FreeGameDev

I have made a Beagle (search tool) kart, the necessary files for trying it out are attached.
I need help in a couple of things though:
* I wish to know if there is a fail-proof method of making a shadow for the kart that will adjust perfectly - I read "The shadow will need to be fine-tuned by seeing what it does in-game." [1], but I don't know if there is already a better method. See suggestion #1.
* The animations are not working, and I don't know why, the markers are set and I even tried manually modifying the kart xml file.

I think that the kart making tutorial needs a lot of improvement because a lot of things I had to find out talking to the developers at the IRC and watching the blend files of existing karts.

Please read link [1] if you have doubts on how to generate the files. If you want the generated files, ask and I'll upload - as for now, I don't see it necessary and I prefer to provide the blend file.

[1]: http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Making_karts_for_Irrlicht

wolterh {l Wrote}:I have made a Beagle (search tool) kart, the necessary files for trying it out are attached.

Thanks!

I need help in a couple of things though:
* I wish to know if there is a fail-proof method of making a shadow for the kart that will adjust perfectly - I read "The shadow will need to be fine-tuned by seeing what it does in-game." [1], but I don't know if there is already a better method. See suggestion #1.

I'll leave this for people with more blender experience

* The animations are not working, and I don't know why, the markers are set and I even tried manually modifying the kart xml file.

That's because you have set the start and end animation to be frame 221. Just change the start frame to be number 1, and everything appears to work (that's set in the scene settings (F10); animation tab). Oh, and after replacing 'loosing' with 'losing' in the markers (but perhaps the script should just accept both??).

I think that the kart making tutorial needs a lot of improvement because a lot of things I had to find out talking to the developers at the IRC and watching the blend files of existing karts.

Well, it's a wiki - we would be really happy if you (and others) could improve it. For us developers it's often difficult to know what needs more explanation. And it's also a matter of time, too. The wiki is a really excellent opportunity for more or less everybody to help out.

Please read link [1] if you have doubts on how to generate the files. If you want the generated files, ask and I'll upload - as for now, I don't see it necessary and I prefer to provide the blend file.

The icon texture was missing

Cheers,
Joerg

Thank you so much, now it works perfectly! I just have to adjust some bone weights and the kart is ready
I will certainly try to improve the wiki when I have time - back to university today.

EDIT: Attached the new bundle

Hi,

nice work
I have one suggestion: the kart looks very nice from the front, but from the back it's a bit dull. Maybe you could improve the back of the kart a bit, since in game the back is what is seen the most?

Regarding shadow generation, as far as I'm aware there is no systematic method, it's a matter of trial and error

And yes, regarding any unclarities in the wiki, I would welcome help - or at least point out what you think is unclear (because I've been exporting STK karts for months now, so it's all clear to me )

Hm, ok, I'll add some detail in the back, I'll what I can come up with, ideas are welcome
I have prepared a new bundle, this time the losing animation also works, which wasn't.

I also have some suggestions for the engine, but I don't really know where to post them. Here they are:
* Let us place boost emitters (nitrous oxide or whatever) as objects in blender, so that it can appear to come out of exhausts
* Tiremark emitters should be placed at the lowest point of each wheel, and should respect the thickness (in blender language, DimX) of the wheels. Therefore, using the handbreak should print 4 paths instead of just 2, and their width should vary
* Let us place a 3D plane below the kart with the shadow mapped to it, so the engine can generate the shadow for the kart without having to do so much trial and error

A beagle kart?
I hope it's faster than the searching tool...

Seriously, it looks good - but I think it needs much work: Unfortunately there's no icon for the kart yet. Besides, it looks somehow angular. IMHO it should be rounded a bit (maybe with some more detail?).
However, nice work.


Crend

Hi,

nitro emitters and adapter tiremarks are planned, we just need some time
regarding plane under kart, could be interesting, I'll let Joerg comment on that since he wrote the kart editor

I worked on the details at the rear of the kart, I hope you like them; they're still angular though, but because I wanted the design to be that way. I solely added some minor details but in my opinion it does look a lot better. Nothing better than constructive criticism .

Great to hear about those emitters, I have some other suggestions I will post all in a single post .

EDIT 1:
Also, I have not made the icon because my inkscape is incredibly slow I don't know why :^S. If anybody wanted to make an icon for beagle, feel ever so welcome. You can work with their logo at http://www.beagle-project.org

Nice work!
The kart is good to drive, and looks quite good as well. The kart style might not fit entirely with the rest of the main karts, but it doesn't have to anyway - unless you're aiming for inclusion in the main game.

So well done, and I will certainly try any subsequent versions as well.

Auria {l Wrote}:Hi,

nitro emitters and adapter tiremarks are planned, we just need some time

The later esp. needs changes to the skidding (i.e. atm the tiremarks are not really where the tires are). And we are using only 2 mostly for performance reasons . I think (though I haven't tried it) that with 4 skidmarks the tracks will look too ... 'skid-marked', or perhaps better to say 'too real'? Not sure if this would fit the style of STK.

regarding plane under kart, could be interesting, I'll let Joerg comment on that since he wrote the kart editor

We could do that in blender, or even in STK. Aren't usually the shadows for karts created exactly like this in blender (manually)? I think there was a tutorial online a while ago (not for stk - perhaps torcs??) that contained some recommendations, but I can't find it now

I won't have time to do anything about this in the near future though - so it would be good if someone could pick this up. If we want to do this in blender and someone could create a sample script that would just place a light, the plane, and renders the shadow, I should be able to port this to the kart exporter.

Cheers,
Joerg

About the 4 tiremarks being too realistic, I have something to say. I think, because I have seen it happen before, that no matter how comic-prone a game is, a touch of realism can always astonish the player. In my case, when I see a world so far off reality at a first glance, but that somehow connects with the realism of our world, makes me think that the actual fantasy inside the game gets a better grip of awesome. About the performance, I think that maybe the options panel should be amplified, in order to let people with higher-end computers enjoy the luxury within the possibilities, and let the rest sacrifice looks for performance when they need.

About the shadow projection method, I think a possible quick solution would be to give users a relation between the scale of the shadow image, and how margins and positioning affect it. The problem I had before trying out a checker pattern and guess where the kart was placed was that I didn't know how the negative space between the actual shadow and the image boundaries affected the positioning of it, how did the size of the shadow, and many other factors - I think that the code should be looked up at by someone understanding it and somehow relate the scale of the kart to the mentioned variations in the kart shadow image.

How about dynamic shadows? Is that very hard to implement in the engine? I've seen games where the dynamic shadows have a low resolution, but they still look great.

Also, I was wondering if the falling speed limit was greater than 300 tf/s (does anybody know what tf is?), which is the apparent kart maximum velocity, because sometimes it doesn't seem like it is.
Overall, I really think that implementing more physics into the game, such as explosion blasts and long falls could make the game better, and that the research to make such features available is worth enough the time.

Arthur {l Wrote}:Nice work!
The kart is good to drive, and looks quite good as well. The kart style might not fit entirely with the rest of the main karts, but it doesn't have to anyway - unless you're aiming for inclusion in the main game.

So well done, and I will certainly try any subsequent versions as well.

Hm, yes: I am indeed interested in getting my model on the main game, what changes do you recommend me? I am really into improving my kart, but I have seen that the karts in the game don't seem to follow some style strictly. Either way, it would be a good idea if somebody wrote about the style that main karts should respect.

Thanks for your comment

Well, your kart certainly fits the written guidelines, and I am not the one who decides, so you may ignore my previous comment about inclusion in the main game.

Nice job

Please Tell us about license You want give to your model

And please include your name in kart.xml or in license.txt I'm sad to lost work attribution

wolterh {l Wrote}:About the 4 tiremarks being too realistic, I have something to say. I think, because I have seen it happen before, that no matter how comic-prone a game is, a touch of realism can always astonish the player. In my case, when I see a world so far off reality at a first glance, but that somehow connects with the realism of our world, makes me think that the actual fantasy inside the game gets a better grip of awesome. About the performance, I think that maybe the options panel should be amplified, in order to let people with higher-end computers enjoy the luxury within the possibilities, and let the rest sacrifice looks for performance when they need.

Sure, though an important point to consider is that we are only 2 devs, so we need to decide what we work on Stuff like that is often delayed simply because we don't have time to spend on it

wolterh {l Wrote}:About the shadow projection method, I think a possible quick solution would be to give users a relation between the scale of the shadow image, and how margins and positioning affect it. The problem I had before trying out a checker pattern and guess where the kart was placed was that I didn't know how the negative space between the actual shadow and the image boundaries affected the positioning of it, how did the size of the shadow, and many other factors - I think that the code should be looked up at by someone understanding it and somehow relate the scale of the kart to the mentioned variations in the kart shadow image.

Agreed, we'd need to read the code and see how the shadow is generated

wolterh {l Wrote}:How about dynamic shadows? Is that very hard to implement in the engine? I've seen games where the dynamic shadows have a low resolution, but they still look great.

This might be interesting, we'd need to check the options from irrlicht and see what they offer. Of course the old shadows would not go away since dynamic shadows are much more expensive

wolterh {l Wrote}:Also, I was wondering if the falling speed limit was greater than 300 tf/s (does anybody know what tf is?), which is the apparent kart maximum velocity, because sometimes it doesn't seem like it is.
Overall, I really think that implementing more physics into the game, such as explosion blasts and long falls could make the game better, and that the research to make such features available is worth enough the time.

tf/s = Tux Feet per Second
I am not sure what the falling speed is, but it is indeed limited, and the reason is because a kart that falls too fast may go through the ground. To avoid the problem of karts going through the ground, we would need to use tunneling/continuous collisions, which are quite hard to implement and are expensive to the CPU. Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, we just limited fall speed


And regarding inclusion in the main game, your kart is fine with me Making it a little nicer to look at from behind would be the main needed improvement - as well as clarifying license, as Rudy pointed out.

Auria {l Wrote}:I am not sure what the falling speed is, but it is indeed limited, and the reason is because a kart that falls too fast may go through the ground. To avoid the problem of karts going through the ground, we would need to use tunneling/continuous collisions, which are quite hard to implement and are expensive to the CPU. Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, we just limited fall speed

AH! Now I understand why the karts allways seem to fall in the direction of the wheels (down relative to the kart). e.g. when a cart is rotated to the right it will actually fall to the left when dropped from near standstll.

This is because this limit makes a parabolic trajectory (normal fall) suddenly change to a linear trajectory. It gives the illusion that you are flying with a certain heading. Perhaps some code can be added so that the forward speed is reduced as the maximum fall rate is reached; this gives the illusion that the kart is gently falling.

Auria {l Wrote}:Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, (...)

Don't tempt me... If you keep pushing me I'll make a motocross jumping stadium track.

asciimonster {l Wrote}:Don't tempt me... If you keep pushing me I'll make a motocross jumping stadium track.

I encourage you

Hm, thanks a lot then people for all of your kind comments, I would definitely like to see my cart in the main game and am willing to improve it as we all see fit.

STKRudy85 {l Wrote}:And please include your name in kart.xml or in license.txt I'm sad to lost work attribution

I'd like my kart to be licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike License, you can read more about it here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. The manner I'd like my work to be attributed would be to simply acknowledge my authorship, which will be specified in the kart.xml file (as I have been recommended in the past posts), as the original maker of the kart. The kart, as the license indicates, can be modified freely, but further distributions of it will still respect the license terms.

On purpose, it would be a nice addition to the STK exporter scripts to include some text fields for authorship and licensing

I hope to see someday the other improvements implemented, they would make the game so much better. Some days ago I was working on a python bomber game that I have kind of left behind lately, but as soon as I finish it I will try to get some experience in C++, and subsequently I would like to put some effort into STK

Hi,

Auria {l Wrote}:

wolterh {l Wrote}:About the 4 tiremarks being too realistic, I have something to say. I think, because I have seen it happen before, that no matter how comic-prone a game is, a touch of realism can always astonish the player. In my case, when I see a world so far off reality at a first glance, but that somehow connects with the realism of our world, makes me think that the actual fantasy inside the game gets a better grip of awesome. About the performance, I think that maybe the options panel should be amplified, in order to let people with higher-end computers enjoy the luxury within the possibilities, and let the rest sacrifice looks for performance when they need.

Sure, though an important point to consider is that we are only 2 devs, so we need to decide what we work on Stuff like that is often delayed simply because we don't have time to spend on it

And also that we don't want to make the options to be too overwhelming. Perhaps instead of buttons use a slider, where people can select more or less graphical details (which gets then translated into which feature is switched on/off?). But I would only try this after the next physics improvements which will solve the 'skid marks not where the wheels are' problem.

wolterh {l Wrote}:About the shadow projection method, I think a possible quick solution would be to give users a relation between the scale of the shadow image, and how margins and positioning affect it. The problem I had before trying out a checker pattern and guess where the kart was placed was that I didn't know how the negative space between the actual shadow and the image boundaries affected the positioning of it, how did the size of the shadow, and many other factors - I think that the code should be looked up at by someone understanding it and somehow relate the scale of the kart to the mentioned variations in the kart shadow image.

Agreed, we'd need to read the code and see how the shadow is generated

The shadow is 2x2 units. I have no idea why this is the case *blush* I guess that's a left-over from work done in the game-of-the-month time. While I am not keen on changing this, we could certainly look at this if necessary.

wolterh {l Wrote}:How about dynamic shadows? Is that very hard to implement in the engine? I've seen games where the dynamic shadows have a low resolution, but they still look great.

This might be interesting, we'd need to check the options from irrlicht and see what they offer. Of course the old shadows would not go away since dynamic shadows are much more expensive

That should be reasonably simple, but due to a lack of developers I'd focus on other things - since I suspect that our 'core players' won't have high end graphics card that could handle all of this (not until we do some optimisations). But as always: patch welcome

wolterh {l Wrote}:Also, I was wondering if the falling speed limit was greater than 300 tf/s (does anybody know what tf is?), which is the apparent kart maximum velocity, because sometimes it doesn't seem like it is.
Overall, I really think that implementing more physics into the game, such as explosion blasts and long falls could make the game better, and that the research to make such features available is worth enough the time.

I would say that spending time on playability research is important, and two things we have learned in the past is that real explosions have too many drawbacks (we removed them recently - explosion ended up sometimes giving a benefit, sometimes a huge penalty, so they were unfair; and people sometimes ended on part of the tracks they were not supposed to reach). And long falls are just boring - though I exclude something visually exciting like a 'canon' that might shoot a kart up a hill, with the additional benefit of removing boring uphill sections from this statement

tf/s = Tux Feet per Second
I am not sure what the falling speed is, but it is indeed limited, and the reason is because a kart that falls too fast may go through the ground. To avoid the problem of karts going through the ground, we would need to use tunneling/continuous collisions, which are quite hard to implement and are expensive to the CPU. Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, we just limited fall speed

The vertical speed is limited to about 12 m/s - it depends on the suspension length (i.e. the suspension must not fall through the track in one time step).And again, falling is boring, so no need to change this. And the display in the GUI is just randomly scaled, the data (e.g. in stk_config.xml) are all in m/s

Cheers,
Joerg

Hi,

asciimonster {l Wrote}:

Auria {l Wrote}:I am not sure what the falling speed is, but it is indeed limited, and the reason is because a kart that falls too fast may go through the ground. To avoid the problem of karts going through the ground, we would need to use tunneling/continuous collisions, which are quite hard to implement and are expensive to the CPU. Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, we just limited fall speed

AH! Now I understand why the karts allways seem to fall in the direction of the wheels (down relative to the kart). e.g. when a cart is rotated to the right it will actually fall to the left when dropped from near standstll.

No, that got nothing to do with the speed limit - it's a 'upright' constraint working to prevent a kart from toppling over. This makes jumps possible.

This is because this limit makes a parabolic trajectory (normal fall) suddenly change to a linear trajectory. It gives the illusion that you are flying with a certain heading. Perhaps some code can be added so that the forward speed is reduced as the maximum fall rate is reached; this gives the illusion that the kart is gently falling.

As I've written earlier this happens at around 11 m/s, which is more than one second of falling. Most jumps are shorter, only falling off track would cause a longer delay, before you get rescued. And I'd suspect that any player will hit 'rescue' much quicker than that But perhaps some graphical effect might be nice (not sure - maybe camera then moving upwards, giving the impression that the kart suddenly drops?)

Auria {l Wrote}:Since falling is not a very important part of the STK gameplay, (...)

Don't tempt me... If you keep pushing me I'll make a motocross jumping stadium track.

Push I've always wanted some real jumps in the game, and was quite disappointed that we got no track using it. So please, go ahead

Cheers,
Joerg

I think the slider is a good idea, but would be good to have - if not already present - a settings file with all this options for power users to customize.

Good to know that the shadow is 2x2 units (opengl units I guess?) then should I guess as well that it shares a x-y center with the kart object?

Regarding to falls, I'd say the user doesn't have to fall all the way to the floor if he doesn't want to, you can always press the reset button . Moreover, if a long fall with gravitational acceleration is long, even longer and tedious would be to fall down slowly I'd say :P I guess I just want to see karts get rammed against the floor after a long fall and violently bouncing about.

Ok, the icon is still missing, but everything else is complete.

Listen up, kart makers: I've discovered a method for perfect shadow generation, which I will write down here and later on in the Wiki:
** NOTE: The procedure is very simple, its just long because its explained with as much detail as I saw necessary. **
1. Position the sun at 0,0 and elevate it a bit. Set the [distance] to 30, [energy] to 1, and enable [Ray Shado].
2. Enable [Ambient Occlusion] in the [World buttons]; set the gather method to [Approximate].
3. Make a plane with dimensions 2x2 at 0,0,0. Your kart should not even reach the bounds of this plane.
4. In the UV Image Editor, make a new image. A 128x128 image will be just fine. Unwrap the plane to this image.
5. Select the plane object, and hit [Control + Alt + B] and then [Full Render] (softer shadows), or [Shadow] (faster). I recommend Shadow.
6. Save the image, and edit it. GIMP is a good choice for editing application.
7. Make sure the only opaque thing in the image is the shadow.
8. Apply a [Gaussian Blur] of about 4.0, set the layer opacity to 55.
9. Make sure the image is rotated to display the front on top, and the rear on the bottom. Save the image and use it as your shadow.

I only did this procedure once, and my shadow was rendered right under the kart.

I think this bake method (step 5) could be very useful to generate a shadow for the texture of any object.

Oops, looks like my shadow plane made its way to the B3D file. Fixed.

wolterh, I like your kart, however there are some things to improve
Firstly, winning and losing animations are a bit repetetive, IMHO (hm, I usually play without karts and scenery animations so I don't see these animations )
Secondly, there are no beagle_icon.png and beagle_map_icon.png. The fisrt one is for kart selection screen, I think. And the second one should be little and it'd be shown on mini-map.
Except these things everything is ok in my view Congratulations!

Nice kart, and thanks for the shadow instructions, if you could place them on the wiki it would be awesome

Otherwise I agree with KroArtem, if you can improve those last bits I think we have a nice kart here

EDIT: Oh, I just looked at the LICENSE file; I'm afraid to say that we cannot use material released under CC-BY-SA 2.5, the 3.0 version is the first version that is generally accepted as falling under free software terms