Stunt Rally 3 with Ogre-Next 3.0 progress - help welcome

[CryHam]

So I am getting somewhere with Ogre 2.3.
This isn't even SR, just the terrain tutorial with more stuff. Sources here
We'll see how it goes. There will be a LOT to do.

Anyone with some C++ or Ogre skills wanting to join? If so please, email me or reply here

[Julius]

So basically a reimplementation on the newest OGRE3D version? Cool, looking forward to it. Does it have some VR support?

[CryHam]

Yeah. It does, but from what I understand, GPU needs to be better to render twice (for both eyes).

[CryHam]

I had some good progress recently.
Ogre-next (now 3.0 on master) is way better than Ogre 1.13.

Currently I'm having smooth about 70 Fps with 3M triangles (faces) and 10k models. And like 127 Fps with 1,7M (on screens: f 1727k) and 6400 models (i instances), with only 15 draw calls (d), amazing.
I'm on Debian 11 with Radeon RX 570 and amdgpu drivers.

No freaking lags, nothing. Feels like butter compared to that ancient paged-geom with lags. Also there are no impostors here.
I have already more vegetation models than we could in SR: tree, palm, 4 rocks, 2 ferns close, plant. I'll probably even add a big tree and a bush.

Terrain has 4 layers already but no triplanar yet. It is 1024 (not 1025 ugh) and I've tested 2k and 4k, work quite well (would be 16MB and 67MB big though).
No grass at all yet, no reflections, no water etc. Fog is from Atmosphere component in Ogre-next.

Screenshots in gallery here.
Sources here, Windows not tested, Linux should work.
I'm attaching 1 below.

[Julius]

Oh, that sounds very promising indeed. The random lags were always quite annoying in the game.

[CryHam]

Okay I'm driving now
SR VDrift code is running. I'm currently dealing with SR tracks, got terrain heightmap almost well fit. And no, nothing more yet from SR tracks.
Ah and I got reflections on cars too.

Man, roadmap is now huge.
I don't want to sound like a broken record talking to a tree, but yeah lots to do, contributors welcome.

We have new repo now, called stuntrally3.
Should be more or less possible to build, well at least on my Debian 11 .

[Julius]

Nice! I am super busy with other projects, but I am definitely looking forward to test it, especially if you add VR support

[CryHam]

Well I did a lot recently. I can load SR tracks and vehicles and they mostly work and remind me of SR
Everything looks still bleak and dull. But at least framerate is smooth at 60 Fps. I only once had 90 batches, otherwise it's lower, even with road.
I got some bugs to fix now too. Feels like doing SR all over again, but much faster this time.
I tried our biggest tracks (like Vast) and they perform way better. Now I can have all trees visible far, and buildings are no problem.
Still, I got no grass, blendmap or triplanar, and just a fake water replacement. Not even thinking of Gui or Editor yet.

[CryHam]

Okay. I got grass, smooth road border, weather and some fog.
All SR tracks load and all vehicles work now.
About half of tracks look similar to SR, many older sceneries look good already (e.g. Forest, Jungle, Desert etc).
But few still look bad, mostly all other planets (Aln Isl Mrs Uni Vlc in track name start).

From all tracks only Taiga and SandyMountain drop below 60 Fps on my hardware (AMD Radeon RX 570).
And it seems only related to vegetation models count being above 10000.
Few are at border near 60, e.g. Beauty, Tropic, they have above 7000.
But this is still without water reflection/refraction and terrain triplanar which could drop Fps on most tracks, we'll see.
Obviously plenty of stuff to do, fix, restore etc in roadmap.

[Julius]

Nice, so things should be smooth on my 480 as well

Looks really great already!

[CryHam]

Things are getting better. I got back my terrain blendmap shader and height fog in shaders.
Hud times and checkpoints are working and I started with Gui, which will take a while to restore all stuff.
Honestly it feels rather empty here, with only Julius replying. I wonder where did everybody go. Perhaps most of those view counts are from spiders, bots and wannabe spammers. Well, you can wish me luck if you can't contribute otherwise

Obviously much stuff is missing and temporary but it's already playable and very smooth. Naturally Windows untested and will need fixing someday. I'm not sure if some sort of alpha/beta release will be earlier than working SR3 Editor. I surely need some material editor first for tweaking and at some point will need to create tracks repo and customize them for SR3.

[Julius]

We did setup a more modern forum on the root domain https://freegamedev.net , but to be honest this didn't really attract many new users and kind of split the small userbase to some extend. I guess most of these kind of discussions are happening on Discord these days, as sad as that is.

Anyway, nice progress!

[CryHam]

All right, I restored now about 50% of the game and 0% of editor.
Single player modes work: Challenges, ghosts etc.
SR3 uses new PBS materials and got new sliders under color (on screen). Vehicles look cooler, and materials are indeed completely different now, were much simpler before.
Finally got gauges. I also changed HUD a bit, all is WIP now, so not sure if any of this will stay this way.
Current details on what is still missing are on roadmap as usual.
I think I'll start with editor soon.
Ah and I got vehicle lights, but they need some fix for grass in shader.

[Julius]

I guess without all new textures the PBS materials will not look much different?

[CryHam]

Cars look better already without PBS textures, since they have reflection and that roughness. Sure would be better with such textures, but also use more GPU RAM.
I'll try to make them someday. I feel this material and light setup is not final. Best would be probably dynamic dust and dirt instead of static textures.
Without such textures, like now, roughness and metalness are as parameters.
All this still needs some tweaking, and best in a new tab with all params for all materials (we had such Tweak tab in old SR editor).
Either way all materials now have roughness and metalness set, and old ambient color, specular power, etc are gone.

[CryHam]

I started with my dear friend ed, aka SR Track Editor.
Most of Gui works already, and like 2 edit modes work (objects, vegetation).
But, for sure terrain editing needs serious rework and new code. And plenty of bugs to fix.

So I'd say we're now done at about: 60% game, 15% editor.
In game I got racing line back and fixed mesh collisions. Also in game graphs, tire and vehicle editors work.
But pacenotes, minimap etc need new shaders which I still need to learn and practice to write well.
Ah and I also have a fancy chart with all emojis that I'm adding in code for better look and orientation .

[QwertyChouskie]

I seem to remember poking around with Stunt Rally a bit a few years ago, and while I never got hugely into the game, it's good seeing it get some love with an engine upgrade.

[CryHam]

Ok I have about 70% of the game and 50% of editor now.
Got back pipe glass, no blinking now. Looking bit different, well like everything.

Split screen works and it has better Fps. E.g.
in old SR, on Tropic, with 3 players I got like 26 Fps,
and new SR3 has 40 Fps (no water but also no vegetation issues at all).

There are still few key things missing, like water, terrain emissive and triplanar, etc, marked bold on roadmap.
Many bugs and plenty of thing to test in editor etc.

[CryHam]

From new stuff I did some wet roads recently, not final yet.

And for glass pipes

I don't remember ever having 60 Fps in middle of Oasis or GlassStairs, I have like 35. But now in SR3 they are at 60 Fps always, nice.

[CryHam]

Allright. Let's say it's about 70% editor now.
I'm doing new things BTW too. So probably +10% more (above 100%) to game and to editor.
Colors tab is now named Paint and has gone to space (complex), but I added a checkbox that hides all and leaves only the palette which has now 179 vehicle paints.
As on screen:

Also improved vehicle paint by this clear coat layer (reflection slider). And I'm trying to add (color changing) fresnel car paints.
Also the palette is dynamic (paints.ini) in user dir and you can add, remove, and move paints now.

I started tracks3 repo. Will be adding tracks one by one once I approve them and edit for SR3.
Another new thing is Horizons (i.e. many terrains). You can now have many and this is also on Gui (added same Gui for roads too). Allowing next, previous terrain, add new, delete current. And you can edit any of terrains, like before.
On screen is MountCaro, which is likely the first track that needed horizon. And I'll be adding them to more tracks, they add value and look good.
Terrains in Ogre-Next perform so well that I don't see a difference in Fps (still 60, didn't try w/o VSync).

[Julius]

Oh, those horizon terrains look very promising! I don't always comment, but I am definitely following this thread with much interest

[CryHam]

Cool. Yeah I don't post too often either.
But color changing paints are so much fun, I had to share.
And now I run out of space on Paints tab I think I'll do some more tabs here, as this will need more sliders.

[CryHam]

Been a while, at slower pace.
Right now we have about 192 tracks of 202 in new tracks3 repo, meant for SR3 tracks. So about 10 look bad (mainly missing emissive terrain, lava on Vlc-*, also Uni-*).

I have to say: horizons make a big difference I think about half of tracks could have them and benefit (still 85 todo). I'll be slowly adding them. Added about 13 already, screen below has: Aus3-Canyon, For13-Castle, Des2-Mntn, Grc8-SlopeCity, Uni4-Pipeline, Aln4-EjeloOutpost.
I also modify some tracks terrain to show more nicer views of horizons. Tracks with high places are great now. Only ones that don't need horizons are those small, dense, middle of jungle or forest tracks.

[EP]

Great Stuff! These screenshots with horizons are so amazing. Looking forward to it comming out!

[Wuzzy]

Oh, what a surprise! So is this version 3.0 or is this a completely new game? And what will be different this time? I don’t really understand what’s going on, but it seems like an engine re-implementation?

Sorry to disappoint, I don’t think I will be able or willing to help tho, as I have a lot of my own projects. Also, my 3D skills are … not there. But this year I wanted to learn OpenGL stuff.

OK, maybe I could help with searching for media file replacements to get the licensing stuff out of the way (see the other thread), but I’m not sure how to get started.

And OOFF I'm very late to the party, lol. I didn’t expect to see such huge news.

Sorry, I haven’t been posting in FDG since ages … Why on earth do we have 2 competing forums now??? They should be the same. This is really confusing and frustrating. The addition of the new forums was probably the biggest mistake FDG has ever made.