up
and then off the side of the track. It seems to happen when the vehicle
takes heavy damage. I'll just need to look into turning that off.

Jim


On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 11:57 PM, James Ihrig <je...@gm...> wrote:

> Thank you, I was able to solve both the gear changing problem as well as
> the crash on driver selection.
>
> As a note, I think the crash on driver selection may have been related to
> my random crashes during runs when I issued a restart. Once I changed my
> name and description from:
>
>
>     modInfo->name    = "MyBot";        /* name of the module (short) */
>     modInfo->desc    = "";    /* description of the module (can be long) */
>
> to
>
>     modInfo->name    = strdup("MyBot");        /* name of the module
> (short) */
>     modInfo->desc    = strdup("");    /* description of the module (can be
> long) */
>
> I no longer have an issue with that. I hadn't followed the other driver
> format exactly since I am not ever allowing multiple cars in my tests.
>
> I still don't know why my earlier attempts at gear changing didn't work,
> but your example code seemed to work. I will look at it more closely on
> Monday.
>
> As for the time, I am currently using situation->currentTime, my bot isn't
> timing some things correctly but at this point I'm still assuming the
> mistake is on my end. (30 second timer seems to take 2 minutes to end.)
>
> Am I correct in assuming that situation->currentTime is the current
> simulation time I should be using? Am I also OK to assume that this is
> measured in seconds?
>
> I have not yet attempted to speed up the simulation again as I'm still
> doing stability testing at real-time first.  (450+ race restarts with up to
> 2 min runs each and not a single program crash so it's looking fantastic so
> far.)
>
> Thank you again for your help,
>
> Jim Ihrig
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 10:40 AM, Bernhard Wymann <be...@bl...>wrote:
>
>> Hi James
>>
>>
>> > I've been running Torcs-1.3.3 and have had a couple problems. First,
>>
>>> when running my bot at a faster speed than real-time, my bot will
>>> sometimes float straight up, then off to the side of the track and the
>>> race will end. (This issue seems like a bug, but I'm reluctant to say so
>>> since I've modified the TORCS code.) Second, I am having trouble with
>>>
>>
>> I guess this must have something to do with your changes, I have never
>> seen/heard of a problem like this before. The problem "makes no sense" if
>> you look at how TORCS works: It simulates basically in simulation time,
>> just when you have a "watching mode" selected it synchronizes real and
>> simulation time to spit out frames, that is it. So I doubt that there can
>> be something wrong. I hope you do not rely on the real time clock in your
>> robot, only use the simulation time.
>>
>>
>>  I have tried to copy/paste this into my drive() fuction (from other
>>> drivers code) but all I see is the gear bouncing between 1st and 2nd
>>> gear, so I feel I must be missing something. I didn't understand what
>>> the code was doing so I tried a bunch of variations with _gear and
>>> _gearCmd and and even tried manipulating the clutch. Is there any
>>> documentation on how gear changing is supposed to work?
>>>
>>
>> No, but it is trivial, the gearbox switches to the gear you choose. How
>> you do the decision is then your business;-) But one example is explained
>> in the robot tutorial: http://www.berniw.org/torcs/**robot/ch3/gears.html<http://www.berniw.org/torcs/robot/ch3/gears.html>
>>
>> This method just works if the gearbox ratios differ and have the correct
>> order, so if you sabotage the gearbox you can make this method fail, but
>> for any halfway "real" gearbox it works.
>>
>>
>>  I have tried upgrading to TORCS-1.3.4 to see if my issue with the bot
>>> leaving the course would be fixed, but it crashes once I select a track
>>> when configuring the race. (It seems to be crashing sometime after the
>>> constructor is called for my bot, but before any other function in that
>>> class.) Is there anything I need to know to move my bot to the newer
>>> version?
>>>
>>
>> Maybe, have a loot at this, this is the only adoption regarding drivers
>> in 1.3.4, all the other bots are unchanged (if I remember correct):
>> http://torcs.cvs.sourceforge.**net/viewvc/torcs/torcs/torcs/**
>> src/drivers/human/human.cpp?**r1=1.45.2.9&r2=1.45.2.10&**pathrev=r1-3-1<http://torcs.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/torcs/torcs/torcs/src/drivers/human/human.cpp?r1=1.45.2.9&r2=1.45.2.10&pathrev=r1-3-1>
>>
>> If you took bt/beriw/etc. robots as base it should work then I guess. I
>> recommend just comparing what you do with the existing robots or running
>> the debugger, then you will see.
>>
>>
>>  I'd also like to note that none of the links in the FAQ seem to be
>>> working right now.
>>>
>>
>> I recognized that some days ago, but I did not yet have time to look into
>> this, I upgraded the CMS recently, and it could be the result of a cross
>> site scripting fix which has done there, but I have to look into this.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Bernhard
>>
>
>