Nym's noob question thread

[Nym]

Ok guys, I have to admit I understand nothing of programming, so though i read nearly everything in here, i don't understand too much (also cause I'm no native english speaking)

After the latest release (http://www.gorcx.net/forum/index.php/topic,88.msg3535.html#msg3535) compiled for me by mac (thanks man ) I thought it would be good to start a thread for questions of the ones who don't understand too much of the things you do but also wanna help making the game greater than it will be n any case.

First of all:
The game runs properly, so i got no crashes (thought you'd be glad to hear it^^)
but now to the problem:
the car behaves really weired:
it steers like it's completly overpowered for it's weight. It's noticable when i accelereate; the car makes a wheely instantly. So to get a proper speed without flipping around all time I have to tap the arrow key only really short time.
Also the steering is like on ice, so really no grip.

I think I'll keep the thread very vitally

Greets
Nym

ps:
xeweasel, I'll send you the car in a few days, just came back from the Chiemsee reggae summer

[Mac]

the car behaves really weired:
it steers like it's completly overpowered for it's weight. It's noticable when i accelereate; the car makes a wheely instantly. So to get a proper speed without flipping around all time I have to tap the arrow key only really short time.
Also the steering is like on ice, so really no grip.

If you're using my car, then yes, it will wheelie. The default car is -very- slow so I fiddled with the torque, but it has the drawback of making the car accelerate too fast.

Also the 4WD plays havok with the steering. The RWD version of my car handles pretty well (if you turn slow enough, it'll oversteer for a while then level out.. ) but it won't handle like a proper Rollcage car for a while, yet.

If you want to fiddle to try to make the car handle better, take a look at car.conf (data/teams/vostok/cars/SCUD) and track.conf (data/world/sandbox/tracks/Sanbox1) and just tinker with some of the stuff (such as torque, motor-tweak, wheel_mu (straightline grip), wheel_slip, track_mu, track_slip, etc, etc.)

:]

btw - the car has -always- wheelied from a standstill. lol.

[Nym]

Well, I just use the normal default game^^

Ok, got a bit through the settings, here my observations:

Wheelies:
It just worked to put gravity on 39.64, I also think the car flies much more realistic on this setting.

sliding:
played a bit with the settings on the track and at the car but I didn't get much difference.
The only thing I noticed: If i crank the values for wheel_mu, wheel_slip (both car.conf), mu, slip (track.conf) to about 5 it seems that when I steer, not the front tires go into another direction, but the rest of the body turns in the other direction o.O (just making a little illustration to explain)
__________

Another question:
where can I define which track/car is loaded?

[Mac]

The only thing I noticed: If i crank the values for wheel_mu, wheel_slip (both car.conf), mu, slip (track.conf) to about 5 it seems that when I steer, not the front tires go into another direction, but the rest of the body turns in the other direction o.O (just making a little illustration to explain)

I dunno why it does that either (I have noticed) lol.

You should leave gravity on either 9.82 (real-world gravity) or 19.64 (double gravity to emulate a 1.5m car) as Slinger will kill you otherwise.

if you want to reduce wheelies, it's best to increase motor_tweak. change it to 1.0 or maybe 1.5 and see what happens.

When Slinger implements thrusters, he'll also add them to make the car turn better.

edit

Oh. I just remembered. Decrease wheel_slip and the corresponding value in track.conf and it should make the car stop sliding when cornering. It's just that with it too low the wheels wobble when cornering and it'll probably not turn at all. xD

[Nym]

Ok, turned the grav back to 19.64, and the motor_tweak to 1.5.
Well, what shall I say: the acceleration is worse, wheelies and sliding is better (it slingers still a bit but i don't feel like on ice anymore )

Thrusters sound goood

[Mac]

You can't expect a 3m-tall car to handle as nimbly as an RC car. you should be lucky it turns at all.

[Nym]

Well, in fact i wouldn't expect a 3m car to flip and spin arould like a bouncing ball, but to handle like it was glued to the ground^^

PS:
where can I define which track/car is loaded?

[Slinger]

Actually, the reason the car moves the way it does is that the motor is way more powerful than anything you would see on a normal vehicle. That's why the thrusters are needed (think of dragracing cars, they all got something behind the rear wheels to prevent them from flipping over, and compared to the rollcage car, they are weak as mosquitoes).

As for what car/track is loaded, that's hard-coded into "main.c", is you don't want to recompile the program, just change name of the directories.

[Gonads]

BUMPED!

Not in a bad way though. Just didn't see the point of making a new thread.

ambient 0.0 0.0 0.0 #black "shadows"
diffuse 1.0 1.0 1.0 #white sun

What is the colour system? Doing photoshop things atm so guessing it is red blue and green but what format? Why not use bigger bit depth or does it not work like that? Can they go to smaller decimal places?

density 1.29

If I lowered that to 1.2 would that be a drastic difference? Is it 1.29 because after loads of fine tuning that worked best? Would it stop car flipping as much in the air or is that just from holding accelerate like a noob?


Also what do you use to read all the files? Notepad just opens them all up in blocky goodness. Maybe Notepad++ will do the job...

#TODO: scripting not implemented yet

XD  I thought I had it bad having to make a collage in photoshop!

[Mac]

What is the colour system? Doing photoshop things atm so guessing it is red blue and green but what format? Why not use bigger bit depth or does it not work like that? Can they go to smaller decimal places?

The colour system is just a simple version of a standard RGB colour-definition. 0 is no colour and 1.0 is full colour - 1.0 0.0 0.0 is red, 0.0 1.0 0.0 green, etc. I don't know why it's set to the scale it is, maybe because of ODE.

It can, however, go to several decimal places (1.0 0.6666 0.0 as an example)

Also, something quite interesting is that you CAN use values above 1, which gives a sort of very sudden colour-change / iridescence effect. It doesn't work well on light/shadows, but when the 3D model loader build is sorted out, you'll be able to use it on car models to give a bright metallic effect.

If I lowered that to 1.2 would that be a drastic difference? Is it 1.29 because after loads of fine tuning that worked best? Would it stop car flipping as much in the air or is that just from holding accelerate like a noob?

Lowering it would give everything in the world less drag, increasing it more drag. I believe that 1.29 is technically the correct value for real air density at ground level, which is why it's set at what it is. The car handles strange on lower air density (lots of oversteer) so it's best to leave it as it is.

The car flips in the air because for some reason, wheel rotation affects car rotation. Eventually, counter-forces are going to be added to prevent the car being affected by wheel rotation, but until then just let go of the accelerator when airborne.

Also what do you use to read all the files? Notepad just opens them all up in blocky goodness. Maybe Notepad++ will do the job...

I use Wordpad to read and add code, notepad sucks lol. Changing the source code won't affect the game though, as you'd have to recompile the source code into the game binary, and you'd need MinGW and MSYS installed with ODE and SDL to do that... which is a pain. everything in the data folder, however, will affect the game if changed - feel free to add more objects to the game with the objects.lst file.

[Codie Morgan]

 THe human eye and only identify 700 colors... more than (256x256X256=16777216) with W3C standard RGB, I think more than 1 decimal places is overkill, since we already have over 100 shades of blue =)

The best range is 0 - 1 with mid at 0.5. A format used in most cases (even in CSS3 and HTML5).

 1.0 is = to 100% of 256 were the first bit starts at 0 and ends at 255.

 To calculate the Red of RGB ( eg  0.45 0.6 0.345 ) would be this. (php vars)
 
 $max = 255; $R = 0.45;

 // 255 range Multiplied by decimal: will result in the 3bit value of red

 $3bit = $max * $r;
 
// is 255 multiplied by o.45.... will result in the 255 255 255 rgb value.... and applies to ARGB or RGBA...

 Similarly HSL is reveral of RGB.

 

[Slinger]

Mac & Codie: you two could easily do all Q&A for rcx!

Just wanted to mention why the conf files are strange in some editors (in windows): in windows text files are considered to contain not only a newline character (in C known as '\n'), but also a so called "carriage return" (C known as: '\r') before the newline, at the end of text files. Since windows isn't the primary targeted OS (GNU and other unix versions/clones are) the way the text files are described is a bit different: lines end with only a newline (no carriage return). And since I'm too lazy to make a set of windows-converted config files, I have made the windows version of rcx open the text files in "binary mode", which makes it possible to read unix-like files without converting them.

Now, some (simple) text editors in windows always open files in "text mode", meaning they will not detect the end of lines (since there are no carriage return characters). The best solution is to use a more sophisticated text editor. I use VIM, which should be available for msys users, but another (easier to install) alternative would be something like http://www.pnotepad.org/. Another bonus of using a more advanced editor is that it will provide text highlighting (for both conf files and source code)..

[Gonads]

Spent the whole weekend crash learning C# for XNA...hope I can remember it all. Might do some 3D tutorials too. Would you be making a map editor/creator so people can make custom maps without having to be pro-programmers?

Also just downloaded "rcx 0.05 build 3 UPDATED" and...well it is quite different to the rescale. Which one should I be playing?

Prefer the rescale just because the camera follows and the color scheme is pretty. Is there a way to import the car from build 3 into rescale? Like watching the suspension and smooth tires.

EDIT: There is the 4WD version too! >__<

Is this what you meant by different build paths? Testing different things one at a time? Is all this answered in a thread like 'about RCX'? Still haven't read it all as it is TWENTY PAGES LONG and mostly goes over my head.

[Mac]

Both the rescale and 0.05 build 3 versions have 4WD in them, so you can ignore that one.

The difference between these two is the latter has object model (.obj) loading, and thus everything in that build is loaded with actual 3D models, whereas on the rescale build everything is using the older, "debug" graphics. If you want to look at what car models will be in the game (Slinger is reworking the obj loader) then play with the 0.05 build. if you like the camera (I do) play the rescale build. Both will eventually be merged, so you'll get both

Prefer the rescale just because the camera follows and the color scheme is pretty. Is there a way to import the car from build 3 into rescale? Like watching the suspension and smooth tires.

Nope, just wait. those cars will get added eventually.

Would you be making a map editor/creator so people can make custom maps without having to be pro-programmers?

On a VERY old build of the game, I have a hack which added a track editor - although it's quite simple. If I recall, eventually there WILL be a track editor, but it'll be mostly based for scramble mode. It could be possible to create a world a la Trackmania's block/grid system for "normal" races, or something similar which defines set blocks and co-ordinates. that's what I remember anyway. :/

[Gonads]

What does VBO stand for?

For some reason I have NO IDEA and it is constantly being mentioned! >__<