Multiplayer Lobbies and AI Opponents

Every lobby in Daily Dirt Rally is a room of up to eight drivers racing the same tracks at the same time, and every lobby runs a set of three races. Lobbies need no accounts, no friend lists and no name: you race as Player 1, Player 2 and so on until you put a name on the daily leaderboard, and from then on you race under it.

GO RACE: quick races with whoever is around

GO RACE puts you straight into an open lobby for today’s track, or opens one. A lobby starts 8 seconds after the last driver joins it, and never more than 30 seconds after it opened: every driver who arrives pushes the start back to 8 seconds from their own arrival, so drivers who press GO RACE around the same time gather in one lobby, and a driver on their own waits 8 seconds. Then the race starts, with AI drivers in any empty seats: up to seven of them. It starts at once when eight drivers are in, and anyone can press RACE NOWto skip the rest of the wait. PLAY AGAIN after the third race drops you into a new lobby for a new set. A new player’s first lobby is the exception: it waits for no one (see Your first set below).

Play with friends: private lobbies

Under Play with friends, one player creates a private lobby. That generates a six-character invite code that identifies the room; anyone who enters that code joins it, up to a total of eight drivers. Private lobbies have no timer and are never filled with strangers. Everyone in a room races the same three tracks of the day, in the same order, because the tracks are made from the date.

The player who created the private lobby is its host, with two controls the other players do not have:

• Slot configuration. Each of the eight grid slots can be left open for a human or filled with an AI driver.
• Race start. Nothing begins until the host starts it, so there is no rush to load in.

When the host starts the first race, any slot marked for AI is filled immediately, the three-second countdown runs on every client, and the AI drivers are released the moment it clears — they do not get a head start. Races 2 and 3 follow by themselves. After Final Standings, PLAY AGAIN lets the host start a new set in the same lobby.

A set of three races

A set is three races in a row on three different tracks: race 1 is the day’s track, and races 2 and 3 are made from the date the same way, so everyone gets the same three. The same eight drivers race all three, each in the same truck colour, and the computer drivers keep their names and levels. A red arrow bobs over your own truck for the first three seconds of every race, while the countdown runs, so you can find it on a full grid.

Each race scores points by finishing place: 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 for first to eighth. A race ends when every human driver has finished, or 30 seconds after the first truck crosses the line, whichever comes first, and anyone still driving is placed behind the finishers by how far round they got. From that first finish, every driver still racing sees RACE ENDS IN 30 under the lap counter, counting down the time left. The server decides the order and the points, so every screen in the room shows the same results. (A rookie set’s races wait longer, for the rookie: see Your first set below.)

While a race runs, the server tells every screen the order of the field at most four times a second, and the race shows your place in it, P3/8, beside the lap counter. Two trucks side by side would swap places on every report, so a truck takes the place ahead only once it leads that truck by more than a quarter of a tile. A finished truck keeps its finishing place, ahead of everyone still racing.

When a race ends, it holds still for five seconds under a banner with your place. After races 1 and 2 comes the standings screen: total points for every driver, beside each one’s place and points in the race just run. If the platform you play on shows an ad, it comes first (a rookie set has none after race 1). The next race starts for everyone together: the server waits for each player to be back from any ad, for 33.5 seconds from the end of the race at most so that one stuck ad cannot hold a room, then the standings count down five seconds on every screen. Each has a READY button: when every human driver still connected has pressed it, the next race starts at once. READY never cuts an ad short, since it only counts once the countdown is running. Races 2 and 3 line the grid up by the standings, the leader at the front, two by two as ever.

After race 3, Final Standings shows each driver’s points from every race, the total, and the total time, with your row highlighted. Only GO RACE sets go on the daily leaderboard, ranked by most points first, then the lower total time; Final Standings has a button to enter your name for those. Play with friends sets do not go on the leaderboard, and it says so there. PLAY AGAIN and MAIN MENU sit under them.

Your first set: the rookie lobby

A browser that has not finished a set yet is a rookie. When a rookie presses CONTINUE on the controls picture a first visit opens on, or GO RACE, the game asks for a rookie lobby, and the server seats it only in a room kept for rookies: a first set is raced against computer drivers a newcomer can beat. A rookie lobby starts at once. It waits for no one, so the race begins as soon as you are seated, with seven computer drivers filling the grid, and a rookie normally races without another human in the room. Otherwise it is an ordinary one, with the same eight seats and the same three races, but its computer drivers are all easy. The hard level is left out, and so is medium: an easy driver tops out at 360 units a second, well below the 450 of your truck, so none of them can outrun you. The standings and the lobby call it a ROOKIE TOURNAMENT: finish it to unlock the day’s leaderboard.

A rookie set’s races wait for the rookie. A rookie race waits for you, up to two minutes after the winner, as a safety net for a tab left idle: it ends when you have finished, or two minutes after the first truck home. RACE ENDS IN shows only for the last 30 seconds of that wait. The ad break after race 1 is skipped for a rookie set, and the standings come straight away; the break after race 2 stays.

A rookie set is scored and shown like any other, but it is not ranked: the server keeps no result for it, so it never goes on the daily leaderboard. Where Final Standings would offer to enter your name, it offers PLAY AGAIN TO MAKE THE LEADERBOARD, because your next set counts, and VIEW LEADERBOARD shows what that set races for. Once Final Standings has shown, you are no rookie: PLAY AGAIN and every GO RACE after it are ordinary lobbies. A name saved from the leaderboard also makes a browser a veteran, so regulars never meet a rookie lobby. The browser remembers it, so clearing its saved data makes you a rookie again, which costs the board nothing because a rookie set never reaches it.

The AI drivers

Seven AI drivers exist, named in order as empty seats fill: CrashOverride, AcidBurn, ZeroCool, CerealKiller, LordNikon, PhantomPhreak and ThePlague. Their difficulty runs easy, medium, hard and round again, so a full grid has three easy drivers, two medium and two hard. They race under their names alone, with no difficulty shown, but each name always drives at the same level: the table below says who is who. (A rookie lobby is the exception: all seven are easy, whatever their names.) If you race under one of their names yourself, the AI driver becomes ZeroCool 2 (or whichever), as a second player of that name would.

They are not scripted lap times — they drive the track by aiming at the centre of the next track tile and steering toward it, sixty times a second, exactly like a human holding keys. The difference between profiles is three tuning values:

Those numbers tell you how to beat each one. The easy drivers lose time by wobbling and by dropping a fifth of their inputs — they are beatable on any clean lap. The medium ones are consistent but turn in at the standard point, so you gain on them by braking later and rotating earlier, as described in the cornering guide. The hard ones drive a near-perfect geometric line and never fumble, so the only places you take time out of them are the straights — and that is where your nitro canisters help, since the AI drivers use none.

How the network keeps everyone in sync

Each client sends its position, heading and speed about twenty times a second, and the other clients interpolate between updates to draw smooth movement in between. This is why an opponent’s truck occasionally appears to correct itself slightly: you were watching an interpolated guess, and a fresh update arrived that disagreed.

Trucks are solid. Touch another truck and both bounce apart a little and lose some speed, and the faster truck pushes the slower one out of the way, whichever of them is the computer’s. A rear-end hit pushes the truck in front along; a hit from the side sends the other truck sliding sideways until its tyres grip again, about the same distance for a computer truck as for yours: a truck at rest that is shoved sideways at 300 units a second slides about 35 units. A shove from behind can carry a truck well over its top speed, and it falls back to it in under a second.

Each game works out its own truck’s side of a hit straight away, so a hit never waits on the network, and tells the server how hard it hit the other truck, so that truck is shoved too even if its driver’s screen had not quite caught up. To keep the two sides agreeing, each game also tells the server how its truck is really moving, a slide included, and the server tells every game how each truck is moving. The AI drivers bump and get bumped the same way, and steer round a truck they are catching rather than ramming it; one that ends up pinned against a stopped truck backs off and tries again. A truck whose race is over turns see-through, and so does one just put back on the road, for a second; the others drive straight through it. Days raced before 23 October keep the old bumps, where a computer truck shrugs a hit off within a fraction of a second.

The practical implication for racing is to leave a little more room than you would in a local game. Each player sees the others a split second late, so a side-by-side entry into a tight corner can look different on the two screens involved: a light graze on one may be a near miss on the other. Passing on the straights is both faster and less ambiguous.

Disconnections and reconnects

If a driver’s connection drops during a race, their truck is not deleted out from under everyone else — an AI takes over the vehicle and continues the lap, so the race keeps its full field and nobody is left racing a ghost. If that player reconnects, they resume control of their own truck. Leaving mid-race on purpose, by closing the game or heading back to the menu, works the same way, minus the comeback.

In a set, a truck stays for all three races whoever leaves or drops, finished or not, mid-race or between races: the computer drives it, it keeps scoring under that player’s name and colour, and it keeps its place in the standings. A player whose connection comes back gets the truck and the points back, also on the standings screen. Nobody joins a set once it is under way, so a room’s invite code stops working when its first race starts.

If the host is the one who leaves, hosting passes to the next player in the room. A new host can start the first race of a lobby that is still waiting, and a new set after Final Standings; races 2 and 3 of a set start by themselves.

A dropped connection keeps its place while the game reconnects by itself. In the lobby, the seat shows as reconnecting for up to 30 seconds and is handed back with the same name and colour; after that it goes, and the game says so. If the race starts meanwhile, the truck waits on the grid, see-through, and its driver joins from there with their own countdown. Mid-race, the AI drives the truck until its driver is back, even when nobody else is racing; a race left with no driver for 30 seconds closes.

Etiquette that makes rooms better

• Agree on nitro rules up front. The game imposes none, but a room that agrees to race a "no boost" lap first gets a much better read on relative pace.
• Do not block. Deliberately driving slowly to hold up a faster driver works, and it makes people leave your lobby. Racing hard for the place is the point; blocking the road to spoil someone else’s set is not.
• Let the host know when you are loaded. There is no ready check yet; the host simply starts when the lobby looks full.

Which lobbies affect the leaderboard?

Only GO RACE sets go on the daily leaderboard. A GO RACE lobby always has a full grid of eight, so each of its sets is a race against a full field. Play with friends sets do not go on the leaderboard: a host alone in a private lobby would win every race. Nor does a rookie set, a new player’s first, which is raced against easier drivers. Ranking is by most points first, then the lower total time. See scoring and fair play for what gets stored and how a set becomes an entry.

Curious why today’s track looks the way it does? Read how the daily track is generated.