Two questions: human characters and packages

[GeekPenguinBR]

Hi, everyone!

I'm really VERY busy preparing a..well (you will see ), but a I would like to add some comments. I don't know if this help, but I have some questions about two subjects:

Human characters
I made this model using makehuman, that's free and open source software to create persons in 3D. I assume this is not a novelty, so you all know this software. Well, I made this girl in less than 20 minutes because it's easy to make a person using the software; anybody could help even being a complete beginner in 3D modelling. The most imortant: the ojects looks nice and after exporting them, the numer of edges are not that high. So, my question is: can this be useful for STK? If not, why?

Packages
Some months ago I sent a private message to a certain member of this forum and I asked him to post a new topic about this subject, but I changed my idea and I asked him to cancel the post, but now, I see some utility for my concept.
My main motivation for this idea is the fact that most part of my secret projects are based on past times. Let's see.

The number of tracks and charaters is increaing, what makes the game heavy and slow to download and to load. So, why not to allow the STK fan to download or to install only the tracks and characters he/she wants? I will be as clear as possible: can you pack the game giving us the opportunity to download or to install specific and thematic packages containing only the tracks and characters that we like?

For instance, we could chose between 1.Install all traks or 2.Install packages. The packages could be (the ugly names are just the first thing that came to my mind):
"Urban": Malao, the Asian metropolis; Tollway, etc.
"Sand and rocks": sand track, Hacienda, Mine,
"Mountain and Valleys": Snow mountain (Northern Refugee), Snow Tux Peak, Green Valley, Alpine, Bonive Banyard,
"Jungle and Mistery": Cocoa Temple, Cocoa Carnival, Zen Garden, Mansion,
"Sea Side": Absys, Paradiso Island, Lighthouse, Port (one of my own projects),
"Across the Universe": Enterprise, XR 591, ...
"Fun and Games": Minigolf, Las Dunas Stadium,
"Time Machine" (Past and futuristic histories).


See the screens below:

I don"t know how complex this can be since the team of programmers is small, but, if this is not so difficult to do, we wold be very happy with this new feature. Forgive my ignorance about programming.

[Auria]

This makehuman model is not ideal for use in STK mainly because it has too many polygons, it may be a bit too taxing the engine and the GPU. It should have at least half as many polygons.

Regarding packs, I am not quite sure of the use - it is not quite true that "The number of tracks and charaters is increasing", usually when a new track or kart is added it replaces an old one, so the number is mostly steady and not expected to change much. Given that STK has story mode, which has you play all standard tracks, shipping without all tracks would break that. But the addons system does allow you to control what additional content you want

[leilei]

the numer of edges are not that high

10,000+ edges is very very high.

Also it's aesthetically clashing. it's not cartoon, and would give the game an unneeded Poser syndrome/Uncanny Valley.

I know my forum used to get Makehuman suggestions all the time. That particular "make art button" is not practical for video games.

[GeekPenguinBR]

This makehuman model is not ideal for use in STK mainly because it has too many polygons,..Regarding packs, I am not quite sure of the use - it is not quite true that "The number of tracks and charaters is increasing", usually when a new track or kart is added it replaces an old one, so the number is mostly steady and not expected to change much. Given that STK has story mode, which has you play all standard tracks, shipping without all tracks would break that. But the addons system does allow you to control what additional content you want

Ok. I didn't expect that everybody would like the suggestion, but, while new tracks are really welcomed, current tracks and future old tracks should not be banned from the game, so, the next releases with new tracks of the main game could allow a direct link to download specific packages according the personal taste of each player. If the idea of packages for new and current tracks would be accepted, I believe that the chosen tracks could be randomly selected to take part in the over world history mode. Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Also it's aesthetically clashing. it's not cartoon..

Yes, but you can change the settings until your doll looks more cartoonish. I agree that makehuman is no the best and ideal solution for STK, but that was just a suggestion for beginners, who could make the hard part (the human shape) easily, making posterior adjustments.
Thanks.

[hiker]

If the idea of packages for new and current tracks would be accepted, I believe that the chosen tracks could be randomly selected to take part in the over world history mode. Anyway, thanks for your reply.

At this stage we have no intention of reducing the number of assets distributed with STK (many people will judge the game on initial download, so if we have only 4 karts and 4 tracks, it doesn't make stk look good) , but I have always supported the idea of supporting addon packages. Ideally they could contain several tracks, karts, music, achievements and Grand Prix. Maybe we could even support adding more challenges to the story mode this way (i.e. they would include their own 'challenge bubble', which would be added to the overworld, ...).

Main problem is: no one has submitted a patch to do that, and the difficulty is that it also affects many different parts of STK: our server, including upload/download, addons-management (e.g. what if one of the tracks included in a package is already installed as a stand-alone addon - if we use some kind of link concept to handle this, what if the original track is updated (e.g. challenges might suddenly become impossible) ),. So it's not easy to do.

But I like the idea of downloading additional packages

Cheers,
Joerg

[GeekPenguinBR]

(many people will judge the game on initial download, so if we have only 4 karts and 4 tracks, it doesn't make stk look good)

My bad. I forgot to mention the minimum number of karts and tracks: it should be at least 10 IMO.

I have always supported the idea of supporting addon packages.

Nice to know. There's a hope for this idea,

Main problem is: no one has submitted a patch to do that, and the difficulty is that it also affects many different parts of STK: our server, including upload/download, addons-management (e.g. what if one of the tracks included in a package is already installed as a stand-alone addon - if we use some kind of link concept to handle this, what if the original track is updated (e.g. challenges might suddenly become impossible) ),. So it's not easy to do.

Thank you for clarifying this aspect. I suspected that something could be hard to do.

Thank you for replying, Hiker.

[hiker]

(many people will judge the game on initial download, so if we have only 4 karts and 4 tracks, it doesn't make stk look good)

My bad. I forgot to mention the minimum number of karts and tracks: it should be at least 10 IMO.

Well, I of course exaggerated I meant in general: reducing number of tracks means stk shows less variety that it actually can. Now of course, one track less won't hurt much, two neither ... where's the limit? At this stage I don't see much of a problem with the file size

Cheers,
Joerg

[leilei]

Also it's aesthetically clashing. it's not cartoon..

Yes, but you can change the settings until your doll looks more cartoonish. I agree that makehuman is no the best and ideal solution for STK, but that was just a suggestion for beginners, who could make the hard part (the human shape) easily, making posterior adjustments.
Thanks.

Makehuman's nice from a reference standpoint, but it's not practical to use makehuman output to make cartoony and/or videogame characters.