Re: [Supertuxkart-devel] My lighthouse edit, sand track, and others

[Joerg H. <jo...@lu...>]

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Hi,

[...]
> Are you interested in .blend files?
Yes, that should definitely go into the media package.

>>> I have been playing the new improved tracks (great improvements by the
>>> way:)) and found a bug with the new sand track.  The karts start in
>>> front of the start/finish 'line'.  This means that the first lap is lap
>>> 0 not lap 1.
>>>     
> Okay. Not sure how to fix that though.
Karts must start on the last driveline quad, and when they cross to the
next one (which is then the first one), they start a new lap. Currently,
the karts start already on the first quad, and therefore a new lap will
only be triggered after nearly one lap, when they (for the first time)
cross over from the last quad to the first one: From the beginning of
.drvl file:

- -16.295441,-12.843588,-2.985276
- -13.971924,30.550003,-2.082319

So the first quad is from -12 to 30 (Y coordinate). The karts start at
- -1.5, -3, -4.5, -6, ... so all on the first quad (unless you run with
about 10 karts, then the last kart(s) will actually start on the last
quad, i.e. have an y coordinate of less than -12.8). I just documented
this in the wiki as well.

There are two fixes:
1) modify the start position of the kart, so that they start at about
   -12 on the y-axis, i.e. on the last quad by adding:

(start-y       -12 -13.5 -15 -16.5)
   to the .track file.

2) modify the drivelines. I did this manually by moving the first line
of each .drv{l,r} file to the bottom. I am not entirely sure how blender
determines the first driveline point, basically you have to modify it so
that the it starts with the currently 2nd point of the driveline.

I didn't commit any of the two changes, since I think it's better if you
could solve the driveline problem with your blender file (otherwise we
will have the same problem when some modifications are done to the track).


> Now, as a quick question, if I were to improve other tracks, which ones 
> should I look at? There are IMO a few ones that are too bad to be 
> improved. I was thinking of maybe turning star track into a spacy track.
> 
> Tracks that IMO are too bad to be saved with improvements:
> * geeko peak
> * bsod battlements
> * gowns bow
> * race track (seems to belong to another game, doesn't fit the STK style 
> IMO)
> 
> And tracks that would IMO need quite a lot of changes to be interesting:
> * subsea (repetitive, boring visuals)
> * little volcano (repetitive, boring visuals)
I'd say pick one you would like to work on most (or perhaps design your
own track?). Most tracks could do with some improvement.

Re style: I don't mind at this stage if certain styles feels like they
don't belong to the game - think of experimenting with different styles
or showing what can be done to other player. If we should ever have
enough tracks, we could group them into categories, e.g. 'race' would
become a more realistic one, and we can offer these packages as
additional downloads.


> And finally I don't like beack track at all, IMO the shape of the road 
> has way too much U-turns, but that may just be me :)
It's one of my favorites :) I hope the U turns will be a bit more fun
with skidding. But I think the AI needs some improvements, it's
currently braking way too much, which is just awful on that track.


[...]
> As a side note, I'd like to point out something that greetly annoyed me 
> while working with tracks - kart stuff and track stuff are mixed 
> toghether. I find it annoying that track models and kart models are in 
> the same folder - they're totally unrelated. Same thing when I'm 
> searching for a texture, I'm finding nolok icons and stuff like that. 
> Also track screenshots have little to do with textures. If some day you 
> change structure, I would love to see a seperation of karts+karts icons, 
> tracks+tracks screenshots and general textures.
I raised that point a while ago, and we already agreed to restructure
this (there should be a thread here somewhere - search for "Directory
Structure"). Basic idea is that each track has a separate subdirecory,
where track specific textures will be stored as well (that should make
it easier to work with blender in this directory), plus a shared texture
directories. You would then have:
- - track models
- - track specific (i.e. non-shared) textures
- - .track/.drv{lr}/.loc files
- - screendumps (I guess)
all in one subdir. Would that be a better structure? I am especially
looking for feedback from more experienced modeler, since the idea would
be to make the task for you as easy as possible.


> And finally a small word on the new music : it's great to have more 
> music, though a few of them are just so much repetitive it's more 
> annoying (for instance the caribbean ones - it's a single riff put on 
> repeat with only minor variations) the title music is great though :D
I'd say we vote on the new music soon (perhaps after a RC, since
removing some music wouldn't really require a new RC). Admittedly, the
Caribbean one is repetitive, but so is having the same song over and
over. Mid term we can solve this partly by setting that this music
should only be repeated once or so (again, after 0.4).

Cheers,
   Joerg

- --
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
Joerg Henrichs
Luding Administration
e-mail: jo...@lu...
URL:    http://luding.org

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