Re: [TuxKart-devel] track building

[Matze B. <ma...@br...>]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Joel Davis wrote:

> Hello.. I saw the gotm mention of tuxkart (a little
> late, I guess) and wanted to try and contribute. I'm a
> programmer but I want to get a little more practice
> doing level design and level building so I was
> thinking of trying to build a "halloween" themed track
> (before halloween).
> 
> I had some questions, first a political one: Is there
> any objections to using non-free software to create
> content as long as the content is given to the tuxkart
> project? There aren't any legal issues, but people
> might have concerns about the open-source purity of
> the project, and I'd respect that. All of the links
> and tutorials mention only open source tools. (I'll
> contibute any exporters I write in the process). If
> people have a problem with the use of proprietary
> tools, I'll find another way to contribute.
> 
You can use non-free tools too. In fact all old tuxkart tracks have been 
created with ac3d which is no free app. Although there are some good 
reasons why we prefer free tools:

- Ideological: After all we're writing free software and wanna push
  usage of free software
- Practical: If others want to change/improve/work on your models they 
  are forced to buy a commercial app. Often this makes it impossible for 
  people to contribute.

> Next, some technical questions:
> - How does the engine handle visibility? Should I
> break the track into chunks that the engine can cull,
> or will it do that when it loads? How big should each
> chunk be for the engine to be happy?
Yes we need chunks, I'm not really sure what chunk size is optimal.

> - instancing?
See file format docu at homepage

> - does the ac3d format support per-vertex color (aka
> prelight?)
I think yes, eventually consult google or the source code of the ac3d 
loader in plib.

> - texture budget? And is the 256 res. limit still in
> effect now that no one uses voodoo cards?
I think textures can be any color depth and png now.

> - how does the engine decide what to use for
> collision? can we mark geometry to not-collide? what
> about collision-only geometry? should I just use
> regular geometry with a 100% transparent map?
You can set flags on a per-texture basis. (Though there isn't even a 
 NoCollision flag yet I think but it should be easy to add).

> 
> I'm sure I'll have more questions once I start
> modeling, and I can always dig through the code to
> answer them, but I thought I'd ask the experts, and
> introduce myself.
Welcome Joe

Greetings,
	Matze