Questions, suggestions, othertions

[Fraggee_Rok]

More dumb stuff from me, concerning upcoming versions, general UW-physics and several extra pieces of nonsense.

Firstly, some irritating questions:

1) The new demolition gametype - when a car is wrecked, does it explode or just remain in play, albeit in a non-drivable state? I ask because a wreck seems to spew loads of smoke, and that'll lag-up some systems.

2) Demolition again - is this going to be a 'Last individual car driving' gametype, or will there be a team version too? Red vs Blue or something.

3) Another Demolition question - will vehicle damage only exist in this gametype, or will it cover every UW gametype?

4) Final Demolition question (honest!) - are the vehicles going to have different 'health' quotas? For example, big trucks having more health than small and light buggies.

Hoorah - no more Demolition questions this post, I promise. Here's a quick picture I snapped this evening, complete with bafflement comments:

Is this something that'll be solved, or do I have to edit each UW map so that headlights are switched off? (yes, I could turn 'Projectors' off in my settings, but then I miss out on shadows and skidmarks)

A question for the clever mapper folks - is it possible to change the ground friction to create something like ice or deep sand? And I don't just mean resulting sound and visual debris [possible already].

You'll be glad to know that I'm not writing anything else today - I think there were some more things I wanted to ask, but I can't remember. Thanks!

 

[craze]

uhh, i have thatrear light problem on my POS machine, it usualy happens to me when i take the GFX town to jack squat diddily zero, but you settings look pertty decent o i dont know, uhh in deomo, i think you die, you blow up, then you dissapear, then your screwed cuz your out for the rest of the game(from what ive heard(i think))

 

[ProjectX]

I've never seen rear headlights, nor are they usually as bleached as that.

Demolition is, atm, last car standing.

IMO all cars have the same amount of damage, it's just I think a monster truck is less likeley to be damages tdue to its high wheel base or something (in reality a monster truck's almost as susceptible to damage except that the bit that's vulnerable is higher up)

Damage exists in all UW gametypes, the more damage you get, the worse you perform. IMO Demolition is the only gametype where cars will actually blow up. In Demolition the damage factor is also scaled up by 3.

We used to have a UWFriction Volume, we used this for creating patches of ice, etc. I think the volume got broken in one of our releases and Shrimp hasn't gotten around to fixing it (if it's even possible).

 

[craze]

i think it got broken when you went from KCar to SCar

 

[ignacio garcia]

I have a suggestion: When your driving in 1º person, the "visual line" is too down, and you can´t see nothing, and if you can put it more hight. Its only a suggestion of a normal player.!!

 

[Fraggee_Rok]

Thanks for answering some of my questions ProjectX - I really appreciate you taking the time to do so.
Waaaay back when, one of the other 2K3 driving mods [UnrealSpeed - now defunct. I think] managed the texture = grip thing, but that was K-car and easier to do. I've found the friction volume [along with pit volumes and other fun stuff] so we can hope that they'll be fixed or deleted entirely when the new version skids into our lives.
As for the rear-headlights thing, well... I'm stumped if only a few others have seen it. On my machine it occurs with every vehicle on every 'dark' map, usually being projected onto walls or slopes behind the car - this is also true of Bot cars too, and can seriously lag things up. I had a similar problem with the Bulldog back in 2K3, where the headlight 'pattern' was projected onto the back of the vehicle as well as its proper projection from the front - I solved this by editing the .uc so that the Bulldog mesh wouldn't accept projectors... but it's not the same thing as I'm experiencing in UW at the moment.

An extra question to further annoy the hard working team [you know I love you really!] - is the collision between S-cars and Smeshes / BSP going to be improved? It's a very tall order [so don't worry too much], but the 'soft' crashes [ie: where you slightly wedge your car into something without damage or noise] aren't very good, especially if your wheels keep spinning even though you've stopped.

 

[ignacio garcia]

thanks! i know another error, well i don´t now if its an error: the lights of the carsgoes right and behind ( i don´t know if i splain me very well?)

 

[Fraggee_Rok]

thanks! i know another error, well i don´t now if its an error: the lights of the carsgoes right and behind ( i don´t know if i splain me very well?)

I'm not sure if I quite understand - could you post a screenshot for us? Press F9 in game and it'll appear in 'Screenshots' in your UT2004 folder. Obviously, convert it from .bmp before posting it though

Oh, I've found more odd lighting too [inspired by Igna's above comment] - as well as lights to the front [good], and to the rear [bad], now there are little ones out each side too! [buh]. Although I could post a screenie, I might try to fudge the base-code of headlight projectors later on to try and fix whatever problem my computer has with 'em.

 

[ignacio garcia]

yes i was trying to say that:lights to the front [good], and to the rear [bad],

another question: there are two files readi to download in the download page, they are the same¿?
Thanks!

 

[ignacio garcia]

Sorry, I now I´m too "boring" heavy but this evening I played a lot and I remember one thing to say to you: the sugeretion of put the vision line in the 1º person cars is only in a few cars. if you want I can tell you what cars are!!
THANKS ANOTHER TIME!!

 

[Fraggee_Rok]

Solution (for me anyway)

Okay buoys and gulls, I think I've figured out what my problem is with the front / rear / side headlights (maybe I should say headlights, elbowlights and footlights instead...)

The problem is...

My computer cannot cope with projectors!

Yup, it's that simple. It'll run 2K4 fine even with everything graphical set to maximum, but if I tickbox projectors then it all goes Pete Tong.
If I summon a Bulldog in-game and hop inside (obviously I can't control it), the headlights shine out of its arse. My own Smeshes have wierd fading problems that are solved by turning off projectors or setting their bAcceptsProjectors to False. And obviously, if I visit any UW track after dark then my car looks like a Christmas tree

So please disregard my continual whining about this bug, as it only seems to be a bug on a few select machines.

Now the tricky bit for me is continuing to try mapping, but having no idea what it would look like on any of your decent 'puters! Doh!

 

[Shrimp]

Hmm, well the UWRepairVolume kind of replaces the UWPitVolume, guess I should properly depreciate a lot of the volumes actually.

I didn't pay much attention to the Grip/Skid whatever volumes once we switched to SVehicle because that whole episode was rather chaotic, and I guess they were lost in time after that. Anyway, I'll take another look at it, I hope it's possible to do still.

The only problem I've had with 'soft' crashes is when you drive directly straight into a wall or object, you kind of just stop dead with no actual impact happening. Looking into that one as well.

 

[ProjectX]

Just put a Karma impulse to the back of the car in an upwards direction to simulate the rear of the car flipping up and over whenever a significant karma impulse hits the front end of the car. it isn't proper physics, but it's better than no sim.

 

[Shrimp]

The problem is not the fact that there's no reaction, the impact is simply not registering in the engine, at any point, AT ALL. I dunno WTF the story with that is .