Speed Study Series Finale
Change is never an easy thing. When a person gets set in a routine, it is very hard to break out of it. Things that were once normal are now odd, and it is tough, at first, to deal with. Whether caused by a life-altering situation or by the fact that the supermarket was out of your brand of toothpaste, there is always some type of rough transition period. Luckily, as much as we want the sim to reflect real life, we take solace in the fact that sometimes it doesn’t. Changes in the sim are not life-and-death; we may care about sim things and not want to see them changed, but they are changes that are much more easily adjusted to than ones in real life. Also unlike real life, a negative change in the sim can easily be corrected by a little additional coding. If only we had that power in real life.
The sim does not allow horses to get permanently injured (or worse). There may be a few out there who want to see this fact changed, but in reality, we’re better off for having it the way it is. It allows for this to truly be a game. It’s bad enough when your prized $25 Storm Cat colt runs a 37 speed figure in his debut – imagine if he came back unable to race again. Would anyone still play this game if that was possible? I know I wouldn’t. And it’s reasons like this that allow for us to use the sim as a form of escapism – to get away from the real world for a while.
The sim does another nice thing in regards to change, that we don’t get the luxury of having in the real world. It gives us a smooth transition. Changes are (usually) not abrupt. A message board switch will be noted well in advance. The addition of RODOTS was announced (although “gamefully”) several weeks before it began. Every change that is made is allowed to have discussion about it, so that it can go as smooth as possible. When the My Stable page was changed to its current style, the Stable Tool became malfunctioned, as Lobo had taken a hiatus from the sim. The abrupt change was met unkindly by many of the Stable Tool users (myself included). After a week or two of freak outs and massive e-mail/message board campaigns to figure out where Lobo was and get him back, Mike took over. He put the old stable page back up, and gave the new one a different link. It’s the small things like this that give this game the ability to captivate its audience.
One of the biggest changes the sim went through was the change in speed figures. When the numbers got too high, they had to be scaled down. But it couldn’t be a simple reduction – too many people would be thrown into a tailspin when their horse who was capable of running a 128 speed figure now regularly ran 105. “Is it time to retire him?” “What’s wrong?” “This game nerfed me!” So Mike did what he knew had to be done. He made the change gradual. He devised a formula to merely reduce the older speed figures, but in a small enough way so that people would get used to it. He used this formula:
f(x, 69) = f(x, 36) ‘ previous speed #
pctnew = (realweekno – 2300) / 180
If pctnew > 1 Then pctnew = 1
f(x, 36) = ((1 – pctnew) * f(x, 69)) + pctnew * (f(x, 69) ^ 0.953 + f(x, 69) ^ (0.65 – f(x, 69) / 200) + f(x, 69) / 8)
This code is the first code to be widely released to the sim community, and it is code taken directly from the game.
The change was necessary, but it did cause a bit of a dilemma. How would you be able to compare old races with new races. Most people generally use speed figures to compare their horses – now, they are not comparable. And thus, the Speed Study Series was born. It took a look at some of the newer horses, as well as some of the older horses. It attempted to seek out the best of the best. But every article took a different directions – every article looked at something different. There are many more things out there, but as is so clear now, the sim is only a game. Real life takes precedence, and unfortunately, real life has time constraints.
One of the most important things to come out of this series, however, is a potential help for BTB writers. There is now a list of Graded Stakes records for every computer-carded race in the sim. And they are now available for the general consumption at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/bea/StakesRecords.htm. It will be continuously updated, (roughly) every week, at least in the near future.
The Speed Study Series kicked off on week 2895 with an introduction. Born partly out of a previous BTB article and partly out of summer boredom, I embarked on a mission to find out graded stakes records, by comparing new and old speed figures. Thrown a loop after an e-mail from Mike, I changed direction for the goal of the series. Instead, I decided to look at some individual horses and races, making comparisons between the “days of old” and the “days of new”. A “misinterpretation” of a line in Mike’s e-mail led to yet another direction of the study, but nonetheless, the e-mail was very revealing. The intro was published and posted on June 19, and can currently be read here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2684
The first real article from the Speed Study Series came later in the same week. It had been planned for a while, and was already in the works when the intro was published. It was a comparison between the most famous horse in the sim (at least to me), Joe Cayenne, and the newest sim star,
After getting a couple of requests for items to do, I decided to take a closer look at one set of races that I always wondered about – The Triple Crown. What better way to look at these races than by looking at one of the most famous horses in the sim, I Seek U? The article quickly changed from a look at the Bluegrass Derby to a “biography” of I Seek U, which I didn’t mind doing. Interestingly, at the time of the writing, a debate came up on the message board involving the name of a particular horse. It reminded me of a story that happened, coincidentally, during the 2003 Triple Crown. So, I decided that it would be a fitting intro to the article, and wrote about the “good ole’ days”. I brought up topics such as the Sim Radio Network, which seemed to peak interest towards some of the finer parts of the old days. But along with this article came a promise of a new direction for the Speed Study Series – a look at Track Biases. It would wait until the look into the Triple Crown of I Seek U, which can be read here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2703
A large study, lots of coding, and a lot of information led to some formatting issues for the next article in the Speed Study Series. After several back-and-forth with Snowchief and Roys, we finally figured out a way to get the information onto the site. And the Track Bias article became very enlightening, and very well-received. It was an experiment that no one in the sim had ever tried before, but it was fascinating to see whether one of the most prevalent factors in the real world of racing was also prevalent in the sim. The end result? Well…yes, it does appear that there is some form of track bias. So which tracks should you run at, or try to avoid at all costs? Find out in one of two places:
Article – http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2722
Results Chart – http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2723
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side, client or server, you were on), the track bias study netted a lot more information than I expected. Therefore, it carried over into a second week, and even then was broken into two articles. These two looked at the different surfaces, and took a look at which tracks were better at which surfaces, for all types of horses. The definitions changed from the previous week, but the idea behind the articles were the same. It was the last “hurrah” for track bias in my mind, as I had spent several straight weeks on coding, collecting the data, and analyzing it. It can be read here:
Dirt – http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2738
Turf – http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2739
The next week was devoted to finishing the graded stakes records list. I realized that I needed the records in order to more properly write the rest of my articles, so I sped through it, devoting most of the week strictly to getting the records. When it was done, I had a list of winning speed figures, leading to an article that I wanted to write since the beginning – the fastest horses in the sim. I found that only 4 horses had ever run races that would be considered higher than a 120 speed figure today, so I decided to write about all 4. Who was the fastest? Find out here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2763
While looking at the fastest horses, I noticed another interesting thing from the graded stakes records. Certain horses held more than 1 record. Some held more than two and three. I started counting, and found out that very few had set 4 records, but no one had done more. And then I found one horse, who currently holds 7 records. It truly was astonishing to see, so I decided to cover it. Although the horse is one of the all-time greats and, according to some, may be the all-time great, I felt that the record was too amazing to be neglected. Who is the record holder? It’s all here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2778
I always wanted to do an article on horses who should have won Eclipse Awards. Therefore, Rain God was always in my plans for an article. When I first started with the Graded Stakes records, I kept running across the name of another turf horse – Bristol Rovers. It seemed only logical to combine them both into one article, and write about both horses. This article was my initial “back-up plan”, in case people didn’t give me suggestions for what to write about, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write it. I had never heard of Bristol Rovers until the record list, and I knew that Rain God was one of the biggest “no respect” horses. This article may have actually been the most enlightening for me personally. Interestingly enough, about 2 days before this article was published (although it was finished, I was merely waiting for the end of the week to post it), a message board post popped up which ended up comparing two horses that people may or may not have heard of – Rain God and Bristol Rovers. Read my article here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2787
The final actual article from the Speed Study Series came after a 3 week hiatus, as I was getting back into the college life. I only had 1 more story idea, that was given as a suggestion. Someone had asked for me to take a look at the top sprinters and the top milers in the sim. So I decided that the best way to do that would be to give my own personal Power Rankings. It sparked a minor debate on the message board, and allowed for people to promote their own horses. As a completely subjective list, it gave other people a reason to defend their own horses, and brought a bit of livelihood to the tops of the divisions. The power rankings are available here: http://blacktypebugler.com/default.asp?artid=2843
The next step this year is yet another change for me. Tomorrow, for the first time in 3 months, I will not be thinking about the next article I have to write. There will be no more scouring the sim for potential story topics. Although I will try to update the Graded Stakes records as much as possible, it might not be as often as everyone would like. The biggest benefit to changes in the sim is the transition. Although the end of this series may not be a “major” change, it does not have the benefit of that easing. Which is one of the reasons why this current article is actually my favorite of the series. Merely writing about changes, and the way they work in the sim, has made the changes in real life that much easier. You may not get the same feeling from reading it, but if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to write it.
I would like to thank everyone out there for reading the series throughout the summer. Also, thank you for all the words of encouragement and criticisms throughout. It doesn’t matter how positive or negative comments are. Just knowing that people are reading the articles makes writing them worthwhile. Remember that the Sim is a community. Without the people, it would not survive. Once again, thank you for reading, and I hope that you have enjoyed the summer-long Speed Study Series. If you missed an article, all the links are above. Enjoy, and may your horses run like the wind…unless they’re against me.