Patch - results not saved

I've sent a patch to Jean-Philippe, it fixes TORCS-NG's faulty behaviour not saving the results file if the directory structure to hold it was not created yet. I made the patch against the sdl-port branch, AFAIK the trunk is expected to be released soon.

The cause is plain simple, saving the XML file (GfParmWriteFile) uses fopen() and fopen isn't expected to create the directories. However I think the directory path should have been created when first running the program...
Well the patch fixes the fault explicitly creating the directories in the path if they do not exist. I've tested it under Linux but can't test it under Windows.

Scanning the TODO file a similar error is still there, not saving screenshots when the directories are not created yet. I'll look at it, this may be the same problem.

Set for this year

Phew, I've been able to set up TORCS and my robot today.
I was really worried I would not get there in time.

I've created a development user environment, for testing the robot. Then I've created a separate user only for running the races. The latter one will get clean a TORCS install right before each race, so nothing can be left over and harm the results. At least I hope so :D

The only remaining issue is - my laptop's ATI Mobility Radeon X200 and Ubuntu 9.04 do not like eachother. I guess you know the story - Ubuntu moved to the new X server, ATI dropped support for 'legacy' cards, so their fglrx does not like the X200 now. That leaves me with the free radeon driver, that is ... khm ... not so strong when we speak about 3D. Framerates can drop to 1-2/s :( I guess I'll have to wait a bit and hope someone comes up with a solution for decent 3D. Or should I downgrade to 8.10 where all was fine yet?

2009 season preview

The TORCS Endurance World Championship 2009 season start is almost here.

I don't particularly like the tracks selected for this year - I like Forza, E-track 4 and Street 1, but really hate Dirt-3, E-Track-1 or Aalborg. I miss Brondehach, Wheel-2, E-track-6 or Corkscrew. But well, maybe my robots have a different opinion :D

I have some issues with my laptop so cannot run TORCS and test the robots at the moment. I expect them to be on the skill level of last December, while many code enhancements were committed, mainly in the raceline section. But none of these changes has been tested against the 1.3.1 release so I only expect the robots to drive as good as they have did near the close of last year's championships.

First race is due on 4th of June, so - from coder's viewpoint - almost an eternity to get everything going.