GSOC 2013 suggestions/wants.

[leiget]

I was wondering if you guys happen to be working on these things, and if not, if you might conisder doing so:

-Lightmaps affecting characters, sprites, and animated entities.
-Be able to have "sticky" roads, so karts can drive in spirals, loops, and tubes, like in F-Zero GX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvUkSbsNl0. Would be important to have per surface/object "sticky" switch to define what roads are sticky and which aren't.
-Per map speed modifiers for karts. EG: City track speed mod=1x normal speed; long race track speed mod=2.2x normal speed.
-Modable falling speed per map. I think the falling speed is too slow as it is now, but I thought it would be nice to have the option, just in case it's useful.
-Per map nitro property modifiers.

Thanks for looking.

[E-Dragon]

Your Ideas aren´t bad.

-Lightmaps affecting characters, sprites, and animated entities.

This might be hard to do, but I guess you can bring more life in the tracks (the tracks are mostly stall and rarely have moving objects), or particles for some cool effects.

I was wondering if you guys happen to be working on these things, and if not, if you might conisder doing so:

-Be able to have "sticky" roads, so karts can drive in spirals, loops, and tubes, like in F-Zero GX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvUkSbsNl0. Would be important to have per surface/object "sticky" switch to define what roads are sticky and which aren't.

F-Zero X and GX have a completely different engine. I guess there would be some problems with the physics if you fall of those sticky roads, because you were too fast and the track wasn´t flat enough.
Sorry but, you must know that this also hurts me as well as you ( because I´m also a F-Zero fan. It looks so awsome).

The rest can be done as far as i know, however in my opinion these aren´t that important.

[leiget]

Well, I know that it'll take some work, a lot of work.

[Auria]

Hi,

[list]-Lightmaps affecting characters, sprites, and animated entities.

do you mean mapping the lightmap from the "nearest floor" onto the kart, or just generally checking the color of the lightmap under the kart to color it?

-Be able to have "sticky" roads, so karts can drive in spirals, loops, and tubes, like in F-Zero GX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvUkSbsNl0. Would be important to have per surface/object "sticky" switch to define what roads are sticky and which aren't.

This could work by altering the gravity in bullet to be along the normal; although apparently this already mostly works with the current unmodified physics, the biggest issue is rather that the camera does not adapt itself properly to the angle of the road

-Per map speed modifiers for karts. EG: City track speed mod=1x normal speed; long race track speed mod=2.2x normal speed.

I am not a big fan of this; tweaking physics is a very, very difficult process and all physical parameters have been tweaked and tested to death. If we start making them highly variable that's a LOT of playtesting, and likely we would need to make physics different when you go fast or slow. We very much prefer improving track design to be of the right length, rather than compensating with physics

-Modable falling speed per map. I think the falling speed is too slow as it is now, but I thought it would be nice to have the option, just in case it's useful.

I actually think this is already configurable the issue is however physics, the current physics are tweaked for the current gravity, if you change gravity then there may be a need to re-tweak many other physics parameters

-Per map nitro property modifiers.

This is another case where I think it's better to improve track design rather than try to compensate

[leiget]

Actually, I'm not trying to compensate at all. I was actually thinking of trying to sync the in-game action with the music. Also, I want some tracks to be really big to make the grandure all that more awsome, so I need the karts to go a bit faster. I was going to make an outer space level were there is a ship-to-ship battle with lasers going on. Which reminds me:

More suggestions:
-Have a quick quit hotkey (like Ctrl-Q) to quickly exit the program from Debug mode. For track and kart creators to quickly exit the track, for testing.
-Trigger based animations and/or events(?).
-Sprint mode. One long race with no laps.

do you mean mapping the lightmap from the "nearest floor" onto the kart, or just generally checking the color of the lightmap under the kart to color it?

Well, the first option might be interesting, but the second would be more fesable, and even though it may not be as accurate as, say, Unreal Tournament 99, it would still make a big difference even with a simple integration. Maybe just make the lightmap change the vertex colors?

This could work by altering the gravity in bullet to be along the normal; although apparently this already mostly works with the current unmodified physics, the biggest issue is rather that the camera does not adapt itself properly to the angle of the road

Actually the camera works fine. I've been messing around with the nitro properties in stk_config.cfg, and making it go much faster than intended. It works remarkably well, all considered. I could raise the boost speed from 5 to about, say, 500 or less, and, excepting 90 degree walls, the collision works, especially with smoothed normals. With a boost speed of 15 and the collision works as expected. I've play-tested it a bit and really tried to make it go through walls, but it hasn't yet. I'm going to post some videos of it and show you how it works.
As far as the tunnel thing goes, yes, it has worked reasonably well, but, no matter how fast I'm going, the kart falls off the tunnel walls.

EDIT: Actually, right after posting this, I tried my tunnel track, and I was able to go all the way around on the inside. The only issue was when it got to the right side, it kindof jumped off the wall a tiny bit, but it grabbed back and keep going all the way around.

[hiker]

-Be able to have "sticky" roads, so karts can drive in spirals, loops, and tubes, like in F-Zero GX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvUkSbsNl0. Would be important to have per surface/object "sticky" switch to define what roads are sticky and which aren't.

This could work by altering the gravity in bullet to be along the normal; although apparently this already mostly works with the current unmodified physics, the biggest issue is rather that the camera does not adapt itself properly to the angle of the road

I have a patch that does this, but one additional issue I see is that kart could then just stop while they are upside down, which would look a bit silly

-Per map speed modifiers for karts. EG: City track speed mod=1x normal speed; long race track speed mod=2.2x normal speed.

I am not a big fan of this; tweaking physics is a very, very difficult process and all physical parameters have been tweaked and tested to death. If we start making them highly variable that's a LOT of playtesting, and likely we would need to make physics different when you go fast or slow. We very much prefer improving track design to be of the right length, rather than compensating with physics

That's definitely a no-go. People will get used to a kart and need to know how it behaves, it can't change from track to track.

-Modable falling speed per map. I think the falling speed is too slow as it is now, but I thought it would be nice to have the option, just in case it's useful.

I actually think this is already configurable the issue is however physics, the current physics are tweaked for the current gravity, if you change gravity then there may be a need to re-tweak many other physics parameters

Is this with 0.8 or current trunk? IIrc I've fixed some falling issues on trunk recently.

-Per map nitro property modifiers.

This is another case where I think it's better to improve track design rather than try to compensate

Yes, I can't agree more. Behaviour of karts and items need to stay the same between track (though of course having different behaviour for different karts is on our todo list).

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

Actually, I'm not trying to compensate at all. I was actually thinking of trying to sync the in-game action with the music. Also, I want some tracks to be really big to make the grandure all that more awsome, so I need the karts to go a bit faster. I was going to make an outer space level were there is a ship-to-ship battle with lasers going on. Which reminds me:

I'd still say this is a design issue of the track. If you have bring parts of a track close, you can use the 'cannon' function, which is similar to what Mario Kart Wii does: it allows you to 'shoot' (very quick fly) a kart from A to B.

More suggestions:
-Have a quick quit hotkey (like Ctrl-Q) to quickly exit the program from Debug mode. For track and kart creators to quickly exit the track, for testing.
-Trigger based animations and/or events(?).
-Sprint mode. One long race with no laps.

Patches welcome Trigger based animations are planned - it would get higher priority if we had a good track that needs it (*hint*).

Cheers,
Joerg