Why is the subsea track in addons

[jpenguin]

AFAICT-- a new and better version of the same track is included in the main game...

BTW-- Will X591 be moved to addons once X691 is completed

[Auria]

because it was added to addons before it was added to the core game, and we have no way to hide a track to certain stk versions maybe a ticket can be created for that if it doesn't exist already (I think not)

[betharatux1]

why not to try emailed Stephen (sj04736) about this, everyone ?
or in STKaddons make other 1 gallery for track unused ? hm .... or special classic track gallery with category old history of STK track was unused ? ( kart, arena included too )

[ctdabomb]

the subsea track should probably be left in addons for a while for older 0.7 versions of STK.

or in STKaddons make other 1 gallery for track unused ? hm .... or special classic track gallery with category old history of STK track was unused ? ( kart, arena included too )

i think i suggested something like this while ago........ i like the idea of having a section instead of "featured" like "classic" for all the tracks that used to be in the game

[Binky]

maybe call it 'nostalgia' instead? Some of them (e.g. Gowns bow) are pretty bad.

[sj04736]

Yes, I recall various solutions to this problem being suggested before - I just haven't actually gotten around to doing anything about it, trying to decide which solution is more sustainable.

For adding a "classic" add-on category to the website, I don't know how well this will work as the collection of "classic" tracks inevitably gets larger. With this single category, let's say eventually we get enough really really good looking tracks in the main package that something like Amazonian Journey or Scotland gets pushed to add-ons. With a single classic designation, those would end up lumped in with "Classic Tollway" when they clearly come from totally different time periods and quality levels, so it may one day be desirable to differentiate between the two. [edit]I totally forgot about Gown's Bow, it's a much better comparison than Classic Tollway for this point.[/edit]

The better solution, I think, would be to be able to mark the version where the track started being included, and the last version it was included in. In the future, some categories could be calculated based on this too. I think there's already some math in-game to do arithmetic on version numbers from when the news system was implemented, so it shouldn't be too bad on the game side. I don't know a whole lot about the in-game code though. This info could be fairly easily added to the XML sent to the game from stkaddons.net, without breaking any compatibility with 0.7.x, but it wouldn't change the behavior of 0.7.x either. I could definitely get this done before 0.8 comes out, at least on the website side of things.

In addition to this (and this is something I've been thinking about doing, but avoiding specifically until I can sort out the huge mess in the uploader code properly,) the kart/track category could be changed from "Add-Ons" to "Classic" in the selection menus but I think that poses a few problems of its own - you may have noticed the current behavior in the game is that if you select a kart from a specific category, it only takes your opponents from that category as well. I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would then be ideal to put a kart/track in multiple categories. I'm not really convinced this is worth the added complexity to the kart/track selection code in-game though.

Anyways, I think I'm done rambling for now. Because this will need to be supported in-game, I still need to discuss all this with the game devs (hiker, Auria) to see what they think is best/easiest on their side of things.

Thanks for your suggestions. If you've got any other ideas relating to this which I haven't noted above, I'm open to other ideas too. I do read the forum daily

[Binky]

Sliders where you could get the range of tracks you wanted to view could be useful. e.g.

max 0.6, min 0.3 would mean:
show all tracks that were included in any of versions 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6

[Arthur]

We need to follow the KISS principle for the GUI. Adding such fine-grained control sounds complicated and unnecessary at the stage STK is in now. If you see an add-on you know you've already got as a standard track, just don't install it.

[hiker]

Yes, the overall situation can be quite complicated. E.g. maybe there are times when we actually want to 'overwrite' a track that was included (e.g. to fix a bug in a track). Or tracks are first added to addons, then included, and later get removed again, ...

I am more than happy to look at improving the situation, but I'd guess (unless someone else takes care of that) after 0.8 would be a better time.

Cheers,
Joerg

[RaceAce]

AFAICT-- a new and better version of the same track is included in the main game...

BTW-- Will X591 be moved to addons once X691 is completed

Personally, I prefer the older Subsea, it's a lot of fun to knock down the pillars in the cave and the leaks in the cracked section look very cool. If those two things were put back in the newer version would be very nice.

[sj04736]

I've added code to the stkaddons website and in-game to handle setting a range of versions where an add-on is included in game. This means you won't see rudy's Subsea in the addons menu from 0.8 until it's removed (or if the marker is changed). These markers will be added to other add-ons eventually if the applicable data is entered.