B-Spec Grinder 2.5.2: Automate Remote Races

  • Thread starter yonis
  • 4,266 comments
  • 545,036 views
Small thing I noticed while running WinXP Embedded, the widget tries to create the log directory even thought logging is disabled. I manually created the folder after running debug and saw that was holding it up.
 
okay, here's something strange... does it look like it reserving more that 16 drivers total?

Code:
Reserving first available driver with the least credits.  Name: W.Lyons  Class: 36  Exp.: 101390  Credits: 98,300
  AeroxSchumi raced you 22 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: K.Kitamura
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: N.Kawasaki
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: D.Miyazaki
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: Y.Ota
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: D.Peters
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: A.Wong
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: B.Kowalczyk
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: V.Rossi
  FATstickman raced you 5 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  kyubinoyoshi raced you 4 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  dantams raced you 2 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  LEGOmy240 raced you 2 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: AeroxSchumi  Name: C.Smith
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: AeroxSchumi  Name: P.Soriano
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: dantams  Name: I.Suomalainen
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: dantams  Name: F.Makinen
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: LEGOmy240  Name: I.Mendez
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: LEGOmy240  Name: A.Fukushi
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: menegsp  Name: A.Snider
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: jolliff87  Name: V.Cummings
03/28/11 19:17:48.765: Race has started.


Yeah I have seen that before i got around that by flushing my GT cache on my playstation it was doing something wierd with that for some reason !
 
I've noticed since 2.0 the offline CR balance doesn't get updated...it only got updated when my internet connection was dropped then reconnected. I've tried restarting the widget to no avail...dont know if restarting GT5/re-signing in PSN will make a difference.

Also, if I uncheck Debug mode...will it no longer default on Sarthe? I havent got a chance to check yet.
 
Thanks for the video! Really clearly done. I just started using the widget tonight and really love it. Sometimes it doesn't select the maximum drivers but it's possible my other friends drivers are being used up. Running a race of 13 as we speak.
 
Great widget, worked straight out of the box :).

However, I've got a "Unable to retrieve race start information from the game server" at the moment, so I probably have to give my PS3 at home a little kick.
 
I must thank yonis, for this wonderful widget. I've had occasional "Temporary Server Issues", but all in all it works. There's less babysitting involved.

I have two questions though. (I'm sure they've been asked, but just in case)

1.) What are the best settings to avoid connection the risk of problems. My university Internet connection can be bad sometimes.

2.) Can you, or do you know someone that can code this for Android phones/tablets?
 
Great tutorial video. Hopefully it will stop some of the same questions being repeated in the thread. Now you just need to explain how to open the debugger in the first post, and most of the questions should be answered there :)

I have a bug / problem (or perhaps a misunderstanding on my part).
I've set up my "Manage Drivers" to have a few friends in "Always Use" with 0 drivers free, as I'm sure they don't race, and have the rest on my friends set on "Reciprocate". Also I've set the preferences to 1 thread and wait 5 seconds, as I had some problems with timeout. Even though I live in Europe, I use the USA server, as I have had the best experience with that one.
So far so good, now here is the problem:
When the grinder starts a race, it'll use the drivers in the "always use list", and it'll use drivers that needs to be reciprocated, but then it'll stop finding drivers, and simply start the race. I've seen it doing this with as few as 6 drivers.
I thought it was supposed to reciprocate first, and then simply pick the rest at random?

:rolleyes: Sure thing. As I've been writing this, it has started a race the way it was supposed to. I changed it to use two threads, and that must have helped. Still, I do have the logs to show the problem was real, and not just in my head :banghead:

EDIT: Oh, now it doesn't use the drivers in my Always Use list, which was the reason I set it to 1 thread, as it does that then.
 
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I would still love to see an option for it to run and automatically stop after 5 races. Obviously so that I can set it while I run to the store, and not have to worry about missing something in the UCD.

The new version is working swimmingly otherwise...
 
okay, here's something strange... does it look like it reserving more that 16 drivers total?

Code:
Reserving first available driver with the least credits.  Name: W.Lyons  Class: 36  Exp.: 101390  Credits: 98,300
  AeroxSchumi raced you 22 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: K.Kitamura
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: N.Kawasaki
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: D.Miyazaki
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: kyubinoyoshi  Name: Y.Ota
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: D.Peters
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: A.Wong
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: B.Kowalczyk
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: BobJosh  Name: V.Rossi
  FATstickman raced you 5 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  kyubinoyoshi raced you 4 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  dantams raced you 2 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  LEGOmy240 raced you 2 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: AeroxSchumi  Name: C.Smith
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: AeroxSchumi  Name: P.Soriano
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: dantams  Name: I.Suomalainen
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: dantams  Name: F.Makinen
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: LEGOmy240  Name: I.Mendez
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: LEGOmy240  Name: A.Fukushi
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: menegsp  Name: A.Snider
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: jolliff87  Name: V.Cummings
03/28/11 19:17:48.765: Race has started.

This happens to me too quite often. The widget seems to reserve 16 of my friends' bobs + my bob = 17 bobs.
 
1.) What are the best settings to avoid connection the risk of problems. My university Internet connection can be bad sometimes.

2.) Can you, or do you know someone that can code this for Android phones/tablets?

1.) You have to play around with the settings to figure out the best combination. Try starting out by reducing the number of threads to 2 and increasing the reservation delay to 5, and see how that does.

2.) I'm getting a lot of requests for an Android version. I'm not saying it'll materialize, but I'm curious about what you would want to see from it?

Great work Yonis! v2.02b running sweetly after some snags this morning, probably some server issues. Reciprocate function is just awesome!
Make sure you're using the final 2.0 version, available from the first post in the thread!
That's a really top quality video!! What did you use to make it?
Hardware:
  • Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture card
  • Audio-Technica AT2020 USB Mic

Software:
  • Photoshop (for the title card and cutting out product images)
  • Screenflow (video editing and capture on OS X)
  • Fraps (capture on Windows)
  • Audacity (recording and normalizing the voiceover)

I recorded the voiceover in my car to eliminate background noise. :)
Great tutorial video. Hopefully it will stop some of the same questions being repeated in the thread. Now you just need to explain how to open the debugger in the first post, and most of the questions should be answered there :)
I'm going to add it as a normal feature in a future version, so it's not really worth the trouble to make another video just for doing that.
I have a bug / problem (or perhaps a misunderstanding on my part).
I've set up my "Manage Drivers" to have a few friends in "Always Use" with 0 drivers free, as I'm sure they don't race, and have the rest on my friends set on "Reciprocate". Also I've set the preferences to 1 thread and wait 5 seconds, as I had some problems with timeout. Even though I live in Europe, I use the USA server, as I have had the best experience with that one.
So far so good, now here is the problem:
When the grinder starts a race, it'll use the drivers in the "always use list", and it'll use drivers that needs to be reciprocated, but then it'll stop finding drivers, and simply start the race. I've seen it doing this with as few as 6 drivers.
I thought it was supposed to reciprocate first, and then simply pick the rest at random?

:rolleyes: Sure thing. As I've been writing this, it has started a race the way it was supposed to. I changed it to use two threads, and that must have helped. Still, I do have the logs to show the problem was real, and not just in my head :banghead:

EDIT: Oh, now it doesn't use the drivers in my Always Use list, which was the reason I set it to 1 thread, as it does that then.
It's possible that most of your friends' drivers are in use by other people. How many friends do you have on your lists?
Yonis

$redirect_url.replace(signout/',")

recieved this message while " Logging in " showing on widget
I could have sworn I fixed this in 2.0. I hope you weren't running the latest version when you saw this.
 
The Widget Keeps on giving me 'Temporary Server Issue' when reserving drivers, has anybody else had this problem?
 
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The Widget Keeps on giving me 'Temporary Server Issue' when reserving drivers, has anybody else had this problem?

I had some of those issues last night. The nice thing is that it does try to reconnect and attempt again. If it keeps reconnecting for you with no luck, just manually setup a race and then let the widget take over again.
 
It's possible that most of your friends' drivers are in use by other people. How many friends do you have on your lists?

I have 10 friends, but I know for a fact that they are not all being used, as I'm the only one using them for one of my friends. It's also not a matter of the grinder trying to reserve them before they get released, as that specific friend hasn't been used for multiple races in a row.
As far as I can tell from the log, the grinder tries to reserve 15 drivers, and then simply races with the ones of those that were available, even if most of them turned out not to be free after all. Example:
Code:
    Reserving first available driver in specified order.  Name: R.Sanchez  Class: 35  Exp.: 12160  Credits: 13,520  Order: 0
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: torben87dk  Name: P.Christensen
  Lirathal raced you 13 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: mhermann87  Name: O.Eisenhower
  mnjfranks raced you 11 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: Lirathal  Name: H.Eaton
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: Lirathal  Name: J.Kraus
  badcrc7 raced you 8 time(s).  Reciprocating...
  Server refused to reserve Lirathal's driver even though it said it was free.
  bigape1970 raced you 3 time(s).  Reciprocating...
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: mnjfranks  Name: D.Montoya
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: mnjfranks  Name: C.Hertzog
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: badcrc7  Name: P.Kramer
  Server refused to reserve badcrc7's driver even though it said it was free.
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: bigape1970  Name: D.Hansen
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: bigape1970  Name: B.Pabst
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: bigape1970  Name: W.Whitehead
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: bigape1970  Name: O.Mcconnell
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: bigape1970  Name: M.Burns
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: Lirathal  Name: V.Barrera
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: badcrc7  Name: H.de Graaf
    Reserving a friend's driver.  PSN: badcrc7  Name: B.Lin
  Server refused to reserve badcrc7's driver even though it said it was free.
  Server refused to reserve badcrc7's driver even though it said it was free.
  Server refused to reserve bigape1970's driver even though it said it was free.
03/29/11 19:26:35.742: Race has started.
The example above started with 11 drivers (10 and me).
 
You should start charging for this Yonis, maybe only $5 a go because with all the downloads your getting of this and all the time your putting into it you should get paid for it.
 
Okay I have a question. I am using the widget and plugin program.

I have one main PSN account and one "mule" PSN account.

My main one has 6 drivers, my mule one has 3 drivers.

I have logged into my mule account (I couldn't care less which driver the program picks to use off this account) to race all 6 of my drivers from my main account.

However the program only uses 1 driver from my main account when there should be more than that available to use. I have checked by logging into my main account after a few failed attempts just to check if any of my other PSN friends were racing them.

My question is, why is the program not using more than one driver when there are 6 and chances are all 6 are available. The race ends up being 1 main vs. 1 mule...

Thanks.

A bump on this issue.

I have also set the widget to leave 0 drivers free on my main account to hopefully force it to use all my drivers on my main account.

The mule account has only 1 friend, being my main account.

Overnight the program ran, and I checked the logs and it indeed did some of the 6 main account drivers (at once) races. However, for some good stretches of time it will only do the 1 mule vs. 1 main account races as well.

The only side variable I can think of is that on my main account I could remove all my GT5 friends, therefore no one could (possibly) take any of my drivers.

Let me know what you guys think.
 
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