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Rating your cars
If your NR2003 path is correctly accepted, you will see all your installed carmods under the "Choose Series" dropdown box. Any roster files defined within the chosen series will show up under the "Choose Roster" dropdown box.
When you choose a series / roster combination, the program will scan that series folder and show all the carfiles according to the selected roster (default is "all"). Loading the cars can take a while, especially if you have a lot of carfiles in that folder.
Once you have cars showing up in the list, you're ready to start rating. On the right side, you will see the ratings box showing the same ratings categories as you would rate your games from within opponents manager in NR2003.
IMPORTANT: Changes are NOT committed until you press the "Save Modified Cars" button.
The real strength of NRatings is of course to have your cars automatically rated according to real life racing data.
To do so, choose your series (and roster if needed) to list the cars you wish to rate. Then press the "Import Ratings from Real Life Data" button. You have to be connected to the Internet at this time, or you will not see any data !
You will be then be taken to a new screen, entitled "Get Ratings from Real-Life Data".
- From the "Series" dropdown, select the real life series you want to get the ratings from. This should be in accordance to your chosen mod in the main screen.
- Select one or more seasons from the "Season" dropdown box. Notice how the grid below (B) gets populated with all the available races.
- Select one or more races by clicking the checkboxes next to them (or use the "Select All" or "Select None" buttons).
- Optionally, if you want to see the results of a given race, double click on the record. This will take you to a screen like below. If any loopdata or pitstop data is available for this race, the LoopData and PitStop Data buttons will be enabled accordingly.
- Once you have selected the races you wanted to use, select a formula set from the dropdown list.
- Optionally, use the "Set Default" button to mark a formula as default. This formula will then be selected by default each time you enter this screen. As you choose a formula set, you will see a description below.
- There are also options associated with a formula set. The author of the formula set has defined the best values to use (defaults) but you can override them if you want by unchecking the "Default" option.
Those options are:
- Use NR2003 tracktypes --> If checked, it will use the NR2003 tracktype definitions. There is a difference between how NASCAR defines tracktypes, and how NR2003 does. For instance, California Speedway is a superspeedway according to NASCAR.com, but a speedway according to NR2003. Tracktypes are used to determine tracktype-specific ratings. You can see the used tracktypes in the race selection (B) list.
- Car mapping method
- By number and name: real drivers will be mapped to your ingame drivers by using both their carnumber and their name. Most of the time this is what you'll want to use, as this mapping method best reflects the real world situation in terms of team/driver performance.
- By name only: real drivers will be mapped to your ingame drivers according to their names only, not taking into account the car number. Choose this if you want to rate drivers not caring what car they've driven (some drivers race for different teams in the same season). Example: Kevin Conway drove the #92 and #66 in the same season, and you have these two carfiles in your game. Selecting this option will ensure that all cars (in the current mod) with driver name Kevin Conway will have the same ratings, regardless of the number.
- By number only: real drivers will be mapped to your ingame drivers according to only the number, not taking into account the driver names. Choose this if you want to rate cars not caring which driver drove it. Example: car with number #92 was shared between two drivers during the course of a season. You have both carfiles in your mod (#92/DriverA and #92/DriverB). Selecting this option will ensure that both cars with number #92 have the same ratings, regardless of the driver.
"Variable Inspector" is particularly useful for formula developers. It will, independently from the chosen formula, give you an overview of the contents of all available formula variables, according to the chosen races. However, the fact that you've checked "Map drivers with name only" or not, has influence here. If you checked it, all carnumbers in following screen will be blank, and each driver will appear only once. If you did however NOT check it, the numbers will be used and drivers may appear more than once if they raced different carnumbers in those selected races.
The "Preview Ratings" button applies the chosen formula and formula-options to the selected races, and will give you a preview of the ratings that will be applied to your cars. For each section, it has the format "MIN - MAX"
The last option you have, is to check the box "Do not calculate ratings, just select the drivers for creating a roster". When checked, the application will map the found drivers in the selected races to your game cars but will not apply ratings to them. Instead, it will only check their "selected" box from which you can then create a car roster to use ingame.
Once you have selected all the desired options, just click Apply and the application will start rating your cars. Once this process is done, you will be taken back to the main screen where you will notice following things:
- The successfully mapped and rated drivers will show up in light blue, have the dropdown field "Maps to" filled in and the "selected" checkbox checked. If you chose only to map drivers and not rate them, the ratings will not have changed and the lines will not show up in light blue.
- Drivers/cars you have in your car list but which were not found in the database according to the races you chose, will remain in white and will not be mapped.
- If for some reason a carfile did not get mapped correctly to its real-life counterpart (maybe due to a minor name mismatch between them), you can map it manually by selecting the right driver from the "Maps to" dropdown box.
- Drivers/cars which were found in the database according to your selection, but which could not be mapped to a driver in your car list, will be listed in the logbox on the bottom of the screen.
To manually rate a car, choose your series (and roster if needed), and then select the car in the list. Notice how the ratings box on the right will display the current ratings for that car. Change the desired values in the ratings box by either typing in the values or by using the up/down arrows. Notice that the minimum cannot be greater than the maximum and vice-versa.
Cars from which you changed one or more ratings values, will change color to light blue. Keep in mind that no modifications are actually committed until you press the "Save Modified Cars" button !
Once you have made the modifications you wanted, press the "Save Modified Cars" button on the bottom. The application will then apply the modifications into the corresponding .car files. Successfully saved cars will change to a green color, while cars that could not be saved will light up in red. Additionally, you will see a result output in the logbox on the bottom.
You also have the ability to modify the ratings of several cars at once (called bulk modifying).
To do this, select your desired series and roster as usual from the main screen, and click the "Bulk Modify Ratings Manually" button on the top right of the form.
This will bring you to the bulk modify form, which is divided into following sections:
- Select ratings you want to change
This contains a list of all possible rating items. Select the ones you wish to modify. By default, they are all selected.
Below the list, you have the possibility to restrict the modifications to only the MIN or the MAX property of the rating, or, by default, leaving it to both MIN and MAX.
- Select the cars you want to change
You can apply the desired modification to either:
- The current car
This is the car currently highlighted in the main screen. You can read the filename of this car between parentheses.
- Selected cars
These are all the cars which are "selected" in the main screen, by checking their "selected" checkbox. The number of selected cars is shown between parentheses. Note that if you did not select any cars, this option is disabled.
- All cars
These are all the cars currently in your car list on the main screen.
- Select the action to perform
This is the important part of this screen. Here is where you'll select what modifications to make.
With the selected ratings and car(s), you can either:
- Randomize the values between two specified values
For each selected rating and rating type (min / max) this will take a random number between the limits you specify, and apply it to to that rating. Remarks: * If you selected to rate only the MIN part, and the generated random number is larger than the current MAX value of that rating, the MAX will also be adapted to the same value (because MIN cannot be larger than MAX) * If you selected to rate only the MAX part, and the generated random number is smaller than the current MIN value of that rating, the MIN will also be adapted to the same value (because MAX cannot be smaller than MIN) * In both cases above, this means that there is a good possibility that MIN = MAX, which is not very realistic. Therefore, it's probably best to rate BOTH rating types when randomizing the values
- Add a value
You can add a value to the selection. To do so, you have to fill in the number you want to add in the "Value" box. If you want to substract, fill in a negative number. The program will then go over your selected ratings and cars one by one and will add the given value to each rating item. Remarks: * If you chose to only rate the MIN or MAX, and by adding, the MIN goes above the MAX, or the MAX drops below the MIN, the other type will automatically be adjusted.
- Multiply by a value
Much the same concept as adding a value, you can multiply by a value. Again, fill in the desired multiply factor in the "Value" box. You can fill in a decimal number, you're not restricted to integers. To divide, enter a number smaller than 1. For instance, say you want to multiply by 1.5, just enter 1.5 in the value box. Now say you want to divide by 2, then enter 0.5 in the value box, cause A x 0.5 is the same as A / 2. Remarks: * If you chose to only rate the MIN or MAX, and by multiplying, the MIN goes above the MAX, or the MAX drops below the MIN, the other type will automatically be adjusted.
- Set to value
This is pretty straightforward. This will set the selected ratings of the selected cars to the absolute value you specify. Remarks: * If you chose to only rate the MIN or MAX, and by setting to an absolute value, the MIN goes above the MAX, or the MAX drops below the MIN, the other type will automatically be adjusted.
- Group modifications by
This is an optional, but quite useful step.
You can choose group the modifications to be made. This can be done by either car number or driver name, or both.
Grouping means that, when the bulk modify routine goes over the list of cars to be modified (containing either only the current car, or a selection of cars, or all cars), for each car it encounters it will check if there are other cars in your car list that match the criteria (either have the same number, or the same name, or both). If it finds one or more matches, it will apply the same ratings to those cars. This is done only once by "group of cars".
Example 1:
You chose to randomize all ratings of the CURRENT car (which is a car file containing #24 Jeff Gordon). You also chose to group by number and name. When you click apply, the program will randomize the values for your current car, AND ADDITIONALLY will go over your car list and look for all cars having number 24 and name Jeff Gordon, and apply those same ratings to these cars. This means that all your #24 Jeff Gordon files, will have the same randomized ratings.
Example 2:
You chose to multiply all ratings of ALL cars by 1.5. You chose to group only by name. When you click apply, the program will go over all your cars (starting from the top). For each car it encounters, it will first multiply the ratings by 1.5, AND ADDITIONALLY will then search for other cars with the same driver name as the one currently being processed. If it finds one or more matches, it will COPY the new ratings of the car being processed to those found. Those other matching cars will also be marked as processed, so their ratings will not change a second time when the modification loop encounters them.
Other notables
You can apply several modifications sequentially without closing the bulk modification screen. For instance, you may first wish to multiply only Aggression by 1.5. After you applied these changes, you can for instance unselect Aggression and select Pit Strategy and add a value of 5. Both these changes will be applied to the selected cars.