I will run another beginners oval racing series in May-June 1998.
Everybody is welcome to participate - send your robot, or if you
participated last year, just send me message that you would like to
participate. I'll try to get some new people by advertising in newsgroups
as well.
There is also a little RARS FAQ now - I compiled it from the questions
that have appeared in list in last three years.
http://evolution.bmc.uu.se/~maido/rars/tutor/FAQ.htm

Maido
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BORS-Beginners Oval Racing Series
1998


OVERALL 
This series is intended for newcomers, but experts are welcome as
well. The source code of all robots will be PUBLIC. Even more, I encourage
of writing clear commented code that can help others. The whole RARS
community wins from that. The series will be run on 8 oval tracks, they
are included in Rars 0.72 package. You can get them from my web-page 
(http://www.ebc.ee/~mremm/rars/traks1.htm or
http://evolution.bmc.uu.se/~maido/rars/traks1.htm) but look for new-format
tracks. 
All tracks have ONLY left turns, so you don't have to think about 
complicated chicane-situations.


SCHEDULE
I am planning to run races at Thursdays, for 4 weeks. The deadline for
submissions is Wednesday, 8.00 AM GMT. I strongly suggest submitting
one-two days before deadline, then we have time to clear out errors that
could appear.
No late submissions are accepted after the races are run, whatever the
reasons could be.  Submit robots as a source code to maido@evolution.bmc.uu.se.
The same address is valid for information. 

Tentative racing schedule:


14.05   Oval2           200 miles       oval2.trk
        Milwaukee       200 miles       mlwaukee.trk


21.05   Nazareth        200 miles       nazareth.trk
        Phoenix         200 miles       phoenix.trk


28.05   Pocono          200 miles       pocono.trk
        Indianapolis    500 miles       indy500.trk


03.06   New Hampshire   200 miles       loudon.trk
        Michigan        500 miles       michigan.trk


RULES 
3 races on each track! Qualifying for fastest lap of 12 qualifying laps.
Cars slower than 150% from fastest car will not qualify for the race - so
you still have fair chance to qualify if you are not purposely slow.
Cars will start in qualifying order. 
Typical command line will be: rars track -ql12 -r3 -l200
Points are awarded in PPG IndyCar style* to each robot for each race. The
same points are accumulated up to the end of BORS to find an overall
winner of the series.
Only the best robot-car will score points to it's owner towards the
overall standings. 

SUBMISSIONS
I accept more than one robot per person. As many as you want to submit. 
If we will have more than 24 qualifyers, I discard slower #3 or #2 robots
to give everyone's #1 car a chance to participate. Intentional blocking or
ramming of other cars is not allowed. Also, intentional slowdown in race,
in purpose to damage other cars is not allowed. I will make final decision
about disqualification of such cars.  
All submitted robots will continue to participate at following events
until removed by author.

SOFTWARE
A version 0.72b of RARS will be used. Most likely I will compile on
Linux with gcc. Movies will not be recorded. People who cannot install
rars0.72 can develop their cars with version 0.71 - the only significant 
difference is that s.dead_ahead has improved in ver. 0.72 

RESULTS
will be published in the mailing list as soon as
possible, hopefully next day. The bots will be available through WWW. 


THE WINNER OF BORS
will be the person whose robots earned more points in
series. In case of tie, the number of wins or better positions is
considered.
NB! If you have submitted two or more robots, only the best of your robots
is scoring points for you in the overall BORS contest of eigth race
events.
My own cars will compete as others and score for race points, but will be
excluded from overall standings.  

(*)In IndyCar 12 first finishers get points
(20,16,14,12,10,8,6,5,4,3,2,1). One point is awarded to fastest qualifier
and one point to the car that lead most laps.
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