What do you look for in a stage?

[Rick Bamford]

I am just curious and not trying to pick on anyone here,

There have been a few comments in the Racedepartment Rally Championship threads regarding the Perrogney stage (RSRBR2010-BTB tracks 5) used in the Third round and the road textures. As someone that plays with track building a little it started me thinking.

What is it that poeple look for in a stage to make it a good one?

Comments like "reminded me of rally games some 10 years back" and "poor quality of surface texture - like old VGA games" just confuse me as i think this is one of the BEST stages i have seen for RBR, not including the issue with the trees. When creators focus on graphics levels and texture mapping we end up with games like WRC2010 which i think we will all agree is TERRIBLE.

For me, the important thing is the way the car drives on the road (and off it ) The gutters, the placment of trees and objects, snow banks and the way the terrain matches the road. I actually find the original USA stages in the game as the most unrealistic with the exception of prospect ridge. The length and flow of a stage are the most important thing. It is always good the have the chance of changing weather, time of day etc but that is not so important, as long as there was a variety of conditions across stages.

The "LOOK" of the stage isn't very important to me. If a game was released today that had the graphics quality of Colin McRae Rally 1 and had stages 15-30 kms long but was more realistic in physics, damage model and setup adjustment than RBR I would call it the best game EVER.

So what is it that YOU, the drivers that play and love RBR like me, WANT to see in a stage? What is important to you? Maybe this thread will be ignored, or maybe it can provide so information to track builders as to what we ALL want to see.

 

[Rick Bamford]

If the guys from VLM or com8 were here I would tell them. I HAVE told the guys at evolution studios when they were making the WRC games and would do it again.

But I think I there is confusion about the word "detail" here. putting in grass that moves or leaves that fall when you pass are all good and well, (I don't see the point but anyway), but what I am talking about is the desire for people building stages for RBR that want to put the right house in the right spot, the right tree in the right spot etc. it takes a hugh amount of time and doesn't add anything to the stage.

The OVER detail of stages is what wreaks rally games and so many people building stages for RBR are going to extreams. Photographing the actual buildings etc along a road so that it looks like the real house on that real road. Why? the people playing the game will never drive the road. We could have so many GREAT stages available to us, but they are still working on them putting in DETAIL.

Then you have the guys that can build a great BASIC track, but get put off because they have to go to so much effort in putting in the RIGHT type of FENCE in the RIGHT place to satisfy who? Other track builders.

Below is a stage built by the maker of BTB. It is 33kms long and AWSOME to drive. Apparently it took him 4 DAYS to make it. Imagine 10 people building stages like this, we could have the whole WRC built in six months and the challenge of driving RBR would NEVER get boring. We need MORE of THESE stages. Yes he could have put in more suface changes etc, but acording to Piddy he this was just an exercise in building LONG stages.

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

That sure is an impressive looking Stage, where did you find it?

It is not currently available in RSRBR2010 yet, hope it is soon. :wink:

Unfortunatelly it's an rbr.czech exclusive (although Vaclav allows for creating rallies with it there without any limitations - some other stages face them to avoid easy memorizing of the tracks), it's available for over a year now. Probably it won't make it outside.

Photographing the actual buildings etc along a road so that it looks like the real house on that real road. Why? the people playing the game will never drive the road. We could have so many GREAT stages available to us, but they are still working on them putting in DETAIL.

There is a strong rally community in southern Poland and of course in Czech Republic. Some guys actually did go to Styckowy and they were absolutely stunned walking down those roads, recognizing the bus stop that they crashed into plenty of times. Czech team has an impressive goal, they are almost perfectionist, and given the fact they do it pretty much for free they have quite good pace of creating new tracks. It's the difficulty of 3D modeling that limits us. Luckily two guys from the Polish community are working hard on a technique of creating BTB stages that will allow for way easier Max adaptation. I'm holding my breath for it, combined with cogonieznajom and his very good BTB RBR skills it looks promising.

Below is a stage built by the maker of BTB. It is 33kms long and AWSOME to drive. Apparently it took him 4 DAYS to make it. Imagine 10 people building stages like this, we could have the whole WRC built in six months and the challenge of driving RBR would NEVER get boring. We need MORE of THESE stages. Yes he could have put in more suface changes etc, but acording to Piddy he this was just an exercise in building LONG stages.

It's not awful, but I would say awesome. IMHO looks too monotonous (NO scenery changes), not to mention lack of pacenotes :]. I tried to drive it once, it looks and feels nicer in reality, but it's still a VERY rough draft. 33kms of a non-changing prefect road through the forest is uncool, Milestone and their rubbish Finland style :].

But I agree to a point - you can put too much attention to the detail. Positioning and resizing every house so that it meets all the satellite data, checking it 7 times IS too much. But just carefully gathering as much information about the road itself as possible? That is spot on if you ask me. I don't mind tracks that just follow an onboard footage if they follow it very carefully (a few guys are working on such projects as we speak and I am supporting them 100%), but you MUST be as accurate as you can while doing so (not for "simulation's sake", just for the immersion's sake).

 

[Robb Kulcsar]

Unfortunatelly it's an rbr.czech exclusive (although Vaclav allows for creating rallies with it there without any limitations - some other stages face them to avoid easy memorizing of the tracks), it's available for over a year now. Probably it won't make it outside.


.

So let me get it right, I can't get my hand on this stage? Not to play it online, but not even alone? Cose sure looks pretty damn nice.

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

Quite the opposite. You can't play alone, but you CAN play online . Just create an account on rbr.onlineracing.cz, have a clean install of RBR, get the plugin from here, download and install the track (you don't even have to install any aftermarket cars), find a tournament with it (plenty all the time) and you can enjoy it anytime you want.

 

[Warren Dawes]

What a shame that designers restrict their creations to only certain communities, rather than support the expansion of great games like RBR for the wider community. I don't really understand the reasons, unless they are charging a fee to use it

I'd love to be able to use some of these Stages with RSRBR2010 but I guess it isn't to be. :frown:

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

Well, Warren, it's caused mostly because of certain people behavior (i.e. "I am entitled to everything"). Czech team is doing a tremendous job, remember, in their free time. They had problems with keeping the server (costs caused by traffic) and when that happened it was hard to gather donations (in many communities active there donating is either "untrusted" or people just skimp on cash). That's one of the main reasons they decided to start restricting certain stages, sometimes it's on authors demand (Liptakov pack is freely available, the Autodrom Sosnova can be used only by the chosen/trusted users, so it won't get over used etc.).

And after all if it's them that did all that they can't really be expected to just go and give RSRBR or RBR-Online away their stages. It's not like membership on their site isn't free and new features slowly, but persistently appear. Right now total number of stages drivable on the plugin is double the original value. And mind you, they don't use changed surface ones (only reversed ones not reversed by default). For me driving on one of the new stages is an amazing experience every time, even on those stages from the first "Pribram" pack.

Personally I'd like to see the live-rally feature on RBR-czech + some changed surface stages (and knowing them they might be able to remove the banks in Finland :]) + some new cars not yet available, so even RD rallies could be held there, making the best use of all those new tracks.

This stage is like a unicorn to us (although now it's drivable way more often than in the early days):

 

[Warren Dawes]

And after all if it's them that did all that they can't really be expected to just go and give RSRBR or RBR-Online away their stages.

As I said, if they do it for financial reasons, then fair enough.

If they choose to restrict their development work to themselves or a selected few communities, that is certainly their right to do that. It is still disappointing though.
If all developers took that approach, then many addon developments that add new life to older sims wouldn't happen, and that is still a shame. I wouldn't be surprised if the developers at the Czech community have benefited from the work of other modders (eg. car moddellers etc) who have been happy to share for the overall benefit.

However, as I have said, that is fully their right to restrict their own work, it just means that some of us won't get to use them or help promote their work. Oh well, I'm certainly not saying that I expect everything for free (I regularly donate to many Sim Communities ), but in this case I'll just miss the experience of some of these Stages.

 

[Rick Bamford]

It's not awful, but I would say awesome. IMHO looks too monotonous (NO scenery changes), not to mention lack of pacenotes :]. I tried to drive it once, it looks and feels nicer in reality, but it's still a VERY rough draft. 33kms of a non-changing prefect road through the forest is uncool, Milestone and their rubbish Finland style :].

OOOOOKKKKKKKKK............................. um ............................ wow.......................................

After your comments I opened up the WRC2010 game (only the second time I have played it and it is still terrible) and drove the Finish stages. Now i have one question....................................HUH?

Now, normally I would go into a rant and abuse people. But I think I will ask instead to try and understand. So, what do you mean by monotonous?

This is an onboard from an Australian championship rally stage i have driven many times. As far as sceneary and surface goes, I don't think it changes much more than Country roads.


In most Australian rallies it is VERY rare to pass even ONE building during a stage, any stage. So i guess that could be why i don't see the need for them, and why you guys think it looks boring without them.

As for pacenotes, only or top level events run with note, and I think it works really well without them. My fastest time is still my first run -21:25 in a Grp N evo 9.

The just don't see the point in making a stage like "Autodrom" except that is it easy to create like a racetrack. The "Vaclav Sourek" stage is fun but.............

I DO think i have come up with a reason why I (Australian) am finding it so hard to understand you guys (Europeans). I have said it before that Australian rallying is different to European rallying and i think that is where the big difference comes from. What we know of as a real rally stage is different. The counrty roads stage is a good representation of an Australian rally stage.

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

Ok, you're right, I got a bit carried away. Probably it's the lack of pacenotes on Country Roads stage that clouded my judgment. And I can't imagine rallying without the notes - it's not hillclimb nor road-course racing, that's the whole point of it.

Sadly in Europe there is a huge percentage of tarmac rallies - it's caused by overwhelming dominance of paved roads, combined with lower costs of running tarmac-spec cars. Don't get me wrong, I'd kill for some 30 or 40 kilometer gravel rally stages in RBR (and yeah, I admit, they will be a bit monotonous at places, just like Noiker is for example). The BTB ones just need some spit and polish, that's all.

 

[Warren Dawes]

Rather than comparing whose is best, I think it doesn't matter much. As I have said before, I favour lots of variety, so while I see that Australian (and New Zealand ) Rallys are quite different to European Rallys, that is all good.
One of the great attractions for me about Rally driving is that drivers must quickly adapt to so many different surfaces, weather conditions, environments, and levels of visibility. Rallying is the only form of Motor Racing that demands that variety of skill and car control, and this is why I believe the top Rally Drivers in the WRC are the most skilled of all.
This sums up why I love Rally more than other Motor Sports, so "vive la difference". :love:

EDIT: BTW, I have NEVER found Noiker monotonous, the variations within that Stage are brilliant (IMO).

 

[Rick Bamford]

agreed agreed agreed

I hope it didn't sound like I was saying Asutralian rallying was BETTER than European rallying. Thats not what i meant, lol. But Noiker isn't monotonous

Ok, but we are starting to get away from the original topic (including me ).

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

Ok, no stretching the topic anymore. However it wasn't a pissing contest, which is great IMO. We just exchanged experiences, I wasn't too aware of the differences in Australian rallying (I watched like 1 round of ARC), I'm glad to learn some useful new info and evolve my way of looking at rallying.

And yeah, I didn't mean that Noiker was borin-monotonous. The pace of the road changes and it's awesome in general; I meant the fact that there are no houses, extreme surface changes etc.