202 replies to this topic

[Border Reiver]

I would say that you want them to be very near to wall edges, i.e. within maybe 10 to 100 gpl units, but not at exactly the same numbers. I forget exactly why that is, but I am pretty sure that Ginetto told me this at some point, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Saving the altitudes in excel for import/export is a great idea. Somewhere on this forum there should also be an excel file that someone made which will help you to do the maths of splitting sections and retaining the same original gradients for the traces. The sheet does the maths for you so you just enter the original section length and the coefficients and tell it what the new lengths will be, then it gives you the new coefficients for the split sections.

It was always my dream to make a track with a perfect workflow and no repetition of tasks or wasted effort, but it has still never turned out that way. Planning ahead and making loads of notes, diagrams etc. really does help in the long run though. It is tempting to press on ahead and try to do it all at once, or to hop backlwards and forwards when you get bored of placing walls or adjusting altitudes but that approach is not always so productive.

Also, make lots of back ups! At every significant stage I would always save a copy of the gtk just in case something goes wrong and you can't figure out why the track suddenly stops compiling, or some other problem happens! Every time you compile a new version of the track that works after making a significant change to the altitudes, or the walls, or the section splits or whatever then save a copy of that version of the gtk with another name so you can get back to that point.

To start with to get an impression of the altitudes then using very few (maybe even only 2) traces which are the same and only considering the "global" altitude changes is a very good idea. This gives you the feel of what you will be driving on. Once you have the whole "track world" following the altitude changes of the track, it is then relatively straight forward to make relative local changes to additional traces to build up curbs, hills etc. around the track.

Rob

[Nicolas]

Thanks for all these insights! I'll share another one: don't wait until it's too late to start over again. My first go at the track was just based on a sat image. However, comparing with street level images, I simply don't have the correct straights & turns to get the actual feel of the track even though it matches the sat image quite closely (for example, a long continuous turn is a whole other thing than straight-turn-straight-turn to race on). I'm still in early stages, so in the long run the fastest thing to do is to add notes to the sat image, and start from scratch on a new GTK. You'll never make a good track with a bad GTK.

Edited by Nicolas, Sep 22 2014 - 11:32 AM.

[Border Reiver]

Been there, done that.

At one point we had three totally different GTKs for Surfer's Paradise based on maps, architect's plans and satellite images and none of the three versions was actually really correct or would even overlay with any of the other versions. (Satellite images are great, and they are really useful, but they are not perfect and are a 2D representation of something that is not flat). Part of this comes back to the point about planning that I made and gathering as much information as you can find to begin with. The worst thing that can ever happen is just before you finish to suddenly find some new source which answers a nagging question that you always had, or which proves that the reasoned guess that you made to fill in a gap was actually totally wrong!

The plus point is that nothing is totally wasted and you always learn something from what you do, even if it is only don't try to do it that way again.

Good luck with it.

Rob

[Nicolas]

Meanwhile, I was wondering: is bump-mapping textures possible in GPL? some texts hint at it, but I wouldn't know how or where to get a bumpmap into a MIP...

[sergioloro]

not bump map!! just the .mip texture, what do you see with potoshop is what do you get in game , with modern CPU we can use bigger resolution (dont go too extreme) and tracks can feel alive if we select the right set of textures.

[Nicolas]

I'm familiar with that second part, see my track updates. It's just that some tutorials mention bumpmapping and I didn't see it happen in GPL. Which was a correct assumption, so I don't have to look further into that. Thanks!

Edited by Nicolas, Sep 24 2014 - 12:42 AM.

[ljmagyar]

S.Beuchert, on Apr 04 2009 - 06:24 AM, said:

Searching thru old files

that could be of interest :
GPLHelpGuide from 2004 by Silverleaf (RSC nick)
dunno if it is available somewhere atm


GPLHelpGuide.zip
GPLGCS_000001.jpg GPLGCS_000002.jpg

If anyone is having trouble accessing the GPLHelpGuide with the latest version of Windows, here's a fix.  The attached archive has been virus scanned.

Download and 7z extract the files, then Right-click on Install.cmd, then select Run as administrator.

Make sure the .cmd file extension is set to Windows Command Script.

Open Control Panel, then Programs, Default Programs, ‘Associate a file type or protocol with a program’ if needed.

Attached Files

•  winhlp32-windows-7-x86-x64-komeil.7z   139.99K   8 downloads

Edited by ljmagyar, Jan 20 2016 - 09:20 AM.

[gliebzeit]

Thanks, Lou!  Good work.