New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 11 Oct 2014, 11:45

Hi, everyone!

Last week I posted a list with a few ideas for tracks in Samuncle's post about the song for "Chocolate". One of those ideas is a project of a track in a soviet town with a space rocket center. Samuncle liked my idea and, for coincidence, that's my preferred project. Then, hHe told me to create a new topic specific for this purpose.

Well, I immediately started to plan the new track begining by the plant of the town and the space center (as I do on my work). Then I spent the last weekend thinking about my project and doing some concept art to show you. But, I asked myself "why not start modelling the game right now?" and I did this.

Now, I'm proud to say that me and my brother (Tuxkartdriver) have modelled the track in just 4 days. The pieces are all modelled in 3D but not yet mapped and texturized. So, I made some illustrations using Inkscape to give you an idea about what I had in my mind. The result is showed below.

This is the general plant. It's easy to understand.
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TRAÇADOem 10-10-2014.png
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 11 Oct 2014, 11:54

Hello

You said you have made the models. Can you post the track ?
Even if it has basic textures I like to see the volumes and how it looks. Unfortunately I can't see that in a 2d plan
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 11 Oct 2014, 12:00

Knowing the town
The peripheral area is rural and includes some houses, a plantation, some towers of electricity and a monastery, of course. That's my concept of the rural houses and the monastery. The facade of the monastery is not definitive.

The karts enter the urban area in a rustic path through many trees in front the housing blocks where there's a park with a playground for the local kids.

Now, some humor: the mani square has a statue of the great fictional leader Nolkai Nolokaiev :lol: . The square is big and let you see the building of government where you find the mayor, the legislative and the judicial brench. Note the local headquarter of KGB in the right side.

Sorry for the bad image quality in the second illustration (it's a print screen).
Attachments
Rural Area .jpg
Parks.jpg
Playground and Matryoshkas.jpg
Square.jpg
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 11 Oct 2014, 12:03

But have you the track so I can test it t in stk ?
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 11 Oct 2014, 12:06

The Space Center

The town is divided by the main avenue. The space complex is big and in front of the Institute of Technology.
There are two parts: 1. the environment for visitors including the very big replica of the "Moscow's' "Monument of the conquerors of the space" over a field where you see the red star and the Museum of Space Program.

The museum includes a lot of beautiful pieces like spacecrafts, rockets and cosmonaut space suit as well posters. The museum is also a tunel.
The part 2 is the rocket center, itself where the Soyuz rocket is placed on the platform. All those pieces (rockets and spacecrafts) are already modelled by my brother.
See the art to have an idea.

Wait for new drawings (today) showing the interior of the space museum. I hope you like my new project. :D
Attachments
Soyuz Rocket and Platform.jpg
Viiew from the RadioMoscows street.jpg
Visitor's Area.jpg
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 11 Oct 2014, 12:09

Hi, Sumuncle!

My broher is making the track.I hope we may test the experimental track nest week. I will try to record a videoin the case the test be sucessfull.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and and it Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 11 Oct 2014, 12:12

I will try to do some print screens showing the town in 3D but with art (fake textures) made in the inkscape. This takes some hours to do, but I expect that I can post the new ilustrations tonight (Brazil's time).
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and it Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 12 Oct 2014, 02:03

Hello :)

Some advices

The time to make one lap in the track should be roughly between 1min and 1min10 at the difficulty Expert without ANY ITEMS nor BOOST or BOOSTER. Please keep this in mind, shrink down everything and trust me it's already a big project even with a "little" track like that.

Now as I saw you made some very interesting concepts that's a good start. By roughly looking at your map it seems the track will be too big. The landscape might be big but the track should be always no more than 1min.

Also it's difficult to tell but I hope we will have some up and down section. Because a flat plane isn't interesting. The items is generally placed when the track is done in 3D to balance them and keep a good ratio between items, banana and nitro. It's difficult to tell from the beginning where they should be placed.

I don't see the point of putting giant matryoshka. I would rather use them as a detail or if you want a big matryoshka, why not using them for the space monument. It's basically how a rocket with multiple stages is built.

Also colors are pretty dark and a sad mood. STK is colorful, you can see some references about real space port and launch pad. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ch_pad.jpg

You should avoid the museum. Focus on the launchpad and you can make some beautiful stuff. Make something big since in russia stuff are generally big and industrial looking.
You can put 3 giant projector to illuminate the whole track and especially the launch tower in the distance. This will give to the launch pad an epic dimension. ALso if you are motivated it's better to focus on how to make a rocket taking off every ~15 second than a museum.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/2830 ... 122777.jpg

Also why not including duga array in the background
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... e_2014.jpg

About references to real world. As we made with Val verde you should avoid to make a direct reference to soviet union. A fictional country should be found.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and it Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 12 Oct 2014, 11:58

Hi!

The lap time
The track is as big as the "Coyote canyon" and, based on port (about the same size), one lap time will be around 1 min with no powerups, but I intend to test it next week.

Downs and Ups
Be sure that there are a lot of ups and donws. The town was founded over a higher terrain and the rural area is in the down terrain. The main square and the museum have lower floors. There's a tunnel, too. See the images bellow to see what I mean.

Matryoshkas
As pictured above, the park has a playground for the children who lives in the housing blocks. So, the matryoshkas are just to "garnish" using worldwide known elements from Russian culture. I ban change the colors but I made the dolls in blue because there are toys full of yellow and red in the playgraound as showed in an ilustration posted on yesterday.

Colors
This track happens in the Spring of 1967. There will be a lot of colorful gardens as well buildings of diferent colors (real facades with cloned colors from real soviet buildings), trees, terrain, monuments and the museum, plenty of colorful pieces. The Rural area has some colorful houses, a monastery, a plantation and a forrest on the horizon. There are beautiul monuments and a very beautiful museum full of surprises.

The Museum
The museum has a beautiful facade but, the main pieces of the game are inside the museum. The pieces are done and are very important and beautiful including spacecrafts, rockets and colorful panels with typical soviet art style and posteres as well some displays with historical objects. The spacecrafts and rockets are big and already done by my brother, who spent many hours since Tuesday.

Be sure that the museum is the most important and the most beautiful piece of the track. I think that every player will like the museum.

The Launch Pad and the Rocket Center Itself
I intend to make another version of the same track at night with different drivelines. So, this one will have a lift off and lights but, for while the current track is scheduled for a beautiful spring morning.

The Country
The ficitional country is in the Eastern Europe and it official language is Russian. The national colors are red, yellow and orange. The name of the country may be somethnh like "UNION OF DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICS".

The country is very burocratic and it has a KGB too. The monuments (to homage heroes of the space race) are replicas of real monuments in the former URSS.

Note that the track was planning based on the soviet archtecture and art, so, there is a lot of symbols and pannels in the visual style of soviet propaganda but no reference to Lenin (only the humoristic statue showed before, of course :) ) , Stalin and any other leader or political stuff. Just visual references to work, science, education and peace. Everthing writen in cirilic.

Trust me: a very beautiful, colorful and exciting track is coming. However, this depends on the interest of the players in this forum. If most have no interest to play this track I will continue to work on the port. :|

For while, I'm attaching some print screens and basic art to give you an idea but I will upload some more elaborate art later showing some details but, not all details, to keep the surprise.
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MONTAGEM 01 em 12-10.jpg
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 12 Oct 2014, 16:01

Hello

Well it's your track and you can do what ever you want with your track. However, here is some suggestions.

About The lap time
1 min without ANY help from items and or booster. Trust me you can already do a cool track with that. The bigger is the track the bigger is the work to finish it. Doing the path is "relatively" easy. But filling the environment with stuff is time consuming and if the track is too big you will quickly loose motivation + it will look very empty.

About Downs and Ups
I can't really tell without TESTING the track. Keep in mind the easier way for me to see what you are planning is to test a track. Of course it won't be the finished track, but I have no problem. You can do a quick test with cubes and basic geometry just to give an idea of the path and if it's fun to play. It's the first step even before creating objects.

Matryoshkas
As pictured above, the park has a playground for the children who lives in the housing blocks. So, the matryoshkas are just to "garnish" using worldwide known elements from Russian culture. I ban change the colors but I made the dolls in blue because there are toys full of yellow and red in the playgraound as showed in an ilustration posted on yesterday.

Again this is YOUR track you can do what you want however this is a classical example that show the difference between a game environement made by a professional and something made by beginners.
An object should NEVER be placed just to be placed or because it's cool. If you just put random stuff like that people won't understand why it's there and it's confusing. Sure it's part from the Russian culture but by just placing random objects you won't make a good track. Objects in real life are never placed randomly. It seems random but it follow a pattern. The pattern might be random sure but at least there is a patern.
For human objects it's worst since it's made and placed by humans. Even in a scene of destruction objects aren't destroyed randomly.

If you do this it will look like you found in a 3D repository objects related to Russia and you just placed them because they are cool. In real life you will never see a big Matryoshkas like that.
I strongly suggest to start a creative process and to think about the philosophy of Matryoshkas.
Basically it's objects who are identical except the scale. Maybe you can do this with the stage of a rocket, or with building in the landscape. You can do a reference to Matryoshkas without putting any Matryoshkas in the track.
That's far better than just placing a random object in the track just because it's part of the theme of the track.
For instance I made water lock in the track Cocoa Temple (chocolate). Sure it's locks, but it's not like they were just placed randomly. They are made in harmony with the theme of the track.

About The Museum
The museum has a beautiful facade but, the main pieces of the game are inside the museum. The pieces are done and are very important and beautiful including spacecrafts, rockets and colorful panels with typical soviet art style and posteres as well some displays with historical objects. The spacecrafts and rockets are big and already done by my brother, who spent many hours since Tuesday.

IMHO it's a bad choice. Since your are putting so much effort outside with buildings, village, launch pad etc, the museum should not be the point of focus of the track. As track designer it's your choice where people will focus their attention. The museum it's just a random and annoying building, you can just put a sign outside with: Museum of space conquest.
My God, you are in a SPACE PORT, do you know what it means ? It's a f***** location where rockets are launched. The vast majority of people that visit space port it's not to visit the museum :P.

THAT should be the focus of the track. Not a random annoying museum with unused stuff. If a player choose a track called space port, We except a space port not a museum.
This track happens in the Spring of 1967. There will be a lot of colorful gardens as well buildings of diferent colors (real facades with cloned colors from real soviet buildings), trees, terrain, monuments and the museum, plenty of colorful pieces. The Rural area has some colorful houses, a monastery, a plantation and a forrest on the horizon. There are beautiul monuments and a very beautiful museum full of surprises.

Hum okay, You should avoid cloning real building. You can take inspiration from them but not a perfect clone. It's better to create your own universe, with your own building, they might be inspired by real ones but not a perfect copy.

The Launch Pad and the Rocket Center Itself
I intend to make another version of the same track at night with different drivelines. So, this one will have a lift off and lights but, for while the current track is scheduled for a beautiful spring morning.

Waaaaaaay too complex. I bet you will be able to finish just the first track (if you want to reach the quality of Cocoa Temple). You should merge the two ideas, it's important to reduce the work load and making a night version isn't as easy as it sounds. You can set simply the track at sunset or during the afterglow, so you have both night and day in the same track.

The country is very burocratic and have a KGB too. The monuments (to homage heroes of the space race) are replicas of real monuments in the former URSS.

Note that the track was planning based on the soviet archtecture and art, so, there is a lot of symbols and pannels in the visual style of soviet propaganda but no reference to Lenin (only the humoristic statue showed before, of course :) ) , Stalin and any other leader or political stuff. Just visual references to work, science, education and peace. Everthing writen in cirilic.

Okay so no political stuff except you are using a real life organization ><, the KGB. Now again you make what you want but you should avoid to put a real life organization in a track. This game should be cartoon ^^. We aren't making Call Of duty 10

Trust me: a very beautiful, colorful and exciting track is coming. However, this depends on the interest of the players in this forum. If most have no interest to play this track I will continue to work on the port

We will be happy to test your track when you will release it. Even if it's just cube we will be able to see if it's fun and what can be improved.

I made this speed concept art just to show you how I would make a track like that. You see this massive rocket surrounded by 3 giant floodlights to lit the area, some little building a blast deflector in the ground and other details in the middle of a desert area. There is a distant village but overall the focus is kept on the main subject. The rocket ready to lift off.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby Anon » 12 Oct 2014, 18:35

My God, you are in a SPACE PORT, do you know what it means ? It's a f***** location where rockets are launched. The vast majority of people that visit space port it's not to visit the museum :P.


I think the main issue with focusing on rockets would be that you can't have them blasting off every 60 seconds without breaking the 1960's cold war vibe. When I think of a Soviet spaceport, I think of a extremely quiet place in the middle of nowhere from which rockets are occassionally launched.

IMHO, it seems like this track focuses more on the culture of Eastern Europe/Russia (hence the museum), and it's only set in a spaceport because that's an interesting part of the culture. It's also not what you'd expect, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 13 Oct 2014, 06:21

Hi,again!

"In real life you will never see a big Matryoshkas like that."

http://meladan.livejournal.com/469369.html
http://moscowalk.ru/vao/sokolniki/parki/matryoshka.html
http://park.sokolniki.com/rus/anounces/news/1907.aspx
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118174101921/

http://img1.liveinternet.ru/images/atta ... rge_31.jpg

http://www.master-raduga.nnov.ru/fest_hohloma_simvol

http://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images ... -park.html
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-m ... ge28493611
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-m ... ge28493641

http://i-fakt.ru/samaya-bolshaya-matreshka-v-mire/
http://blogs.carleton.edu/moscowbeyond2 ... rn3vgm.jpg

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118174101905/
http://otzovik.com/review_446275.html
http://www.liveinternet.ru/tags/%F3%E4% ... %FC%ED%EE/

http://en.ria.ru/photolents/20110525/164220408.html
http://jeremynicholl.photoshelter.com/i ... ksd5DMD.P8
http://jeremynicholl.photoshelter.com/i ... Gj0PvV.unc

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Z5iIJDPVQE/U ... shkas+%285%
29+19+Aug+2012.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r0CY-YZUrzw/U ... kas+%25282%

2529+19+Aug+2012.jpg

http://www.mbkmegas.com/data/dt_mzl_img004.jpg
http://park.sokolniki.com/EditorFiles/i ... eshki4.jpg
http://www.manchzuria.ru/matr.html

http://en.ria.ru/photolents/20110525/164220408.html
http://americangirlsinmoscow.blogspot.c ... -mega.html
http://8monthsinukraine.blogspot.com.br ... -2012.html
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118174950734/

http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhot ... rt_Museum-
Manzhouli_Inner_Mongolia.html

China
http://www.tour-beijing.com/blog/beijin ... manzhouli/

Eggs
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118176038439/
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118174364944/
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/308778118174152382/

Giant matryoshkas in parks are common in countries of the former USSR. I'm not "inventing" some foolish because it seems nice and look beautiful to insert in a track. I know a lot about Russian culture and my mom has a matryoshka bought about 20 years ago. My brother speaks Russian (he always talk with Russians visiting Rio, including athletes and business men, like a vice-president of a factory of MIGs. He studied Russian culture. I have a lot of information
about Russia and the former USSR, even if we are not communist,

Everything we (me and my brother) do is based on references. Until this moment, I have more than 600 pictures of reference for this track. The giant Matryoshkas are part of Russian culture as decorative pieces for playgrounds and parks like showed in the links above. That's the difference between "to think" and to work professionally based on references.


Randomic?
Well, I'm not used to put random stuffs, but I have seen many objects included randomly in some STK tracks. Some giant unnecessary objects and some objects placed where there was not reason for that. The only one weird thing is the group of matryoshkas in my track even if I tried to reproduce scenes from the real world? What's the logic behind this?

Well, this is a game (maybe most players are kids or teenagers, so we must to remember them when we create a track or just when we post a comment) and, like Mario kart, some environments and situations are "Childish", unreal and, sometimes, absurd, but, there's nothing wrong. It's just for fun.. This is not the real world. In real life we never see a race with elephants, chinchillas, penguins and monkeys driving karts on nuclear plants or above the Earth, in the space. STK is a fantastic world. A world of fantasy, of course.


The Museum
"My God, you are in a SPACE PORT, do you know what it means ? It's a f***** location where rockets are launched. The vast majority of people that visit space port it's not to visit the museum."

"THAT should be the focus of the track. Not a random annoying museum with unused stuff. If a player choose a track called space port, We except a space port not a museum."

Remembering the title of the post, the track is not called Space Port. The provisory name was "Soviet Town", but, since you advise me to avoid the explicit reference to the former USSR, I will find another good name. I will not name it "Rocket Center" because, for most, the first thing that comes to mind when they hear "Rocket Center" are the NASA Space Flight Centers. I can see US citizens downloading the track thinking that they would find Titans, Space Shuttles and a lot of symbols of USA in the environment, so they start the game and see a track in the former Soviet Union...

"...a SPACE PORT, do you know what it means ? It's a ***** location where rockets are launched. The vast majority of people that visit space port it's not to visit the museum" :shock:

It's obvious I know, if not I would make a track on the "Valley of Dinossaurs" or "Allan quatermain and the lost city of gold" or any other old adventure movie like Indiana Jones. But, if the track was in a soccer arena a match should be happen at the same time? Well, the "Classic volcano" is not erupting while the karts are there (this would be terrible, by the way). "Bovine Barnyard" is a farm, and a farm is a place where people cultivate plants and have animals (cattle, poultry, suines, etc.) as livestock but we don't see a farmer on his tractor, cows being milked or cattle becoming meat, of course, but, everybody understand the scenary and the context. They don't need to see the things happening to realize what the site is about.

This track is placed in a remote town where there is a space rocket center. The focus is the town. The rocket center is an important plant to enrich the visual of the track.

There is a lot of space centers in USA too and, most time, people visit the museums to see static spacecrafts because launch is a rare event. In the real life, rockets are launched every 3, 4 or 6 weeks, not every 15 seconds. In 2014, fourteen launches are scheduled in Baikonur (Cosmodrome) and just eight in Kourou.

What tourists and visitors in general would see in the rest of the time? The "annoying" museums!

Now, imagine, the professionals who works in Nintendo playing my track with a rocket (or watching the video on Youtube) lift off at every 20 seconds. I don't know, but, I think that they would mock and laugh.


Quality and criticism
Look, Samuncle, you seem a nice guy trying to keep the quality of the STK project and this is good, but, you seem me pretty angry about my museum even if you haven't seen it just because the museum takes off the focus from the launch pad. I will not waste the opportunity to include a lift off in a track on a rocket port because I'm planning a second version of this track at night, but, for while, I will not put the focus in the rocket pad itself because this demands a lot of work modelling complex parts that may look exactly like in the real world and, as I said, this game was made in only a few days because we have other things to do and I had already a track ("Holliday on Port") with mapping and tests in progress. So, we will not spend much time (extra time) in this track.

Even so, you see my thoroughness (posting a map with the plant and the symbols placed where I think they should be trying to help you all to see what I have in mind. Then, I made some fast concept arts while I was working on the pieces in 3D. I'm really interest to contribute with the STK project but it's stressful when somebody doesn't likes almost everything I post and I must wasting my time justifying my ideas instead working on the track.

Be cool Samuncle, we will not make STK fall down in quality. On the contrary: we (me and my brother) are trying to take this track to the higher quality possible in a professional level. Unfortunatelly, STK has a lot of limitations: time lap, file size, time to upload, image quality limited to 1024x1024, etc., but, as I said, my brother works on modelling and I'm an artist (even if I have another activity) and we do professional works. He doesn't make rockets like cartoon rockets.The Soyuz rocket seeing in this track looks exactly like the real Soyuz rocket (the model in 1967) with the limits of this game, of course. We use Maya to modelling due to the high level of control of each tool. Everything we do is in a perfec scale - from the high of grass to the size of ships and it parts. Everything is perfectly aligned with precision. We don't make pieces and aligment based on eye view. However, we can't do everything that we would like to do due to the limitations of a game that's downloaded instead sold in packages with gigabytes like Mario kart.

As a player and fan, I don't like to see how some fans of Mario kart mocking and ridiculing the quality of STK (even in the official videos of Supertuxkart Project), calling it a "Cheap Mario kart clone" or making statements about supposed "bad graphics" of the game. If the level of criticism there (on Youtube) was in the same level as it is here, in the official forum, those guys would shut the up forever. Unfortunately, nobody gave them a deserved response, since they are doing bad propaganda about STK.

"...You should avoid cloning real building. You can take inspiration from them but not a perfect clone."
I mean real colors cloned, not cloned facades.

Politics
"Okay so no political stuff except you are using a real life organization, the KGB."
No. I said "The country is very bureaucratic and haS a KGB too". Note: "a" KGB. In other words, a rigorous organization for State security like the KGB, not the same organization neither the same name but a fictional organization inspired in the real KGB.


Dazed and Confused
"This game should be cartoon"
This is interesting to see, because, according to the "official guidelines for Supertuxkart", It's not a too cartoon game. So, we (the new contributors) don't know when and where we may represent the real world or the cartoon style. :?

My original idea was to mix good humored contexts placed in scenarios that looks like the real world. I think that most tracks are thus.

Another question: the official rules say "Avoid making the track too long (over 1m30 is definitely too long - between approximately 1m00 and 1m30 is considered appropriate for one loop without using booster and or items (like nitro))." This mean that, if my track had a time lap of 1m20, it would match perfectly the rules. Even so, I believe that the time lap will be around 1 minute. I will test it this week.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 13 Oct 2014, 06:25

Anon {l Wrote}:
I think the main issue with focusing on rockets would be that you can't have them blasting off every 60 seconds without breaking the 1960's cold war vibe. When I think of a Soviet spaceport, I think of a extremely quiet place in the middle of nowhere from which rockets are occassionally launched.

IMHO, it seems like this track focuses more on the culture of Eastern Europe/Russia (hence the museum), and it's only set in a spaceport because that's an interesting part of the culture. It's also not what you'd expect, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.


Exactly what I have in mind. :)
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby 0zone0ne » 13 Oct 2014, 10:34

I really do like the idea of having an entire track in an isolated spaceport in a barren, dusty landscape. It could similar to many of the maps from Team Fortress 2:
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/ ... 0324100600
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/ ... 0324100640

Personally, I don't think that using a small section in a rocket launch site to "enrich" a track in a different environment is a very good idea. I mean, why not extend that section to make the whole track? The amount of content that can be built around the idea of a desert-like environment with underground bases and rocket launch sites is easily enough to make an entire track.
So, perhaps, we could make a separate track with the spaceport idea?

If a separate spaceport track ends up being made, I think that having a rocket or two take off close to the track where the player is driving would be quite amazing. Even if a rocket launches only once in the entire race (to be honest I think once a lap would be best), it would be an amazing experience to have that amount of activity happening around the player. It's just the kind of comical exaggeration that fits the game perfectly.
It could even affect the gameplay in some way, like having the track splitting into two parallel paths that both descend into flame trenches under the rocket, and the player would have to pick the correct path to avoid being slowed down by an incoming wall of flame and smoke from the rocket's engines.
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 13 Oct 2014, 11:10

Hi! :)

To start, I want to let some clear: the idea of a track in the space port is very good. I have nothing against, of course, but, for this first track, I prefer prefer to emphasize the "soviet" town and it main instalation: the space center. However, the space center in this track is limited to the area for visitors. The space port itself is just a scenery in this track.

I intend to release another track (maybe at night) exploring the space port, but, as said above, this need more time to research references and, of course, more time to plan, more complex pieces, etc. That's why I prefer to be restricted to the town itself and the visitor's area.

Well, this is a free and open source game, so, you have liberty to modify or to create another project based on my track when I release it. Unfortunately, for while I will not develop a complete track inside the space port due the reasons mentioned. :oops:

I agree that only one lift off is enough and more realistic, since it's impossible another rocket be ready in some seconds. We all know that this is just a game, but, for many people lot of sucessive launches could make no sense.

"having the track splitting into two parallel paths that both descend into flame trenches under the rocket, and the player would have to pick the correct path to avoid being slowed down by an incoming wall of flame and smoke from the rocket's engines." :o

Seems exciting but I know nothing about programing, so, I'm not certain if this could be possible. Anyway, an idea of a track around the rocket pad is very interesting. That's was my original idea but, I decided to develop the town instead the rocket base.

You could help to create the project of the track restricted to the rocket launch base, but, in this case I believe that the rocket and the port will be not Russian but created by yourself. Am I right? :think:
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 13 Oct 2014, 11:19

Hello

"In real life you will never see a big Matryoshkas like that."

Okay, I was wrong, no problem with that. It just seems unusual.

Giant matryoshkas in parks are common in countries of the former USSR.n

That's okay, I admit I'm not a specialist in Russian culture and I made no research about this topic.

Everything we (me and my brother) do is based on references. Until this moment, I have more than 600 pictures of reference for this track.

Very good. I like to hear that. Usually beginners don't understand the importance of references. That's a very good thing Thumb up ;). You are in the good direction

Well, this is a game (maybe most players are kids or teenagers, so we must to remember them when we create a track or just when we post a comment) and, like Mario kart, some environments and situations are "Childish", unreal and, sometimes, absurd, but, there's nothing wrong. It's just for fun.. This is not the real world. In real life we never see a race with elephants, chinchillas, penguins and monkeys driving karts on nuclear plants or above the Earth, in the space. STK is a fantastic world. A world of fantasy, of course.

I agree with you at 1000%. I just wanted to avoid the classical cliché of someone who want to make a track and find random assets online and try to put them together without any logic. (And you will agree with me unfortunately we see this a looooooot).

Remembering the title of the post, the track is not called Space Port. The provisory name was "Soviet Town", but, since you advise me to avoid the explicit reference to the former USSR, I will find another good name. I will not name it "Rocket Center" because, for most, the first thing that comes to mind when they hear "Rocket Center" are the NASA Space Flight Centers. I can see US citizens downloading the track thinking that they would find Protons, Space Shuttles and a lot of symbols of USA in the environment, so they start the game and see a track in the former Soviet Union...

The name can be Cosmodrome ^^. I won't argue with that it's your choice you do whatever you want ;).

It's obvious I know, if not I would make a track on the "Valley of Dinossaurs" or "Allan quatermain and the lost city of gold" or any other old adventure movie like Indiana Jones. But, if the track was in a soccer arena a match should be happen at the same time? Well, the "Classic volcano" is not erupting while the karts are there (this would be terrible, by the way). "Bovine Barnyard" is a farm, and a farm is a place where people cultivate plants and have animals (cattle, poultry, suines, etc.) as livestock but we don't see a farmer on his tractor, cows being milked or cattle becoming meat, of course, but, everybody understand the scenary and the context. They don't need to see the things happening to realize what the site is about.

Well I agree the old classic volcano isn't erupting and you can be sure if it was made by me, it will be erupting during races ^^. I agree with you on bovine barnyard and in its next gen counterpart (harvest) there is a combine harvesting corn in a field.

That's part of our philosophy: Making and epic adventure in stk universe. In every track made by me at least next gen ones there is always one or two big cool things to see. For instance in cocoa temple there is this waterfall and the pyramid.
If you don't want to follow this philosophy it's your right. However in the guidelines it's specified:
Playing at Supertuxkart should be an epic journey in its fictional universe. Avoid using too much city/industry elements, instead explore lots of different, exotic and even unexpected locations in stk universe


This track is placed in a remote town where there is a space rocket center. The focus is the town. The rocket center is an important plant to enrich the visual of the track.

It's your choice and I respect it. However I think it's a bit sad. However you can still do in the background rockets taking off, like that

This track is placed in a remote town where there is a space rocket center. The focus is the town. The rocket center is an important plant to enrich the visual of the track.

There is a lot of space centers in USA too and, most time, people visit the museums to see static spacecrafts because launch is a rare event. In the real life, rockets are launched every 3, 4 or 6 weeks, not every 15 seconds. In 2014, fourteen launches are scheduled in Baikonur (Cosmodrome) and just eight in Kourou.


I know perfectly that in real life there isn't rocket taking off every ~15 seconds from a launch pad. But we are in a video game, everything is allowed. You can imagine a big rocket near the player who take off only one time, and in the distant background rockets regularly glowing in the sky.

Now, imagine, the professionals who works in Nintendo playing my track with a rocket (or watching the video on Youtube) lift off at every 20 seconds. I don't know, but, I think that they would mock and laugh.

OH yes probably :P because in their track Sunshine airport there is plane taking off every ~5 seconds from the nearby runways.
And yes we know in reality there is no such thing as you said before, it's in a fantasy world.


Look, Samuncle, you seem a nice guy trying to keep the quality of the STK project and this is good, but, you seem me pretty angry about my museum even if you haven't seen it just because the museum takes off the focus from the launch pad. I will not waste the opportunity to include a lift off in a track on a rocket port because I'm planning a second version of this track at night, but, for while, I will not put the focus in the rocket pad itself because this demands a lot of work modelling complex parts that may look exactly like in the real world and, as I said, this game was made in only a few days because we have other things to do and I had already a track ("Holliday on Port") with mapping and tests in progress. So, we will not spend much time (extra time) in this track.

You see it's a fact that i have more experience than you. Now making chocolate was a challenge and it took me 6 MONTHS, 6 months of hard work crafting this new track and a lot of failures.
So I know all the difficulty of making a track especially something with the quality of chocolate. That's hard and it takes a lot of time. In my tracks I try to batch all ideas that can fit in the track so I don't have to make a new one. That's why in the track Cocoa temple, you have a pyramid, a canal, waterlocks, waterfall, etc. Sure I can do 3 tracks but it will take me a loooooot of time.
AFAIK, you never made one complete track (if I'm wrong I'm deeply sorry, but I can't remember if you did one). So you have a lack of experience, okay you are two working on this track and I was alone, but you can trust me it will be something difficult to do.

Even so, you see my thoroughness (posting a map with the plant and the symbols placed where I think they should be trying to help you all to see what I have in mind. Then, I made some fast concept arts while I was working on the pieces in 3D. I'm really interest to contribute with the STK project but it's stressful when somebody doesn't likes almost everything I post and I must wasting my time justifying my ideas instead working on the track.

Okay so my only goal is to help people if you don't want my help no problem, we won't loose our time. I don't spend 1h to write a detailed answer + making a concept art just to bash someone. My time is precious.
I saw your concepts and they are pretty fine, maybe a bit dull and sad but otherwise I perfectly understood what was your plans. I'm just dubious about items because items is something done generally at the end to balance the track.
The only thing I strongly disagree is the museum.

Be cool Samuncle, we will not make STK fall down in quality. On the contrary: we (me and my brother) are trying to take this track to the higher quality possible in a professional level

That's perfect it's my goal too

Unfortunatelly, STK has a lot of limitations: time lap, file size, time to upload, image quality limited to 1024x1024, etc.,

The time lap limitation is to HELP you. It prevents people of doing huge tracks that look empty at the end. Trust me a huge track is painful to finish and to fill it with objects. It's also for players and it might causes performances issues with the engine.
The image quality is pretty high when you think about it. Many professional games don't use by default 1k. Going to 2k would be IMHO useless and will skyrocket our memory usage. 1024 is the perfect size you can do a looooooot with that. Yes it's a limitation but try to reach it before asking for more ^^.
I was able to make this with only 1k textures + some other at 512, and the result is pretty descent.

I said, my brother works on modelling and I'm an artist (even if I have another activity) and we do professional works. He doesn't make rockets like cartoon rockets.The Soyuz rocket seeing in this track looks exactly like the real Soyuz rocket (the model in 1967) with the limits of this game, of course

STK isn't a realistic game, it has it's own universe. We prefer references and mashup but not an exact copy. You can take parts from several different real rockets. I did exactly that with my plane, it's similar to an MD-11 but it has winglets + other details inspired by other planes.
Again it's not Call of duty it's STK, you can take inspiration from the reality but at the end it should be something original. You might love space and Soyuz rockets, that's fine but your goal isn't to make a copy of the real world.
Everything is perfectly aligned with precision. We don't make pieces and aligment based on eye view. However, we can't do everything that we would like to do due to the limitations of a game that's downloaded instead sold in packages with gigabytes like Mario kart.

It's nice however you loose the point I think. You should see a stk track as an attraction in an amusement park not as a depiction of the reality. And it doesn't mean putting a cartoon rocket however rockets can have interesting stuff. If you put a launch pad like that http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/image ... t-bp-1.jpg even if it's not like the reality it will be perfectly fine.

As a player and fan, I don't like to see how some fans of Mario kart mocking and ridiculing the quality of STK (even in the official videos of Supertuxkart Project), calling it a "Cheap Mario kart clone" or making statements about supposed "bad graphics" of the game. If the level of criticism there (on Youtube) was in the same level as it is here, in the official forum, those guys would shut the up forever. Unfortunately, nobody gave them a deserved response, since they are doing bad propaganda about STK.

We are spending countless hours trying to improve the quality of stk, not just the visual. I think with the new engine we have done a pretty descent job (have you tested Cocoa temple ?).
My personal objective is to make the most beautiful game that we can do. But don't miss the point, you don't need a 100% depiction of reality to make a great game. And speaking of quality and epicness I think a launchpad with rocket taking off is far more attractive than a museum ;). But that's my personal opinion.

"Okay so no political stuff except you are using a real life organization, the KGB."
No. I said "The country is very bureaucratic and haS a KGB too". Note: "a" KGB. In other words, a rigorous organization for State security like the KGB, not the same organization neither the same name but a fictional organization inspired in the real KGB.

Okay, we just try to avoid putting a big KGB logo in the game ^^.

My original idea was to mix good humored contexts placed in scenarios that looks like the real world. I think that most tracks are thus.

Yep that's the goal. But don't try to make a perfect representation of the reality ^^.

This is interesting to see, because, according to the "official guidelines for Supertuxkart", It's not a too cartoon game. So, we (the new contributors) don't know when and where we may represent the real world or the cartoon style. :?

Yes I made a mistake sorry. But stk isn't cartoon but it's not a perfect 100% accurate depiction of reality

Another question: the official rules say "Avoid making the track too long (over 1m30 is definitely too long - between approximately 1m00 and 1m30 is considered appropriate for one loop without using booster and or items (like nitro))." This mean that, if my track had a time lap of 1m20, it would match perfectly the rules. Even so, I believe that the time lap will be around 1 minute. I will test it this week.

Yes if it's 1min20 it's perfectly okay
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby samuncle » 13 Oct 2014, 11:27

Now as conclusion

I'm the first one that want to see your track in a playable state :). I like to see other tracks and to discover what people do.
If your objective is to make an addons, that's fine. You can do whatever you want (and I'm very clear about that). Except obvious stuff like racism, violence, etc.
However if your final goal is to have your track included into our game you should taking into account my advices.

If a separate spaceport track ends up being made, I think that having a rocket or two take off close to the track where the player is driving would be quite amazing. Even if a rocket launches only once in the entire race (to be honest I think once a lap would be best), it would be an amazing experience to have that amount of activity happening around the player. It's just the kind of comical exaggeration that fits the game perfectly.
It could even affect the gameplay in some way, like having the track splitting into two parallel paths that both descend into flame trenches under the rocket, and the player would have to pick the correct path to avoid being slowed down by an incoming wall of flame and smoke from the rocket's engines.


That was exactly what I had in mind, and you can perfectly include a small town and some stuff outside for the command center. In the distant background you have rockets taking off (you just see the glowing flames).

edit: and yes a rocket that kick the player if he choose the wrong path is already possible even with the 0.8.1 version. I did a cannon like that in the Fort magma track.
0zone0ne, you summarized exactly what I had in mind, and it fits perfectly with: An epic journey in stk's universe.
Of course I'm not saying that a rocket should blast off every 10 second. But if there is a rocket every ~40 sec it makes perfect sense.

The launchpad as you described and the concept art that I made will be probably used for the track XR582
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 13 Oct 2014, 12:21

Hi, Samuncle!


"The name can be Cosmodrome ^^. I won't argue with that it's your choice you do whatever you want ;)."
Cosmodrome is a good name. I perfectly agree. So, from now, the official name of this track is "Cosmodrome".

"It's your choice and I respect it. However I think it's a bit sad. However you can still do in the background rockets taking off, like that"

I see no problem in takeoffs. My only one concern has to do the amount of new pieces that I should make to have a decent spaceport. I mean in the case of the cars drive around the launch pad.

"OH yes probably :P because in their track Sunshine airport there is plane taking off every ~5 seconds from the nearby runways." :lol:

"The only thing I strongly disagree is the museum."
The museum is colorful and plenty of spaceships. I think that even you will like it. :)

"1024 is the perfect size you can do a looooooot with that. "
I don't know...there are some building very big and I have tested textures with this resolution and they looked pretty bad in pieces larger than 20m.

"If you put a launch pad like that http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/image ... t-bp-1.jpg even if it's not like the reality it will be perfectly fine."

Well, I will include a launch pad with that 4 giant floodlights and the hangar but the karts will run at some distance (about 60 m) separated by a wire fence. A train would be nice (I believe that you have seen some pictures showing the rocket transported by train from the hanger to the launch pad) but this add many, many faces. My intention is a second version in the space port itself. In this case, the track will be the contrary of this one: the visitors area and the town will be just the scenery.

"if it's 1min20 it's perfectly okay"
Very good. Maybe this allow some surprises... :think:

"I'm the first one that want to see your track in a playable state"
Good. Thanks a lot. This make me happy. :D

"I like to see other tracks and to discover what people do."
Me too.

"have you tested Cocoa temple ?"
Not yet, because my version 8.1 has an annoying bug that resets the game if I don't play for more than 3 or 4 weeks. So, I need to play all the history mode to unlock some tracks. Not all, but, some.

"If your objective is to make an addons, that's fine. You can do whatever you want...However if your final goal is to have your track included into our game you should taking into account my advices."
Well, my main goal is to allow people around the world have fun playing my tracks, BUT, like most, I would like to see my track included in the official package, of course, and I'm trying to follow your advices.

Then I have an idea about the STK packages: why not annual packages with some tracks that will be not included in the next year. Eg. Supertuxkart 2015: Cocoa Temple, The Island, etc. In 2016 the tracks would be new, but the previous packages will remain available for downloading, of course.

I would like to see thematic packages. You could start creating packages for specific environments like sea (Sub Sea, On the beach, Mystic Island, "Holiday on Port" (my track under development), "The treasure of the pirate" (a fictional track), resort, etc. The package with urban tracks could include "Shine suburbs", "Tux tollway", etc.
I think that will be very coll having annual and thematic packages. Why not? :think:
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Postby tuxkartdriver » 13 Oct 2014, 12:26

-
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby Anon » 13 Oct 2014, 18:32

So, perhaps, we could make a separate track with the spaceport idea?

I was thinking the same.

In the TF2 universe, Austrialia is a super-futuristic country with technology centuries ahead of the rest of the world. We could do something similar in STK (maybe make it Antarctica or something, to remain apolitical).

The doors would then be opened for all kinds of futuristic tracks, such as spaceport track from which spaceplanes and rockets take off every few minutes/seconds. This might sound like a lot of launches, but I think the Falcon 9 reusable rocket (which is in development by SpaceX) has a turnaround time measured in days, and a quick search shows that the XCOR Lynx spaceplane only needs two hours between launches. So you can imagine that a nation decades ahead of the rest of the world could manage multiple launches every minute with a large enough fleet of spacecraft.

It could also be merged with a remake of Skyline, if the artist making it decides that that's a good idea.

What does everyone think about this idea? Is it worth pursuing?
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Re: New Project - Soviet town and Rocket Center

Postby GeekPenguinBR » 13 Oct 2014, 21:12

Futurist tracks are a good idea. This gives you some extra "freedom" do create things.
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