Sewer Track

[SvenAndreasBelting]

Hi guys as said in my post a few days ago I'm currently working on a sewer track.
It's track design is mostly based on some older concepts by 0zone0ne.
ctdabomb already started making a track (which is available in the addons) based on those concepts a few years back https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic ... ilit=sewer https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic ... d56beb21c0
Since he isn't active anymore and I really like those concepts I wanted to give this track idea another shot.
I first thought about using his track as a starting ground but after reviewing the track I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch.

Originially I wanted the track to be progressed a bit further before posting it here but I figured it might be better to post it now because getting gameplay feedback earlier is always better than later.

Download link for the track:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhahv0ubpwqr3 ... n.zip?dl=0

The reason why I wanted to post it later is simply that I didn't want to waste any time texturing before I wasn't sure the objects wouldn't be final, for that reason the track was mostly grey for a very long time and therefore not good to drive (on graphic level 1 and 2 even impossible).
But I'm at a point in development were it's kinda the last chance to change things about the gameplay without wasting a ton of development time.

So I'm personally pretty happy with the gameplay of this track so far, the only thing I'm not sure about is the 3. and 4. turn

I don't dislike these turns just on their own but in combination they are pretty difficult if your not on a lightweight kart, (and even then they are not easy) I would probably leave it the way it is, but I think it's very reasonable if you rather want to see it changed, so let me know what you guys think about it.

As I said playing the track forward is in my opinion (exept for the above) pretty good already, but feedback is of course very welcome.
Reverse works already BUT it's only for testing, like with snow weeks I will start polishing the reverse mode just when the rest is finished.

Most part of the texturing work is NOT FINAL, I textured most parts of the track just to make it playable and to give it at least a bit of atmosphere.
The only part of the track which is anywere close to be looking like the final track, is the the first room you drive through, and a few parts at the double jump section.
Some objects are of course already nicly textured, but what I wanna say is: just dont pay too much attention to the graphics yet as most of it will be changing.


The following things are not really important, I just want to let you guys know some of my thoughts.

A few other things that I'm currently juggliing around with are things like:
-do I want the whole track to be indoor if not what should the outdoor surounding look like,
-how to seperate the wider sections of the track so you can't look into other sections of the track,
-and the genereal tone of the, track should it be rather dark or a bit brighter (I'm tending to mix it right now).

those are the things I will have to tackle next, after that asset modelling, texturing and special effects are on my to-do-list (whats a sewer without some blubbery green slime )
Im planning to reuse the lava splash animation I used in the new Fortmagma and give it a green color and I also want to add some new animations like popping airbubbles and things like that to make the track feel more alive.


Have a great day

Sven

[tempAnon093]

I did miss the 4th turn the first time, but I like it. My opinion is that if you're driving on SuperTux, you can't complain about those corners being hard. You kept my favourite parts of the track layout which is great to see.
I don't actually see anything bad about seeing into other sections of the track, like through those arching support columns, or maybe even looking through an aquarium-type glass window. It adds some nice depth.

One part I would like to see added is the way that the old track suddenly becomes narrow just before the finish line. I can understand if some see it as annoying, I think it adds variation and a final challenge that can make a tight race even more exciting!
I also like the way the original has, for the final turn, the feeling that you're descending under the sludge into a concrete underground tunnel, the sludge so close it could almost overflow.

A couple of sections, like the end of the first spiral curve down into the tunnel, and the archway part just before the double ramps, to me feel too smooth. I would suggest experimenting with suddenly hitting flat road to add a bit of impact between the incline and the flat.

I really like the nitros in the air (I'm surprised we don't see more tracks with that!) and the double ramps. Those are lots of fun

[eltomito]

I like the gameplay!

I'm just thinking that since it's so cool to see the sewage flowing out of that pipe into the slime pool, it may be even cooler to have sewage gush over the track so that you have to drive under it. Would adding another sewage pipe on the wall next to the track and having a jet of slime overshoot the drive path be possible?

Also, the track could use a bunch of rats and a lot of garbage you can push around: crushed cans, crumpled up plastic bags, rotten half-eaten hamburgers, a boot with the sole coming off...

[Polo10]

Hello Sven,
Finally, I'm not asking you for shortcuts because otherwise the other paths in your tracks would be useless and you would have worked for nothing. What I'm asking you for are paths here and there that would take an equivalent amount of time in the game, whether they are short or long. And that they are unusual and invisible at first sight (for example in your sewer track you could add a path in a pipe at the end of the track).
This is an example for your next races.
Good luck !!!!

[SvenAndreasBelting]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback.

I ran into some serious performance issues on this track because of the techniques i used for the green slime and the lighting.

That demotivated me a bit and I decided to work on the magma track for a while instead.

Once I will start to work on this track again I will get back to the feedback in more detail.

[altcoin]

Great track. I have two notes.

1. I see you already mentioned this above. The presence green slime seems to significantly slow down the computiation. FPS go down the moment the slime comes in view, and sometimes stk becomes visibly choppy. I don't know if there is a way to make this more efficient or not.

2. Falling off the first jump does not rescue the kart. When the kart is rescued (eg. manually) it is dropped directly back into the the slime in the middle of the jump.

[QwertyChouskie]

I didn't notice any performance issues on my system, but then again I'm playing with an RTX 3060.

That being said, the in-progress Vulkan renderer for STK is already sowing very promising performance uplift, so I wouldn't worry too much about the current slowdowns, as they should be fixed soon enough.

One suggestion about the track itself, I noticed in one part of the sewer, the road slopes up to the wall rather than being a hard cut, it'd be cool to make this part a walldriving section.

[SvenAndreasBelting]

I didn't notice any performance issues on my system, but then again I'm playing with an RTX 3060.

Yeah I'm on a 3060 as well but some players on the discord went from like 90 FPS down to 9 FPS on some parts of the track.

Vulcan might help, but if it doesn't help or at least not help enough, I want to already have another system in place, to make sure the track will be playable.

One suggestion about the track itself, I noticed in one part of the sewer, the road slopes up to the wall rather than being a hard cut, it'd be cool to make this part a walldriving section.

Oh no what a spoiler
Just kidding, but you can be sure that I had the same idea and I love it.
I will definitely use those parts for some cool walldriving sections, (what a waste would it be to not do that)

[eltomito]

Ooops! Ignore this comment. It's about New Fort Magma...

I seems to me that the swinging spike balls are much harder to evade on Expert level than on SuperTux level.
Is it because on SuperTux, the karts go faster so it's easier to slip by?
If it's so, maybe the balls should swing faster in SuperTux mode.

[QwertyChouskie]

I didn't notice any performance issues on my system, but then again I'm playing with an RTX 3060.

Yeah I'm on a 3060 as well but some players on the discord went from like 90 FPS down to 9 FPS on some parts of the track.

Vulcan might help, but if it doesn't help or at least not help enough, I want to already have another system in place, to make sure the track will be playable.

One suggestion about the track itself, I noticed in one part of the sewer, the road slopes up to the wall rather than being a hard cut, it'd be cool to make this part a walldriving section.

Oh no what a spoiler
Just kidding, but you can be sure that I had the same idea and I love it.
I will definitely use those parts for some cool walldriving sections, (what a waste would it be to not do that)

I remember a while back, it was mentioned that overlapping lights causes big slowdowns in the current engine. Due to the number of overlapping lights used in this track, that's probably the issue. @Benau we need area light support in the engine! It'll both run faster and look better for these kinds of tracks.

[QwertyChouskie]

Looks like I was wrong, transparent texture rendering is what's killing the framerate. Area lights would still be very good to have though.

Lemme take a quick poke at things, and see if there's anything obvious that can be optimized.

[QwertyChouskie]

Even the Vulkan backend struggles with the green slime. At this point, I suspect it's not so much to do with with STK's engine, it's more just the limitations of alphablend performance in general. I'd recommend just reducing the number of alpha planes to like ~5-10 rather than the like maybe 50-100 that are currently there. Or if you want to get extra fancy, you could perhaps use a custom shader that uses the depth buffer to increase opacity of the slime's texture the further away the underlying pixel of the wall/kart/whatever is. Such a shader could be used anywhere there's water in the game. This effect is sort of faked in Gran Paradiso Island with a sand texture that gets more blue as it goes deeper, but an actual liquid shader would be awesome.

[SvenAndreasBelting]

It's actually both, the green slime and the many lights.
But you're right that the slime has a way bigger impact.

Does someone with more technical knowledge than me, know if the radius or strength value of a light further influences the performance?
I used 2 green lights with, I think it was a radius of 50 and a strength of 10, to get a nice glow from the green slime, and I'm a bit suspicious that they caused more performance issues than using lights with standard ranges of these values.

And yes area lights would be very cool

I actually used 126 planes layered on top of each other, quite an insane amount. I did that on purpose though to give a better impression of the water depth, without weird segments with different colours were the planes touch the other objects (and I really liked the result).

Vertex colours are pretty nice for that as well, but it only works for static objects and not for karts driving trough it.

A custom shader would be the coolest solution for sure, however I'm not a coder and not able to create one, if someone wants to help me with that, that would be amazing of course, but otherwise I will find nice solutions using less planes and vertex painting.

[QwertyChouskie]

BTW I'm not sure if you've already seen this but it seems applicable here: https://github.com/qwertychouskie/Super ... cept%20Art

As for the liquid shader, that's likely going to have to come after the Vulkan engine is feature-complete, as the OpenGL engine has some annoying limitations (e.g. no reflections on semitransparent surfaces) that would get in the way of a liquid shader looking as good as possible. For now, opaque slime should look fine, we can upgrade it when the engine allows it.

[rubberduck]

I really love this track so far too, and I also think that reducing the amount of the planes, maybe just a few, up to 10 works well. Next I would focus on the rest of the track geometry.
And here some ideas from me: make a round pipe like piece of track, where you can drive in spirals, something like the pipes in stunt rally, and an alternative route, and both routes have the jump, going through the same room (and where you can see karts driving the other route jumping over that ramp), even maybe a bit track width variation at some points.

And finally I am thinking to contribute a bit, maybe some smaller props, like the trash items, the idea that someone else posted here before.
I also don't know if it is possible to import the model files exported to STK, or do I need the blend file to experiment with own additions? Anyway I would like to be able to download the blend file somewhere too, even without textures, if this is too much.

[SvenAndreasBelting]

And here some ideas from me: make a round pipe like piece of track, where you can drive in spirals, something like the pipes in stunt rally, and an alternative route, and both routes have the jump, going through the same room (and where you can see karts driving the other route jumping over that ramp), even maybe a bit track width variation at some points.

I like the idea with the pipe, the problem is that such a pipe takes a lot of space to work well gameplay wise. I'm not sure if there is a good place for that rn.
Maybe you already have a specific idea in mind, if so a quick concept could help me understand better what exactly you were thinking.

And finally I am thinking to contribute a bit, maybe some smaller props, like the trash items, the idea that someone else posted here before.
I also don't know if it is possible to import the model files exported to STK, or do I need the blend file to experiment with own additions? Anyway I would like to be able to download the blend file somewhere too, even without textures, if this is too much.

Nice some good props would defenitly be welcome!

You can in import the .spm files to blender but it's not very practical, since you will be missing things like lights, drivelines, library objects and a lot more that's only stored in the .blend

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayqpjt6oj6inv ... r.zip?dl=0
heres a link to the newset version of the tracks .blend and other source files (it's still in the older blender 2.79 version because I was to lazy to convert the track yet )

[rubberduck]

ok, cool, I just tested your other tracks, they are cool too, and I got an idea for the snow track, right after the jump, before you enter the tunnel in the curve, there could be a (maybe frozen) waterfall and on the road above a short wooden bridge, with a river going down to the waterfall. And the ice cave there could use some ice ground, and I think the position of the icicles is a bit tricky, but somehow ok

[rubberduck]

I really like the idea of a round track pipe, maybe could be right before or after that jump in that curve.
The other idea was to add a split route in this area where the jump is, and make 2 jumps cross each other , like in my rough drawing, seen from the top

[SvenAndreasBelting]

I really like the idea of a round track pipe, maybe could be right before or after that jump in that curve.
The other idea was to add a split route in this area where the jump is, and make 2 jumps cross each other , like in my rough drawing, seen from the top

I gotta say I'm currently working on too many projects, to put in the time and work to test if your ideas will work without breaking to much of the existing enviroment.

If you want to, you can try to make a quick and dirty implement of youre ideas in the track, if they work well I would like to work these ideas into the track.

[rubberduck]

I know that too, I am working on so many other projects, which includes a godot puzzle game, or things like making sound effects right now, but soon I have more time for experimenting with the track, maybe in 1-2 weeks

[rubberduck]

I had a bit more time than I thought and started to experiment with the track, also ported the file to at least blender 2.93 RC, I tried it once with a newer version, but the exporter didn't work for me there
I tested and worked on an idea to improve this transition area, both visually and in terms of driving.

Then I experimented to bring a few of my own textures in, which I made completely by myself, the trick here was using own photos with g'mic filters

I even managed to make some sort of risky shortcut, which is basically this pipe here, and worked a bit on the room inside there too, but this is still very sketchy

[SvenAndreasBelting]

I had a bit more time than I thought and started to experiment with the track, also ported the file to at least blender 2.93 RC, I tried it once with a newer version, but the exporter didn't work for me there
I tested and worked on an idea to improve this transition area, both visually and in terms of driving.

sewer_001.jpg

Looks good for gameplay, but I wanted that transition to be a blocked/not finished road were you then jump into another part of the track. If anything I would change the part before that.

Then I experimented to bring a few of my own textures in, which I made completely by myself, the trick here was using own photos with g'mic filters

sewer_002.jpg

A bit hard to tell how those textures look, the rusty metal texture looks a bit to photo realistic to me, but again it's hard to tell from the picture.

Also I left the top of that section open on purpose, to add some variety, and give the feel as you would descend into the sewer.

I even managed to make some sort of risky shortcut, which is basically this pipe here, and worked a bit on the room inside there too, but this is still very sketchy

sewer_003.jpg

That looks really cool! Will probably need a lot of testing to get right though.

[rubberduck]

I am more focused on making some props for the track as I had it planned before. Right now I am testing and developing these in my version of the track, later I want to put these objects in a separate file though too.

I worked further on these spheres, testing different looks

and other smaller things, like this trash bag, and more things are planned

[tempAnon093]

I tried it once with a newer version, but the exporter didn't work for me there

When was this? Because I updated the exporter on March 15 to make it work properly with the new versions (I'm exporting fine with 3.5.0) so if it's still broken, let me know.

[rubberduck]

It was maybe a week ago, I will check it again soon, maybe something else was the cause, something in the file that wasn't set up or so. For example in some conditions where I disabled a specific collection made the exporter fail when I tried to export it. Or yesterday where I had parts of the driveline not over ground (set to reset on drive), where it didn't want to export the track.