Game testing 2.6

Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 12 Sep 2015, 15:53

We are close to release.
Testing master is most welcome, if you build from sources check Compiling Wiki, there are new dependencies: openal and bullet.

Also if you can help updating Translations (especially those which aren't at 100%).
See Changelog to get familiar with new stuff (which needs more testing).
I generally don't accept any big changes now. But if you think something (that isn't hard to test and is easy to fix) needs to be adjusted go ahead. Probably Gui comes to mind first, track times, car factors, challenges etc.
I'm gonna start with making new game video, showing off various vehicles, best stunt tracks and landscape views.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby dimproject » 14 Sep 2015, 18:11

Disable pacenotes by default.
Need bind pacenote to road point.
Need make pacenote type selection.
Only manual pacenote will good (leave it for track editors).
Game is dynamic and no need many pacenotes.

/home/user/stuntrally/source/paged-geom/ImpostorPage.cpp
||In member function ‘void Forests::ImpostorTexture::renderTextures(bool)’:|
/home/user/stuntrally/source/paged-geom/ImpostorPage.cpp
|533|warning: large integer implicitly truncated to unsigned type [-Woverflow]|

Warning fixed by me.
ImpostorPage.cpp
(26.15 KiB) Downloaded 980 times
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 14 Sep 2015, 18:27

Ugh. Are you for real? This is ridiculous.
I don't agree with anything. Well only with that ImpostorPage.cpp warning.

And I'm editing out the links. IDK if even STK would accept it, and this is SR. We do not have any humans, we have vehicles and plants that's it.
Even if those were good models it would take a lot of time to get them exported.
And project dev is now again stopped. So putting anything new 'to do' or new ideas is just wasting time.

As for the pacenotes..
There are no track editors. Don't forget most tracks are mine. I won't be wasting tens of hours putting crap signs on each turn, thinking if it's good angle or length or otherwise wasting my time.
The way I see it the auto generation works surprisigly good. So I've spent time on writing intelligent code that makes them on all 172 tracks and will do on any new or modified ones. I'm a programmer, that's what I do. Even if I do manual, boring stuff, this is not the case for it.
Won't disable it either, it's easy to do it, and it's the main gameplay feature of 2.6.

Also I'd like to read more opinions on pacenotes..
If you don't build from sources you can see them on the new 2.6 unofficial yet video.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby Wuzzy » 16 Sep 2015, 01:47

And I'm editing out the links. IDK if even STK would accept it, and this is SR. We do not have any humans, we have vehicles and plants that's it.

I, too, think that those “racing girls” don't really fit into the game. But no reason to manipulate other people's posts. It's not that dimproject posted links to child porn or someting. xD

Also I'd like to read more opinions on pacenotes.

Keep them activated. I too think the auto-generation works pretty well. Mostly.

I too would oppose if every freaking pacenote would have to be added by hand. This would be a huge technical step backwards, unless the autogeneration is completely broken, which is absolutely not the case.
So I've spent time on writing intelligent code that makes them on all 172 tracks and will do on any new or modified ones. I'm a programmer, that's what I do. Even if I do manual, boring stuff, this is not the case for it.

This position is completely reasonable IMO.

After some hours of playtesting, here are the results:

First, my general comments on pacenotes:
  • Curves: Great! This is what makes Stunt Rally feel like a rally game. These kind of pacenotes help especially on tricky, more “rally”-like tracks suck as Sav8-SlowFrenzy. On this tracks these guys are especially useful because of the many ups and down and it is hard to see the road. However, these symbols make Des12-Sandstorm and Wnt14-MtFog in Horrible Weather too easy (the whole point of these tracks is that you don't have orientation). I guess pacenotes can't be force-disabled in challenges, right?
  • Jumps. The fact that the minimum speed is shown is a real life saver. On the other hand, one may be tempted to go much faster than the displayed speed, because the color does not change much above that. Going too fast on a ramp on Mrs1-Mars is deadly. Overall, the speed recommendation helps a lot for Mrs1-Mars if you don't overspeed, but the jumps are still very difficult on Mrs4-Platforms, even with the pacenotes. But probably that's just the track difficulty.
  • Bumps: The bump symbol is another useful life-saver for when it is actually a bump. But it is a real killer it it was a terrain jump, actually. This ambuiguity is not good, because for a bump, you may be tempted to slow down, and for a jump, you may be tempted to speed up. :-( Luckily, there are not too many terrain jumps in this game.
  • On-pipe segments: Also a life-saver especially on Mrs4-Platforms is the “start mark”. Maybe there should a different symbol for the “end mark” (maybe just the same symbol, but “slashed out” or something)?
  • Loopings: It's very cool that you took the time to implement different pacenotes for the various looping types. But I don't think some of the symbols are exactly obvious, would you please explain them (The changelog isn't so helpful either)?
  • Overall rating: Pacenotes are an useful addition to Stunt Rally. There are some quicks in special situations, but they are overshadowed by the overall benefits. I find them useful and would therefore strongly encourage you to keep them enabled by default. I have earlier suggested to include more road signs as placable objects. Now with the pacenotes, I decide to drop that suggestion. Some sign objects might be nice as decoration in a few tracks, but I think now it is best to keep them as as just that.

Now for the quirks in pacenotes:
  • The “bump” symbol can either mean an actual terrain bump or a terrain jump. I am not sure if it would work, but maybe terrain jumps can be detected if the road behind is is hidden. That would (I hope so?) at least fix Vlc12-LavaPools
  • Very odd:: At about 43% forwards in Uni4-Pipeline, the (orange) curve pacenote shows into the left direction, but the curve goes to the right. O_o
  • It is possible that a “curve” sign is very close (nearly overlapping or overlapped) to a on-pipe sign. You may see this on Tox1-Radioactive multiple times before the on-pipe segments. If you drive in reverse mode, you can see it right from the start.
  • The first big lava pool in Vlc12-LavaPools has a “bump” symbol (at about 30% in forwards direction). I have no idea why. There is also a “wrong” bump symbol on the frozen lake in Wnt17-FrozenGarden
  • I am pretty sure Grc7-Spider should have a “sharp turn” pacenote for the giant curve shortly after 61% forwards (but I can't see one). Or is it not shown because it is so obvious?
  • Mrs3-Hot has a ramp symbol at the on-pipe segment. I have no idea why. Also, the on-pipe segment is exceptionally crowded with symbols.
  • On Mrs4-Platforms I noticed that the speed number can be displayed above everything else (even the car), while the symbol itself can't. Is this inconsistency intentional?

I think the quirks can be fixed sooner or later, certainly no reason to abandon the automatic pacenote generation.


I would have like it if there would be pacenotes for these (not really important and I don't have any illusions about seeing this in the next release, but hey, you asked for my opinion on pacenotes so you get it :P):
  • Warning about an obstacle—The big question is: How? Manually (which means extra work, lol)?
  • Significant changes in “steepness” (esp. for sudden steep slopes as in Oth1-FogCity). Or does this count as a “bump”?
  • The opposite of a “bump”: A sudden hole. Vlc8-Uncertain has one, shortly before 80% in forwards direction. Or does this count as a normal “bump” as well?
  • Different flag symbols depending on what state the race is in (analog to the different checkpoint colors at the finish checkpoint):
    • Checkered: If you pass this, the race is over
    • Yellow: If you pass this, the final lap begins
    • Blue/Cyan: End of lap (neither final lap nor finish)
  • Warning about a pool (especially if big). But I am not sure if it's worth it, because they are normally easy to see
  • The pacenotes menu should say “Opacity” instead of “Transparency”
  • I would set the default “transparency” (actually: opacity) to 0.90


Finally, as a beta tester I have to bring the obligatory bug reports:
  • If you use rewind for a long time, the pacenotes seem to be “lost” for that segment. You must continue to the point from which you started to see the next pacenotes again
  • Sometimes, you can see the “checkered flag” symbol at the start (very slightly; high transparency). I suggest to hide it before the player has reached the very first checkpoint in this race
  • If you hit F5 to reload the track, after it loaded, there is a brief period of time where the track ghost (?) may be visible (and then disappears, maybe because of its distance to the actual car?). It does not happen always, but it seems to happen more likely if you use more demanding graphics settings such as a higher resolution
  • Track list: Clicking on the “name” column sorts by ID, clicking on the “id” column sorts by name. :D
  • If you start the game and go to the track list, the arrow on the minimap will be wrong initially, until you change the track or toggle reverse mode
  • Also, the reverse arrow on said minimap seems to be slighly displaced

Strange, I thought the last 2 bugs were fixed a long time ago. Do we maybe have a regression here?
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby dimproject » 16 Sep 2015, 06:06

All new tracks - hard.
Here are replays
Aus8-Cliff_1.zip
(1.04 MiB) Downloaded 867 times
Aus8-Cliff_2.zip
(1022.63 KiB) Downloaded 885 times
Aus8-Cliff_3.zip
(1.06 MiB) Downloaded 919 times

I can't upload file with size more than 2 MB. :(
Maybe exist good website for it. :)

I dislike hard tracks because result for me close to 0.
This is neither interesting nor fun.

I not against to hard tracks (for some players) but all a little hard to some players.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 16 Sep 2015, 19:00

Great read Wuzzy. Thanks for testing.
I have a similar opinion in most cases.
Shortly to answer:
- Yeah I want to make an option in challenges.xml to disable pacenotes. [Done] Denied pacenotes on Horrible Weather.
- Generally green and cyan are good to jump, then it's just white. IDK maybe it should drop to black or red after?
Mrs4-Platforms has weird jumps, more difficult than I wanted and already took time to make them as they are.
Anyways this isn't perfect. I noticed that e.g. XZ needs more speed than jumps tell. Has more downforce, probably each vehicle should have a factor to scale that vel.
- I wanted to do terrain jumps like usual with vel. But yeah there are like 3 or so in whole game. And the code for them is different.
- On-pipe end symbol, yeah should be. [Done]
- Loops and types. We had an idea to make a Gui screen with all signs and some text what are they, probably scrollable list view. No idea where to put it. Maybe as a new big window, and a button on View - Pacenotes to show it?
- Yeah the old idea of sign meshes was too demanding. Pacenotes are quicker and not that work demanding on textures etc. Still some may be good for decoration but that needs time to make the models etc.

Didn't check those track remarks, but I know of few more even:
- Sometimes when on-pipe starts below ground the symbol is underground too.
- Some code should detect if signs are close and do sth. Since there are 2 ways (road trace and track ghost) that add them and both don't know of each other.
- Sometimes jump sign (and text) is far above jump, e.g. on Mos5-Factory. Weird.

- Terrain Bumps and jumps are detected from height difference of track ghost car to terrain (when road is on terrain).
Should be possible to detect big jumps (but need to know end point, also for reversed). Holes and steepness are just treated the same way. If height diff. was high for some minimal distance, there will be a sign. If it was bigger then the bigger bump sign.
- Yeah rewind should check the pacenote spheres and allow to go back. [Done]

- Name column sorts by ID is by design so. This is the default sorting and in short view you can pick it, would need to switch to full list view, pick and go back to short.

So yeah most of all that is TODO, not for now, for future. But some may be difficult to fix.
Right now there is no way at all to adjust anything. Neither manual fixing of signs nor changing auto gen parameters.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 16 Sep 2015, 19:05

@dimproject
I'm a fan of hard tracks. Maybe you just didn't play that much yet.
We, old timers, playing since years are bored with simple tracks. They are great for multiplayer but singleplayer needs difficult tracks.
There weren't many new tracks, just 5. And I didn't make any myself either, pity.
But I usually want to make new incredibly difficult tracks too :D.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 17 Sep 2015, 17:17

Done few things, the easiest ones, marked [Done] in my prev -2 post.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby Astobe » 28 Sep 2015, 11:26

Sorry, I'm late to the party again.

Overall: great work!

Now the "but" part ;-)

The game crashes on the loading screen for asphalt tracks (brands for instance). However, my install isn't very clean. Here is what I did:
Installed 2.6 over 2.4 - saw the crashes
Uninstalled 2.6 - still crashing
I noticed that my graphics and controller were still there, I deleted the stuntrally folder in AppData/Roaming (or whatever the name; I'm running Windows 7 btw) - still crashing.
I can give further info if you need/want to.

About pacenotes: I think that making them visible through the terrain and objects could make them more effective.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby CryHam » 28 Sep 2015, 12:10

Right. VDrift tracks are crashing on load (but that's only 4 and aren't important).
Didn't test this earlier, is some simple fix probably, will be on master, but won't make a release with just that.

Pacenotes have Transparency slider in Gui: View-Pacenotes tab, to make them more see-through, though IMO look bad if too much.
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Re: Game testing 2.6

Postby Astobe » 28 Sep 2015, 17:33

CryHam {l Wrote}:Right. VDrift tracks are crashing on load (but that's only 4 and aren't important).
Didn't test this earlier, is some simple fix probably, will be on master, but won't make a release with just that.

Pacenotes have Transparency slider in Gui: View-Pacenotes tab, to make them more see-through, though IMO look bad if too much.


Ah, good if it's just this four tracks. I was worried some others would crash too.

About Pacenotes: sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant: if they could be made visible even when they are behind an object or a hill/slope. Like hacking their Z-buffer so there are always visible.
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