Our ReVolt Pub

It's your fault jig and huki if we are like that ...
you make a so great job

tiny bug : yesterday i joined a 16 peoples room on rvhouse (we were only 5 after some late joining) the game work fine. i became host when the first one leave = everything ok
BUT when i try a single player offline revolt crash each time during loading track. player number was set to 14 (???) i down it to 12 (and couldn't go back to 14 ;-) and everything become fine

build 825

I found a new bug on Himalaya Highway it's happen at each start : see the video

bug on 810 and 825
all alpha from 731 and previous work fine

For info, no, we're not going to share the sources (neither we're going to answer any question/request about sources, for the abovementioned reason). If we have had to give a reason, I guess what Dreedo said would have been sufficient.
About the next release date, I can't tell. And the changelog obviously can't be written beforehand. We have mainly worked on trying to understand/improve the AI for example, and it has cost us quite a lot of hard work, sweat and headache, with several attempts and backtrackings. Of course we hope to get a little improvement, but it will by no means be proportional to the time we spent.

ok I'm fine with that since I just wanted to play around with the source code anyway (and if something would have come out, I would have posted it here ).

so as far as I understand it you dont want to share the code mainly because you are unsure whether it would be legal or not?
I guess you have already tried to contact the original devs/responsible people of Re-Volt and asked them about this issue? what did they say?
and if you couldn't figure out the details about that yet, do you think the code will ever get a chance to be legally published or will it remain locked away from the public forever?

It is better that the code is in the hands of few.

We don't want anyone to do anything bad or illegal with the code of our beloved game Re-volt. DO we?

And @kenny- do you want to play around with the code? Then i am definitely against on passing the code to you. The Re-volt source code is a serious thingy which our best programmers had kept with safety.

+1 Pranav

Pranav @ Oct 1 2011, 06:02 PM wrote: It is better that the code is in the hands of few.

We don't want anyone to do anything bad or illegal with the code of our beloved game Re-volt. DO we?

And @kenny- do you want to play around with the code? Then i am definitely against on passing the code to you. The Re-volt source code is a serious thingy which our best programmers had kept with safety.

I totally agree with you on that but if the code would be open source it wouldnt necessarily mean that the team is not needed anymore. they could still do the developing they are currently doing and if others want to contribute some of their work, bugfixes or code optimization then they could contact the devs (although that would mean that they had to take the time to speak with everyone so its their decision)

also if the code would be open source I'd bet that there are some people out there who have the skill and the desire to port Re-Volt to other platforms like linux, mac or even portable devices.
but as long as we dont know if we are allowed to publish the source or not, we have to wait of course

and I meant with "playing around" more like to try out if I could achieve some things that I had in mind to add/implement to the game (for example adding the dreamcast cars as stock cars or doing some sort of track list so you wouldnt have to scroll thorugh the track screen) and not doing some stupid things like messing around with the physic's or the ai

Let's wait for Huki and Jig.

sebr @ Oct 1 2011, 10:47 AM wrote: It's your fault jig and huki if we are like that ...
you make a so great job 

tiny bug : yesterday i joined a 16 peoples room on rvhouse (we were only 5 after some late joining) the game work fine. i became host when the first one leave = everything ok
BUT when i try a single player offline revolt crash each time during loading track. player number was set to 14 (???) i down it to 12 (and couldn't go back to 14 ;-) and everything become fine 

build 825

Happens to me too I'll explain better:

Sometimes when hosting and maybe joining a 16 player rvhouse room your number of cars gets set to 14 on normal revolt. But to be honest doesn't need to be fixed since i want 64 cars :3

Kenny @ Oct 1 2011, 06:25 PM wrote: also if the code would be open source I'd bet that there are some people out there who have the skill and the desire to port Re-Volt to other platforms like linux, mac or even portable devices.
but as long as we dont know if we are allowed to publish the source or not, we have to wait of course tongue.gif

there already is a way playing revolt on MAC => HERE

and i regulary play revolt on LINUX (UBUNTU) with the help of wine

We've been receiving emails asking when the next official Beta release would be coming (as it has been 8 months since the last one). Well, to be honest, I'm not sure. Our original plan was to make an official release once every 2 or 3 months. This involves describing each new feature in our website and publishing a newsletter summarizing important changes in the new update.

The idea was to make sure the new features are easily accessible and well documented. But the development has been pretty much rushed during the past months, especially with the multiplayer improvements, that we've had no time to explain and document everything we're doing. There are frequent changes and bugs to fix, that trying to maintain a publicly usable build frequently doesn't appear to be a good use of time.

So we had decided instead to stick with the fast pace of development and target our releases towards testers and advanced users only. For these people who are interested in following the development closely, we'd recommend having a look at the changelog accompanying each release, which covers everything new since the last February Beta in chronological order. If you still have queries about any feature you can always ask here, and we can help you out.

And with that, I think we can now continue with the development and see where things go. As jigebren has said, we were working on improving re-volt's AI code in the past weeks. There is significant improvement, even with the original AI Node data (which is pretty bad in most stock tracks). I can't explain everything yet, and a lot of work is still underway, but a quick video showing some of the noteworthy improvements thus far can be found here.

@sebr: Ah, I see we have more bugs to squish.
- The invalid number-of-cars problem was caused because of bad registry entries after using the 30-cars option in wolf. 30 would appear as 14 in multiplayer as we use less space to store the value online. We'll remember to check all registry data for safe limits when working on Profiles feature.
- About the Himalayan track, there appears to be a reposition trigger set up at the start pos that cars get into when being dropped from air. Re-volt used to ignore reposition commands when the race hasn't started yet, but due to recent changes (to fix the bug in Amco TT reported by Phantom) there is no such check anymore. We'll fix the problem, but till then you can just delete or move the trigger in that place.

About the source code questions, jigebren has already answered them, and also noted that we wouldn't be answering any more questions related to it. But anyway, Dreedo and Pranav have said it much better than I could have. I have to add, please don't take it bad that we refuse to answer these questions in more detail. For now we're not even thinking of letting anyone access the sources, and we do have our reasons.

From UBUNTU

Huki @ Oct 1 2011, 07:09 PM wrote: - The invalid number-of-cars problem was caused because of bad registry entries after using the 30-cars option in wolf. 30 would appear as 14 in multiplayer as we use less space to store the value online. We'll remember to check all registry data for safe limits when working on Profiles feature.

I didn't use wolf since many mounth ... and the host didn't use it too because there where some late joining and spectacling peoples during this multiplayer game... and i use revolt 825 offline directly after closing rvhouse

@URNE
Ubuntu 11.04 (linux 2.6.38-11-generic) and Wine 1.3 configured for Windows 98

Revolt progession correctly stored on registery and all mode ok (multi-player not tested)
only 3 small bugs :
- didn't find any way to play revolt cd during game (only mp3 works)
- Qwerty keyboard even i have a AZERTY one (not so big problem)
- a little graphic bug :
main menu XP
main menu UBUNTU
single race XP
single race UBUNTU

Hmm, I think I got it. I think. So, it's like a copy-paste technique, eh?
You want to race the track and the AI Nodes to be set like the user car drives. Like, if you slow down at some corner, the system will make the AI slow at the same speed, just like the ghost line. Something like this?
Also, pushing the time for recovery from a collision would help as well. For instance, it takes 2-3 seconds for an AI car to flip while being upside-down. Making this faster up to 1 second or even less would help. Same for repositioning.

sebr @ Oct 1 2011, 06:43 PM wrote: there already is a way playing revolt on MAC => HERE

and i regulary play revolt on LINUX (UBUNTU) with the help of wine 

noted but just let me add here that these are not native port solutions.

with a native build for the particular operating system the game would be much smoother, possible errors or bugs that could be caused by this solution wouldn't be there and the game would overall need less hardware resources (which is especially important on devices with rechargeable batteries).

not to mention how awesome it would be to play revolt with a portable device (I know already possible but again, its not a native solution)

but if you are satisfied with the current solution then I guess there is not much more to point out

fps with xp fullscreen = 60 (v-sync on)
fps with ubunto fullscreen = 59 (v-sync on) as smouth as on xp

on my laptop [sony vaio vgn-ar78e (europe)]

I was having a walk around in the none edit node. I found two stars. I don't know whether its a bug or not.
Screenshot:-
http://i51.tinypic.com/1t2b6f.png

you have in the same time pickup star and practis mode star ...


note : don't directly use fullscreen picture on the forum

sebr @ Oct 2 2011, 12:18 PM wrote:

note : don't directly use fullscreen picture on the forum

Sorry..

Edited the post.

I can't explain everything yet, and a lot of work is still underway, but a quick video showing some of the noteworthy improvements thus far can be found here.

If all those cars seen there are driven by AI, then I'm impressed. They were quick to recover from situations, i hate it when the AI get stuck, its the main reason why I win every race i think, except on playermade tracks, usually lose the first race on that, as i get so confused and lose the racing line often.

Wow, that Humma and AMW really show progress. As for Toyeca...i like that now they dont stay in place for 5 seconds before backing up and getting back into the race. Hopefully this will make them competetive and maybe allow us to drop(if its even possible) rubberbanding and enjoy AI-cheater free races

Okay... so is there a difference at the car AI or the track AI?

miromiro @ Oct 5 2011, 01:18 PM wrote: Okay... so is there a difference at the car AI or the track AI?

[speculation]both, perhaps?[/speculation]

I second the hope of no rubberbanding...

"In other news:"

It seems that with losing the automatic repositioning back to track on custom tracks, you guys also lost the automatic flipping back onto wheels. With RV 1207, if you flip the car and wait, the game flips the car back onto wheels after a few seconds. Not anymore with V1.2. (Why the whine? Because I use this effect for a bit of fairness in offline races – the AI cars are not flipped back instantly, so why should I do it? Let the game treat me and them the same.)

Also, the game now _requires_ the Clockwork cars to be in the cars folder. Without them it crashes at the end of the loading screen, before displaying the Frontend. RV 1207 displays the Frontend just fine without the Clockworks, showing the small-arena (options screen) without them, but RV 1.2 crashes instead. (Why the whine? Because I found that out the hard way. I only keep those cars that I actually race with, (the Challenge Pack, you know ), so my cars folder lacks most of the stocks that I don't want to see as opponents either. Clockworks as well.)

I've also tried to tell Huki about the flipping problem, but he keeps on telling me that he can't find anything. But I keep on doing 20 lap off-line races, and in 70% cases I've got to cancel the races because of the AI cars who keep on staying rolled over without getting flipped back.

Citywalker @ Oct 9 2011, 03:58 AM wrote: Also, the game now _requires_ the Clockwork cars to be in the cars folder. Without them it crashes at the end of the loading screen, before displaying the Frontend. RV 1207 displays the Frontend just fine without the Clockworks, showing the small-arena (options screen) without them, but RV 1.2 crashes instead. (Why the whine? Because I found that out the hard way. I only keep those cars that I actually race with, (the Challenge Pack, you know ), so my cars folder lacks most of the stocks that I don't want to see as opponents either. Clockworks as well.)

revolt always need clockwork "FOLDER" but you can put toyeca or what ever you want in it...
2 rules : you must leave clockwork spiner file (key.prm) on the folder AND keep Clockwork name in the "Parametes.txt" but you can change everything else ...

Hi, I would to report 2 strange things about the controls when a "WASD" configuration is used to move the car.

1)I can't resume the game from pause keeping W key pressed.

2)"Fire" key doesn't work when W+D or W+A keys are pressed simoultaneously.

Any kind of AI improvement is welcome, its always making RV better, and we do want that, right?


Im sure that with faster repositioning, flipping and better AI overall, rubberbanding wouldn't be needed.


And it would be more fun. Now if you make a mistake, rubberbanding does its job and AI slows down, and if you are in front, they get a huge power increase and catch up. Without that, mistakes would really hurt, but at the same time flawless driving would be rewarded.

sebr wrote:I didn't use wolf since many mounth ... and the host didn't use it too because there where some late joining and spectacling peoples during this multiplayer game... and i use revolt 825 offline directly after closing rvhouse

Well, the settings can pass from one player to another during host migration. You could have caught the bug that way. Quick, rush to your nearest clinic and report the outbreak!

Pranav wrote:I was having a walk around in the none edit node. I found two stars. I don't know whether its a bug or not.

All pickups and stars should be visible in edit mode. I noticed only stars are activated though, that is fixed now.

@City:
Yes, we disabled automatic correction of player's car in user tracks. Hmm I don't get it: speeding up the cars for fairness is a bad idea, but delaying player recovery for the same effect is good? But a good news is that the AI's recovery is not timer-controlled anymore. Well, there is still a 1 second delay in the lowest difficulty level. But basically the AI will only wait till it has almost stopped moving. And yes, re-volt crashes without the clockwork folders. We'll fix that.

@miro:
Your problem is different. While improving the AI recovery, we sometimes noticed the AI keeps lying upside down and never gets back up. Good news, it's now fixed. As I mentioned earlier (did I?) the AI won't stop moving or get confused / struck anymore.

@anto:
- I'll check the resuming issue when W or other key is pressed.
- About the Fire key problem, what key are you using? It seems rather to be an issue in DirectInput, which doesn't detect a 3rd press in certain situations. In my system an F key press isn't detected if I already have W and S pressed.

Note that we are only improving the AI code for now. The track node data and car AI values are still the same. Once we're done with all the code improvements, the old data might not make sense anymore. Getting the optimum racing line and car values again is going to be the hard part. Hopefully we'd be able to automate most of the work, which would also make it easier for car / track makers to find the ideal racing lines and under/over steer values in the future.

I'm still unsure about disabling the catch up code. It's really an integral part of the game, IMO. But we'll make sure the speedup / slowdown is subtle enough not to be noticed (rather than taking the player's full speed). And then there are 4 difficulty levels too, with only a slight catch up in the lowest. Well, it could still be noticed if Dave takes a video with 30 RC Bandits without collision. But then I can call it a conspiracy theory. Psst, no one will ever know..

Huki @ Oct 10 2011, 10:21 AM wrote: Well, it could still be noticed if ZR takes a video with 30 RC Bandits without collision. But then I can call it a conspiracy theory. Psst, no one will ever know..

Fixed it for ya

Supermarket battle
Me and my brother were playing battle tag. My brother jumped up here and was't able to move left even if there are boxes. (see the pic) I think this is a bug.
http://i51.tinypic.com/eb7ae9.png

I love you Huki for FINALLY fixing that flipping bug!
See? I wasn't trolling when I said some months ago about it.

NEW IDEA: Some tracks have AI Nodes bugs, this resulting that the cars will still get stuck and not be able to finish the race.
EXAMPLE: Phat Slug can't do a jump over something because it hasn't got enough space to catch speed.
SUGGESTION: After 1 minute or staying on the same node, it should start getting repositioned with 1 node before. If still doesn't work, after another minute with another node, and so on. I think it's a good idea but I just am not sure if it's possible. Still, wanted to share it since we never know.

SHAMELESS QUESTION: When's the next update come?

Hmm I don't get it: speeding up the cars for fairness is a bad idea, but delaying player recovery for the same effect is good?

Yes, because the AI car speedup (rubberbanding) is done without asking the player, but me waiting for the game to flip me (instead of me flipping myself) is my own conscious choice. I want my penalty for roofing the ground to be the same as the AI’s penalty for roofing the ground, _if_I_choose_so_. Basically, I feel like a cheater if I flip myself sooner than the AI cars do in a race.
OTOH, I still want to be able to flip myself sooner if I test a car.

But basically the AI will only wait till it has almost stopped moving.

That’s how I used to flip myself, until I discovered that the game flips me back itself if I wait a bit. I like that optional bit of equality. Anyway, if the AI flips itself sooner now, then please do the same for the player’s car, too.

I don't know about that. IMO if the player's car is flipped too soon it might become more of an annoyance than an actual try to be fair (I would like to decide when I want to flip my car myself thank-you-very-much ). However, it's hard to tell yet how the outcome will be from your suggestion so I'll keep my mouth shut for now.

In this case, Urne, there should be an option for turning off / on the flipping and reposition automatically for the user car.

@Antonius
About the keys not responding, I think it has rather something to do with the Keyboard switch matrix. Take a look at "Key jamming and ghosting" in this Wikipedia page. If it's actually the case, there is nothing we can do about it, you'll have to use another keyboard or another layout than WASD.
Looking in my old list of tools, I found the KeyScan utility which can be used to visually check which keystrokes can be simultaneously pressed. You can still find it here.

Pranav @ Oct 10 2011, 04:22 PM wrote: Supermarket battle
Me and my brother were playing battle tag. My brother jumped up here and was't able to move left even if there are boxes. (see the pic) I think this is a bug.
http://i51.tinypic.com/eb7ae9.png

In case no one noticed....

Getting the optimum racing line and car values again is going to be the hard part. Hopefully we'd be able to automate most of the work, which would also make it easier for car / track makers to find the ideal racing lines and under/over steer values in the future.

Just a possible suggestion for the future: maybe the car AI values can be calculated from ghost car data like miro suggested for the track AI?

Here's another request increase the draw distance or make it unlimited.

Increasing draw distance can be done yourself by editing the inf files in each tracks folder.

Draw distance is decided by the tracks creator.

Huki @ Oct 10 2011, 03:21 PM wrote:I'm still unsure about disabling the catch up code. It's really an integral part of the game.

...and since the AI will be greatly improved, it isn't needed anymore. Infact, very often on most tracks (inc. customs) the catch-up code is what ruins the challenge especially if you're miles away from the opponent. Rookie cars going 50 MPH on AMCO Bitume is a no-go.

If you stick to the code so much, at least make on option to turn it on or off (off=completely, 0%).

If the AI is going to be noticeably improved we should have at least an option to turn off rubberbanding. It ruins the fun of racing on tracks like Hockenheim Ring, because you will have, no matter what, random cars overtaking you on the long straights just because the AI decides to do so.

Very strange thing here.
Phat Slugs aren't in contact then too they move. I made my Phat slug to touch other Phat Slugs but i was not able to. Check the video. Without any touching or colliding with others, the cars move.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0ZwPFJJrw

Sorry for the poor quality.
Cam studio ruined the quality.

Resuming when W or other key is pressed works now. Re-Volt will skip loading the key cars in frontend if their parameter files are missing, so it won't crash anymore. Clockwork Carnage mode will also be disabled if the required folders are missing.

I also fixed the crash when a car does not use any model for the body. So now it is possible to have a car with, for example, wheels or spinner only.

@Pranav
About the supermarket battle bug, it's just some invisible collision on that part of the level. Maybe the devs didn't want you to go any further (to avoid camping probably). In case you thought you were struck there, you can still go right and jump down to the freezer.

About the Phat Slug collision problem, I don't see anything wrong. If you're saying the collision is not "perfect" / realistic, you're probably using Arcade or Console mode. Try Simulation instead.

@Miro
Re-Volt will not reposition cars on a node with Jump Wall priority. If the nearest node has the Jump Wall priority, re-volt will instead pick the next node to reset cars on. If the next one is a jump wall node too, it will keep checking the next and next nodes till it finds a normal node to place the car on. You can check this effect in Garden's wall jump (hmm, hence the name).

City wrote:Just a possible suggestion for the future: maybe the car AI values can be calculated from ghost car data like miro suggested for the track AI?

Well, the ghost car isn't controlled by any AI. It's just a simple animation which places the car object at different positions per frame. So it is useless as far as car AI values are concerned. But the ghost car's path should be a good starting point for the track node data. The player just needs to make sure not to make a biased lap (i.e. taking quirky turns and cuts that wouldn't make good racing line).

@Nero @Elven
Yep, we don't know yet how the catch up will alter gameplay once the improvements are finished. We'll of course disable it if the AI can drive fine without it. Or we'd enable it only for relatively slow cars (like Bertha against your Toyeca in a 12 player race). Anyway, I can already confirm the speed won't keep increasing unchecked. So no, rookie cars for example, won't copy your car's speed and run at 50 mph. The current catch up / slow down speed modification is very subtle.

Miro wrote:SHAMELESS QUESTION: When's the next update come?

SHAMELESS ANSWER: I don't know.

Huki @ Oct 14 2011, 07:34 PM wrote:
@Pranav
About the supermarket battle bug, it's just some invisible collision on that part of the level. Maybe the devs didn't want you to go any further (to avoid camping probably). In case you thought you were struck there, you can still go right and jump down to the freezer.

About the Phat Slug collision problem, I don't see anything wrong. If you're saying the collision is not "perfect" / realistic, you're probably using Arcade or Console mode. Try Simulation instead.

Thanks for the reply Huki. But don't you think about fixing the invisible wall?

Oh yeah sorry for my noobishness.
I was playing in arcade mode.

SUGGESTION:-
Disable the CHANGELING cheat for Random Car races.

Huki wrote: SHAMELESS ANSWER: I don't know.

Huki @ Oct 14 2011, 07:34 PM wrote:

City wrote:Just a possible suggestion for the future: maybe the car AI values can be calculated from ghost car data like miro suggested for the track AI?

Well, the ghost car isn't controlled by any AI. It's just a simple animation which places the car object at different positions per frame. So it is useless as far as car AI values are concerned. But the ghost car's path should be a good starting point for the track node data. The player just needs to make sure not to make a biased lap (i.e. taking quirky turns and cuts that wouldn't make good racing line).

I don't know if we are talking about the same thing but
MAKEITGOOD already make half of this work
on AI NODES mode :
(Left) CTRL & 6 => Create Racing Line from Ghost path (save to file): Are you sure? Yes / No

(it's only work if we are on a stock track folder and time trial mode, but we can place a custom track on nhood1 ;-) )
Ai Nodes must be created and linked before
only racing line are created ...

AI nodes from a ghost seem good, but it could be tough to get it right. Some routes on certain tracks might just not work with some cars.


At least the catch up wont make Harvester's overtake you in your Cougar.

ElvenAvenger @ Oct 15 2011, 12:41 PM wrote:Some routes on certain tracks might just not work with some cars.

So true. For example the route under the red car in Toys In The Hood 1 (wich saves you lot of time) doesn't work with big cars like Panga unfortunately.

For example the route under the red car in Toys In The Hood 1 (wich saves you lot of time) doesn't work with big cars like Panga unfortunately.

Stock tracks have multiple AI routes, and AI cars select them on the basis of the Suspension parameter in AI part of the parameters.txt. This can be utilised.

Getting the optimum racing line and car values again is going to be the hard part. Hopefully we'd be able to automate most of the work, which would also make it easier for car / track makers to find the ideal racing lines and under/over steer values in the future.

Even if you can't make it automatic, there's still a quite simple way to make mostly everything run well with the AI. See the new tutorial, scroll to end:
http://z3.invisionfree.com/Our_ReVolt_P ... ry10639164
Of course the new AI is way better, but this works even with the old AI.

Cmon its halloween give us an alpha or something.

gdfsgdfg @ Oct 20 2011, 02:20 PM wrote: Cmon its halloween give us an alpha or something.

Besides, huki and jig are putting in a whole bunch of new AI stuff which will make the AI for RV way better. One does not simply revamp and entire AI system in a small amount of time.

Dave-o-rama @ Oct 20 2011, 07:51 PM wrote:Besides, huki and jig are putting in a whole bunch of new AI stuff which will make the AI for RV way better. One does not simply revamp and entire AI system in a small amount of time.

Hmm, I would rather say "huki and jig are trying to improve the AI, which is likely to make the AI slighty better (at least in some cases...)".
It's not that we're too modest, but just don't get too high expectations or you'll likely be disappointed. It's not easy to improve that kind of feature, especially as we have to keep compatibility with existing material as much as possible.

Well, to keep you waiting patiently, I can just say that next release will also feature:
- Reverse support for user track.
- Support for any amount of user Stunt tracks.
- Support for any amount of user Battle tracks.

And other stuff too of course...