FreeGameDev

It's gonna be a little long as I have several questions.

Scale?
How wide should the track be in blender units?
If I make a second level how high up should it be so as to clear the karts?
How long are the karts?
How steep can a slope up or down be?
What's a good slope heigth (we are talking every X blender units forward you can go Z blender units up)?
How big is a karts normal turn radius for a 90 degree turn?

Splatting what good is it?
Why not just make several meshes and assign textures without using a splatting map?
How do you assign textures?
I'm not a master at blender but I do know that you need to add a matirial first and then a texture but the tracks I've looked at don't do that, yet they do have textures in the game.

Lightmaps.
Why not just use the regular lighting IE. sun or spot light fo a lamp?
Where is the information baked to?
All I can get is "No objects or images found to bake to." or "Feedback loop detected." How do I fix this?

These are some options used by the script that I don't quite understand:
"action trigger" what is it?
"cannon start/end" what is it?
"easter egg" what is it (I've never seen eggs on a map!)?

Under "object"
"Is soccer ball" what does it mean?
"use tangent space" what does it mean?
What's the difference between knock player as opposed to moveable by player.

In the licensing http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Licensing section it was mentioned that the imageafter license was unacceptible..... why?
The only restriction is
"WHAT CAN'T YOU DO WITH IMAGE*AFTER IMAGES AND TEXTURES?

you CANNOT REDISTRIBUTE our images and textures as part of an online resource site like our own, i.e. use them to directly compete with us."

http://imageafter.com/terms.php

So it seems pretty permissive to me.

"you CAN use our images and textures in your own work, whether it be for personal or commercial use"

So what's wrong with it?
Perhaps a general idea of what makes a license acceptible is in order?

How wide should the track be in blender units?
3-5
How long are the karts?
the size of the defult cube with half the hight
How big is a karts normal turn radius for a 90 degree turn?
When possible try to keep curves less than 90 degrees
How do you assign textures?
UV map them
"cannon start/end" what is it?
It's for the cannon feature (like being shot from a connon from the cannon start to the cannon end)
"easter egg" what is it (I've never seen eggs on a map!)?
for the easter egg hunt feature
"Is soccer ball" what does it mean?
defines if it is a soccer ball for the soccer feature.
In the licensing http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Licensing section it was mentioned that the imageafter license was unacceptible..... why?
The only restriction is
"WHAT CAN'T YOU DO WITH IMAGE*AFTER IMAGES AND TEXTURES?
you CANNOT REDISTRIBUTE our images and textures as part of an online resource site like our own, i.e. use them to directly compete with us."
http://imageafter.com/terms.php
So it seems pretty permissive to me.
"you CAN use our images and textures in your own work, whether it be for personal or commercial use"
So what's wrong with it?
Perhaps a general idea of what makes a license acceptible is in order?
not open source compatible. I am not the best to explain why.

ctdabomb {l Wrote}:How big is a karts normal turn radius for a 90 degree turn?
When possible try to keep curves less than 90 degrees

That did not quite answer my question. How wide is the turning raduis of a kart? IE. How big should I make the curve?

ctdabomb {l Wrote}:"cannon start/end" what is it?
It's for the cannon feature (like being shot from a connon from the cannon start to the cannon end)
"easter egg" what is it (I've never seen eggs on a map!)?
for the easter egg hunt feature
"Is soccer ball" what does it mean?
defines if it is a soccer ball for the soccer feature.

Perhaps I should restate these questions.
Why do I care about these things?
No, wait, you'll just reply "Ask your self that question."

Umm....
What is the egg hunt feature and the soccer feature?
Do any other tracks impliment those?

It's for the cannon feature (like being shot from a connon from the cannon start to the cannon end)
Do any other tracks impliment this?
I'm looking to see what it's god for.

ctdabomb {l Wrote}:open source compatible

Is there a deffinition for that somewhere?

sorry, yea most of those answers were not the healpfulest....

for the first question. depends on the kart I think.

soccer feature is where you play a game of soccer with the karts trying to push around big ball and score

easter egg is driving around on a track and looking for big eater eggs. for the younger ones out there.

I think there was a cannon in one or two tracks...... don't know which or where.

I think the new minigolf track in the addons has a cannon.

The are two types of cannon : the one in fort magma and minigolf track which shoot balls, and an unused type of cannon which transports kart from one point to another (like in Mario Kart).

Soccer and easter egg modes are not yet completed, so I don't think you care for them right now

Regarding ImageAfter, it's because they prevent you from using images unmodified. Open-source requires the right to reuse even when unmodified. Note that we are not the ones making these rules. Fortunately, there are other websites with large amounts of good open textures.

Regarding turn radius, we have not measured it mathematically. There are too many parameters, like speed, skidding, etc. The best suggestion is to make something that seems reasonable, and playtest it early during development to see if it works

Lightmap : what this adds are mostly shadows, and is higher-quality than "regular" lighting. Note that for google summer of code, Cand is currently improving our lighting system. I suggest keeping that really last, do everything else first

Splatting : the advantage of splatting is the smooth transition between the different textures

Action trigger: for now this is mostly an internal tool for developers, we used it to make some special things for tutorial and story mode

Sentmoraap {l Wrote}:The are two types of cannon : the one in fort magma and minigolf track which shoot balls, and an unused type of cannon which transports kart from one point to another (like in Mario Kart).

there are two more cannons: in the farm and in the new mines-track

Thanks!

If I created a metal grate could the karts dirve on it without bouncing up and down?
Why not just use better suspention on the karts to keep them from jumping?
Should/could I do any bump mapping?

Can I use blender's texture dialog box and blender's camera render to see what the track looks like in-game?
If no, then when unwraping is there some way to render the result so I can see if I got it right? and how should I ajust the mapping options as they are done outside the UV image editor?

What type should I assign to roads and the buildings that the karts drive in?
Currently I am using object (static won't move.)

I merged your threads ballsystemlord; there's no point making more threads unless you're coming up with something specifically different.

Fine by me charlie. I normally start a new thread instead of risking over using one.

ballsystemlord {l Wrote}:If I created a metal grate could the karts dirve on it without bouncing up and down?

No, a grate should be modelled with an appropriate texture only, not with a full mesh. Besides not working with a raycast physics model, it would also use unnecessary triangles. If there should be any reasons why this can't be done, you would have to cover it with an invisible plane.

What type should I assign to roads and the buildings that the karts drive in?
Currently I am using object (static won't move.)

You don't have to assign a special type to anything that is main track, only special objects need a special setting. While it would still work, it prevents the physics and graphics from combining the meshes, which means the frame rate might be unnecessary slower.

Re width of the track: just load some kart models into your track, then you can immediately see the right scale. Note that wide tracks are preferred - narrow tracks make it difficult to overtake other people, and will (imho) potentially be more boring.

Re curves: we have changed the physics significantly in 0.8, and I think the dust is settling now. It would be interesting to have some templates ('this very sharp curve shape is suitable for skidding, this longer curve can make use of skidding while counter-steering, these curves are not suitable for skidding), and we would appreciate help here

My suggestion would be to make a simple plane as a track. Then pick a single kart drive the interesting curve shapes (full skidding, skidding with counter-steering, normal curves). After each curve, save the history of the race by pressing F10 (which basically stores the x/y/z coordinates in a file called history.dat). This could then be used to model a curve (or whatever) to show the curve, and those models could be loaded and rotated during track creation. But note that it would obviously also depend on the width of the track, potentially on the karts (atm the physics are identical, but karts still have a different shape, which could affect curving somewhat, even though we try to take this into account). In the future we expect karts to have different physics as well.

What do the artists think - would that be useful?

I leave the blender related questions to someone with more blender knowledge

Cheers,
Joerg

hiker {l Wrote}:No, a grate should be modelled with an appropriate texture only, not with a full mesh. Besides not working with a raycast physics model, it would also use unnecessary triangles. If there should be any reasons why this can't be done, you would have to cover it with an invisible plane.

Perhaps it lost something in the translation, I want to create a phsyical grate that the karts drive over. I want objects to fall through.
Why cover it with an invisible plane?

Nobody has even tried to answer this question from my first post (perhaps it got lost in and amoungest everything else?)
How steep can/should a slope up or down be?

ballsystemlord {l Wrote}:

hiker {l Wrote}:No, a grate should be modelled with an appropriate texture only, not with a full mesh. Besides not working with a raycast physics model, it would also use unnecessary triangles. If there should be any reasons why this can't be done, you would have to cover it with an invisible plane.

Perhaps it lost something in the translation, I want to create a phsyical grate that the karts drive over. I want objects to fall through.
Why cover it with an invisible plane?

What objects do you want to fall through? Maybe I am not getting the sizes right: you don't want the karts to fall in, but smaller objects? So wheels should not fall in either?

But basically: the karts have infinite small wheels (raycast), so if there are any holes in the track, chances are the wheel will fall through,resulting in very odd physical behaviour. That's just a basic limitation of a raycast car model.

Nobody has even tried to answer this question from my first post (perhaps it got lost in and amoungest everything else?)

I am not really the right person, I am just a basic blender user. Textures are assigned via UV mapping. Perhaps just have a look at our existing files in our media repository.

How steep can/should a slope up or down be?

Well, at around 45 degrees we let the karts slip down, but generally uphill sections will slow the karts down, so make for a more boring game. Make sure to use zippers or similar to avoid this problem. And best to look at our existing tracks to see what kind of slope you can get away with, we don't have any hard thresholds (except the 45 degree one).

Hope that helps!
Joerg

I won't requote everything in order to save a lots of space.
I want to have rocks fall through the grate. I want the karts to knock them in as the drive. I thought it would make for a far more interesting track if there were something to run into.

Well, you could also do some kind of bridge and let your rocks fall down to the sides. Or you create an animation inside Blender with rocks or whatever falling throughyour bridge.
And to answer your question how to preview the textures: enable "Textured Solid" in the properties window ('N') or display in Textured mode.

I did not believe that the interpretation of the licence of imageafter was correct so I submitted an email to them as follows:

I wanted to ask about the fact that people on the supertuxkart forums are telling me that no one can distribute your textures in an unmodified state as part of a source (for a track in this case.)

I got the response:

That's not entirely true. We allow almost all uses except one: We would really not like to see people downloading our images and starting an imageafter.com clone somewhere without the effort we put into it.
Other than that our images and textures to be the most hassle free to use terms-wise.
We also have a more restrictive GPL license for a subset of our images since some GPL licensed games etc also require the textures to also be under gpl license. We created a sub domain for those: http://gpl.imageafter.com/
You can choose which one you want to use.
Best of luck with supertuxkart!
Kindly,

Tristan Bethe

I think that even should I have misrepresented your problem with the licence this email makes it quite clear.
The image after licence is LESS restrictive then the GPL.
If you have any more questions concerning the license could you avoid making me the middle man and contact them directly posting any useful information somewhere in the STK forums.

ballsystemlord {l Wrote}:That's not entirely true. We allow almost all uses except one: We would really not like to see people downloading our images and starting an imageafter.com clone somewhere without the effort we put into it.
Other than that our images and textures to be the most hassle free to use terms-wise.
We also have a more restrictive GPL license for a subset of our images since some GPL licensed games etc also require the textures to also be under gpl license. We created a sub domain for those: http://gpl.imageafter.com/
You can choose which one you want to use.
Best of luck with supertuxkart!
Kindly,

Tristan Bethe

I think that even should I have misrepresented your problem with the licence this email makes it quite clear.
The image after licence is LESS restrictive then the GPL.
If you have any more questions concerning the license could you avoid making me the middle man and contact them directly posting any useful information somewhere in the STK forums.

You are not allowed to use the unmodified textures to make a texture site, which is not compatible with the an open license (which can not have this kind of restriction).

Understand me correct: I totally agree with these sites not wanting to give their stuff to competing sites, but this is what our acceptable open licenses require. If we would use a texture like this in the main game, certain Linux distributions would not be able to include us anymore (or would replace the texture - usually with a significantly worse looking one). I am not even sure if we could (theoretically) get in trouble with SourceForge, since they only allow open source (caveat: I didn't check the fine print tbh, maybe they are fine with it).

You can certainly use those textures for your track, and likely will be able publish it on our addon server (caveat: we will still check the license), but not for our main game.

Thanks for your effort!

Cheers,
Joerg

IMHO it's one of the advantage to make a closed source game. The problem is not only limited to the textures. We cannot include logo from a sponsor or something like that, because logo aren't DFSG. We cannot use high quality texture from CG textures because it isn't DFSG. We cannot include 3D objects from a regular 3D library, etc.

It's sad to say that but we can't use the same tools or resources that a professional game producer will use. Like addons we can use a server to download the core content and that will work.

or would replace the texture - usually with a significantly worse looking one

O_O seriously ? Like when they introduced bugs because they don't want to use our own irrlicht . gosh that's not cool.

hiker {l Wrote}:Tristan Bethe
You are not allowed to use the unmodified textures to make a texture site, which is not compatible with the an open license (which can not have this kind of restriction).

Understand me correct: I totally agree with these sites not wanting to give their stuff to competing sites, but this is what our acceptable open licenses require. If we would use a texture like this in the main game, certain Linux distributions would not be able to include us anymore (or would replace the texture - usually with a significantly worse looking one). I am not even sure if we could (theoretically) get in trouble with SourceForge, since they only allow open source (caveat: I didn't check the fine print tbh, maybe they are fine with it).

You can certainly use those textures for your track, and likely will be able publish it on our addon server (caveat: we will still check the license), but not for our main game.

Thanks for your effort!

Cheers,
Joerg

Ah, I see now, that's unfortunate. I'd never have thought of that. Well..... um.... dang, all these letter of the license problems. OK, is there something that can be done? I often see sites/resources that I download that ask that you not redistribute there material saying that you should just link to there site and it's all free (which it is.) And now I find out that you can't use them cause of the above noted dilemma. I'm talking aside from insisting that they absolutely must allow everyone to clone there site or torture, beat, and ignore them otherwise. I'm not talking legally here, I mean they are people and that, if they so choose, they should be given the opportunity to distribute there own materials on there own site.
Consider,
"Hey look what I got on my site!"
Will quickly become, under the letter of the law,
"Hey, look what, HEY, HEY CAN ANYONE HEAR/NOTICE ME?

People can distribute their own stuff as they want.
But if we want to be in the Debian repositiories, we need to follow their accepted licenses, or we'll have to say we don't care about Debian and its free software principles. We have so far chosen the former.

I just wanted to know if there was some kind of work around for the above mentioned problem.

ballsystemlord {l Wrote}:I just wanted to know if there was some kind of work around for the above mentioned problem.

Are you referring to the licenses issues? Then the best solution is to use the list of websites mentionned on http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Lic ... find_files , those contain files you have the right to use and some of them are quite complete, so you should be able to find what you are looking for there