How to Play

It is not as intuitive as it should.

Main Menu

The main menu of ARS is brought up at any moment using the Sprint + Interact keys, Shift+E on keyboard.

This menu allows you to select a track, the lap number, the opponent vehicles, and how many opponents will participate in the race.

The first item is the Track Selection. It will let you input a few keywords, separated by spaces. These will be used to search for tracks that fit the keyword criteria. On the same item you can select the current filtered track with the arrow keys.

Disciplines lets you input some keywords to filter what cars will be summoned. muscle street will, for example, select any car which is considered a Muscle car, or has a street tag on it.
The input has a few modifiers to better choose what kind of vehicles you want summoned.

*tag will mean that tag is priority. Cars with this tag will automatically be added regardless of any other rules.
+tag will mean that tag is required. All cars summoned need to have this tag.
-tag will mean that tag is prohibited. All cars summoned cannot have this tag.
tag will mean that tag is optional. If a car contains this tag, it will be included.

You can freely include as many tags as you want, with one modifier on each, or none.

Grid Size allows you to decide how many AI racers will participate in the race. You can enter a number here, or use the arrow keys to modify it.

Laps does the same, but regarding how many laps the race will consist of. You can enter a number here, or use the arrow keys to modify it too.

Quick Start loads the race itself. It will first load the track, then the vehicles, and place all of you in the grid.

You can participate in the races by simply being in a vehicle when you hit Start. If you're on foot, you'll not participate.

In the trace

This is the easiest part. A countdown will appear, and, you know, when it hits zero, you kind of release the handbrake and start accelerating, basically. Right? Sometimes you'll need to steer and stuff.

There are no rules to abide by, as long as you follow the track so ARS can track your position properly, you're golden. While ARS currently does not have a fleshed out GUI, and so, knowing where to go may not be ovbious, all tracks will have objects to the side of the track guiding you. It should not be hard to know the way.

The racers will attempt to be as respectful as possible without giving way. You can follow suit or you can not, there are no rules against contact implemented yet.

Rewards

ARS' reward system generates a prize based on the number of vehicles in the race and how long the track is. The winner will get the money.

Adding vehicles

You can add new vehicles to ARS to summon in the races.

There are two ways to add a new vehicle. While sitting on it, you can either open the ingame cheat prompt º or ´ and enter 'arssavecar', then follow the instructions.

If you enable Advanced Options in ARS/Options.ini, a new menu item will appear in ARS' main menu, prompting you to save your current car too.

Track Creator

Powerful, but tricky to use.

The Track Creator is a tool that allows you to generate standalone routes, where you and other AI Racers can race later.

To be able to access the Track Creator, you have to enable AdvancedOptions in ARS/Options.ini. Then, it will appear as one of the menu items in the main ARS menu.

Its usage should be very intuitive, you'll have instructions on screen. As soon as you open it, you'll be prompted to place a starting point for the track. You have to define how wide the starting point will be and where it points to, easy stuff.

Next, it is really matter of navigating around with the Drone Camera and adding sections to the track until you are finished.

A track can be a closed circuit or Point to Point, ARS will let you know if it considers your track closed or PTP while you create it.

When you're finished, bring up the menu and simply select Save Track. You'll be asked to provide a name for the track, and a few tags to help look for it later on. You're done.

Couple of things to take into account:

Keep the sections coherent. Try to keep the transition from one section to another as smooth as possible, as the AI uses the information contained within them to figure out how fast take the corners you draw. AI can take complex corners, but it just cannot work with careless design.
Elevation is important - the track will attempt to follow the ground, always. Or any prop it passes over. If you need to have the route pass a jump section where the elevation should be ignored, use Shift (Sprint on keyboard) to have the current section ignore the ground and just transition to the endpoint mid-air.
For Point to Point races: Currently Finish lines are broken - AI will swerve weirdly right after they pass the finish line. This won't affect the leaderboard, but its annoying. I am aware. Will be fixed.

Couple of things you don't need to care for:

Grid positions. They are generated automatically when you enter a race. No need to do anything yourself.
Vehicles: Tracks are completely independent from the vehicles that race on them. You don't need to define which vehicles will race on this track. I am aware that other scripts do this (Community Races), this one does not. Don't worry.
Track props. You can place the props for the track later, after saving the track.

Track Tweaks

Props

Usually you want to create a track that's more complex than 'a route to follow around'. You know, props, barriers, details.

To do this in ARS, you first have to load a track after creating it. Then if you have Advanced Options enabled in Settings.ini, you will see a Debug Mode option. Hit right until you're in Prop Edit mode. Then, you can start placing the props you want with your favorte map editor. It only matters that the props are persistent.

Only props are supported. Not vehicles, not peds.

As you place props around you can bring up the menu and hit Find Props. ARS will higlight all the object it has found for your track. You can select Update Track and the track file will be updated with all the objects.

You are finished.

Racing Line

ARS features a Racing Line system that allows you to define a proper racing line for the AI to follow, so they are better at navigating the track. A racing line helps the racers position themselves better and attack corners from the right angle.

It shouldn't be hard to work with. In the Debug Mode menu mentioned earlier, switch to Racing Line Edit, then follow the instructions there.

The Racing Line works defining sections of the track that have an offset to the right or the left from the center of it. They are made up of nodes, and the racing line follows one node to the next, forming, well, a line. Not all sections of the track have to have a racing line, you can just define racing lines for corners. It is up to you.

You have to select Update Track> so the racing line modifications are saved to the file.