Our ReVolt Pub

Just a quick question about the skymaps: Will there be a "local" skybox option or something that will point to your custom skymap, or will Re-Volt just use your custom skymap no matter what skybox you specify in the .fob file?

-> Re-Volt will just use the custom skymap no matter what skybox is specified in the .fob file (as all existing skyboxes use the same textures name).

About the upcoming release, I'm waiting for Huki signal. He's the one who usually do the final touch, that is to say: newsletter, updating website, writting the final changelog, compiling, creating the archive, etc. And this take quite some time, believe me... And just yesterday I was still working on the Market1 collision modification as there was some harmful side effects, and Huki was still polishing the AI... So be patient.

Lol miromiro has gone mad

Anyways hopefully the new update is gonna make rooftops be more like on dreamcast hoho

I will edit rst's 03 version and then add it to my compil then :3

I have a question:
Rooftops will be add in Championship?
And other cars will be playable by AI in Championship?


Miro stay cool probably it will be launch tomorrow or Monday or why no in this night!

BossVolter @ Dec 10 2011, 01:42 PM wrote: I have a question:
Rooftops will be add in Championship?
And other cars will be playable by AI in Championship?

Nope aaaaaand nope.

Miro and others, I hope you're all excited about the custom features only, and NOT about the AI improvements.

Well, as far as the end user is concerned, there isn't going to be anything to see about the AI, but internally there has been a lot of improvements. A small but significant change is that AI cars will now be more prone to oversteer (contrary to old versions in which cars were turning very sluggishly and most of the time, could never make even simple turns).

Now, this would mean the existing car AI parameters (the under / over steer parameters) would make no sense with the new release. We would have to update the understeer / oversteer handling code, and then find the correct values for each car (the latter part could be finished in an year or two ).

We had no idea yet on how to update this part of the code, so we left the AI in its current state and continued working on other features (custom, etc). We were going to release the next update with a clear notice that the work on the AI is unfinished and could behave unexpectedly, even worser than before.

But yesterday we started trying something in this part again, and its actually turning out to be quite promising. For example, Sprinter XL is now able to do a 28.5 lap in Toy World 1. It would take some time to wrap up these new changes, but we'll try to finish it soon. It shouldn't take more than a day or 2 though, so we can expect a release by Monday.

For the car tweakers, there would probably be more AI parameters available to modify (per car). Of course, the AI parameters in existing cars are still not going to make any sense with the new code. So you'll only be able to test the updated Sprinter XL (which will be included).

Not only the existing car parameters, I guess the existing track AI nodes are also going to be a problem now. The picture below shows approximately the path traced by Sprinter XL in 1207 (the BLUE path) and in the new 1.2 (the ORANGE path).

As you can see, the new AI path is more smoothed out and very precise even at high speed. But this also means unless the track nodes are updated to reflect these improvements, the car is going to end up crashing at the corner turn near the boxes.

PS: No release today, but at least there was a picture. Now I hope Nero doesn't post one of his own..

nice, next week I'm pretty busy so I cant really immediately take a look at the patch when it comes but... whatever

As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty excited for the AI update as I play most of the time offline (never took the time to get Re-Volt set up for online playing

did you actually removed the rubberbanding now or leave it ingame? or maybe even made an option to turn it off/on?

could you also do some testing on the Graphite 2 track? its a really cool track but currently most of the AI cars get moreless stuck in the first part with the halfpipes.
it would be really great to get tracks like this working with the AI

here's the track link if you dont have it -> http://rvzt.zackattackgames.com/main/co ... Graphite+2

edit: oh btw this track also has some graphic bugs (probably because of the transparent ground?) there are no skidmarks when you should leave some (especially after driving in oil) and sometimes the oil lacks disappear for some seconds (which makes it difficult to see them).

and a funny bug on the track (though I'm not sure if it is one) is that the water bombs dont explode when they land on the track. only if you directly bumb into them with the car they explode.
to me its more a feature than a bug because it adds some kind of weapon to the track that the game doesnt have -> mines

Okay but PROMISE that on Monday it WILL be released, okay?
So, from what I get, there won't be any AI improvements this release and only custom stuff, like bug fixes and all that?

PS: Did you fix that AI flipping bug? That's all what interests me mostly.

Man i hate those people (like hilaire9) idiot kept kicking me cause hurr i use custom cars, only problem is that they won't make get on 1st place at all don't they know all the cars I use are well official. aka right HERE http://revolt.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Cars

well I'm myself a developer and I can tell that it is acutally quite difficult to predict when a project will be finished. so dont be so hard with them (and even if it doesnt come out on monday - they promised us that they will do patches so they will come, sooner or later)

and from what I can read out of Huki's post is that the AI will be included in the next release (apparently this is also the reason why it gets delayed to monday?)

@gdfsgdfg:
PS: arent the cars Bossvolt, Purp XL and Fulon X missing in your compilation?

Kenny @ Dec 10 2011, 10:41 PM wrote:
@gdfsgdfg:
PS: arent the cars Bossvolt, Purp XL and Fulon X missing in your compilation?

I checked and they are there o.o http://www.mediafire.com/?a51oea5xjv9a2bl

you are right, sry my fault

but for some reason most of the cars dont appear ingame (as a selectable car, I didnt check if the AI drives the cars but from what I have seen I dont think so).
maybe you know why this is? I'll unlock everything again and see if they become selectable (altough I never heard of custom curs being not selectable when they should be...)

also I would like to know if all of the cars have their original parameters? I know that some cars originally didnt have parameters (or didnt work out of the box), could you list them?
and it would be nice if the carboxes of the DC cars had a better quality
the other boxes are very nice but if you look close they are actually too nice.

I think we should make a HD pack where most of the textures ingame get polished up and the car models get more quality.
for example all the tires of the cars have actually no tire profile, they are just plain black (and somehow rounded down at the edges?). or the springs of the cars look like they were only painted-on (which they are actually).

but of course I'm dreaming a bit here, it would probably take way too much time and probably isnt even worth the work.
maybe the polish up of the original carboxes would be enough (and if they dont get updated - not a big deal, really )

Most of them have original parameters but the dreamcast one's will be made by Nero in the future he might release em this month on rvzt : and yes i know the carboxes look like crap i had to resize them it seems 85x85 makes the box appear invisible, a bug in 1.2 newest alpha (huki fix it!)

Anyway rv_passion pretty much made half of those stuff like the hd pc gamer for ex. or every good quality carbox you see there.

Don't know what you mean with unselectable my game is 100% complete i can use them all

Update: http://www.mediafire.com/?9gpi56zmc5h831q

- Improved quality on most carboxes

v Nah most people read here

Getting (sort of) back on topic...

If it ultimately means that we get a better update, I can wait a few days for it.

And please, gdfsgdfg, if you really want to make your own pack of cars or whatever you've got there, feel free to open your own topic. We'll see it...

sry for offtopic but I hope this is for the last time

@gdfsgdfg: interesting, after applying a 100% profile I can select all of them. I'm wondering why most of them are not selectable in a new profile?

anyway, I still got one question regarding the collection
what car is pcgamerremake? obviously it seems to be a remake of pcgamer car but is it something official? because I cant find it in the wiki or elsewhere...
and if it is not, why did you put it in the pack?

Kenny @ Dec 11 2011, 12:22 AM wrote: sry for offtopic but I hope this is for the last time

Yea i thought of removing it but as the name suggests its supposed to make the car look better.

Anyway improved the carboxes for ya.

Sprinter XL is now able to do a 28.5 lap in Toy World 1.

I was more interested about the custom content & the profile system as you expect, but this really caught my attention.^ It's wonderful that you guys keep making such a refined work after all the amazing improvements already applied to Re-Volt. Keep it up!
I can also keep waiting for the good work.

@Kenny: Remember that those are STOCK cars in the DC version, not customs. And they have different Ratings. Obtain value is not set to 0 in most of them. So it's normal that they need to be unlocked by completing the championships, single race, etc.

Now let me remind that this is the RV1.2 thread. If you guys are too interested in DC content, just make a new thread and discuss about it.

Sprinter XL is now able to do a 28.5 lap in Toy World 1.

I actually tried to beat that (with Sprinter XL of course) and I must admit that I had to do more than two attempts to beat that.

But the driving was not really the problem, the big jump at the end was because it always turned my car around so I lost 2 or 3 seconds which were already too much. How did the AI handle that jump?

And what were the conditions of the time measuring? Was it a normal race or Sprinter XL only? Were pickups enabled? (I didnt use battery btw)
Anyway, my record with Sprinter XL on Toyworld 1 is now 28:282

Oh and do the AI changes influence their use/handling of pickups too? As far as I have seen it, the AI almost immediately uses their pickups when they got them (except for the rockets maybe). So I think its not to their full advantage.
But I also would like to know, do they recover now faster from crashes or sliding due to the changes you have made?
For example, how do they behave when they drive in an oil spill? Until now they slid away almost everytime when they started to steer with the car. Is this improved now?

Remember that those are STOCK cars in the DC version, not customs. And they have different Ratings. Obtain value is not set to 0 in most of them. So it's normal that they need to be unlocked by completing the championships, single race, etc.

I know but the strange thing is that there were some cars which were not supposed to be unlocked (two or three advanced cars). The dev cars were all locked except for the dev UFO.
Also maybe I'm wrong here but do the obtain values even work properly when used with custom cars? Because I tried it once and it didnt work (the custom cars were all unlocked although they all had different obtain values and I had a fresh install).

Hey, my favorite car got an AI upgrade!




Well at least it won't be last in every race now.


Are you going to update other stock cars' AI as well or is that our job after the update is released?

well the AI is kind of a general thing so the update wont only affect Sprinter XL but rather all cars that are selectable by the computer (custom cars too)

Sprinter XL was just an example here to have some reference but if it got really that much improved then all other cars that have similar parameters will probably also be very much improved.

edit: I just read that for now only Sprinter XL will be affected
but in future version it will probably also count for all other cars

We would have to update the understeer / oversteer handling code, and then find the correct values for each car (the latter part could be finished in an year or two).

Not only the existing car parameters, I guess the existing track AI nodes are also going to be a problem now.

Huki, are you sure all that was necessary? You broke backwards compatibility, and badly.

A small but significant change is that AI cars will now be more prone to oversteer (contrary to old versions in which cars were turning very sluggishly and most of the time, could never make even simple turns).

That’s specifically why the old AI didn’t work well: it couldn’t handle oversteer. And it’s also why the simplified AI works so well with the old AI: it bypasses oversteer completely. Unless you totally rewrote the oversteer part, that may be one reason why you need to take a year or two to find new car AI values.

For example, Sprinter XL is now able to do a 28.5 lap in Toy World 1.

Well, with _old_ AI and simplified AI procedure (*), I got Sprinter to make 30.5 laps half the time there (took me just 10 minutes to get that UnderMax value and half an hour to pedantically verify that the car can’t do better with any other value).

* http://z3.invisionfree.com/Our_ReVolt_P ... topic=1475

Insert this into the stock Sprinter and see it run:

UnderThresh 0
UnderRange 1
UnderFront 50000
UnderRear 50000
UnderMax 0.187500
OverThresh 50000

Ignore the rest.

Yes, Supermarket 2 ice is still a problem, but Sprinter is a difficult car.

And the same UnderMax does laps under one minute in Supermarket 1, even while making _several_ mistakes along the way.

At least try the simplified AI method with the new AI, maybe it’s possible to save us all from redoing all the thousands of tracks and cars. It’s easy to code the method into the game itself (the version using the TC6 track), like an extension of the Calculate Car Stats procedure, and 1) you’ll get your stock cars re-calculated quickly, and 2) everyone can get their favourite custom cars re-calculated quickly at home, only those they want. And hopefully no tracks would have to be redone then. Although, the Supermarket 1 example you showed in that picture is telling me that maybe you should roll back a bit with those optimisations (I specifically mean the dynamic look-ahead distance). I think you became trigger-happy and went too far.

And Huki, I did send you a PM about this weeks ago, didn’t you read it?

[end rant, initiate cool-down]

Edit:
At least make it so that the new AI / the old AI can be selected in game options, for now.

Huki, am I smelling a Monday? YES! Do you also smell it?

I smell fish from your avatar

Well I trust Huki didn't just go and break 99% of the car/track AI thing just to make improvements to Sprinter XL's AI. Hopefully he made sure that at least the stock cars won't be broken by the changes.

For the most part, custom cars could be fixed by people who use that specific car.
The only problem here is that some people have hundreds if not thousands of custom cars and fixing even 10 of them could be tedious, let alone all of them.

ElvenAvenger @ Dec 12 2011, 05:58 PM wrote: Well I trust Huki didn't just go and break 99% of the car/track AI thing just to make improvements to Sprinter XL's AI. Hopefully he made sure that at least the stock cars won't be broken by the changes.

of course not, it would be ridiculously calling it a patch when basically half of the game would not be properly working afterwards (aka offline racing and using custom content).

also even if Huki added new parameters for the cars, I'm sure they are optional so I guess all custom cars should be working. if the game finds new parameters in the file - fine, if not then it probably will handle the car as usual so not a big tragedy

I think it's understood that 1.2 is in Alpha stage and any modifications are just not finalized.

huki wrote:We would have to update the understeer / oversteer handling code, and then find the correct values for each car (the latter part could be finished in an year or two).

By "this part can be finished in an year or two", we mean "this part cannot be finished in realistic time and the modification is not worth keeping, but we are going to include it, at least for this release anyway" (okay, I'll cut back on the sarcasm from now on ).

To be more clear, this is what we have now and we're not sure on how to proceed further. But till we can think of a solution, we can't keep the other features we've worked on and finished (custom, etc.) unreleased and untested.

In an Alpha patch, it's understandable to have part of the software not working, especially when it's not significant to the current release, when it's mentioned beforehand that it's unfinished. Now, we can't say when the situation will change, or when we (or someone else) will find a solution.. and those are the risks of using Alpha software - it's subjective to change. If you think you're missing an important part, you're just expected to revert back to an older version that works.


Now onto more useful matters...

@CW:

CW wrote:

huki wrote:A small but significant change is that AI cars will now be more prone to oversteer (contrary to old versions in which cars were turning very sluggishly and most of the time, could never make even simple turns).

That’s specifically why the old AI didn’t work well: it couldn’t handle oversteer. And it’s also why the simplified AI works so well with the old AI: it bypasses oversteer completely.

I can see your point here. Oversteer correction felt broken in the original version and even the original stock cars bypass this code with very high OverThresh values. Anyway, I just tried your simplified Sprinter parameters in 1207 and it's indeed working nicely.

I also tried it in the new 1.2 (after removing the quoted modification) and I've noticed still more improvement, because of the better recovery from crashes. Of course, the UnderMax value might have to be recalculated for the dynamic look ahead distance, but that's no big deal.

CW wrote:It’s easy to code the method into the game itself (the version using the TC6 track), like an extension of the Calculate Car Stats procedure, and 1) you’ll get your stock cars re-calculated quickly, and 2) everyone can get their favourite custom cars re-calculated quickly at home, only those they want.

But isn't your method more of trial-and-error? Maybe we could take the lap time into account, but I think it's better to run the cars and set the value manually. Maybe we could allow increasing / decreasing the UnderMax value in-game, although I'm not sure if it will be included for the upcoming release.

CW wrote:And hopefully no tracks would have to be redone then.

We can't promise anything here. Not many tracks have good, unbiased lines (they're mostly tweaked to get a bad AI to work), and the stock track AI lines are especially pretty bad.

But one thing to understand is that we're not creating a new problem. For example, the AI has always crashed in Market1, and it's still going to.. just in slightly different places. The improvements in AI lines, such as the smoothed interpolation and the dynamic look ahead distance, will be useful for tracks created in the future, but we can't promise anything for existing tracks.. that is, unless the existing tracks AI nodes are updated accordingly.

CW wrote:At least make it so that the new AI / the old AI can be selected in game options, for now.

So now we have decided to let the car designer / tweaker turn off one of the more controversial modifications: changing from an understeering AI to a normal oversteering one. There will be another entry in the Parameters file (in the AI section). The "new type steering" will be used only if this entry is set. As the existing cars don't have this entry, they will keep using the old type steering, the existing cars and CW's simplified AI will keep working. I think that would do.

Citywalker @ Dec 12 2011, 07:05 AM wrote: At least make it so that the new AI / the old AI can be selected in game options, for now.

Yeah, I TOTALLY support this idea! I actually asked Jig about this feature, and he said he isn't sure if it'll be implemented or not. It would be awesome though, new users who might find hard the game at the beginning can choose the easy mode.

Anyway, Huki, I know you're deep into this AI discussion, and I know that you might get a little angry at my repetitive following question, but can we expect a release this week? It's not just me, but more people from RV House, Re-Volt Live who are waiting for the new update especially for the custom parts.

Greetings!

I'm not sure why the ai improvement anyway i mean the ai is hard as it is actually I'd say screw that and make more custom stuff.

gdfsgdfg @ Dec 12 2011, 11:25 PM wrote: I'm not sure why the ai improvement anyway i mean the ai is hard as it is actually I'd say screw that and make more custom stuff.

that might apply to the stock tracks but on many custom tracks they behave not that good so I think its valid if we try make some improvement there.

also once you get the hang of it, the AI is quite easy to trick. sure beginners of the game will have a hard time (lol are there even still beginners? )
but thats what the easy mode is for (or maybe the advanced but does anybody actually plays in that mode? we could make the current hard mode the advanced mode and the AI improvements for the hard mode ).

At least make it so that the new AI / the old AI can be selected in game options, for now.

sure its nice to have everything optional, it gives the user a lot of freedom to customize the game as he wants it to be.
but remember, the more customization the more time you will have to spend with it (sure this feature would be only one option but I am talking about that things in general).

miromiro @ Dec 13 2011, 03:47 AM wrote: can we expect a release this week? It's not just me, but more people from RV House, Re-Volt Live who are waiting for the new update especially for the custom parts.

Don't worry, we'll have a release soon after we finish adding the new parameter entries. Not much more time to wait..

EDIT: There will be a track with custom features included with the release. The custom version of the track is not found on rvzt, so I think it will make for a nice surprise.

gdfsgdfg @ Dec 12 2011, 06:25 PM wrote: I'm not sure why the ai improvement anyway i mean the ai is hard as it is actually I'd say screw that and make more custom stuff.

Have you ever actually thought of the other Re-Volt players who maybe don't play online? I'm sure they'd like to see AI improvements. Just because you aren't particularly interested in them means that we should all just drop what we're doing and cater to your particular whim. As jig said before me, if you don't like what's going on, don't use the update.

*fears he's already started something bad*

EDIT:

huki wrote:Don't worry, we'll have a release soon after we finish adding the new parameter entries. Not much more time to wait..

Good to hear!

I just meant that ai stuff can wait and i still play sp from time to time

Huki, thank you for a comprehensive reply!

But isn't your method more of trial-and-error?

Yes, but it’s automated and optimised trial-and-error, thus an algorithm can do it quickly and efficiently (5-6 runs of ca. 20 seconds gives a near-perfect AI to most vehicles, 10 runs should be full-perfect). And trial-and-error is necessary for adjusting precisely to the individual car (the only other method would be calculation from params, and there’s just too much to take into account there).
Besides, it’s an adapted version of the classical half-step database search algorithm (an automated trial-and-error method widely taught and used).

Of course, the UnderMax value might have to be recalculated for the dynamic look ahead distance, but that's no big deal.

Only, I think that the dynamic look-ahead distance makes the car see straights differently from curves, so that an UnderMax quickly calculated from a straight section may not work for curves, and vice versa. That’s theory, though, and needs to be tested with the new AI.

Maybe we could allow increasing / decreasing the UnderMax value in-game

Not good, it would have to be increasing / decreasing by an arbitrary step, whereas the simplified AI gets more precise with every step.

We can't promise anything here. Not many tracks have good, unbiased lines (they're mostly tweaked to get a bad AI to work)

There will always be bad track AI, because not all track-makers are good at it. That’s why it’s better to concentrate on car AI, to make it automatically good, so it’s able to cope with anything it can encounter.

and the stock track AI lines are especially pretty bad.

Run the simplified Sprinter on all stock tracks and observe it. If it copes decently with everything there, it copes with everything decent anywhere. No point in redoing old tracks, yes. And not all people will make tracks for the new AI, unless it will be easy to adapt all cars to the new AI (e.g. automated trial-and-error).

To confirm the wait of a harder AI, there is I : I cannot play on-line because of a problem totally unknown. In brief, to play on-line is impossible for me

The AI is really easy to overcome on track stock and if one day I see a really difficult AI, I would be really happy

Agreed with Strix. Besides, all the thousands of custom cars at RVZT are fun to have as opponents in offline races. Currently they are 1) made so that the stock AI can drive them, so they’re a bit bland, or 2) the cars with more interesting handling cannot be opponents because the stock AI can’t handle them. Better AI would open up more possibilities there. Even the simplified old AI can help out a lot with that, but together with Huki’s improvements we would have killer AI for everything on any number of wheels (and without wheels ).

Huki @ Dec 12 2011, 11:40 PM wrote:
EDIT: There will be a track with custom features included with the release. The custom version of the track is not found on rvzt, so I think it will make for a nice surprise.

Now that's more like it but still how much waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Bonus exclusive content!!!!!

You know, staying patient with all this goodness is hard to do...

EDIT: this is actually really awesome because that means I'll have less figuring out to do when I put custom stuff in my tracks

Release will be on 16th, tomorrow (I still have to finish updating the change log, and it's probably too late today for most people anyway).

I think we can resume the AI discussion after the release, but for now I have some rather good news. It seems that with a recent change (of which you'll hear more about later), there is a significant improvement with most cars, even with the original parameter values (and of course, with Citywalker's simplified parameters too).

I was running Sprinter AI with the updated parameters vs. the other rookies with the original stock parameters and the more stable cars like Volken and Grudge were able to beat Sprinter on Toy World 1 (the light-weight car put up a good fight before finally giving up to all the weapons and physical attack). Interestingly, I was able to capture one of the recovery improvements showing the AI's reflexes. You can find the short video here..

tomorrow in valve time or should i say huki time means either in 2-3 days

anyway on the video damn that's pretty cool i can pull those off but slowly

Day. Has. Been. Made. It recovers from rockets better than I do

Huki @ Dec 16 2011, 05:25 AM wrote: Release will be on 16th, tomorrow (I still have to finish updating the change log, and it's probably too late today for most people anyway).

I think we can resume the AI discussion after the release, but for now I have some rather good news. It seems that with a recent change (of which you'll hear more about later), there is a significant improvement with most cars, even with the original parameter values (and of course, with Citywalker's simplified parameters too).

I was running Sprinter AI with the updated parameters vs. the other rookies with the original stock parameters and the more stable cars like Volken and Grudge were able to beat Sprinter on Toy World 1 (the light-weight car put up a good fight before finally giving up to all the weapons and physical attack). Interestingly, I was able to capture one of the recovery improvements showing the AI's reflexes. You can find the short video here..

You are awesome Huki!

You have been working at night time on the Re-volt update (your post says:- Dec 16 2011, 05:25 AM"), thanks a lot for the effort!

14:30 here, GMT+2. I guess there it is 18:00. Ain't the day already somewhat half done? We're waiting!
Great video, also.

Indeed, the improvement of the AI is IMMENSE *-*

Very Great

Umm..its already 16th and the day is going to over in 45 minutes.

Come on Huki mate, can't you update those damn change log later? I'm pretty sure everybody already knows the fixes, improvements and new features. All we need is just a download link. Come Huki, I trust you, just as we all do. Don't delay it no more!

Wow...seeing a Sprinter XL AI actually driving is satisfying by itself.


Usually they just spin out even when they are on a straight...
Now I can race with pick ups somewhat fairly, because usually the AI does not really recover from a rocket, they just stop and waste at least 5 seconds trying to get back to the race.

miromiro @ Dec 16 2011, 07:06 PM wrote: Come on Huki mate, can't you update those damn change log later? I'm pretty sure everybody already knows the fixes, improvements and new features. All we need is just a download link. Come Huki, I trust you, just as we all do. Don't delay it no more!

what he said come one man

looks like we won't see the new update until next next week right?

No idea where Huki lives, but in the UK its only 9:53PM, so there's still time. lol