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Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 28 Oct 2017, 16:22
by flavio
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Okay, the scons building process works now and I built Yorg. But for some weird reason it permanently steals the focus of my windows while it is building. This is terribly annoying and makes my computer more or less useless until the building process ends.

Actually I modified the building process recently, to make it faster by using multithreading. But maybe the first version of my implementation used too many threads, which consume a lot of RAM (and this may slow down the building machine). Now I've decreased the number of threads and added an option for modifying it.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Anyway, now I can at least start Yorg and click around in the main menu and stuff, but when I start the first single race, I only come to the loading screen, but it crashes after a few seconds. I don't get to see the actual race track.[...]

The branch master is expected to be unstable, since it is where I introduce new bugs almost daily. The bug you reported has been fixed, thank you for reporting. :)
If someone prefers a stabler branch, there are the other branches. Anyway, since I have just worked on them for creating a new branch, so they aren't really stable right now. But this will definitely change in the future: the stable branch will be considered stable, and the testing branch will be considered as the "pre-release" branch.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:PS: You seem to use the “NB” awfully lot. I think this abbreviation is quite obscure, at least in English. Better remove it or find something better to avoid confusion.

Thank you very much (I didn't know it), I've changed that!

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:PPS: I attached a German translation for your game, feel free to include it under any license. Warning: This translation is untested (for obvious reasons), so I will probably submit a 2nd version when everything works for me.

Wow, thank you very much! :) I've added your translation, and credited you on the site and in the game (please let me know if you prefer not to be credited). If you need to submit another version, you may start from the current one, since it is up-to-date. I've written a small guide for translators, there could be some hints. Thank you very much!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 08 Nov 2017, 23:18
by GunChleoc
I have made a translation pull request and added 2 new issues for translations.

Game still runs too slow on my Intel i5 / Windows7. Performance is hard, so I hope you manage to improve on that some time in the future :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 08 Nov 2017, 23:41
by flavio
GunChleoc {l Wrote}:I have made a translation pull request and added 2 new issues for translations.


Thank you very much! :)

GunChleoc {l Wrote}:Game still runs too slow on my Intel i5 / Windows7. Performance is hard, so I hope you manage to improve on that some time in the future :)

Did you test the master branch? Since I've applied several performance improvements there. Moreover, Panda3D has implemented several performance improvements recently, so you may want to use Panda3D 1.10. Plus, I've added an option for selecting cars' number and shaders - you could try to reduce cars' number and disabling shaders.

I've profiled the game recently, and it doesn't seem that there are big performance issues. An heavy part is the physics, I've asked to the artist to optimize physics models to improve that, we've planned to improve this aspect for the release 0.9. So, there should be better performances in the future. :) Thank you!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 09 Nov 2017, 11:56
by GunChleoc
No, I've only tested the latest release - I don't have time right now to compile a new project.

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 09 Nov 2017, 19:33
by flavio
GunChleoc {l Wrote}:No, I've only tested the latest release - I don't have time right now to compile a new project.

Ok! :)

I've integrated your modifications and your language can be selected now. It will be included in the next release. I've credited you on our site and in the game, let me know if you don't want that. Thank you once more! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 10 Nov 2017, 12:19
by GunChleoc
You're welcome - the translation isn't that big and took me only about 1/2 hour.

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 12 Nov 2017, 12:38
by flavio
Hi! After reading your comments, I've rewritten a lot of stuff for the driving model. I hope that it is something closer to your suggestions now! Moreover, I've added the drifting, and it seems that it adds fun to the game. More info in our last post. Thank you very much!

Image

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 12 Nov 2017, 21:56
by charlie
Looks good. Without having trie it yet (just going off of your video) there's probably still a bit of fine tuning to be done but glad to see you are making inroads (pun intended).

It seems that gravity is a little weak or cars are a little light - they seem to leave the ground a bit too easily and take some time to come down.

A few particle effects from the wheels might make it look more convincing too; mud particles etc so it looks like the cars are interacting with the ground physically as well as virtually.

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 13 Nov 2017, 18:53
by flavio
charlie {l Wrote}:Looks good. Without having trie it yet (just going off of your video) there's probably still a bit of fine tuning to be done but glad to see you are making inroads (pun intended).

Eheh! :) Thanks! Sure, it's not definitive, it is "just" an improvement (hopefully :) ). Then I'll collect feedbacks and see if I can improve it more from the suggestions.

charlie {l Wrote}:It seems that gravity is a little weak or cars are a little light - they seem to leave the ground a bit too easily and take some time to come down.

Actually, this is the expected behaviour. I've changed the physics a bit so cars touch lightly the ground. I think that it gives more fun. But I may be wrong: we'll listen for feedbacks about next release so we can modify it again if players don't like that. Tuning those parameters is very hard. :)

EDIT: The motivation is that Bullet doesn't provide drifting, so, to implement it I needed several workarounds, and this is one of them. So, it is actually a trade-off.

charlie {l Wrote}:A few particle effects from the wheels might make it look more convincing too; mud particles etc so it looks like the cars are interacting with the ground physically as well as virtually.

Actually I've implemented them, but they require Panda3D 1.10. Particles based on Panda3D 1.9 imply some unpleasant hiccups, so I removed them from the released builds (which use Panda3D 1.9). As soon as they release Panda3D 1.10 I can deploy particles.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 14 Nov 2017, 10:21
by charlie
Definitely Bullet can be manipulated to support drifting without going to moon gravity.

An example of a game that uses Bullet and has drifting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dgzXcEK49w

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 14 Nov 2017, 19:32
by flavio
charlie {l Wrote}:Definitely Bullet can be manipulated to support drifting without going to moon gravity.

Eheh actually gravity's force is not that low. :D

charlie {l Wrote}:An example of a game that uses Bullet and has drifting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dgzXcEK49w

Ok, I can see what you mean. :)

To be honest, we've implemented it in a different way, and this is by design. I'm not saying that the game you linked is not good (indeed it is very cool and superior to ours in many ways), I just want to say that we're attempting something different (not necessarily better). These are my thoughts about that driving model:
  • if you look at 00:06s, while the car is turning to the left, wheels aren't turned to the right in order to exploit car's inertia (so, it doesn't seem that the game "awards" a correct drift);
  • my feeling about that video is that when you steer you're rotating the entire car (and you're not turning the wheels, which rotate the car then);
  • moreover, it seems (but I may be wrong) that the graphics mesh of the car and the physics mesh are "unconnected" (or, if this is not true, this is what I feel) i.e. if you look the trajectory of the car, when you turn the car then the car slightly turns its trajectory, while the graphics mesh strongly rotates - it may be that they enhance the drift effect with the graphics mesh while the physics mesh is not drifting "strictly".
Let me repeat, that game is very cool. Our game is not comparable, we've to improve a lot, especially in the driving model (and this is the first reason that moves me to look for feedbacks here). Anyway, we're trying to do a different thing (if we do the same thing we can't sustain those "competitors"). We're trying to do a more simulative driving model (indeed, we're trying to manage the previous three points in the opposite way), in an "arcade" framework (this is why we defined a minor gravity, weapons, ...). This is mainly because this is what I like more, as a player. Personally, I prefer a driving model that is "a bit" simulative over a driving model that is totally arcade. But this is only a subjective taste, if a player likes an arcade game, it is totally legit, of course. :) Of course, if we'll see that nobody likes this driving model (i.e. there isn't a "niche" for this game), we are going to change it, definitely. :)

A small note about Bullet's drifting. Drifting was not properly implemented, as its author said. The answer is very old, but if you look at the history of Bullet's vehicle implementation, it doesn't seem that there are commits related to drifting since that.

I looked at their code, and it seems that m_skidInfo influences body's impulse, but that value gets a reset each frame (I've not "studied" it deeply, so I may be totally wrong - it's just a first impression). I'm writing this because if someone could help me by pointing me in the right direction, I would totally love that.

I googled and found several developers that propose workarounds for their drifting implementation over Bullet. Mine workaround is only another one. :)

I hope that my tone looks nice (English is not my mother-tongue and I may write things in a bad way). I totally appreciate your feedback, I've already considered several modifications to our driving model considering the video you linked. ;) I plan to release next version with the current driving model, collect players' feedback about it, and modify it for the following release after discussing the improvements here (if you want to :) ). Thanks again for your help!!! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 30 Nov 2017, 20:38
by flavio
Hi! We've made a release candidate build for next version of Yorg. If anyone wants to test it, this would be very kind of you. :) Please report if there are critical issues that should prevent its release. Thank you very much!

Here are the builds: Windows, OSX, Linux64, Linux32.

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 02 Dec 2017, 18:16
by flavio
Hi! We've released a new version: 0.8!

As described in our release post, there are several updates (these are some of them):
  • a new track;
  • a new car;
  • seasons;
  • new languages (deustch and scottish gaelic thanks to Wuzzy and GunChleoc);
  • driving model;
  • new camera;
  • bugfixes and performance improvements.

About the driving model, I've tried to implement some of the suggestions received here by Julius and charlie. It is not definitive, we are following an iterative development model, so we are going to collect feedbacks and refine it again.

Here is release's trailer:

Image

Here's a screenshot from the new release:

Image

Thank you!

PS IndieDB's Indie of the Year is open! Please, go to our page on IndieDB and vote for us if you want! Thanks!

PPS More info in our release post!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2017, 10:48
by Julius
Played it a bit... definitely a big improvement over previous releases in regards to driving "feel" and so on.

Steering still feels a bit restricted and overly punishing (i.e. easy to loose control) though.

Also when playing with a keyboard the camera also does these jerky movements on steering. Some sort of smoothing out the camera movements would be nice.

I also still don't see any particle effects under Linux.

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 04 Dec 2017, 09:39
by Imerion
Congrats on another great release! Will be fun to try it! :D

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 05 Dec 2017, 18:36
by flavio
Julius {l Wrote}:Played it a bit... definitely a big improvement over previous releases in regards to driving "feel" and so on.

Imerion {l Wrote}:Congrats on another great release! Will be fun to try it! :D

Thank you so much! :)

Julius {l Wrote}:Steering still feels a bit restricted and overly punishing (i.e. easy to loose control) though.

Ok, I am going to tune it more (also considering charlie's feedbacks) for next release.

Julius {l Wrote}:Also when playing with a keyboard the camera also does these jerky movements on steering. Some sort of smoothing out the camera movements would be nice.

I am not sure that I got the issue exactly, anyway I've just changed camera's easing for next release, let's see if this improves.

Julius {l Wrote}:I also still don't see any particle effects under Linux.

Unfortunately Panda3D 1.10 has not been released yet. I have to wait for their release in order to publish several features (joypad support, particles and more performance improvements).

Thank you once more for your precious feedbacks!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 09 Jan 2018, 00:08
by flavio
Hi! If anyone is interested in it, in our last post we've published a couple of screenshot of our next track. :) Thank you so much! :)

Image

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 25 Jan 2018, 22:47
by flavio
Hi! Our artist has rendered a video with his last track:

Image

We hope that you will like it! :) More info in our last post!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 26 Jan 2018, 12:59
by Julius
This is rendered in Blender? Or in the Panda3D? Looks nice though!

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 26 Jan 2018, 22:19
by flavio
Hi! It is rendered in Blender. :) Thank you very much! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 26 Jan 2018, 23:14
by Arthur
Very nice! I really need to try this game sometime. :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 27 Jan 2018, 11:12
by flavio
Wow! Thank you very much! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 07 Jun 2018, 21:56
by flavio
Hi! We’ve just published the release candidate build of the upcoming version of Yorg! Mainly, it features a new track and an experimental multiplayer support. It would be very helpful if you could download it and test it, and report critical bugs here (if any). More details in our post. Here is a screenshot of the new track:

Image

Unfortunately, a lot of suggestions that we've received here (e.g. particles, joypad support, ...) haven't been implemented yet: we're waiting for Panda3D's update, so we can deploy them. Anyway, there are other new features, while we wait for the suggested ones. :)

Thank you very much! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 19 Jun 2018, 21:23
by flavio
Hi! We've released the new version 0.9.0. Thank you! :)

Re: Yorg

PostPosted: 20 Jun 2018, 02:12
by Julius
Interesting that multiplayer requires a XMPP account. Is that only for ingame chat or something else?