Off track looking on - cotharyus - 11-05-2006
On some tracks (Ruud in particular springs to mind) I've noticed that there is apparently no armco image (guard rails) for the outside of the track - in other words, there is a structure there that you can't see and will run into getting back on track. Having these visible from off track would be helpful for me, since when I spin off track, I have a tendancy to be carrying huge amounts of speed. Just a thought.
- reece146 - 11-05-2006
This raises a good point.
Is there a key press or similar to get back on the track from the "outside"?
I ask becaise there are as some places where high speeds and uneven terrain are required to do a "Duke boys" style jump back into the track. Some parts of the track don't seem to have many gaps in it to get back on via driving. I'm thinking of the 'Ring in particular.
- thelusiv - 11-05-2006
cotharyus Wrote:On some tracks (Ruud in particular springs to mind) I've noticed that there is apparently no armco image (guard rails) for the outside of the track - in other words, there is a structure there that you can't see and will run into getting back on track. Having these visible from off track would be helpful for me, since when I spin off track, I have a tendancy to be carrying huge amounts of speed. Just a thought. I've run into this problem too, especially on Ruudskogen. The rails need a backing added to them which we could use Blender to do, however right now we lack a way to convert our model files from either JOE (.joe) or their original Racer format (.dof) to something Blender can open. This is something we will need eventually as we have more need to edit our tracks, and problems like this demonstrate that need...
reece146 Wrote:I ask becaise there are as some places where high speeds and uneven terrain are required to do a "Duke boys" style jump back into the track. Some parts of the track don't seem to have many gaps in it to get back on via driving. I'm thinking of the 'Ring in particular. Yeah there have been a few times where I've had to find something to ramp myself back on to the track somehow (actually...this is kind of fun! ). There is no control to get directly back onto the track, however there is a *hidden* control - press the R key to reset the car to the start position. This is really sort of a development tool and will disappear eventually...
The reset function used to put the car back on the track from a crash but with the new track system it disappeared. I personally think it's unrealistic and we shouldn't have it, but as you mention our tracks are not quite good enough to allow this and still keep the cars from leaving the "allowed driving area". Maybe we should consider putting it back. Joe, how hard would this be to do with the modeled tracks? And perhaps instead of dropping the car on the track, we should put it in the grass pointing in the right direction. If this function also had a mandatory 2 second time penalty (car is held for 2 sec after reset) then I'd be happy with leaving the reset function in-game.
- cotharyus - 11-06-2006
All of this talk brings to mind a question too - everyone keeps talking about a track editor - what do we use currently? Maybe we need to start a thread somewhere discussing this and what we would like to have for a track editor - it sounds like right now the two major projects are the multiplayer/network code and a track editor. Any takers?
- joevenzon - 11-07-2006
Someone please write a track editor! ;-)
Right now we're using a tool I hacked together from VDrift code, along with some command-line utilities I wrote. It's pretty clumsy and they were always intended to be replaced.
A few other things:
Quote:On some tracks (Ruud in particular springs to mind) I've noticed that there is apparently no armco image (guard rails) for the outside of the track - in other words, there is a structure there that you can't see and will run into getting back on track. Having these visible from off track would be helpful for me, since when I spin off track, I have a tendancy to be carrying huge amounts of speed. Just a thought.
On those tracks you should edit the data/tracks/trackname/track.txt file and turn "cull faces" to "off". Some tracks seem to count on the game drawing back-faces, some don't, so that's why I made it a track-by-track parameter. I tried to set "cull faces" appropriately, but I guess I missed some tracks. If you set cull faces to off for a track either make a post about it or commit the change to SVN so everyone gets the benefit. :-)
Quote:however right now we lack a way to convert our model files from either JOE (.joe) or their original Racer format (.dof) to something Blender can open
ZModeler does this, but I agree something more automated would be useful.
Quote:The reset function used to put the car back on the track from a crash but with the new track system it disappeared. I personally think it's unrealistic and we shouldn't have it, but as you mention our tracks are not quite good enough to allow this and still keep the cars from leaving the "allowed driving area". Maybe we should consider putting it back. Joe, how hard would this be to do with the modeled tracks?
Not super hard... we'd just need to keep track of the last road segment that the user was on, and then put them back onto that segment instead of at the starting line.
- reece146 - 11-07-2006
joevenzon Wrote:Right now we're using a tool I hacked together from VDrift code, along with some command-line utilities I wrote. It's pretty clumsy and they were always intended to be replaced.
Link? Or I can send a email addr via PM.
- joevenzon - 11-08-2006
The track editor and the command line utilities are included in the track editor SVN repository. Is that what you were asking about a link for?
- reece146 - 11-08-2006
joevenzon Wrote:The track editor and the command line utilities are included in the track editor SVN repository. Is that what you were asking about a link for?
Ok, cool. I gotta sit down and pull the stuff out of SVN. Been meaning to attempt to build the latest SVN on my G5. Too many broken cars (real ones) around me to get enough time for hacking in the evenings lately.
- thelusiv - 11-08-2006
The track editor is in a separate repository from the game and data. To check it out, do
Code: svn co http://svn.vdrift.net/repos/vdrift-trackeditor/trunk vdrift-trackeditor
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