Absolutely. Please feel free.
I didn't want to throw too much at you, but you seem genuinely interested in making this an app to be proud of, so perhaps I will share some more thoughts with you regarding this fine project...
To begin, let me say that any individual suggestions that I might make in regard to this app are focused towards the overall goal of making the process of creating new cars...either completely from scratch or doing a repaint and tune...as user-friendly and efficient as possible. To that end I will attempt to describe both the perceived need and the proposed solution. If you have a better idea for implementing something, then by all means run with it. Know also that there would be more smiling in this post, but I seem to have run into an emoticon limit...heheh.
<insert smiley face here>
Currently my process involves countless cycles of closing and opening the game with tweaks to the parameter file in between. The things I suggest come from my own recent experience with creating new cars (currently from existing ones) for Re-Volt. It is my belief however, that other people would also benefit from them.
Aside from the necessary reload of the changed parameters, I need to actually see/feel how those changes affect the car's handling. For the final tuning there is going to be no replacement for just plain racing the car, but many gross adjustments could be made before the car ever hits the track. Since there was no (obvious) objection to being able to add an impulse to the antenna, perhaps this next one is possible.
Like I said, there is nothing that will take the place of getting behind the keys and taking it for a spin in Re-Volt, but is there any way you can get the cars to drop onto an invisible floor when they are first displayed kind of like they do when you choose them at the select screen or by using shift+F10 and -dev mode to reload the car in-game? The way the car bounces would give you at least some indication of weight as well as spring compression and rebound. This would allow you to establish the basic 'character' of the vehicle without a lot of time-consuming trial and error. Even better, you could have this happen when you hit the 'Refresh' button on the End User panel.
Oh boy...this one just came to mind. It would be SO helpful to have a visual indicator of the COM position. A 'Show COM' checkbox that displayed the center of mass would save me a bunch of time. This is something that I check and often modify for every vehicle that I do, and currently it involves quite a bit of guesswork in determining where it lies. If you could count on the fact that 0,0,0 was the exact center of the vehicle, that would be one thing, but determining that is an exercise in spacial visualization at best. At worst, some of these vehicles
seem to have some weird offsets that make it difficult to pin down what's going on.
This is just a thought, but since this point is quite often inside the vehicle, perhaps you could force ghost display mode while this is active, or at least present it as an option. It would be awfully nice to be able to have a visual indicator displayed right on the vehicle that updates dynamically or by hitting the Refresh button. Ideally I think this would be a widget that displayed the X,Y,Z axis with the center representing the placement of the COM. It would also be especially helpful if this widget showed which way was positive and which negative.
Heheh...I can't seem to stop them, the ideas just keep comin'. I just had another one.
Another piece of guesswork is just how far to move any given element. For instance, let's say I want to add an antenna to a car that doesn't yet have one, like one where all the values have been zeroed out by the creator. Or here's another one...just a day or two ago I took the spinning turret off of Sgt. Stomp and stuck it on my repaint of Wardog, making it the War Wolf. It would have taken a lot less time finding the right spot on top of the cab if I had the overall dimensions of the vehicle to work with. I made it work, I'm just saying it would have been easier.
<insert smiley face here>
In this situation and in others I would imagine, it would be helpful to know exactly how big any given vehicle is in 'RV Units', so to speak. So perhaps while the COM widget is active...or maybe even better as simply a seperate checkbox/function...you could have something that displays the height, width and length of the vehicle as interpreted by Re-Volt.
Now in regard to the section concerning the wheels...
Perhaps this is something that you simply haven't gotten to yet, and if so then please disregard the following. I notice currently however, that when you select the wheels, only one set of values is displayed. Is this the final intended functionality? Is so, may I suggest that you at least seperate the front from the rear wheels? I will agree that left and right sides will almost always be the same, except in the case of certain extreme vehicles, but front and rear values very often differ. This will be the same for the springs.
I know you said that 'Wheels 3D editing' wasn't finished, but I'm not sure if that included what is mentioned above. So like I said, just disregard if you haven't reached that point yet. Otherwise, there are a few thoughts that might be of some use to you as you flesh out your app.
