Tour De Giro: multiplayer racing game using ANT+ PMs, CompuTrainers, or various trainers. [in development]

Triathlon Forum
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Dec 18: If you want a client to try it out, you can PM me for it. It was kinda annoying keeping things compatible, so we’ve taken down the public client for now.
Nov 20: Better, persistent web tracking. If the server is up, you can view my profile at http://198.74.57.166/player?id=273
Nov 10: Trainerroad-style support for 5 CycleOps and Kurt Kinetic trainers that I could find curves for.
Nov 7 update: Kinda-persistent web tracking is in: http://198.74.57.166/. Also, the graphics are way better

Nov 2 update: Computrainer support has been added, and has been tested at least once. Chime in if it does or doesn’t work with yours!
Oct 31 update: All 3 AI personalities (steady, surgey, and hill-guy) are now enabled, and switch up every race.
Oct 30 update: I changed the AI personality - they now surge at 2x FTP for 3 seconds, then glide at 50% FTP for 6 seconds. This makes them immensely annoying to draft.
Oct 29 update: The server (198.74.57.166) is now looping a 13km race of the Muskoka 70.3 course, and should continue doing that for a couple days.

Over the last month, I’ve written a basic racing game that connects to ANT powermeters and does a racing simulation based on your power inputs and the locations of other players. It’s like CompuTrainer multirider, except you can play it over the internet and it should work with any ANT+ power hardware or a computrainer. I’m currently testing it with a powertap SL+ I got off the classifieds. It’s ANT+ and computrainer for now, but if someone were to figure out how to connect other powermeters to their computer, it would certainly be possible to get them playing too. Example: thanks to a tip in this thread, I added Computrainer support on Nov 2.

Screenshot of some testing:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8186/8132255932_5411bff420_c.jpg

My goal was to try to recreate the tactics and strategy of road races without having to risk road rash or french tv cars to enjoy it. It simulates drafting, hills, aerodynamics, rolling resistance, and any other forces I could think of that affect a bike. The drafting simulation is a bit simplistic at the moment (it only does front-back drafting, not side-to-side). It is also possible to ride on top of another rider, albeit at a 10% drag penalty.

Here’s a somewhat-narrated video from a test ride yesterday against dumb AI opponents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVvzTawBcnU

This post used to have old instructions for how to set it up, but I’ve pretty much withdrawn public support for the time being. I generally keep it in a workable state, so you can PM me if you really want a client, but I’m not doing tech support just yet. You can check out the website at http://www.tourdegiro.com/, which has a developer blog on it.

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Just fixed a server outage, in case anyone tried in the last little bit.

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Very cool. I will try it out, but no time right now.

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5 minute bump! Looks like we’ve got myself and “trijedi” up for a 20km ride.

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Update: Had to reboot the server, as the linode host seemed to have lost network connectivity. Try again, if you’re out there trijedi…

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Got the race started at about 8:10 with just me and the 3 dopey’s (steady-paced AIs at 200, 250, and 300 watts). Trijedi rejoined about 2/3rds of the way in and I could see his/her power updating, so stuff was working, though I really need to work on the server reliability. I’m having to run a windows program in WINE on the server, and it looks like it makes it a bit less stable than when I run it on my windows PC.

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just saw this! headed out to dinner:( . Can you do it some other time too? Would love to do this. I’m on the west coast so it may make things trickier

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I’ve got the server running right now. It’s supposed to restart the race each time after someone finishes, but that’s the main reliability issue I’m battling :frowning: Stupid WINE.

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Interesting. I’ll have to give it a try one of these days.

It would be really cool if you could do a time trial type workout (like 2x20s) and save that ride and then race against yourself. Could make a workout like 2x20s a lot more fun.

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Well I’m done my test, so here’s a version of the client that will connect to any IP for its server, rather than hardcoding my linode’s address (since I’m having uptime issues on my linode)

Instructions:
-Run the server .exe - it’ll scale the Muskoka 70.3 course to whatever length you want.
-Run the client .exe, and point it towards IP 127.0.0.1
-Go racing

Server zip: https://sites.google.com/site/tourdegiro/TDGServer.zip
Client zip: https://sites.google.com/site/tourdegiro/TDG-Oct28Test.zip (same URL as before, but I’ve updated the client .exe)

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That would be interesting - even if you’re not going to beat the ghost rider’s wattage in a given workout, you could still try to ride up/down hills optimally and beat his time. You’d build TT pacing skills, but maybe not great steady-wattage practice since a hilly TT calls for a not-quite steady power output.

Another workout-style option I was considering would be for you to enter your goal watts when connecting - as long as you’re near your goal watts (not too high or low), your “game watts” will be a pre-set maximum. Ex: if your workout calls for 200 watts and you’re at 250, then your “game watts” would be lower than if you were hitting 200 dead-on. You’d get to race by following your training plan the best.

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Ok, I fixed the server looping issue. So it should be possible to join up to the server at 198.74.57.166 and race any time of the day, for you west-coasters. It’s currently set to repeat a 5km race on the Muskoka 70.3 course.

I’ll probably leave it looping for a couple days while I develop the next generation server. Probably next feature will be tracking data and doing a webserver, so you can view race results and total mileage online.

3 races, 3 victories against that jackass Dopey300. 6:54, 6:52, and 6:58 (the game gives you *very *generous Crr/Cda values)

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Game crashes with a generic windows error message “this progam has stopped working” short after the ui pops up. I have tried both running my own server and connecting to yours. There doesn’t seem to be any output diagnostics. Any suggestions?

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You know that you can get a WIndows VPS for pretty reasonable don’t you?

https://budgetvm.com/windows-vps.php

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Needs a trash-talking chat dialog box.

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Looks sweet.

How do you create courses?

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Man I support this idea so much lol… If you need hosting pm me and we can talk. I can setup a dedicated server for yah with a static Ip

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Looks sweet.

How do you create courses?

I think he can import Gpx and/or tcx files. The Muskoka course he has now is my pathetic 2010 effort.

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Hi, by chance will there be a mac version?
Thanks.

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Cool! That’s even cheaper than the linode I’m using right now.

Game crashes with a generic windows error message “this progam has stopped working” short after the ui pops up. I have tried both running my own server and connecting to yours. There doesn’t seem to be any output diagnostics. Any suggestions?
Argh, I’ll have to look into it. I’ve never had a crash in the client :(. There might be a way for you to fish out a minidump - if you have c:\windows\minidump\ and can figure out which one corresponds to TdG, could you email the .dmp file to art.hare@gmail.com?

Edit: More/better instructions for where to find the minidump: http://www.sevenforums.com/...ump.html#post1212936

Needs a trash-talking chat dialog box.
Coming soon-ish. Probably this weekend. The couple times I’ve been online with someone else, I felt so muted without the ability to chat/help.

How do you create courses?
At the moment, it’s hardcoded to use ChipMunk’s .gpx recording of the Muskoka 70.3 course. If you want to change that up, you can replace muskoka703.gpx with another .gpx file of your choosing. I’ll probably make that a choosable option when starting the server sometime soon.

Hi, by chance will there be a mac version?
At the moment, probably not. The non-ANT cheater version works in WINE, but I bet that the ANT-USB support would probably not work in WINE so you’d be out of luck. The source code is available though, so I’m sure someone could figure it out. I don’t have a mac though. Other option: plug in a ANT stick, and run the game in WINE and see if it works. It just might.