Re: [TuxKart-devel] GOTM release?

[James G. <j....@vi...>]

On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 15:43, Matze Braun wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, James Gregory wrote:

> > - FPS issues. Grumbel said he hacked a patch for VBO support into
> > TuxKart, are you going to commit it grumbel or is it too buggy? Also,
> > maybe we could reduce the default number of karts in a race to perhaps
> > 6? Even with double the FPS the game will still struggle on slower
> > computers as it now stands.
> I think we need more research in this area. At the moment it seems we're 
> not using any culling at all, which results in the whole track getting 
> always fed to the 3d hardware.
> VBO might be an option (if plib isn't getting ready for it soon enough, 
> then we could implement a custom VBOVtxTable or something in tuxkart). 
> However you should keep in mind that VBO is only available on 
> geforce2-class hardware, would this be our target audience?

Well, ideally we don't want to demand people have geforce 2s, however if
it's a choice between that, rewriting the whole 3D engine or going back
to the old kart models, the choice is less clear cut.

> -transparent parts in the subsea track are not z-sorted. So sometimes you 
>  don't see the stuff behind the transparent parts...
> -Kart smoke looks very ugly. We should either improve or remove it, 
>  currently it doesn't look good...

> -We should make the tracks a bit more attractive by adding more 
>  background stuff. It would also be a good idea, to add a possibility for 
>  skydomes (ie. 6 images projected on an infinitely far-away cube), that 
>  typically improves the look alot.

Well, if you're going to do this then I'm certainly not going to
complain, but it does strike me that in the time it would take someone
to make this work, maybe they could have written new AI code or
something else more vital to the game 's basic playability.

> -physics is totally pointless at the moment: no sliding, breaking or only 
>  drawing skidmarks when the kart is really skidding. Also the collision 
>  feedback didn't improve (velocity is simply set to 0 which feeld odd).
> -in-game gui is still not nice

Hopefully I'll have time to change round the in-game GUI to SDL_ttf this
weekend, and then maybe I can make minor adjustments each weekday
evening.

> -specials disappeared
> 
> all in all we totally lack a funny gameplay at the moment, our first goal 
> should be to get the game into a state where it is fun to play. So I think 
> our first goals should be to improve the physics and bringing back AI, 
> special and the different game modes.
> The rest should come by itself then I think...

Concerning physics (and the AI which depends on it): is Straver still
working on this? Or can someone just dive in and rewrite the physics
code as they see fit?

And is Straver still working on the smoke? If not, then maybe we should
just remove it (unless of course someone else wants to make it look
better).

	James