They're back for a second time. The PCM.Daily Online Championships are returning and sign-ups opened on Thursday. Keirin, 200m TT, Points, Scratch, Elimination and Road Race are all being held, meaning there is surely something for everyone. It is now a PCM15 based championship so you can find more details in the PCM15: Online subforum. Sign-ups are OPEN so come and take part!
EDIT: The Championships have moved to PCM15!!!
Cycling Dominates
It's been a week heavy on real world cycling. La Vuelta is a race that just keeps on giving for talking points with epic racing, epic stages and just all-round entertainment. The Week 2 Thread has just been bursting as Aru heads proceedings, though not without "help" from Landa, whilst Dumoulin might just be making himself a favorite to win overall. I'm sure a Week 3 thread will be landing soon for what is probably the best GT of the year.
But we about more than just La Vuelta. The week included some big transfer news, to be found in the Transfer Season 15/16 thread. Or perhaps you want to catch up on some big news and World Championship squad announcements in the News in September thread. Perhaps you want to talk about how cycling is changing with MTN doing so well and the UK growing it's domination in the Cycling is Changing thread. And i've brought the Womens Cycling thread back to life.
Man-Game Madness
Quiet week for the ProTour but the Dauphine concluded with Rein Taaramäe taking the win for Bouygues Telecom. Andy Schleck, Vesuvio, was second and Robert Gesink a distant third. The best ManGame action has been lower down. The brutal Tour d'Andorra is almost complete, this 5 day monster is currently headed by Tiago Machado, Prio-Porto, but anything really could still happen here. If you like flatter racing then look to the Monterrey TTT event where RBC squeaked a close victory. The Continental teams have had action as well, most notably at the sprint-fest Hanko Classic. Yauheni Hutarovich took the honors for BelarusBank over Lavoine and Richeze.
Story Game Summary
The MG isn't the only game on the site. The ICL, run by bikex, has almost finished it's season and has opened it's sign-ups for the 2016 season. You can get all the details on how to join in the Sign-Up thread. For EPIC it is the Tour of Turkey that is center stage right now where Nieve won the latest stage, but it's Pellizotti who leads the race overall.
However if road racing isn't your bag then good news everyone! Cyclo-Cross: A New Dawn is back! Ian Butler has restarted the great game with an NES race from Johannesburg, South Africa. Next up is Lisbon as the game jumps right back to full throttle.
Thread of the Week
It's the PCM.Daily rFactor Racing League 2.0 thread. Race weekend brought a lot of new discussion as the league broke a record for participants with 11 drivers making the startline. Only 4 finished but it's a huge step forwards for the league. If you want to know more go to the thread, or alternatively check out baseballlover312 and SSJ2luigi commentating on twitch!
The Second Annual PCM.Daily Online Championships are here! A few months later than last year we are back and ready to host another incredible competition. It's a chance to show that last year was not a fluke, or that you are better than in 2014, or you could settle that score from the World Cup! Oh and if you wanted more reason to compete we have prizes to give away to the wnners.
They run from today through to 23:59 Thursday 10th September, which is one week from now. Events commence on Saturday 12th and will run almost every day through to the 23rd September. We'll have Keirin, 200m TT, Points Race, Scratch Race and Elimination on the Track and a Road Race competition on the open roads. Like last year there will be an Overall Competition across every event to crown us a true PCM.Daily Online Champion.
So get involved! You do need PCM14 and an internet connection, as well as 75 posts, to compete. Any questions just message me, TMM, or post in the General Thread. Good Luck to you all!
Why does this suddenly get more public attention the week after I win a race - SSJ2Luigi (rFactor League)
Breakaways and Recovery
It's not often that somebody from Cyanide joins in with a discussion on the forum, but when they do, it always tends to be worth a read. This week saw a few posts from Freire which gave an interesting insight into the game mechanics behind how the AI decides whether or not to chase down a breakaway attempt, and the workings of freshness, and how the recovery stat is involved. So if you have any thoughts on either of those parts of the game, get on over to those threads and leave a comment - it just might have an affect on the development for next year's game.
Height Maps and a Hard Tour
This week has seen Samu12 complete his Tour de France variant, a race he set out to make as "21 days of hell". There are cobbles throughout the first week, before the latter two weeks are dominated by some extraordinary mountain stages with climb after climb. A few notable stages at the end of the race are a 108km time trial that finishes on the top of Mont Ventoux, a summit finish on the Pic du Midi, and a final stage that is nowhere near Paris - and a tough 315km long!
Meanwhile I have written a detailed guide on how to use the heightmap feature of the stage editor to create stages, which hopefully helps to unlock one of the great mysteries of the stage editor. Heightmaps do make it easier to create races outside of the .DEM file coverage, such as the Rio 2016 Olympic course.
Jersey Votes
This Tuesday voting will open for the August Graphic Contest, in the sixth month of competition to decide upon the best fantasy shirt designed in the past month. The contest, organised by MARSUPILAMI, has seen five different jersey designers take victory so far: Cavendish-Fan, krisa, Maximka, trvalezmateny, and the_hoyle. With plenty of entries this month, it could be one of the most competitive votes yet.
Weekly Vuelta
Bilbao will get a stage win at some point in these three weeks, definitely. - Shonak
Will Shonak be right? Two more weeks to find out, after a near miss yesterday.
Thread of the Week
U23 Discussion Thread. This week saw the Tour de l'Avenir, the biggest Under 23 stage race of the year, and a chance to see who may (or may not) be the stars of the future in cycling. Probably the most discussed race of the season, of the races that don't have TV coverage!
Nibali better finds a teamcar soon. - Spilak23 (on Sunday, 16:54 CET)
Last update for the PCMDaily Expansion Pack
The PCMDaily Expansion Pack v1.6 is now available. This should fix some reported bugs like a crashing calendar, riders' photos not showing and the DB not showing under 'Options'. Since a lot of the DB team members are busy with either other projects or their real life, this probably is the final update for the Expansion Pack. (haasje33)
It's strongly recommended to follow the correct installation guide, that will prevent you from 'corupt' installations. There's also a small bugfix for a problem with accessoires for Bretagne, which can be found here: fixed files for Bretagne.
How to write a succesful Story
The Tips & Tricks section saw a notable addition this week: Mre's Checklist for a succesful Story. You certainly know Mresuperstar as one of the well known storywriters on the site, so there's definitely a few reasons to read his guide. His list comes in four 'stages' and makes for an interesting and helpful read. If you're into stories, get yourself a cup of coffee and take a few minutes to listen to Mre:
Hello there, are you planning to start a story on PCM.Daily? - Well, look no further, you've come to the right place. This is my lengthy article to those thinking about adventuring into the realm of story writing of the forum. This checklist is meant for the newbies who have never wrote a story before, but perhaps some of these tips and tricks can even enlighten some of the more experienced writers as well.
Fantasy & Real Races for PCM15
Always nice to see an active 'scene' of stagemakers: SN came up with a new thread this week. His Project Olympics aims to make several Olympic Road courses available for download. With Bejing and London already converted to the newest edition, we've now the timetrial course for Rio as well. SN also managed to get the heightmaps work in the Stage Editor and he plans to write a guide soon.
Two small fantasy stage races may be worth a mention as well: coolrex finished his Giro di Liguria - featuring eight stages and some of those pretty awesome ZTCS-files, which Grebiere brought up a couple of years (?) ago. If you love detailed landscapes (without automatic cities), go and try this.. trekbmc took a break from his GT project and came up with a Tour of Hellas. Four stages, all hilly.
Weekly Vuelta
Nibali won't win.
Finally they give him a ride. - Spilak23 (on Sunday, 17:06 CET)
Thread of the Week
Cargate makes it a pretty obvious choice: La Vuelta a España 2015 - Week 1will probably become the most crowded thread anyway, but the discussion about stage one (that stage, that wasn't neutralised) was a nice kick-off. Including an interesting conspiracy theory, why Nibali got DQd on Spanish ground.
Every year the Transfer Season thread is a popular resource for discussing riders changing teams or renewing contracts. On 5th August 2011, Aquarius informed us that the French sprinter Jimmy Casper was set to leave his Saur-Sojasun team. 5 days later, we found out that he had signed for Ag2r.
Such was the importance of this transfer, that this one post was not enough recognition for the move. Fortunately, thanks to Eden95 the next day, and DJP19 the day after, we all became aware of Ag2r's latest signing. Casper went on to achieve a number of Top 10s for Ag2r before retiring at the end of the 2012 season, but his transfer is always worth remembering - particularly on other occasions where somebody posts about a transfer that we already know about!
