by HyenaRacer45 » Thu Dec 04, 2014 5:36 am
Sure Tom_D3, of course I would preserve your car class in the rewrite, it would be part of my collimation and restructure process of the folder layout for speed dreams. There are some quirky issues witht the current layout, in the ioquake3 powered rewrite I want to return to torcs folder layout simplicity. Glad to hear 12.04 LTS is what you use for editing though how did you get two seperate versions of blender installed in linux or is 2.7 installed on your windows partition with only 2.4.9 on 12.04? I am strongly considering a new partition for 12.04 LTS along with the 14.04 and win8.1 already on the machine. Since 2.4.9 is the blender version with 12.04, that will definietly work with the ac3d scripts built in rather than installed, unless you can teach me how to get two versions of blender in 14.04, maybe any possible way of pulling from 12.04's repository and integrating into 1404 or is the difference from Lenny/Squeeze/Wheezy too great? After All I want to include your cars as well if I ever figure out the zmodeller thing. of course I will be converting all meshes, stock game meshes, community meshes(like deckard fuitbasket and hydra and hammel sb2, etc), and the z3d meshes all to a new format for use in a heavy modification of ioquake3's 3d engine. Still deciding on which format I will settle on (either obj/LWO/PLY) OBJ is fine nothing wrong with it, but for sake of less commoness Leaning towards LWO or PLY once I reconnect ioquake3 to that format in place of md3 models, the beta will use md3 static meshes with the wheels now full 3d mesh (which will be tricky for different size options (diameter is simple scale function but width will be tricky as rims will be adjustable in offset, lip, and bolt pattern not just scale width). For rotation, I think my re-write will ditch the radial blur process since now full 3d meshes, I will attach a nano module of bullet physics to actually rotate the wheel and tire meshes as well as provide for true rubber bouncyness and angulation when bouncing on the suspension. Python will be an absolute requirement at this point to execute the much much more detailed physics engine as the current one is too primitive for me. (No actual suspension components with weight and gravity interactions just a crude simulation approximating what would go on if we assume a fixed weight for said parts that dont exist on the mesh and fill in some tension parameters for the limited physics model employed currently, don't get me wrong still a fun game but lacking so much basic realism.)Also not bashing the original authors work on his/her physics engine but there is too little input to work for any reasonable expectation of realistic physics simulacra to occur. Will experiment with the current physics engine if it supports having actual parts beung defined unique weight and connect the physics with mesh geometry of real suspension setups, leaf springs, wishbone, macpherson struts, ladder bars, 3&4links, etc.
But I imagine ultimately a new physics engine is needed for the game to progress further and become on the level of Shift, MostWanted, or Shift2. (ProStreet sucked bad in its physics engine so please no one ask or expect me to implament that garbage code into my re-write.) (To me ProStreet is like nearly all bad parts of torcs/speed-dreams current physics code put together). I expect it will take 17months once I start to complete the process and at least 9months for the complete beta version using md3 static meshes, 17mo should have the final mesh format standardized and all shader scripts written for base textures, glowmaps(brake disks), lights(lightmap powered volumetric projection light or blender style area light, beta uses quake3's light projection cone like in the q3dm17 space map and either vertex point light q3a style or lightmap q3a style), rim shaders, and overlay liveries.