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Buggy Racing

Uploading race results

When you’ve run a race, the output of the process is a new race file. This file is the same as before the race, except it now contains the results, and an event-by-event log (that the race player can animate).

Uploading the results (and disqualifications)

Admin → Races → Race: Upload results
or
Admin → Races → Race: Details → Upload results

When you upload the results file, the server will check the contents of that file against the details (including students) in the database. If there are any discrepancies, you’ll see warnings. If there are any warnings, then no changes will be made on the server unless you choose Ignore warnings.

When you first upload the results, do not check Ignore warnings — it’s important you see what they are before you proceed. If it was a busy race, there may be several things reported. Read the warnings carefully before deciding to proceed: if it’s OK, upload the file again, this time explicitly ignoring warnings.

Results of a race

When you upload the results of a race (and agree to override any warnings, if any), they are stored in the database of the race server. Specifically, results are about what happened to each buggy that was entered in the race. That means: every buggy that was on the race server when you downloaded the race file. There are three outcomes for each buggy:

  • Buggy finished (so: has a position)
  • Buggy did not finish (has no position)
  • Buggy was disqualified from the race — in which case the rule violations are suggested

Although winning races is fun, disqualifications can be especially informative — because they may be related to the quality of each student’s buggy editor, which may be checking for rules and calculating costs. The results page is (deliberately) the only place when students see the definitive cost of their buggy. They may have calculated this out from the specs, and indeed task 2-COST requires them to have automated this calculation. Similarly, this is where students discover if they’ve missed — or failed to apply — rules too (such as having fewer tyres than wheels).

See about races: What the races show for more about the underlying value of race results.

Be sure to upload the race file that contains the results of the race — it’s possible to get this wrong, because the race file did exist before you ran the race. Running the race creates a new copy of the race file. If you accidentally upload the wrong one, you’ll see a warning that the file contains no results.

What if there really are no results?

Admin → Races → Race: Details → Edit → Abandon race

If you need to mark a race as complete without having any buggies entered into it, you can abandon the race. This might arise if there were no students’ buggies on the server when you ran the race, or if the race had to be cancelled for some other reason. If you want to add an explanation for the race not having been run, consider editing its description text too, which is displayed on the public results page.

It’s also possible to delete the race if, after you’ve created it, you decide you aren’t ever going to run it.

Visibility of results

Races → (specific race) Results

The results of races are public (that is, visible to students) as soon as you upload them only if you’ve set both Is visible? and Are results visible? to be Yes — see editing races. You should always make the race visible to students in time for them to prepare and submit their racing buggy, but there’s a case for keeping the results hidden until you’ve uploaded them and checked everything looks OK.

Admin → Races → Race: Details → View results (preview)

If you’ve set Is visible? or Are results visible? for this race to No, anyone with a staff account can view a preview of the results. This allows you to preview (and indeed replay) races before the students can. You can of course make the results public at any time by editing the race and changing Are results visible? to Yes.

Events in a race

The detailed events that occurred during the race may be included in the race file you’ve uploaded (if you use the default Python script for running the race, they will be). These can be used to show an animated replay of the race. For more about this, see replaying race.