FreeGameDev

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all having good holidays.
I'm back with another track, this time with a Sewer theme. The idea came from 0zone0ne's concept piece.

Right now I am still in the planning stage, but am starting this thread now to get some ideas and suggestions from others. Here are some doodles and stuff of mine to give an idea of my idea for the track.

ideas welcome, more coming soon,
ctdabomb

Wow you 've got a plan . That's cool.

0) Before opening blender, you should look for documentation. You need tons (100 is a minimum) of photo references, maps, etc about sewers, metro, underground facilities, etc. You can watch on youtube video about underground to see how it looks. be CURIOUS !!!

1) You can start to think about what can be cool to include. You can also see other games how they made similar environment.
You need to choose a color palette. A color palette is what is the main color that you will use to make this track. Of course a red barrel will be alway red. But the general atmosphere needs to have one or two color.

2) You have to make concept art. Where buildings, pipes, etc will be located ? You can also make a very basic track with only the path and blocs to show where buildings might be. You can see if the gameplay is interesting, what do you really need to do (that's the state of harvest. Currently there is only the building very quickly done and the track).
Also if you want to add something special (like water flowing) you need to look for documentation about this effect. How it's made by professional games ? You can try to make it in a mockup. That's exactly want I did with water reflexion on the mine. I won't necessarily use water reflexion in this part or even on this track. But now I know exactly how to do .
(example of water reflexion in the mine)


3) You can start to make the track . Remember, failure is ALWAYS an option. It's difficult to make a good track. But we learn from mistakes and that's how it works. Try to improve yourself, for the moment I suggest to focus on modelisation and texturing. Lighting will come after

Don't forget I still have quite a few ideas for this track as well. Here's a quick preview (Unfinished! Work in progress!):


I'm going for a quite surreal and quirky approach to the track, staying as far away as possible from the stereotypical "that sewer level nobody likes", which can be found in many games. My goal is to make the track as diverse as possible, instead of just being a whole bunch of dark, wet tunnels.

Are you going to include some wall riding?

Just like Top Gear did. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fv8s2ky4Z8, at approximately 2:10

Yeah I would really like to see one place in the track where you have to do a sideways loop since the road/tube has a hole or similar. With the correct size and correct normals, this should be possible.

samuncle, Yes, I have a plan. Or at least I like to think I do..... I am still gathering ideas, references, etc. I am making a mock-up track with the current layout just to see how the game-play is and then I was going to get into the modelling and texturing. After that is all done, I want to learn all the new lighting stuff.
0zone0ne: Thanks for the art, You are making me rethink this a bit. I was going down the path of the standard gloomy wet sewer with giant alligators and all. Your idea is interesting, and I am not quite seeing it. More art would be great. keep it up!
asciimonster and Arthur: Yes, that would be nice to have in a part, and it could/should be doable. Was it ever changed that the gravity is always aligned with the normals of the driveline? I know it was talked about.

As far as I can remember, no it wasn't. With reasonably sized loops it should work out anyway - though camera may not tackle it too well. But sideways loop might be better in that regard actually. Both of these would probably be fixed if needed for a nice track.

there should be to-ways for the karts to go [img][url][/url][/img]

@0zone0ne you are welcome to make many concept art as you want . To help you you can read this about stk universe.

@ctdabomb Surprise us by making something cool
@James. Hello as I can see you choose the same avatar than me. It's not a good idea for many reason.
1) It can be confusing for people reading the forum
2) I'm a member of the core team and it can be also confusing
3) I'm the author of my avatar. I made it 5 years ago.
So please can you change . I'm sure you will find a better choice. Thanks

I hope this track will be difficult, STK needs his own Rainbow road

I really like the idea of the sewer track. The concept art is cool too.

Totoplus62 {l Wrote}:STK needs his own Rainbow road

True

I whipped this up in about half an hour. It's not finished yet, but if this track gets made then I will probably continue it over at this thread http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5083, once I'm done with other stuff over there.

Thanks for the music! (and art)
Here is a quick mock-up of the track for testing to see if the layout/shape is good, and to get some more ideas flowing.

Looks pretty promising.

I'll wait until there is more stuff in the track to give an opinion.

Thanks, This is just a mock up to see how the layout and driving works out. So any opinions on that would be nice before I start work on the 'real' track.

Well, for one don't forget to block the places players aren't supposed to go. The left road in the area with the bridges has a dead end. Also, those bridges could be wider, the game doesn't have a strong overpowered "goodie" yet in order to be placed in such a narrow, speed-slowing place. The starting line could be a bit further from the "generator" area, like it actually is in STK Enterprise. In Reverse Mode the track is pretty well and driveable.

Hello

It's a very good idea to start with a block map

I know this is a a block map and everything will be replaced by other objects but the geometry of this wall hole isn't clean.


It may cause troubles with the new pipeline. You should always have the cleanest topology possible. Avoid big deformed triangles . Prefer regular quads.
The player shouldn't have problem to find the regular way. You might add hidden shortcut but you the normal path should be always indicated. Avoid dead end.

Also I don't know if you want to be "compatible" with > 0.8.1. If yes your track isn't friendly with SSAO. You should add a modifier split to avoid smooth normal on hard edges.

There is a potentially annoying part (the long tunnel between the last "room" and the "generator" room) It will depend on what you have planned to add . Also the minimap looks strange at some section. Maybe driveline's normals aren't correct.

SuperMat {l Wrote}:I really like the idea of the sewer track. The concept art is cool too.

Totoplus62 {l Wrote}:STK needs his own Rainbow road

True

Why ? Auria and me we are trying to "remove" all reference to the very old stk rainbow road on google image :P. Our game should have it's own palette and it's own original tracks.

samuncle {l Wrote}:Why ? Auria and me we are trying to "remove" all reference to the very old stk rainbow road on google image :P. Our game should have it's own palette and it's own original tracks.

Rainbow Road is just a very hard track in MarioKart Wii

SuperMat {l Wrote}:

samuncle {l Wrote}:Why ? Auria and me we are trying to "remove" all reference to the very old stk rainbow road on google image :P. Our game should have it's own palette and it's own original tracks.

Rainbow Road is just a very hard track in MarioKart Wii

Yes, I hate that one

But agreed, adding a hard track might be good. I would just prefer to come up with something new that doesn't scream: "I am a rainbow track".

So what are the characteristics: easy to fall off (since there are mostly no rails), and twisting. The latter might need some work on the camera and physics (but that's something I want to do anyway). Any other theme someone can think of that would allow a similar twisting structure? Now obviously since I haven't moved these postings into a new subject - sewer would be one possibility: you drive on a path (perhaps a mesh?) in the middle of a big pipe, and left/right is just sewer. Perhaps it could also reasonably be made more twisting (going down with the flow of the sewer on your left/right, going up obviously against the flow).

Cheers,
Joerg

hiker {l Wrote}:. Any other theme someone can think of that would allow a similar twisting structure? Now obviously since I haven't moved these postings into a new subject - sewer would be one possibility: you drive on a path (perhaps a mesh?) in the middle of a big pipe, and left/right is just sewer. Perhaps it could also reasonably be made more twisting (going down with the flow of the sewer on your left/right, going up obviously against the flow).

I was thinking of something like this (quick draw):

how about this for harder? as you might be able to tell/figure out, there are five sections/rooms in the current design, and I will be referring to them as 1-5 (in order from the start of the track) I should explain with a picture, but didn't so words will have to do. Let me know if you do not understand. I think section 4 should be harder now, but I didn't test, and this is to see if this is sort of what you all wanted.
I will redo section 3 to be better and have the wall riding.

This was my original layout idea. As you can see, I haven't finished colouring it yet, so I'll update this post with the coloured version when it's done.


EDIT: I must have been writing this as ctdabomb posted that last post, so I hadn't actually tried the newer version of the track yet. :/

0zone0ne {l Wrote}:This was my original layout idea. As you can see, I haven't finished colouring it yet, so I'll update this post with the coloured version when it's done.

sewer_layout1_wip.png

EDIT: I must have been writing this as ctdabomb posted that last post, so I hadn't actually tried the newer version of the track yet. :/

It's very good idea

Good Luck CTdabomb

This is much better! plan switch!

Sorry for the quietness. I am crazy busy, and haven't had time to work on this. I wanted to let you all know that I haven't dropped this though.