LiL Lake Cg

Hi everyone,

After some days of creation, here's finally a nice little track near a lake. I've fixed a lot of things graphically, like the flickering issues when vertices aren't merged, cool shaders like the mix2, cool bump maps for the palm trees & fences.

It's my first Racer track & the whole idea was to create something with smooth curves & integrate some real trees (those palms are about the half of the whole scene polycount ~ 25-30K) & real water reflections too...

I kept the whole track simple so anyone can feed easily the geometry.ini file & add even more objects. I'll finish it in Tracked & try to release it soon.



Direct link [ 3840 x 3072 px]

Hope you'll like it !

UPDATE 30/01/2013 :
LiL Lake Download

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Racer-Max Portal (New) - Free Tracks, Cars & Tools for Racer

Looks nice. Congrats on your first for Racer.

The background is very blue. You should call it 'Atlantis'
nice though, I hope I can play it

Looks nice from the pictures supplied, abouts how many km's is the track?

and personal taste here but I like tracks that are built more like real roads instead of race tracks (ie multiple ways instead of a loop)

It's approx. 1.542km long.

About loops, I had yesterday one issue with that (I'll probably fix it today), how do I set my track to be a "double direction/ two way" track, that means normal + reverse mod ? I ask this, because for now (easily fixable) I get the "wrong way warning" in one way...Was thinking maybe Ruud/Mitch would give us the ability to mod a variable in Racer.ini file, like :

; one_way=0 (dynamic wrong way warning); reverse_way=1 (dynamic wrong way warning); two_ways=2 (meaning no wrong way warning)
; default track direction
one_way=0

If something like that, could be done, would be really nice ! In Shift i.e., I was one of the first modder to reverse tracks, that means I changed some of the game rules values, but the car was still placed in normal direction. So, for sure, a dynamic wrong way direction means car position should rotate around his CoG to work correctly, same for AI's & their AI splines.

Now, LiL Lake got almost everything, AI spline (1), sounds events (8), track cams (12), timelines (6), grid & pit positions (14) & minimap (1)...Movables, KF cameras, trigger events, particle effects & animations (trees ? new guys ?) will be tested & hopefully integrated in this track.

It's really easy to work with TrackEd, I know some of you having issues, I admit it took some hours to get it fully working (splines, cams..etc) but once you know, it's then all pleasure, that's what I felt yesterday !

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Tip : Once in TrackEd, don't forget to keep SHIFT pressed with your LBM pressed too (Left Button Mouse) & keep dragging mouse to actually create your spline (which isn't represented as a spline for i.e. timelines, grid/pit positions etc..). In spline mode, the same works but gets snaps to your object vertices. 60-80% of my track spline was done automatically like Ruud explained in the official documentation. I had only to press A & check TrackEd working alone...

Another useful (maybe one of the best), is the G key...If you only press SHIFT + LBM without dragging mouse, you'll get a point (a yellow line facing upwards = Y axis) & then you press G to go to that location instantly. Same as BTB, where you do the same with LBM or double clicking LBM if I recall correctly.
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@Ruud/Mitch

Playing with track sounds, I noticed the name of the sound/audio file can't contain any underscore character (_), after 1 hour asking myself why TrackEd would crash with my new custom sounds when in sound mode, I finally deduced that was the cause, so I just renamed those... (example : lake_ambience_01.wav was renamed to lake01.wav). No error message from TrackEd.

Edit :

1.) Is there any way of disabling the AI names (AI 1, etc..) ? => "hide names"
2.) How do I change the FOV of the disco cam ? (when pushing "c" 3 times in surround view..) I got a squeezed car view !
3.) Surface props were set properly, how can I set the color of the smoke once driving on a particular surface ? For now, I only have a brownish/dark yellow smoke color ?

Thx for any help/feedback...

Good tips on Tracked. I liked that. So I'll tip you on the other stuff..

In racer.ini

; Enable wrong-direction indicator? (flashing image)
show_wrong_direction=0

; Show car names above cars? (default 0)
show_names=0

"The color of dust (smoke) that comes of this surface, represented by 3 floating
point numbers, each ranging from 0..1 (RGB). For example 'dust_color=0.68 0.49 0.1'
gives the particles a brown color. (http://www.racer.nl/reference/tracks_surfaces.htm)

Edit: boomer also wrote a reverse script for the AI line. Maybe it would
be possible to use that script as a trigger event.. have not looked at it
though.

Thx luthobu





Things fixed :

- reversed grid/pit positions + timelines to fit AI spline direction
- enlarged/debugged timelines for anti-cheat if multiplaying
- tested AI to 16 drivers (AI learn..)
- smoke color fixed
- whole track debugged (all vertex merged => no flickering, no Z-fighting...)

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Issue noticed (0.8.14) :

- tyre/surface smoke in replay mode not rendered (from TC=Track Cameras)

What an idiot ! The track is approx. 1.650 km....=> odometer value (ctrl + 9 ; last variables)

Sry...

Also, I've been playing with success with pacenotes, still can't see them when racing ?
Anyone knows why ? Are they still supported ?

So u have merge all ground/track vertices? Should have some impact on LOD/view cull.
However, I've just work out a new bloom shader with anti-flicker filter, which IMHO gets rid of most of those random flickerings...

Great gtpdzbiz, hopefully I keep everything when track creating. So yeah, I could try to see the difference...

In fact, I finally decided to merge all visible terrain vertices which I've done manually, to avoid any error from automatic functions.
The trick was, I've merged everything together & then from the ME (Material Editor) I've selected those faces & separated/extracted them back to their original state.

The result is perfect, been comparing 2 screenies on a tripple resolution.

BTW, BTB which is also a great tool, does the same with all terrain vertices, which results in a bug free track, the probability to fall through your Newton scene is thin....what's not the case for Shift for example, where we have found missing triangles/ non-merged vertices....

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NEWS
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- TKF cams will be integrated along with the default ones (the trigger cams)
- Collision/Destroyable Objects will be available !!! => big feature still brainstorming a little
- Custom Scripts with Trigger Lines => on his way still having some issues when compiling rsx or when in-gaming, hope someone can show me the path....
- new ideas concerning dynamic/animated objects ( real trees simulation, real water simulation with joints/bones + IK/FK animation techniques
- other stuff to be fixed => like cams once more objects are added
- more materials, more detail on all visible (drivable area) objects => normal/bump maps

Hope you like my inputs, I really try to produce something that includes all the Racer features & till now, I'm really surprised how easy it is & how powerful Racer is.

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Question
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- Do someone knows what to do with waypoints & how to play with them ?
I couldn't find any information on Racer.nl Official Docs, hmm...
- And pacenotes ?

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Using TrackEd 0.8.14

for track length if you drove around the track at a specific speed and took the time it takes to go around once then you can calculate the distance, just my silly two cents worth ehhehe

50km/h for 5 minutes = 4.16666666666666 kmilometers
50km/h for 2.678 minutes = 2.2316666666666666666666666666667 kilometers

hahaha well it's (50 x 5) / 60 = length of track in KM

I just fixed the AI spline to have a perfect AI loop, I've done the test with the Lambo which should run great approx. @ ai performance 2.5. I also tested animations via skeletons, works great, but didn't integrate it in the track. TKC (Track KeyFrames Cams) were also successfully tested, but it would need time to set it correctly....

Enjoy !

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Tested on 0.8.12 / 0.8.14 / 0.8.15

Phenom X4 9950 BE OC 2900MHZ
OCZ Gold DDR2 4GB OC 1066MHZ
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H Rev2.0
ATI HD 4670 1GB
ATI HD 4670 512MB
Corsair TX 750W
Triple Screen 19" LCD 3x DVI
XP SP 3

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Surround Gaming FPS ~ 25-30
Simple 1 Screen Gaming +65

CSM Off (deactivated fully because of the currently shadows issues)

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Feel free to add your 3D objects, track is quite empty because my idea was to give you the freedom !

Note, the track wasn't splitted finally, can't really find an explanation, since I had sometimes some problem once splitting were executed, so I finally kept the optimized DOFs generated by Modeler, mirror + fps probs.

Feel free to split the whole as you wish, with 300m split you get ~ 165 DOFs files. Create in Racer root a folder named 'output', load track LiL_Lake in TrackEd & finally split it & close TrackEd. Backup the whole track, delete all DOFs in LiL Lake & place all output files with geometry.ini inside the LiL Lake default track folder.

You can see the track length directly in racer, just press ctrl+6

Thx man, as always !

Correct LiL Track Length Rounded to 1.712 km !

Code:

track
{
  ; Type of track; flat=simple track format (first track format try)
  type=vrml
  name=LiL Lake
  year=2010
  creator=By QuadCoreMax
  length=1.712 km
}

I also forgot to put materials flags into the track shader (shd) file, hmm....

Kerbs working now, problem was the overlapping of collidable/drivable surfaces....

Thank you QuadCoreMax, the track with updates works excellent in v0.8.15

WoW nice track running in version 0.8.19 the off road dust does seems to be the correct colour too IMO
p.s. where's the gate to get thought the outter wall it loks nice as it is so would rather it stay
Some other track I've just taken the outer walls off just to have some fun in the outer dirt land.

I definaltly love the scenery and the lighting on this track it workd well in the new racer version
congraulations on your first track making

After some days playing with KeyFramed Cams for LiL Lake, I'm finally satisfied with the results, almost like Shift does...

You have now 3 different special.ini files only including those TKC. It means, if the car or AI car isn't on the splines, the car cam is triggered & you have to press "c" to re-target the TKCams.

I also tried to keep the car centered for all cams (max. 4 TKCams), so the purple box was carefully centered for all keyframes, ending up with nice results.

I also tried to keep it smooth enough for all KF interpolations views...

One remark: I tried also to mix the older system with the newer system, but I'm not happy with it, because I have to constantly press C to find either my TC or the TKCams again...

Somehow, I would love to have more cam control, enabling us, to decide which cam gets activated or deactivated over the track length. Also, some cam randomness would be cool, so any of the driven laps wouldn't look the same when AI debugging/playing tracks.

Backup the original special.ini file & enjoy one of the 3 new special.ini files

Hey, wanted to test it, but I get cg errors (no geo shaders in my gpu)
so I'll try to adjust them a bit so I at least can see what it looks like.

THX.