Brad's Driver Randomizer for NASCAR

Here is a short introduction in Brad's own words:

Update Information: The upgrade is that it'll recognize when a user hasn't copied DRIVER2.TXT to DRIVERS3.TXT and/or hasn't created the DSETUP2.TXT file.

The EVEN.EXE version will also allow you to change the aggression settings to within a specified range from xxx - 999 (ie 700 - 999) for all drivers upper and lower settings. I set it to 900 - 999 once at Talladega and they WERE aggressive.

Introduction

Even the most consistent drivers have a bad day now and then, even though they may run up front 8 out of 9 races. NASCAR Racing from Papyrus allows you to set ranges for power, traction and drag, but, these ranges tend to be more random than the drivers are in real life.

For example, Dale Earnhardt generally runs up front, but once in a while you see him run 20th or so. If you want Dale to run up front in NASCAR Racing you edit your DRIVERS2.TXT file and set a higher range for power and traction and a lower range for drag. This does work to get Dale up front, but then he ALWAYS runs up front. If you widen the range to allow for him to run in the middle of the pack once in a while, he runs in the middle of the pack more often than he does in real life.

This same concept applies for those drivers who generally run in the middle of the pack, but really get hooked up once in a while and run up front. Bobby Hamilton and Michael Waltrip may be good examples.

It's pretty easy to manually change the settings because Papyrus kindly made it available to us in a text file. So, you could use your editor to change the file to make Dale run in mid pack for one race, and then change it back after the race, but if you do that for very many drivers it gets pretty time consuming.

So....why not do it automatically? That's what this program does. It's a simple BASIC program compiled using BASIC. It simply extracts the low and high power, traction and drag settings and adjusts them at random (you set the likelihood that it will happen) by a percentage value that you specify for each individual driver (including yourself). Agression settings are ignored because I think that reflects the driver's style more than how their car happens to be performing that day. I'm sure Earnhardt gives them the fender in the middle of the pack as much as he does when he's in 2nd place.

BRADBOY336@AOL.COM (I may change this in the future. Upon reflection, I think my address name is stupid). Also, please let me know if you find any bugs. I'll see what I can do to clean it up.

Hope you like it.

"Dependent people don't make independent decisions"

"Okay, this sounds interesting. Please send a copy of Brad's NASEXT2.ZIP my way."

Copyright © 1996, Michael E. Carver