Our ReVolt Pub

Hi all.
I know that i have been away for a while and i just wondered who is currently extreme track making?
I exspect Hil is still on the case and i too am back in max but who else? Just being nosey really lol.
Ohh and is the pub still the main forum where you all talk? or is there more?
Thanks..
Mike.....

I am doing extreme tracks as well, though it's been a year since my last track release. I do have something boiling - I just need to push myself together and work some more of it in Gmax.

ORP and #revolt-chat is a bit silent, there is more activity at RV House in the evening - races every night though not any very impressing amount of people. I hope that the word will be spread about 1.2, so we might attract some more users & track makers.

Revolt Live is another place that sees activity these days.

No one does extreme tracks anymore - people got bored to work for walls.

Please don't generalize, it won't make it any better. Oh well, we do need a few more track makers around here, but again I'm sure that the future looks brighter. ^^

urnemanden @ Feb 25 2011, 07:41 PM wrote: Please don't generalize, it won't make it any better. Oh well, we do need a few more track makers around here, but again I'm sure that the future looks brighter. ^^

Sometimes facing the truth is the best.
I expect some good tracks coming from you, hil, skitch and human (?) but nothing else.
People just lost interest, there are more noobs in the community than actually veterans.

Well, the "noobs" will learn if prodded - somebody just has to remind them that it's very much possible for them, too, to make good extreme tracks. OTOH, many people are well content to race on lego tracks and they don't think they need anything "more extreme".
Oh, and some of the noobs will become veterans - with time. Only this requires dedication, which not everybody has anyway. (Although I can see some bright minds among the "noobs", already.)
Anyway, hasn't it always been like this in the community? Some extremely good track- (and car-) makers and lots of other people, some trying, some not very much.
<okay, enough theorising, back to carmaking >

Yeah, unfortunately I have gotten caught up in work and wedding planning. I still try to stay active, but don't expect any new tracks from me for a little while..... Unless I go back to some unfinished projects...

Totally offtopic: congrats in advance, ZA!

LOL @ miromiro, The same goes for the negitive members too, there has always been one or two in the mix!
From the very first extreme track there were only a few good Max track makers and some very good lego editors. The drive to build a good track may have ebbed a little but still we show up year after year lol.
I still dont know of any game community that has stayed as long as this one!
Mike....

I am making wedding plans myself:

Lol hil,you again with these kind of jokes!

Well, I sometimes make tracks, but i hate these noobs around there but ok. I was a noob once. But i expect a little bit english from them :/

at least, if I would get many critical and constructive comments, I'll might give it a try to make a new track. Just more people need to try my tracks or it isn't it worth to make new ones.

Thanks in advance,

R6

Sorry to bump this topic, but I just have to add my 2 cents worth.

I'm currently making Extreme tracks again, this time stepping up my skill, and also looking more into making more tracks with a 3D Editor (my first one being Testing Ground 2).

We need more (and good) track makers!

nero @ Apr 28 2011, 10:34 PM wrote:Sorry to bump this topic, but I just have to add my 2 cents worth.

I'm currently making Extreme tracks again, this time stepping up my skill, and also looking more into making more tracks with a 3D Editor (my first one being Testing Ground 2).

We need more (and good) track makers!

don't fear the bump nero! what 3d program you use?

it seems like yesterday i had big plans for Rhino3d to help make tracks...but that was already 3 years ago!!! the tools work, and i started making some tutorial vids on how to use it all in rhino but alas things have slipped, life moves on so quick. i will try to get in touch with jiggy to see if i can help his blender efforts in any way, from what we've learnt from our rhino tools. either tool could help map makers, all the better.

jiggy has got some blender scripts going it seems, that is probably the future, unless my mate and i can get more people into using rhino

i agree with skitch about the long time community, if people are getting married then it's been around awhile! it's a great thing. i wonder what might happen if throwback ent. ever releases the rights, or a new game???

i think the secret of the success was a game ahead of it's time, built using good fundamentals of gameplay and awesome physics model before any physics engines like havok or bullet or ODE were invented! and the binary files are all named in order, so it's easier to reverse engineer them. the sound is still better than most racing games i play today (eg. colin mcrae dirt, the engine and gears sound pretty average, the rumble of the little toyeca is miles better). the graphics run a million FPS on modern hardware, which shows solid scaleability from good programming. sound + graphics + gameplay = awesome game for all time. if i could make a game 1/10 as good, i'd be very happy

don't fear the bump nero!&nbsp; what 3d program you use?

ZModeler, as it's the only 3D editing program I understand.

i wonder what might happen if throwback ent. ever releases the rights, or a new game???

We-Go Interactive (a Korean company) bought all the rights of Re-Volt, RC Revenge, etc. from Throwback Failtertainment.

Time has passed, hasn't it?

i'm gonna give it a go at making lego/extremes when i get my pc fixed up

I would be much happier if new members would try out the old kits like the Warehouse and the off road kits!! I mean some really great tracks have come out of those!!
Mike...

I think we'd see more of that if they knew where they are... BTW I'm suddenly motivated to make Re-Volt tracks again

PM me about a track lmao

Finally some competition then!

Me! I've days away from finishing the office I work in, ground floor + first floor

Here what I have so far

jfbasic.zip (1.42MB)

Note:

• It's used mainly as a LAN track, so although the AI routes are not too bad, they're not perfect.
• There are no triggers on this (such as directions). Everyone I race with, I work with, so they know the route!
• This was made with 3Ds Max 2014
• I do not claim to be a pro at making tracks, if you find some errors or the textures look a bit funky in some places, then I'm not surprised.
• Good/back feedback is welcomed

That's... actually, not too bad.

The flow of the track takes a little while to get used to, as there aren't any straights at all; you can't really take a break, since you're constantly having to deal with corners. Perhaps making the track slightly larger might help.

The graphics stand out the most, because of the lack of lighting, and everything looks a bit pixellated. I encourage you to use bigger bitmaps for your textures (512x512 bitmaps are a good start), as it will improve the overall look of the track.

The AI isn't that much of a challenge, as they're fairly easy to lap.

Overall though, it looks promising. Looking forward to seeing it released.

Tasty feedback, cheers Nero. I did try 512px BMPs, but they came out funny, I haven't patched my install - is this why? If so, where can I download the patch?

As for the lighting, I did a test a while ago on a different track and all the lights I inserted seemed to have no affect on the parts of the track that I made in 3Ds (it did however work on the cars and on PRMs that were imported from stock). Any ideas on this? Are there any lighting tutorials knocking about online? Cheers for your help.

RichyDude @ 27 Aug 2015, 07:50 PM wrote:I did try 512px BMPs, but they came out funny, I haven't patched my install - is this why? If so, where can I download the patch?

Try 1.2 alpha or RVGL.

VaiDuX461 @ 27 Aug 2015, 02:03 PM wrote:

RichyDude @ 27 Aug 2015, 07:50 PM wrote:I did try 512px BMPs, but they came out funny, I haven't patched my install - is this why? If so, where can I download the patch?

Try 1.2 alpha or RVGL.

or you can also use wolfr4 or jig's 512 patch if you would like to stay in 1207/acclaim builds

Thanks for the info chaps, I have now patched it to the version where 2 acclaim screens & a ufo video appear when the game loads.

I'm trying to figure out how to make my custom track 'reverse-able', I've created a folder called REVERSED in my track folder, loaded up revolt with the dev switch, changed my track to reversed on the track selection screen, but, when the race starts all my custom imported PRMs have vanished and the car is facing the normal way?! I have modified the .ini file so that the cars rotation is backwards (at least I think I have, is it '1' or '0.5' to rotate it 180 degrees?). My main question is, is there a way to important all the PRM positions + AI nodes + all the other stuff that goes into a custom track, into the reversed version?

I've been playing around with a multi-level mall idea.



Diagonal slants would be "escalators," the holes between floors on the far left would have a number of hanging glass/light sculptures that the cars fall through and break apart, bunch of storefronts along the straights or something..
Knowing my track record for actually finishing things, it's probably biting off a lot more than I can chew but I'd rather fail than not try I guess. One can dream, right?

[hide]Is it even possible to have escalators in customs, or is that hard-coded into muse2? I know there's a couple cooresponding ncp material types used in that track at least.
E: the supermarkets have moving surfaces too. judging by the mat names there's at least some level of hard-coding going on[/hide]

Gotolei @ 9 Sep 2015, 03:45 AM wrote:I've been playing around with a multi-level mall idea.

I think that would be absolutely stunning!

Out of interest, can you apply the BMP textures (along with correct mappings) within Blender? I've only had experience with 3Ds Max.

RichyDude @ 8 Sep 2015, 10:29 AM wrote:My main question is, is there a way to important all the PRM positions + AI nodes + all the other stuff that goes into a custom track, into the reversed version?

Copy *.fin (PRM instances), *.fan (AI nodes), *.pan (POS nodes), *.taz (Track zones), *.tri (Triggers), *.cam (Cameras) files from the main level folder to reversed?
Rest of them: *.fob (Objects), *.lit (Lights) and few others are unnecessary.

RichyDude @ 8 Sep 2015, 10:29 AM wrote:I have modified the .ini file so that the cars rotation is backwards (at least I think I have, is it '1' or '0.5' to rotate it 180 degrees?).

0.5
1.0 will be full 360 degrees, which is pointless.

RichyDude @ 9 Sep 2015, 10:07 AM wrote: Out of interest, can you apply the BMP textures (along with correct mappings) within Blender? I've only had experience with 3Ds Max.

Blender does mapping too, yeah. as well as vertex shading. I've yet to run into any limiting shortcomings, though for what it's worth I've only really done car-related stuff up until now.

Gotolei @ 9 Sep 2015, 08:15 AM wrote:Is it even possible to have escalators in customs, or is that hard-coded into muse2? I know there's a couple cooresponding ncp material types used in that track at least.
E: the supermarkets have moving surfaces too. judging by the mat names there's at least some level of hard-coding going on

The escalator material types were originally hard-coded to move in the direction required for muse2 and market. In v1.2 this hard-coding was removed and we take the direction of movement simply from the polygon orientation, so you can just use one of the 4 available conveyor types on your tilted surface.

From the v1.2 changelog:

Alpha 12.0405 wrote:    - Updated conveyor effect (eg., Museum 2), direction of movement is
      according to each polygon orientation (previously hardcoded).

Ah, that's cool. Not sure how one would go about manipulating the orientation, but at least that's something searchable

Gotolei @ 19 Sep 2015, 01:03 AM wrote:Ah, that's cool. Not sure how one would go about manipulating the orientation, but at least that's something searchable

The polygon's orientation is simply how much it is slanted. You don't have to worry about it as it is known by re-volt. You only need to apply the appropriate conveyor material type on your slanted surface (the ncp polys). Use the material types used on the muse2 conveyors (one goes down and the other up).

Has anyone managed to import/recreate the escalators from museum? I had a look at the museum level whilst using makeitgood, in both object & instance mode, and couldn't select them. I read somewhere that someone suggested you could recreate them via a combination one f "facing wind" and "weird magnet" but when I tried this the results were horrific! If the escalators are hard coded in then is there absolutely no way of converting them into standalone PRM files?

The escalators are two separate parts: the part that actually moves the car is an ncp material type, and the visual animation is a texanim flag in the w file.

Assuming you have the blender plugin, you can import the ncp file and note that the escalators have their own color (material type).


Texanim's kinda hard to explain, but one of the easiest examples I've seen are the blinking lights in the DC rooftops track since they only have two frames. Go in-game, find something that's blinking, go into blender, select one of the faces, check which texanim slot it's using and work from there.

For starters, note that 217/256=0.84765625.
http://i.imgur.com/5djAWn3.png
http://pastebin.com/KkmJvrRa


I guess this is as good a thread to ask as any.. how does the automation stuff that seems to be in there work? Guessing it uses the console somehow?

E: messed around a bit, and it adds more text when regenerating the file.
[hide]

# Examples: (uncomment the block to use the code as a template)

# slot 0

# Here we generate TexAnim frames for the first TexAnim slot.
# The rule is that the first frame TexAnim[0][0] already exists (it is set in
# the TexAnim panel using the 'As first frame' button). We use it as the basis
# to generate the following frames.
# We want to generate 32 frames that translate by 1 pixel to the right at each
# step (ie. a horizontal translation, along the V direction).
# The texture size is 256x256, so the dv step for 1 pixel is 1/256 for frame 1,
# 2 * 1/256 for frame 2, etc., that is to say: i * 1/256. We use the
# Translation() function defined at the end of this script.

# get info from the first frame
texture, time, uv = TexAnim[0][0]

# generate following frames
for i in count(31):
    TexAnim[0].append(texture, time, Translation(uv, dv=i * 1/256))

# slot 1

# get info from the first frame
texture, time, uv = TexAnim[1][0]

# generate following frames
for i in count(8):
    TexAnim[0].append(
            texture,
            time,
            HorizontalArray(uv, du=80/256, dv=80/256, nu=3, i=i)
            )

[/hide]Process detailed in the readme to get things started doesn't seem to work though, it never actually creates the initial TexAnim[#] = [] block :/
E2: scripting in general doesn't work it seems, even with the template. It errors, says to look in the console, but the console is empty.

Are you using a supported version of Blender and python? The plugin requires Blender 2.73, and from the readme, it seems the texanim generation script requires python3. You can find the version of python bundled with blender by going to 'blender/2.73/python/lib/'.

/home/raster/Downloads/blender-2.73a-linux-glibc211-x86_64/2.73/python/lib/python3.4

Maybe it needs 2.73 flat instead of 2.73a? Though the current version of the plugin came out after 2.73a..
Rest of the stuff works fine, idk.

E: still no dice in 2.73. Guess I'll just xpost to the relevant thread at this point.