Our ReVolt Pub

I don't want to write a novel in here but can some one tell me in layman terms if this is at all possible.
In regards to all the new ideas about textures and tools i wanted to throw this out there.

Do we need to be thinking that we should separate the old from the new??
As you say, there are lots of custom content out there that would need to be altered and that seems impractical so maybe we need to be thinking of a new patched Re-Volt for 2010 with a coming together of all brains and tools for the community?
When i say all, I mean all. Car makers, Track makers, Tool creators (rst included).
We would achieve A Re-Volt version with more Texture space (or higher quality) with a new file format for the textures. Tracks with new models using the "all powerful" R3 tool.
Keep Re-Volt the same as far as front end and stock tracks are concerned (apart from the texture re size) but start to pull strings within the community and bring it all together.
At the moment there are some really brainy people who are interested and good at what they do floating around the sites and it would be nice if we could keep the interest moving forward this year.
Human has lit the fire for me yet again as far as track making goes and if the New RV patch works out, i will be able to do the tracks that the texture limit gave me.

I would love to hear what you guys think and I would love to get back into mirc with the oldies and batter out track ideas for a rejuvenated Re-Volt.
Have A great start to your new year people and i will be creating max fusion between my music and fighting.

Anything where people actually work together on a project is good as far as I'm concerned. Too many people work independently and get things half-done, then abandon them because they either lose motivation, feel that others aren't interested, or don't have the necessary tools or abilities to create what they need. Those problems are usually helped if not solved by working with a group, assuming your group is competent.

I don't really think that everyone in the group needs to work together, per say. I think that as long as everyone picks something and accomplishes it, the project can be finished. Someone may need help, and it is their responsibility to ask for it. Help should also be offered, but don't count on anything. There is a rebuilding community devoted to writing a new Re-Volt engine, Re-Volt Devs (click here). I think that as long as that community focuses on writing the engine, the rest of us can work on tracks, cars, and gfx. I think that sometimes, moral support is all that's needed, and we definitely don't get enough of that in this community. I support this project 100% both morally and physically. We just need to get something organized and stick to it.

Personally I think that the re writing of the engine is the wrong way to go.
More focus should be spent on the game that is stable and working now. there is still loads more we can do to push the existing RV to its max before we spend too much time on a, lets face it, long winded project. But that's just my opinion. i will continue to work on tracks for the RV we have now with hopefully more texture space.

I personally support both idea (i.e. patching and rewritten engine).

there is still loads more we can do to push the existing RV to its max

That's true, and it's an exciting challenge.
But the main benefit from a rewritten engine is that it would at the end ease the adding of new functionnality and help to improve revolt compatibility with future (and existing) OS.

When i say all, I mean all. Car makers, Track makers, Tool creators (rst included).

Skitch2, are you sure rst would allow his tools to be distributed?


Else, I'm just asking something. Wouldn't it be better to have a new section in this forum dedicated to tools and update/patch to revolt? Something like "Re-Volt Tools" section. I use to post in "the bar" but I don't feel like it is the appropriate place.

LOL in an ideal world dude rst would play nice!!

But hey, ever the optimist.

A tools section would be cool indeed. Just like to say that it has been a pleasure reading your posts since you arrived jigebren reminds me of the early days of Re-Volt.
Mike....

Thanks for the compliment, mike, I really appreciate .

Who would be able to decide if a tools section can be added, manmountain?

Yea MM or GWC

Well, we are still on a batch writing stage, so I agree that a new kind of automatism should be introduced - one that is compatible with and without this upcomming Re-Volt addition. At the moment I am already beginning to convert all my tracks to the - hopefully soon - 512 dimension standard.

Well I have just ran a few tests with the new 512 textures using 10 512x512 high res ones and all I can say is WOW!!! totally changes the way i am going to create tracks.
I am stunned.
Thank you all who are working on this.

good to see conversations like this instead of the "what is your favorite dish" type topics.
i support the idea of creating a section for tools and development.
im not sure about the way to go in terms of developing the game, i have a track maker brain, sadly i no nothing about anything else. i was thinking about jigebren's (may i call you jiggie?) appearance in the community, jiggie says he doesnt no too much about programming, he may be just modest, but with his "little" knowledge he created something that was (in my opinion) necessary for taking a step up in quality (still talking about tracks). honestly, ive been considering jailhouse rock as my last track, because of the game limits, half of the time (if not more) is spent on fighting these limits instead of actually creating the track. so, does jiggie no something that the community didnt? was it just not stressed enough, or does it require a special knowledge that was missing? im just thinking loud. anyway,
i support any kind of effort to make this game more up to date, i would think rewriting the engine would be the best if it can be made relatively quickly and bugfree. if members got the knowledge, its a question of moral support as zach said, if we dont have the knowledge, better leave it. i certainly no nothing, i dont even no what to no about it
by the way, talking about rst, i think he could be convinced. i dont exactly no whats his problem with "bad" people, i dont see bad people, i havent talked to him for ages, im not sure what he thinks, but i would think there is a chance to grab that peace-pipe. at least from my side. i just simply stopped contacting him because of his crazy conspiracy theory and selfishness, but he may have changed meanwhile, who knows.

The rst issue has me thinking because i was surfing around the net and came across some stuff relating to the RV file structures and the like and it all seemed very interesting until i clicked to read the full deal and it sent me straight to the RRR locked forum lol.
As you say, I think as far as track design goes and have also been blocked by RV limitation (until today).
It is great timing for me that jigebren came along as I was about to say cheerio to RV too and I am glad I still follow the forums closely every day. Gone are the days where ali was tool making and digging into Re-Volts secrets and it looks to me like we have another interested member willing to dig further.
I am back in max with renewed interest and have many ideas.

I will also bury the hatchet with rst in order to make tracks far more detailed than we have been able to do.

Human you are my inspiration to track design mate and I wish you would hurry up and get the new one to me lol.
Mike...

Skitch2 @ Jan 2 2010, 01:13 PM wrote: Human you are my inspiration to track design mate and I wish you would hurry up and get the new one to me lol.
Mike...

vice versa mike, and im glad we think very similarly about how to improve the quality.

@urne

Well, we are still on a batch writing stage, so I agree that a new kind of automatism should be introduced

I afraid I can't understand what you're talking about. Batch for what? replacing stock models with custom, is that it?

@human
No problem for me, you can call me like you please.
I just want to point out that I may appear to you like a sort of programming guru, which in a sort of way is flattering , but I assure you I'm not. I just like to understand how things work, and how we could change them, and I still have a lot to learn...

Maybe I should contact manmountain about the tools section? But I don't see him very often, don't know if he spend too much time on ORP currently.

Jig -> Urne wrote:I afraid I can't understand what you're talking about. Batch for what? replacing stock models with custom, is that it?

Exactly. If we don't count with Phoenix R3 I mean.

urnemanden @ Jan 2 2010, 04:40 PM wrote:

Jig -> Urne wrote:I afraid I can't understand what you're talking about. Batch for what? replacing stock models with custom, is that it?

Exactly. If we don't count with Phoenix R3 I mean.

I maybe one day have another present in my sack, but let's keep it a secret for now .

Hi Mike, to change the subject, did you ever get any further with your theory on poly size? If it is at all valid, now may be a good time to start a new thread - remember, today's track makers won't have seen the old forum, and they have more enquiring minds than the most of the oldtimers!

Happy New Year to you all,
Geoff

I will bring all of those theories into a thread definitely dude.

I am still sure that my maths is sound as far as poly sizes are concerned and i still stick to the same maths in current work.
Nice to speak again mate hope you are well and ill be in mirc chat again soon if its still up and running.

just a little addition to the idea of cooperating with rst:

on rvhouse tonight he pm-ed me asking if he can release jailhouse phoenix version with background music. i said yes. after this he asked about how to do a certain vertex operation in 3dsmax, i answered that as well. right after this i got pulled out from the pm window by the room i entered meanwhile, because the race started. when i came back to rvhouse i found myself put on ignore by rst, and my messages to him got automatically refused by the system.

i would have to meet a really strong convincing power to work together on anything with this fellow.

At first reading, I understood something like that:
"i [have found] a really strong convincing power to work together on anything with this fellow. "
Don't know why, but I felt a bit surprised, so I read a second time, and it seems that I had misunderstood...

Just to say, that I have been contacted by rst himself last week. He had heard about my 512 patch (I didn't know he's going here ) and wanted to talk about programming stuff with me, and he propose me to join the RRR forum.
To resume, I answered that I would be glad to talk to him, but I'd like him to change his policy about the RRR forum and his tools. He told me about the "bad people", the leechers etc... For now, I think he has stop the communication as he didn't answered to my last message (2 days ago), in which I asked him for a clear answer about a hope for change.
EDIT: Funny, I finally got the answer in the hour following this post. So the clear answer is, as you may have expected, that he has no intention to release his tools.

Of course not.

There must be a way...
Part 3 comes...now i'm talking to him.

Happy New Year to you all!!!

Yeah, a bit late, but who cares .

sorry but rst just wants to keep his tools in his own community (of like 6...).
the idea sounds nice but the chances of that happening are 1/100000000, maybe if hes drugged lol. jk

zipperrulez @ Jan 15 2010, 04:40 AM wrote: sorry but rst just wants to keep his tools in his own community (of like 6...).
the idea sounds nice but the chances of that happening are 1/100000000, maybe if hes drugged lol. jk

Dude...in this world, anything is possible.
From Nero von Amber to rise in 2012 to RST teaming up with us morphing the whole community.

zipperrulez @ Jan 15 2010, 03:40 AM wrote: sorry but rst just wants to keep his tools in his own community (of like 6...).
the idea sounds nice but the chances of that happening are 1/100000000, maybe if hes drugged lol. jk

So what are these tools made by rst, what do they do?

antimorph @ Feb 20 2010, 01:49 PM wrote: So what are these tools made by rst, what do they do?

Instead of typing something redundant, have a look at these:

http://revolt.wikia.com/wiki/Phoenix_R3
http://revolt.wikia.com/wiki/R3-DCP

They do semi-neat things, some of the features are actually very useful... but the way rst releases his software just turns me off of it. I had my stay at RRR and I actually did get to use both of these at one time.

Also, I warn you. Re-Volt the Wiki can be terribly biased for the RRR sometimes.

Adamodell @ Feb 20 2010, 12:57 PM wrote:

antimorph @ Feb 20 2010, 01:49 PM wrote: So what are these tools made by rst, what do they do?

Instead of typing something redundant, have a look at these:

http://revolt.wikia.com/wiki/Phoenix_R3
http://revolt.wikia.com/wiki/R3-DCP

They do semi-neat things, some of the features are actually very useful... but the way rst releases his software just turns me off of it. I had my stay at RRR and I actually did get to use both of these at one time.

Also, I warn you. Re-Volt the Wiki can be terribly biased for the RRR sometimes.

Originally Rooftops 2003 had an "install track.bat" file which allowed users to make a full custom track manually. Later RST decided to make it into "install track.exe", and eventually inspired him to create the "Phoenix R3" as a program to do all the required operations automatically.
RST had wanted this level to be just like the original DC version except this time on the PC. The problem was that he would need to replace a lot of in-game models and sfx to make this work. Then he came up with the Phoenix R3 program, which was born to do just that. His program is able to move and replace automatically files to create a Full Custom experience. The latest version of the Phoenix R3 now doesn't even need to move most of the files, just tell revolt.exe where they are.

Well, that all seems pretty straightforward to me.

- I could perhaps get interested in making a car viewer with WebGL. I've a feeling however that a ZBrush subtool aware track/car exporter/converter may be the more productive tool to build.

- I'm curious as to what track poly limits are considered to be on today's hardware.

- I'm also curious as to whether anyone has been testing Pixologics decimation master yet for e.g. collision meshs.

antimorph @ Feb 20 2010, 02:12 PM wrote: I'm curious as to what track poly limits are considered to be on today's hardware.

not sure if this answers your question, i have a semi-decent pc with a few years old technology (ati crossfire, core2 duo, ddr2, s-ata) and theres no track available today on rvzt that could disturb the performance at 85 fps which is the monitors refresh rate. still unsure about the question though...

Thanks, I was wondering aloud. I'll run a few tests to find some reasonable limit for the number of in and out of scene polies before starting a new track.

i see, to be honest i thought you were about to make a patch to reset the poli limit from 16k to 64k or something

edit: i think a lot depends on the layout, if the track is "visiboxable" that helps. i think the best is to think in corridor/tunnel style and try to not create huge spaces without anything disturbing the view.

16K, that's the ncp poly limit if I remember correctly. It should I think be possible to decimate (checkout "Decimation Master") the collision mesh to stay well under that. The collision mesh doesn't need to have the same topology as the world mesh.

i see, i just checked out that decimation tool,
it seems to have great result with really high poli objects but remember the output is still extreme high poli from revolts point of view. a 20k model viewed from a distance looks still good comparing to the 200k original, but we are racing on the model itself in revolt from pixel to pixel, any changes on the mesh will have an effect on the surface properties.

Yes, agreed. I'll maybe give it a go and see what happens, might be able to pass the surface off as sand or something .