Anything you want looking out for?

[Entr0p1cLqd]

Hi Chaps,

I finally got around to downloading the mod today as I'm off to a LAN in a couple of weeks and am going to be running a 2K4 server. UnWheel is one of the mods we'll have a bash through.

Is there anything you particularly want feedback on in terms of mod/map behaviour or shall I just get a bunch of first impressions together?

Having played through every single race track this afternoon you guys have done a good. There are a couple of maps where the meshes are a bit off though, and the cars feel like they are floating above the ground - but on the whole it's all pretty decent stuff.

If you like I'll go through the maps again and note down the ones that I found problems with, and what the problems were. There weren't many.

digression
Actually, the whole car handling thing is a bit of a personal thing. I've only played three driving games where I've felt like the cars are actually attached to the ground. Midtown Madness 2, GTA Vice City, and Trackmania. All of the Colin McRae games feel exactly like UnWheel does - the car is floating above the ground and is actually behaving like the spaceship in Asteroids or Thrust.

 

[UltraNew-B]

The build you downloaded was not meant for the public at all, its very, very buggy. All the problems you see have already been fixed or are being fixed as we speak.

I would reccomend NOT running a buggy version of Unwheel at a lan, it will not go over well at all. It will just annoy everyone who plays it.

We will have stable, almost bug free version in around 2 weeks.

Stay Tuned for updates.

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

....We will have stable, almost bug free version in around 2 weeks....

 

[jerdaygo]

The build you downloaded was not meant for the public at all, its very, very buggy. All the problems you see have already been fixed or are being fixed as we speak.

I would reccomend NOT running a buggy version of Unwheel at a lan, it will not go over well at all. It will just annoy everyone who plays it.

We will have stable, almost bug free version in around 2 weeks.

Stay Tuned for updates.

Well it is true that the BETA 3 that you downloaded has bugs and does not work mulitplayer, unless the new epic patch fixed the Kvehicle problems, BETA 3 IS A PUBLIC RELEASE, Noob is talking about the version that is in the works, NOT the version you downloaded, so feel free to try it out, I am unable to test the older version with the new patch because it would conflict with the UNRELEASED version we are currently working on, hope you have fun the beta 3 is the version that won thrid place in Non-fps 2nd in Vehicles and 1st in Karma Physics, it is a pretty good build, the version we are working on has a different vehicle code and when its done will OWN

I hope this sets things straight for you

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

That makes more sense

tbh I've not tried it in multiplayer mode as yet as I've been busy doing other stuff. Anyways - now that you've clarified things - do you want any comments or not?

 

[jerdaygo]

Sure comments are welcome, many of the maps you have played have been totally overhauled since the beta 3 release, but ideas are welcome

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

Map comments (given that most of them will probably be redundant). On the whole the maps are nicely varied and play well. I found a couple a bit dark (it's a shame headlights cannot be made to work cortrectly) It'll be nice once you've got the bot AI fully worked out.

Carribean
Could do with a slightly clearer route through the check points. If it wasn't for the radar I'd have been lost.

CityTrackv2 / v3
It's a bit picky but the the first bend could do with a railing on the inside of the corner. Also the straight before the final bend needs some railings on the left. The invisible blocking volumes there at the moment are a poor way of preventing the car from leaving the track.

Farie
Even though there are big signs everywhere I still get turned around on this map. Maybe add a different ground texture (or more obvious racing area). I normally get lost when I'm exiting the low hanging branches and can't see anything.

MotoX
If you do this track in the Shaguar the jump over the water mysteriously reaches up and slows you down in mid air. The rally car I tried it in didn't suffer from that problem.

MountainTown
Exiting the first building/tunnel thing you have to cut left. This needs to be made a bit more obvious as on initial exit it looks like you can go both ways (until you slam into the railings that is ). Also, some of the bridges have invsible "bumps" - again this is more noticable in the shaguar type cars.

Pavillion Track
The left route from the beginning has a gap in the railings and it really looks like there's a short cut that can be taken there. Until you get your car stuck in all of the blocking volumes that is.

Sherwood
This was only a minor irritation in the shaguar but the track is slightly raised from the grass verge. Getting back onto it after sliding off proved somewhat problematic.


I've not really tried any of the other gametypes although I did tinker with the "Big Air" and the "K-Ball" game types. The K-Ball game type could do with restricting the vehicles that can be chosen - the "smaller" vehicles simply roll under the ball.

 

[ProjectX]

Hmmm... Well we've got some cool new arrow meshes, which (if set to unlit) should provide a good route through all of my maps. I just have to add them to my maps now...

 

[carmatic]

unlit meshes? just like that old black and white racing game... umm whatwasitcalled...

 

[ProjectX]

Yeah but they're supposed to look like they're not part of the scenery you see, they're part of the game and not part of the locations. Setting them to unlit also aids visibility.

EDIT: and on the topic of restricting vehicles can we add an option to prevent the caterpillar from being used in KOTH matches? Only, it's very hard to budge off whatever platform its on.

 

[The_Devils_Avarcardo]

Cars being attached to the ground is a bad thing, imo. Thats one of the main reasons i dont play VC as much as i should. If you havent played driv3r or gran turismo a-spec i suggest you pick up a copy and try them out. Those are the single 2 games that i would award a "realistic physics" award to. Its a shame unwheel isnt going down the realism road, but the car handling is cool anyway.

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

Cars being attached to the ground...

What do you mean? The reason the caterpillar is hard to budge is because it's massive (as in heavy) and it's tracks allow it a huge amount of friction.

Anyway - what sparked your comment about cars being attached to the ground?

The cars in UnWheel are in no way attached to the ground as far as I can tell. From what I've seen the physics of the cars is excellent. I've been playing half-pipes and loops today and it works (not as well as I'd like though). It needs faster cars .....

The ironic thing is that the big wheeled vehicles are faster (absurb though it may seem) than the racers and cope much better with loops and half-pipes.

 

[carmatic]

nothing like a few simple tweaks to rectify the absurdity...

also, asking for the caterpillar to be removed for a gametype brings us into the question of fairness of the game... like , for a mod like unwheel, how can all the vehicles be equal?how can you have a fair game?im thinking you add an option in the server to force all vehicles to be one type, and everyone starts to love the multicolour effects that you can do in unwheel... of course this means no more 'any car, anywhere' unless people are willing to accept this... making the game sport-fair is gonna be difficult , i think, especially for the character of this game...

 

[The_Devils_Avarcardo]

I think you misunderstood me there a little. I'll explain what i meant :/

What do you mean? The reason the caterpillar is hard to budge is because it's massive (as in heavy) and it's tracks allow it a huge amount of friction.

Anyway - what sparked your comment about cars being attached to the ground?

The cars in UnWheel are in no way attached to the ground as far as I can tell. From what I've seen the physics of the cars is excellent. I've been playing half-pipes and loops today and it works (not as well as I'd like though). It needs faster cars .....

First off, i wasnt even talking about the CAT, i dunno where you picked that up from. Secondly, i commented on cars "being attached to the ground" because of your 1st post.

Actually, the whole car handling thing is a bit of a personal thing. I've only played three driving games where I've felt like the cars are actually attached to the ground. Midtown Madness 2, GTA Vice City, and Trackmania. All of the Colin McRae games feel exactly like UnWheel does - the car is floating above the ground and is actually behaving like the spaceship in Asteroids or Thrust.

The reason i said it was because i was agreeing with you that cars sticking to the ground sucks, and stating that's why i dont play VC anymore. However, my ideal kind of realism lies with driv3r, or even better, gran turismo a-spec. That's how i'd like unwheel to feel, but i know it wont, so im happy with how it is now.

Oh and before i forget... the only thing that just about EVERY driving game misses is the fact that if you wrench the steering wheel all the way in 1 direction while you're travelling pretty fast, then hit the gas, your car is gonna flip over if it hits even the slightest bump in the road. Unwheel kinda has this, which i like, but its not as realistic as i would like

Anyhoo, we'll see what happens for future releases. If shrimp explains the mechanics of the physics engine i might have to start messing with it.

 

[carmatic]

oh you mean the floating above the ground bit? and what are you doing up so early on a sunday morning?

yeah, the cars feel 'detached' from the game, for me too, allright... umm...thats why , i said once before, the cars look better in renders than in in-game screenshots... when theyre on the ground and you look at them from above, they look like theyre floating or something... when theyre touching the wall and you look at them from the side, they look like theyre not touching and located a distance away from the wall... its kinda hard to explain, its not just the physics that matter anymore, its about cars not being lit the same way as players are...(or being lit as players are, as the case seems to be now... ) little touches like a projected shader of the shadow of a tree your driving under or the shadow of some beams on the roof of a building your driving through or maybe some funky light effects, when they just roll over the shape of the vehicle , it gives them alot more place in the world... like they sometimes do with the ONS vehicles
in my opinion, the vehicles should be presented in the same way as the gun thats held in front of you,in first person, in just about most other mods as well as the default gametypes(dm, ctf, br, etc)... people will notice these shader effects on vehicles, just as well as they will notice them on their guns... like the fan effect on dom-core, and the tree shadow in maul and various other places...

unless, of course im getting this all wrong and if i were to go into spectator mode(in the latest build you guys made, which i dont have, hmm) and look really close at the place where their wheels are supposed to touch the ground i'd actually see a gap....

oh another thing i can think of as a guess to what you meant... was like, how the on-road vehicles handled on tracks like citytrack... like, the vehicles that shipped with ut2k4 are all off road vehicles, like one's a buggy , and the other's a jeep, so thats how the physics system will treat vehicles , right? well i suppose its well beyond my grasp how shrimp will deal with this, but i guess its gonna be pretty deep or something... like how to make on-road vehicles actually handle like on-road vehicles, not like buggies... ive been thinking, like, hmm, 'road volumes' , if that makes sense to you guys... basically where there is supposed to be a road, the on-road cars will have a compatibility towards it that the off-road cars dont... like, if an on-road car is inside a 'road volume' , it handles like a manta, but without the scraping when you go on sloped corners... ive been thinking about this too, like , it came from the concept that if you have a shiny roadster in this wilderness out in nowhere it would look akward, similarly if you have this rough and tough off roader in a city environment, it kinda looks uncivilized...

 

[ProjectX]

Yuk, that would be torture for all the mappers, a simpler system would be to do wheel friction depending on the surface types. And different ways of handling the friction for different cars, i.e. race cars go really well on the track but spin out easily on dirt.

 

[Entr0p1cLqd]

also, asking for the caterpillar to be removed for a gametype brings us into the question of fairness of the game... like , for a mod like unwheel, how can all the vehicles be equal?how can you have a fair game?...snip... of course this means no more 'any car, anywhere' unless people are willing to accept this... making the game sport-fair is gonna be difficult , i think, especially for the character of this game...

To a certain extent I like the fact that you can pick whatever car you like for a race. However, what will actually happen is that people with converge onto a single car for a specific track simply because its the fastest car. This means that you waste a ton of time implementing a bunch of different cars that unless they all handle pretty much the same, most of which will never be used.

Trying to use a roadster in the ball game is a little pointless. You simply drive under the ball. For people that have played the game before it's not an issue - you know that the big wheeled vehicles are more effective. For someone picking up the game for the first time - it will ruin their first game because they will almost certainly choose a racing car - and find they can't do anything with the ball.

I think you misunderstood me there a little. I'll explain what i meant...

Yep - I completely misunderstood you. Thanks for the clarification.

In terms of the whole vehicle handling thing, I've been playing around with the vehicles on a very large flat track surface and just driving them around. If you actually watch what the wheels are doing and what the car body itself is doing you can see that the behaviour is consistent with itself. Unfortunately the behaviour doesn't look consistent with the environment.

The conclusion I've come to is that either there isn't quite enough friction between the wheels and the ground, or, the vehicles themselves are not heavy enough. Overall I'm much happier with the handling of the big-wheeled vehicles. How much of that is due to the body being significantly higher than the ground I'm not sure.

In my half-pipe and loops experiments yesterday I discovered that it's almost impossible to do any stunts with the racers and rally cars. If you make the half-pipe/loop large enough so that the car body doesn't scrape along the ground (they are very close to the ground) they cars don't have enough speed to get much beyond an 80 degree incline. If you make the half-pipe/loop sized so the cars could complete the loop the car body scrapes on the ground and kills your speed.

Heh - I managed to get one of the rally cars stuck with it's wheels in the air on one of my half-pipes. The car's weight was resting on the very front of the car body and the very back. I should have taken a screenie really.

But anyways - most of this discussion is somehwat moot. They've changed the vehicle scale and the base class of the vehicle for the next release so we'll have to see what they've changed once it gets released.

 

[carmatic]

yeah i really look forward to svehicles... skeletal vehicles! that means the suspensions will actually work

but have you ever shoved a scorpion on one of the hills in ... uhh, that map... and it will just 'skid' and the wheels keep on spinning at the constant rate until it stops, and then some pretty unrealistic things happen, like the wheels dont spin , the car slides backwards, but if you turn on the steering, the wheels are still locked, and the car turns the way you turned your steering... good if your going for a very arcadey look (probably so arcadey that its better off top-down) , but wierd when you see cars do that...

 

[ProjectX]

I'm looking forward to the next release as well. I put a lot of work into that build and as has everybody on the team (especially Shrimp and UltraNew-b with S-Vehicle conversions, ouch.)

 

[carmatic]

hehehe i feel good cuz i just sit here and whine all day

wheeeee
actually, i support unwheel fully, just that , uhh... dang gotta think of some excuses now...