Traffic lights instead of 1, 2, 3, ...

[Kinsu]

Could you post you thunderbird sources, please Funto ? I'll see what I can do to improve it. I think I'll mainly change the texture, and try to make the animation...

[hiker]

Brainstorming: what about a 'reverse' progress bar: the light comes on full, then it fills to less and less. [...]

I'm not sure I understand well your idea : are you talking about progressively reducing the color's opacity to 0% (in this case it would rather be a kind of traffic light than a progressbar), or a real progressbar that is "unfilled" clockwise to let the next color (or the dark background, if the next color only comes at the beep) appear ?

I meant the unfilling (counter?)-clockwise, not changing the opacity.

This question brings me another idea : how about combining those two solutions (maybe that was that you really meant ) ?

I don't think that changing the opacity is the way to go - depending on background it might become invisible, and it would be very hard to see when you can start.

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

...

- At each transition (there are 2 of them: ready -> set, set -> go) the player has to press the accelerate button to get an additional speed boost. This adds a new challenge to the game: if the player is synchronized, he gains a speed boost, but if he fails, then he gets a penalty. During the first time he pressed the button (ready -> set), there could be some smoke coming out of the kart to show the success of failure of the operation.

While I basically like the idea, I think it might be a bit of an overkill for STK - and certainly a bit too difficult to explain to casual players (esp. without having a tutorial).

...

- Thunderbird could be used as well when we are rescued. I think this keeps the game consistent, as you have the same character who is somehow "managing" the race.

Yes, I'd like that idea. We could perhaps even show thunderbird diving down (when a kart is falling or in water).

Cheers,
Joerg

[sst]

Hi, ...

Edit:

ProgressBar seem the best choice. = Did it will be included in the next release version ?

[Iridium]

Hi, ...

I see that the ProgressBar, is the choice of also, others people, ...
Did it will be included in, the next lower release version ? or maybe in the complete release version.

Please rephrase this, as I see your English is poor, no offense meant. If it's approved and completed, maybe it'll be in the next release. I'm not one to decide that.

1) Helicopter rescue
2) Metal Tower Crane, with Metal Hook.
3) Teleport Light = "Like ufo light" = "At begin light upper to lower light aftert light go lower the kart, and after the light and the kart go upper, ...
4) Quicksand
5) ThunderBird Rescue

1) Would have to be a good model and very well animated - would take a lot more time then the other options.
2) Where would the tower rest, though, if you fell of the course? Floating in the air?
*** 3) I like the idea - very simple and doable. I like it. Again, please rephrase - I cannot make sense of your explanation.
4) Huh? Floating quicksand? And how would that rescue you? Quicksand GETS you stuck.
*** 5) The one we're considering now - is certainly possible and probable.

-Iridium

[sst]

Hi, ...

Others rescue object.

1) Helicopter rescue.
2) Floating Metal Tower Crane, with Metal Hook.
3) Teleport Light.
4) ThunderBird Rescue.
5) Magic Wand.
6) Brooms Brush.
7) Kart go to recylclebin, and after reappear.

[Funto]

Could you post you thunderbird sources, please Funto ? I'll see what I can do to improve it. I think I'll mainly change the texture, and try to make the animation...

Nice, thanks
You're free to entirely redo the texture if you want, no problem with that

You can download the sources from here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20292682/stk/thunderbird-0.1.tar.bz2.
I've included a basic flying animation I started, hope you can improve that

[Kinsu]

Thank you

[Funto]

Any news on this Kinsu (or whoever wants to play with it)?

[Kinsu]

I did not have the time to work on it this weekend, but this is the next thing on my to-do list.
I've just tried to take the original thunderbird logo as a texture for the model, it should look more cartoonish with it.

[Funto]

Hmm ok... I wonder what the feathers will look like then, looking forward to see this

[fraang]

If the model is ready please export a uv layout into a tga file (or something else). I would be very happy to paint a custom texture for it.

[Kinsu]

I've begun to modify the model, I'll be glad to send you the UV coords when it's ready. Great teamwork

[Ludsky]

Could you post you thunderbird sources, please Funto ? I'll see what I can do to improve it. I think I'll mainly change the texture, and try to make the animation...

Nice, thanks
You're free to entirely redo the texture if you want, no problem with that

You can download the sources from here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20292682/stk/thunderbird-0.1.tar.bz2.
I've included a basic flying animation I started, hope you can improve that

Where put thunderbird in supertuxKart ???

(sorry i'm french and my english is ... medium)

[Kinsu]

The idea is to make a kind of referee character («arbitre»), which will show a traffic light at the beginning of races, and rescue characters during races.

[code-breaker]

How about Firefox doing the starts (and maybe finishes) maybe with a checkered flag in addition to the stoplight, and Thunderbird doing the rescues?

[Kinsu]

In the 1st page of this thread, we concluded than it's better to have a flying character for the start as there is not enough room on the ground of every track.
I like the checker... Maybe it could be defined as a kind of standard for tracks to add a checker arrival line on the ground (it would also be good for consistency) ?

[Iridium]

In the 1st page of this thread, we concluded than it's better to have a flying character for the start as there is not enough room on the ground of every track.
I like the checker... Maybe it could be defined as a kind of standard for tracks to add a checker arrival line on the ground (it would also be good for consistency) ?

Agreed, this would be a good idea, as consistency is something our tracks our lacking. Many of the finish lines are invisible, and agreed, it would be good to be able to see them.

[Ludsky]

The idea is to make a kind of referee character («arbitre»), which will show a traffic light at the beginning of races, and rescue characters during races.

ok

[code-breaker]

In the 1st page of this thread, we concluded than it's better to have a flying character for the start as there is not enough room on the ground of every track.
I like the checker... Maybe it could be defined as a kind of standard for tracks to add a checker arrival line on the ground (it would also be good for consistency) ?

I think of Firefox as a flying character. He looks like a rocket to me, the lower half of his body is a big flame.

[Iridium]

I think of Firefox as a flying character. He looks like a rocket to me, the lower half of his body is a big flame.

I guess, but Thunderbird'd be easier to animate and most likely have a lower poly count.

[hiker]

Maybe it could be defined as a kind of standard for tracks to add a checker arrival line on the ground (it would also be good for consistency) ?

Definitely. I think we should have enforced this, and not added any tracks without that. I've added this to our style guide.

To all artists: please feel free to fix any tracks that don't have a start line

Cheers,
Joerg

[Kinsu]

EDIT : Just updated blender file : corrected some vertices and added an armature (hidden for now). UV coords did not change.

Here is Thunderbird (Based on Funto's one, with the whole mesh reviewed, the UV coords updated, and a quick & dirty texture, to wait for fraang's one ).

For the wings' texture (and the crest's one), I think it would be cool to make something like this : everything outside the blank line would be transparent. It's a little difficult because STK & Blender do not display transparency the same way, so a face which is not transparent in Blender could be transparent in STK with the material.xml file... ingame tests are required to do so.

So the final wings would be a little like this :

Thunderbird-STK.zip

UPDATED BLEND FILE - Blender file, textures, uv coords.

(569.34 KiB) Downloaded 533 times

For the traffic light, I think it should be a different mesh than Thunderbird, as we will use Thunderbird also for rescue. But I don't know how to tell STK we want Thunderbird AND the traffic light for the race start...

[hiker]

For the traffic light, I think it should be a different mesh than Thunderbird, as we will use Thunderbird also for rescue. But I don't know how to tell STK we want Thunderbird AND the traffic light for the race start...

Yes, definitely a separate mesh. We will load both models, and make the traffic light a child of thunderbird. This way the traffic light will automatically move, rotate, ... with t'bird. Just make sure that the traffic light model has an appropriate offset so that when it is attached to t'bird it is located at the appropriate location.

Cheers,
Joerg

[Funto]

I like the new texture, too bad it's temporary

As for in-game testing and transparency, best for now is to test using Irrlicht's mesh viewer, which is part of its samples.
Just export to B3D, copy the textures to the same directory and open in this viewer You will also have animations in the viewer.

Concerning transparency, if we use punch-through transparency (that is, pixels are either transparent or not) and enable the alpha test, I think we wouldn't have problems concerning the order of drawing.