New battle arena/soccer stadium

[Arthur]

Hi everyone, as we have quite few battle arenas and just one soccer stadium I thought it could be interesting to try my meagre Blender skills and make both in one (with minor differences). With this one I tried just making a rounded mesh with no hard corners and with "sticky" walls so one can drive up them. Now I would want some feedback before continuing, mainly from someone who could test it as a soccer stadium.

The opinions I'm after is:
1. Is the size good? Both as a soccer stadium which is its main purpose but also as a battle arena with up to 4 players (which is already quite chaotic).
2. Is the size of the goals good? I know they look very ugly, but for this point please ignore the looks and focus on their size.
3. Are there too many collectibles? Especially when playing it as a battle arena with the new AI it gets quite chaotic, which might be fun, but there might be too many collectibles, or one might want to play with fewer karts.
4. How can I improve its looks? Right now it's quite ugly, I am aware of that. The "goals" are not proper goals, and just crudely textured differently from the rest to make them visible. Also I am just using one generic concrete texture for the rest, which is very boring. Any ideas for a "theme" which I can use to texture it so it both looks better and less boring, but also doesn't require me to redo the whole mesh (which would make it a completely different arena/stadium)?
5. Other comments regarding playability/fun factor.

Now my goal for this is to make a fun battle arena and a fun soccer stadium, and if it never gets good enough for inclusion in the main game I'm fine with that. I will upload it as an add-on once it's more final and less ugly.

[ArDanWol]

I like where you're going here.
1. I think the size of the arena is a bit too big. I definitely think it should be scaled down a bit.
2. The goal size is great, but I think there should be 4 goals (check out the soccer arena add-on, I like that a lot more than the default soccer field).
3. I think there are too many collectibles. You could tone it down just a bit, but don't make it too sparse.
4. Nothing springs to mind right away with themes for the arena, but if it were to be used for battle mode, you should definitely add some obstacles. You need something to hide behind when someone tosses a cupcake. I'll post again if I get any ideas for a theme.
5. You should add some way to prevent karts from flying out of the track.
I think this is a good idea to start on.
ArDanWol

[GeekPenguinBR]

I have downloaded it, but I can't find the soccer mode on my game. All I can see (in Portuguese) is: 1. Story mode; 2. Single Player; and 3.Multiple Player, that's empty. Single Player mode has 4 options: 1.Normal race; 2.Race against the clock (translated from Portuguese); 3. Follow the leader; and, 4.Hunt for the Easter eggs.

[benau]

It's only in multiplayer game, or you can enable artist debug mode to play alone

[GeekPenguinBR]

It's only in multiplayer game, or you can enable artist debug mode to play alone

Thanks. Now, it's permanently available after using debug mode.

The opinions I'm after is:
1. Is the size good? Both as a soccer stadium which is its main purpose but also as a battle arena with up to 4 players (which is already quite chaotic).
2. Is the size of the goals good? I know they look very ugly, but for this point please ignore the looks and focus on their size.
3. Are there too many collectibles? Especially when playing it as a battle arena with the new AI it gets quite chaotic, which might be fun, but there might be too many collectibles, or one might want to play with fewer karts.
4. How can I improve its looks? Right now it's quite ugly, I am aware of that. The "goals" are not proper goals, and just crudely textured differently from the rest to make them visible. Also I am just using one generic concrete texture for the rest, which is very boring. Any ideas for a "theme" which I can use to texture it so it both looks better and less boring, but also doesn't require me to redo the whole mesh (which would make it a completely different arena/stadium)?
5. Other comments regarding playability/fun factor.

Now my goal for this is to make a fun battle arena and a fun soccer stadium, and if it never gets good enough for inclusion in the main game I'm fine with that. I will upload it as an add-on once it's more final and less ugly.

1. The size is good already.
2. The goals have a good size too.
3. IMO, the number of collectibles is enough.
4. IMHO, the track should be green covered using the chess grass like the Mini golf tack. The goals can be in a common grass.
5. Just a crazy idea, but, if I was trying to make a tottaly different arena (if this was the goal, of course), I would consider one like Foosball/Table football with animated dolls (foos men) moving from right to left and vice-versa.

For a normal arena, keeping the current wip, I would add some objects like a inflatable referee, flags on the corners. etc.

[samuncle]

Hi

I tested your arena and honestly the gameplay is good I liked it. However, unfortunatly I think the design is a bit too basic and boring.

I think you should go for a snowy environement IMHO, with an icy lake/river at the bottom of a canyon

Here is some interesting concepts

http://img15.deviantart.net/4d25/i/2010 ... fhutch.jpg
http://randomwhispers.com/wp-content/up ... -Sheet.jpg
http://feel-planet.com/wp-content/uploa ... enland.jpg
http://web-vassets.ea.com/Assets/Richme ... 1311853029

The last one (SSX EA games concept art) is very beautiful.

1) Cut some part where the goals are so we can see the landscape in the distance, it looks less "closed" while keeping the arena feel
2) add some irregularity + snow falling
3) use stuff like fog, clouds, skybox to give it depth and a physical lighting
4) add some obstacle on the playground so player have some challenges
5) Don't forget to use textures from the media repository, I have added a few of snowy related stuff there.

I enjoyed so much your arena, I made my own version trying to respect the point. It's far from finished but hopefully you can learn from it and see what I did differently compared to yours

My scripts aren't updated yet (yes it's bad since I'm the lead artist) so the map was exported as a regular track ( )

You can try my version here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9jjDv ... sp=sharing
However, my test isn't polished nor finished. I encourage you to check what are the difference between mine and yours and to learn from that

Sam

[benau]

Regarding soccer field, I've finished the soccer ai, now you can test here: https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/tree/soccer_ai

Remember to update stk-assets for a dummy soccer field to test.

[Arthur]

Sorry, I've been away for a while so I haven't continued on this yet. But wow, thank you everyone for the great response! I will definitely continue on this, especially with samuncle's improvements. Can't promise when I will have the next version out as I will have to do a fair amount of improvement - otherwise it will just be a disappointment due to the bar being set quite a lot higher.

Thanks everyone; if anyone wants more replies to any specific feedback they gave me I can do that, but I can say you've definitely given me motivation and ideas for how I can continue, so for now I'll leave it at that.

[ArDanWol]

Regarding soccer field, I've finished the soccer ai, now you can test here: https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/tree/soccer_ai

Remember to update stk-assets for a dummy soccer field to test.

I updated to the latest development version of stk (built from source), but I'm not seeing soccer mode in singleplayer. Do I need to do anything special to enable it?

[benau]

Please update stk-assets too!

Edit:

Please checkout my branch:

git fetch
git checkout soccer_ai

Should work, come to IRC if you are having problems

[benau]

Notice: soccer ai branch merged, just git pull on your current stk-code (if you can in master) should work.