Startrack Improvements

[STKRudy85]

I want to do a better UFO, A big Jump, and some holes but I don't have too much time, yet ...

[asciimonster]

If possible, also add some track shortcut prevention...

[STKRudy85]

there are 2 already Did you find a mistake ?

[STKRudy85]

An UFO to replacing actual one

[Kinsu]

Much better than the current one !

[Auria]

very nice flying saucer indeed

[hiker]

Should we think to add support that karts being hit by a beam to be rescued? We would then probably only need 1 beam (or one additional beam in the middle)?

Cheers,
Joerg

[Kinsu]

Should we think to add support that karts being hit by a beam to be rescued?

It would add some difficulty in the startrack, which is very peaceful at the moment !

[Auria]

A more general way would be to add support for rescue triggering objects (at this time only grounds may trigger rescue); this could also be used for electric fences in XR591, etc. This could be interesting to have

But then we would need to modify the flight path of the saucer to come over the track more often

[Arthur]

Should we think to add support that karts being hit by a beam to be rescued?

It would add some difficulty in the startrack, which is very peaceful at the moment !

Indeed, if something like this was added I'd probably play it some more.

[hiker]

A more general way would be to add support for rescue triggering objects (at this time only grounds may trigger rescue); this could also be used for electric fences in XR591, etc. This could be interesting to have

Indeed. I was actually thinking for the saucer to use either a special raycast (which would add some additional coding for this particular case) or a ghost object (which would need some work to the exporter and stk), but I guess if the beam just becomes a physical object, it would be much more useful. Added as ticket #163 for 0.7.2. It could be useful for a lot of other things, e.g. we could have some karts driving around (slightly bigger karts), and bumping into them causes a rescue, or a train could drive around, ... .

But then we would need to modify the flight path of the saucer to come over the track more often

Yes indeed - it also needs some tweaking to make sure karts have a way of escaping it, i.e. it should probably not block the whole width of the track.

Cheers,
Joerg

[Auria]

Hi,

sorry for late answer, I finally got to look into this.

See screenshot

[STKRudy85]

[KroArtem]

Hey, looks good! (though there is still room for improvements)

[Funto]

Yeah, nice
But I'm wondering: doesn't STK support MSAA? The screenshots seems aliased...

[Auria]

Yeah, nice
But I'm wondering: doesn't STK support MSAA? The screenshots seems aliased...

We do have support for FSAA but it doesn't work everywhere, not sure why, maybe because of render order

[hiker]

sorry for late answer, I finally got to look into this.

Looks nice. It will take some time before we can actually affect the gameplay by the saucer: so far stk supports more regular structures (box, sphere, cylinder, cone). So I am not sure what to do with the UFO. Either we have to base the physics model on the actual mesh to detect the collisions (which might be too expensive), or we have to support that we assemble three cylinders into one physics object (difficult - while this is supported by bullet, getting it exported etc. would be difficult). Or: what about we add one additional beam in the middle of the UFO (in a different colour), and only that beam would affect karts? This would still leave the problem of how to define the shape of the bullet object, but that would be a lot easier than adding a specification to allow combining of several basic blocks.

Cheers,
Joerg

[Auria]

sorry for late answer, I finally got to look into this.

Looks nice. It will take some time before we can actually affect the gameplay by the saucer: so far stk supports more regular structures (box, sphere, cylinder, cone). So I am not sure what to do with the UFO. Either we have to base the physics model on the actual mesh to detect the collisions (which might be too expensive), or we have to support that we assemble three cylinders into one physics object (difficult - while this is supported by bullet, getting it exported etc. would be difficult). Or: what about we add one additional beam in the middle of the UFO (in a different colour), and only that beam would affect karts? This would still leave the problem of how to define the shape of the bullet object, but that would be a lot easier than adding a specification to allow combining of several basic blocks.

Cheers,
Joerg

Huh Joerg, you already coded rescue by texture (you used that for the fences in XR591)

[hiker]

Huh Joerg, you already coded rescue by texture (you used that for the fences in XR591)

Yes, but animated objects are not converted into bullet (which detects the texture with which a collision happened), so the collision can not be detected atm. And if we would convert the UFO into a bullet triangle mesh, I am not sure about the performance impact. It should (in this case) actually be quite minimal (since in nearly all cases the boundary box test will discard the UFO early on, only when a kart is either hitting the UFO or driving under/very-close to the UFO the triangle based collision needs to be triggered).

For now leave the UFO the way it is, I'll do some tests later (*grin* all(!!) UFOs I have seen always(!!) beamed people from the center, not from a side-beam; nor have I ever(!!) heard from an UFO using the side-beam ... so perhaps we should stay realistic and add the center beam ).

Cheers,
Joerg

[Teh Matt]

I agree with Joerg's thoughts on the center beam. A larger, brighter beam in the center of the UFO seems more intuitive and realistic (though STK can't always be considered realistic) and certainly sounds like it would be easier to code. Either way, that UFO is looking quite nice

[STKRudy85]

Auria, Did you take a look on track improvement I made (post #1) ?
Which is your opinion ?

[Auria]

Hi,

Auria, Did you take a look on track improvement I made (post #1) ?
Which is your opinion ?

well I think "disco.png" doesn't really fit, we'd need something more subtle and more fitting