PC gamers (Nascar Racing 2003) Golden Gate track released

[steveb73]

For those of you who may play the PC game Nascar Racing 2003 by Papyrus, we’ve released another old Florida track for the game. The group I work with has released many of the old and existing FL tracks over the last few years. I won’t list all of them 'cause if you play the game, you already probably know that. Bronson is still on the list; road trip time, I guess!

Type: real - 0.33 mile moderately banked oval. Track layout tries to mimic (given what pix we could find) the 70s configuration during the track’s heydays – some editorial license has been taken with the way it looked. The 60s layout had guardrail right along the edge of the track from T1 thru T4, and a wall along the front grandstand stretch. The guardrails were removed and that scary cable was put up, and when grandstands were added to the back, they put a wall in front of them, but off the track. My “advisors” who ran there say you could nearly get stuck in the sand if you ran off the backstretch into the “grass”.

Pits are fictional… of course.

This track was a real short track in Tampa, FL, which was open from 1962 to about 1982. In 1963, NASCAR came to town with 24 drivers, including Buck Baker, Ned Jarrett, Buzzie Reutimann, Richard Petty, Fireball Roberts, and Possum Jones. Three finished on the lead lap; Richard petty won after leading 158 of 200 laps, being paid 780 bucks. I guess this could be called Buzzie Reutimann’s home track.

Golden Gate was the annual (with a brief respite) host of the “Governor’s Cup”; a 200-lap feature. The Governor’s Cup was presented annually to the winner of the Florida State Late Model Championship Race held at Golden Gate Speedway. This handsome trophy is a tribute to the late Al Keller who contributed so much to Florida auto racing. When Golden Gate closed, the Governor’s Cup moved to New Smyrna, I believe. Don’t know if its still awarded or not.

More info on the Governor’s Cup can be found here (with a post from our old friend and sim racer, Jimmy McKinley): http://www.karnac.com/floridahistory/governorscup/letters.shtml

Comment: AI carsets vary so much now… its hard to make competitive AI that will match them all. Less aggressive carsets may go long distances without a yellow. For example, the default hobbystock mod carset, with every car rated 90/60, will give you the most boring race you can imagine, as will the default aero88 carset, and the default short track set for the new GN70v3 mod (all cars in the latter 2 sets are rated 60/40). Carsets like these do not cause cautions. Conversely, if you have an aggressively rated set, like my 2004-05 PWF CTS truck set, you will have to tone down the AI by lowering the line_modifier and squeeze_pct values, and increasing the drafting distance.

The GNS stanza is a “balance” of AI performance between the quite different default PWF GNS carset, the default LMV2 carset, default whelen carset, and the default latemodel90_gns carset.

The CTS stanza will give much more variable results, depending on carset. The stanza is a compromise of results achieved with my agressively rated 04-05 PWF/da’rock truckset, a rated 2008 trg CTS truck set, the default CTS09 trg set, the default Outlaw carset, the default skmodified carset, and the default ASA90_cts carset.

Cup support in a generic setup only.

Known Bugs:

1. This track is made with Butters_’ principle expanding the centerline outside 0.45 miles. Under yellow, the AI may take some time to get sorted out.

2. AI that pit on the left side speed on the front end of pit road and MAY serve a 5 second penalty. Dang if I know why they do it. I suspect it is because there are no pit stalls on their side early along pit road and they must need to “see” pit stalls.

3. This track has NOT been tested for long green flag runs to a green flag pit stop to compare AI times to human times over the course of a tire run. Consequently, you may need to stop sooner or later than the AI do. Given the high degree of diversity in various carsets, I’m not sure this can be matched anymore with any accuracy that would provide a similar result for everyone… so I just didn’t do it. This is one of those tedious tasks that really have made me stop making tracks; I hate doing it!

credits (trackmaking, objects, setups): riviera71, steveb73, amtronic, BOWTIE, waynef and co., dcoral, and last but not least, bobby, who asked me to make this one and who provided a lot of feedback all along the way.

Extra feedback from the rest of the nr2k3tracks and simthunder crew, including JR, Draftdancer, Wrangler, Bill, and others who’ve I’ve now forgotten and old posts are long gone. Thanks to all for all their feedback and help.

its here at nr2k3tracks.com on the SRCtracks page

[DeMan951]

Excellent, I will have to give it a try tonight. Thank you!

[Jimmy_McKinley]

Wow. That’s awesome Steve! Sure wish I had my NR2003 still Would love to run the wedge Late Models there at the 'Gate! Sprint cars would be fantastic!

Steve, do you know if there’s any “mid-70s” (1974-1979) Camaro Late Model type car sets/models out there?

[Austin34471]

Thats the one thing I don’t like about iRacing. I can’t race at all the FL mod tracks that were on NR2003.

[steveb73]

[QUOTE=Jimmy McKinley;28615]Wow. That’s awesome Steve! Sure wish I had my NR2003 still Would love to run the wedge Late Models there at the 'Gate! Sprint cars would be fantastic!

Steve, do you know if there’s any “mid-70s” (1974-1979) Camaro Late Model type car sets/models out there?[/QUOTE]

Hello… Jimmy! long time no talk.

Denis Rioux was going to do something along those lines. About the best you can do for that “era” is the Sat. Night Stock Cars mod; its labeled SNSC70. Since Denis and Bill A. split, I guess at riouxmods.com now …

have you tried the hobbystock mod? Its lots of fun. Lots of rusty DTR looking paints over at Bill Anderson’s simthunder.com. There is also a sprint car mod now, too, Jimmy. If you lost your game… there is always NR2005 or NR2007, although several of the download links went away. I also have about 3 extra copies of 2k3; FOR YOU… I’d be willing to negotiate a very reasonable price (even if you were cheating in that N3 race at I-70 that I ran with you… <smile> nobody’s tires last THAT long!!! <smile>)

[Jimmy_McKinley]

Steve, shoot me an e-mail, bud...JimmyMack12@aol.com

[JackTripper]

I’ll be sure to download this tonight when I get home.

I have a hodge podge set of Sunbelt Series cars from about 2-3 years ago (Anderson, Choquette, Middleton, Scofield, Drawdy, Jimmy Cope, etc.) and I have a mock Sunbelt Series calendar I race with, so this will be a nice addition.

I’ll try to post a pic some of these cars out on this track when I get a chance.

Thanks steveb73 - your website is the best!

[DeMan951]

Tried it out last night fun, tough little track. The only issue I have encountered with it is when you go out to qualify you have to drive through the grandstands in order to get onto the track.

[steveb73]

Doh! I called it a beta because I hadn’t finished it, and probably wouldn’t.

Open the track.ini and scroll down until you find this stanza:

[ pit_lane_0 ]

A little farther down in the ini is the pit stalls, which start with:

; race control stuff
lane_on_right = 0 ; 0 if on left, 1 if on right
lane_has_wall = 1 ; 0 no wall, 1 has wall
speed_limit_MPH = 30.0

stall_0 = 435.00 19.20 0.01

right above that stall_0 line, paste this text in:

; special stalls
stall_qual_exit = 435.00 19.2 0.01

Then scroll down to the pit_1 stanza a bit further down. Delete that same text down there (although the game won’t read it there anyway - that’s why you’re qualifying from the s/f line way out on the centerline of the track.) I flipped pit0 and pit1 and forgot to move the qualify stall as well.

[DeMan951]

Okay got it, that fixed it. Thank you.

[JackTripper]

This track is a blast to drive.

I took a few pictures of me driving on it (the #38 obviously) and all I’ll say is art imitates life as Jay Middleton gets in my way. Any my apologies to Billy Bigley, that one was my fault. With Fain Skinner looming I knew something bad was bound to happen.

[DeMan951]

Man you got to turn shadows on those pics don’t do the game justice without them.

[JackTripper]

Alright then, I’ve prettied it up for you and even brought out my old late model I used to run in the TT Racing Super Late Model League.

As you can see, once again, Jay Middleton gets into someone for the first caution. Then later in the race, that dastardly Billy Bigley got into my right rear corner (probably because I overcorrected after getting loose…) and wrecked my beautiful car.

We need to try to get a Florida league going if there are enough of us playing Nascar 2003 with the late model add-on.

[flvideo]

Thats kwell Tripp. I’ll have to download the Nascar 2003 or can you still get it? How do you steer? Gotta get one of those wheel and accelator pedals I’ve seen for PC’s? That would be neat to travel around a circuit and never leave your office. Bob…

[JackTripper]

Hey Bob.

The only legal way I know of to obtain a copy of NR2003 is from someone like steveb73. You could always try eBay, but be prepared for heart palpitations when you see the price. Supply and demand and all.

And yes, you definitely want a steering wheel and pedals. I have the Logitech Momo which is nice.

If you go through all of that trouble, we can point you where to download the Late Model add on and then I can post all of my Florida cars for you.

I still play it quite a bit since I can “jump in and go” and make setup changes real quick since the game mimics real life late model handling characteristics regarding, shocks, springs, weight, gears, etc.

[Jimmy_McKinley]

Had my own NR2003 racing series for a while (more like seven years…LOL). We were called the United Shorttrack Alliance. We ran on nothing bigger than Richmond or Lakeland when it was released. We held HUGE events like the All-American 400 at the Nashville Fairgrounds for years. Drew over 100 cars a few years back qualifying for 24 starting spots. Had a mid-season “Red, White, and Blue Triple 100’s” at Madison, WI. Started to run the Snowball in 2004 until we found that the track had some “bugs” in it; not sure if they were ever worked out. Ran the World Series at New Smyrna for a coupla years, too, but it was offline and with N3. We’d run a 20-race season, ending at Nashville. There’s a lot of online series out there that have a short track division, but we were the ORIGINAL short-track-only sim racing series, beginning in 1996, and NEVER Ran any “superspeedways”.

Sure wish I didn’t have to sell my copy of the game (I needed the money after getting divorced in 2006 ). I had a TSW wheel/pedals that I bought used for like $250; these things go for like $500 brand-new.

I like the fact now that there’s Street Stocks/Bombers/Thunder Cars, Trucks, ABC-type Late Models, Outlaw Wedge Late Models, a '70s short track mod (with Chevelles, Camaros, Mustangs, etc.), the 1970’s Grand National mod, NASCAR Whelen Modifieds, winged Sprints…just all kinds of short track stuff out now.

IF I still had my NR2003, we’d be racing a Florida Championship series, seeing’s how most of the paved tracks in Florida are “built” now for the sim, and running the Governor’s Cup 200 at New Smyrna in November on a Sunday afternoon…

[flvideo]

Now thats what I’m talking about. I guess I.d better start getting stuff together. I can see it now gota get a dedicated PC for racing set up in the back of my studio. My XYL won’t ever see me scept meals. Steveb73 can you hook me up with a copy of NR2003? And if so how much? Bob…

[JackTripper]

Jimmy, if you get back into NR2003 and want to host a series again, shoot me a PM and I can kick in a few bucks for hosting and such, if we have enough interest in a Florida Pro Series.

[Jimmy_McKinley]

Would love to. But copies of the sim right sell for over $100 - why, I don’t know…LOL…it’s a six-plus-year-old sim. I guess because the demand is out there for it. Check out Steve’s track lists for the Florida tracks that are available. We tried Orlando once, but there’s a black-flag bug in it somewheres, and not sure if Justin (the “track builder” for Speed World) is still around. It’s a great place to run by yourself (practice), but if you try to race there with multiple cars, you’ll get black-flagged for jumping the start or cutting the infield or something.

There were a couple of different versions of New Smyrna. One, the first one, was just a redone Bristol with New Smyrna graphics. Then the second one was a totally new track, but not sure if it ever got finished.

I think CCMP and Citrus had just been finished up when I was getting out of it.

You also need a dedicated server to run the online racing end. I was actually renting one for $75 a month. Tried to get KARNAC to sponsor my series and cover those costs for me…LOL…but no go. That dedicated server also needs to have all the mods and tracks installed on it to be able to race, and I had a hard time getting my server guy to get the LMPV2 mod, let alone the Sprint cars, Street Stocks, and Modifieds, installed on the server to get them to run online.

We kept points for all nine of our racing years. No one driver ever won two points championships in the same division, and no one driver ever won our big races more than once. We had over 70 drivers sign up for our series, so we had good fields of cars…just couldn’t keep guys from wrecking all the time. So a lot of our races were caution-fests :-\ and it kinda killed the actual racing (sound familiar…?? LMAO). In the last All-American 400 I ran, we had 26 starters. Before the 100 lap mark, we were down to ten cars left. I think only four actually finished the race, and only two on the lead lap.

Anyways…we had a lot of fun with it. Wish I had the time and effort to put back into it, but, between my girlfriend and I, we only have the one computer. I don’t really have the time any more to mess with running a series. Sure wish I could, though…

I can still paint cars up, though I do some mean fictionals!

[Vic_Merriam]

Hey Tripper I see a few of the Older Sunbelt cars I painted a couple years ago glad to there still out there and being used I need to get back to painting soon and get rid of this painters block Ive had for a while…LOL!