Tracks, RARS track editor

[thelusiv]

On the Vamos site in the documentation about tracks, it is mentioned that there's a way to convert tracks from the Robot Auto Racing Simulator or RARS to Vamos tracks. Looking at the RARS site, I noticed that they have a track editor. It's been about 2 years since RARS has released anything, all the code depends on an old version of Qt, and it won't compile (yet) on my system. This might be an easy way to make some more (original) tracks for VDrift before we get our own track editor or whatnot. I don't think I could write an entire track xml file by hand...I kinda want to work out the terrain system and make a hilly track with lots of ups and downs, bumps where you can get air, banked turns, sharp curves, etc. In other words I want to make a really great track for drifting.

[joevenzon]

I wonder if that conversion is the way that Sam got all of his tracks for vamos, or if he wrote them all by hand. Anyway, at some point I should really spend a weekend and add all of the following to VDrift:http://vamos.sourceforge.net/tracks.htmlbecause they're a snap to add (just have to draw up generic terrain) and new tracks are always fun. Too bad more people didn't vote for better scenery -- the game needs it. Terrain is nice, but it's sort of odd having a race track in the middle of nowhere! Plus, networked multiplayer is taking forever to plan and prepare for and I don't even want to guess how long it'll take to implement. I just found out that I'll need to augment the sync packets again... the bandwidth requirements for net multiplay will probably end up requiring a 128 kbit connection... sorry modem users.

[thelusiv]

I agree that we need more tracks, as well as more scenery. I'll start going through the tracks, picking out the best ones and trying to make some terrain. Tangent: scenery.I think the best way to handle scenery would be to have generic object-model support - some way for track authors to simply put a position in a text file along with a position for the object. Also of course there will need to be a way to specify the filenames of the model and accompanying texture. The x and y coords should be specifiable in the text file and the z coord should be figured out automatically from the terrain. The object's center point should be positioned on the ground (this way we don't have to worry about height of the object or figuring out where its base is relative to its center point etc...). Coordinates should (I guess) correspond to the coords on the terrain map, only they should be floating-point so we're not confined to a grid.Joe, if you add this kind of generic scenery object support I will get cracking on simple models of trees, bushes, billboards, buildings, fences, barrels, stacks of tires, and whatever else I can think of.

[joevenzon]

Adding scenery like that would be pretty easy.