Starting in on the trees

I raced a ton of laps tonight on Dead Man's Loop with the guys over at MCOMOD and maaaaaan was it some fun! Bob hooked me up with a decent setup and i was getting times as low as 1:56 on both directions of the track - thanks Bob! And many thanks to Ralph for getting the server up and running. I didn't notice any lag and i never got randomly dropped - seems like a pretty good setup. Good times!

Once we were done, i got an itch to open the track editor and start detailing stuff. Since the whole garage/pit area was still needing some structural work, i decided to start there with fixing up the terrain and working on the general look of everything. I planted trees, grass and dropped some rocks around. I also started covering the garages in bricks. I'm going to put some MCO tribute posters on the inside walls of the garage for people to look at when they first start up, but just put a blog banner on the side of the garage for now. Anyway, the detailing begins. Here are some screenshots from the track builder:

1st playable version of Dead Man's Loop

So i've finally put together enough of this beast to get something raceable. The track is a slight modification of Dead Man's Run and Tornado flats. It's not pretty, but you can at least get a feel for the track, set times and race other people. I've also put together a reverse version of it so if you get tired of running it forward, you can load up the reverse version.

I've made a video of it that you can view on the right side of this page if you're just wondering what it looks like. It's kind of a scratchy YouTube video, but you can see what's up. It might be a little confusing at first because it starts off on a section of the track that's nowhere on the original Skoggit track. Give it about 15 seconds and you'll know right where it's at.

And if you want to download the track - click the download link at the top of the page to download the track.
Unzip it to C:\Program Files\rFactor\GameData\Locations
The zip is about 89mb, but it unzips to about 218mb. It contains both forward and reverse versions.

I feel like i can't express this enough - it's an ugly-ass alpha version. There's very little detail around the track once you get outside of town. By which i mean:

 - Very few trees
 - No texture blending on the terrain
 - No grass or bushes
 - Limited objects - just fences, light poles and a few signs are to be found outside of town.
 - Weird terrain edges off in the distance
 - Ugly splices in the few areas where different roads intersect with the main track
 - No barriers around the track - you can basically go anywhere once you get around the fences and there's a good chance you'll get stuck doing it. Stay on the track and you won't end up getting annoyed and needing to restart.
 - The AI are retarded. They work and can race laps, but not in any competitive fashion.
 - The Start/Finish lines aren't extremely clear, but you'll get the feel for it.

The point in me putting this out is so that people can see how it's coming along and have some fun racing a big chunk of Skoggit. I'll polish up this version in the weeks to come and put a new one out that has all the pretty stuff included. Once that's done, i'll start building out the Hickey's Ridge portion and post the occasional update on where i'm at. It's going to be a long haul before i'm completely finished with the entire track, but in the meantime, this should provide at least a little fun. :)

I should also point you to: MCOMOD for rFactor
If you don't already have all the MCO cars, you should go get em. It's the only right way to be racing on this track. ;)

It works!

I joined the two ends of the track the other night to see if i could get a loop working right, and hell yea - i finally got it working. Setting corridors on a track is an art i hadn't previously figured out. If you set the drivable area to stretch over wall objects (which is what i make sidewalks out of), the AI get confused and freak out. This basically means that the AI will never be able to take the shortcuts, but whatever.

The important thing is - laps and lap-times are being recorded accurately. I was also pleased to find that the crazy shortcuts introduce no problems for human players and the game doesn't give you yellow flags for using them - at least in test mode.

The version of the loop i have right now is lacking most of the trackside detail outside of town - no texture blending, very few trees or bushes and you can still see some awkward terrain edges here and there. Despite the ugly, i think i'm going to kick out a test version for people over on the MCOMOD forums to check out. The track detail is just cosmetic stuff that i can work out in the days to come - the important thing is knowing if the track feels accurate to the original and if it's fun to race on. I think it is, but i'm like a proud parent, so my opinions are skewed.

Anyway, MCOMOD dudes, as soon as i tidy up some loose ends, a very naked and ugly version of Dead Man's Loop will be coming your way. Expect it later tonight or early tomorrow (Sunday).

Back at it for a couple days

Been on a track building bender lately. I don't really have the time for it, but i guess i'm doing it anyway.

After pushing it right up to the start of Hicky's Ridge, i went back to the beginning and started working on that end of things. After putting in a 46 car garage and building a whole new stretch of town, i managed to get the two ends within reach of each other. I can almost create the loop that will give us something to race while i'm finishing the rest of Skoggit.

There's a lot of detailing and tweaking to do before i join the two ends, but i don't think it'll take all that long; the hardest part is behind me. I really want something raceable in the next couple of weeks.

Anyway - here are some screenshots of where i'm at. First up is a shot of a bunch of cars parked in the new garage. I don't know that i'm setting up the race settings just right yet, but it will actually be possible for 46 people to race on the track at the same time. I can't imagine that many people would ever be around to fill it to capacity, but the clusterfuck option is there if it ever goes that far.

And here's a chunk of track that didn't exist in the original, but is essential in this one:
 

Here's looking across to the other end of the track. SO CLOSE:

Lastly, here are some wireframe shots of the track from inside the track builder:

And i suppose it's worth note - i raced a pretty good line from the beginning to the end in a Cobra and it was about 2 minutes and 23 seconds of racing. I didn't wipe out and nailed all the shortcuts, so tag on maybe another 5 seconds for the joining stretch of track that i haven't built yet, and you'll have an average lap time of 2:28. Well, in the MCO MOD Cobra. I'm sure it'll differ from car to car.

Slow month

Work's been pretty hectic lately, so my time and inclination to work on the track has been at a minimum. Nonetheless, i've managed to slowly work myself quite a bit closer to the beginning of Hicky's Ridge . Track, terrain, fences and a few key trees have been built out most of the way.

Another few hours of work and i'll have the basics laid out to where i can loop the start to the finish and begin detailing in "Dead Man's Loop". I made something similar the first time i built the track, but this version will have the track completed up to the beginning of Hicky's Ridge instead of looping out 2/3 of the way through Tornado Flats.

I've got tomorrow off, but there's enough to do outside of track-building that i can't say if i'll get any time to work on it. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots from in-game and in the track-builder:

I managed to push ahead quite a bit this Saturday. Here are two videos – one down and one back. It shows everything from the beginning town of Dead Man’s Run to the last ¾ of Tornado Flats. It’s about where I left off with the first build of the track I made – but this one works. :)

**for better looking versions of these videos, here are links to wmv versions around 90mb each:
First Video (down)
Second Video (back)

(youtube videos removed to make way for better versions)

Some notes:

-    I built fences, houses and power lines out to the top of the s-curves in the last quarter of Tornado Flats (as the video shows), but that’s about it.
-    Worked on a ton of terrain.
-    Tons of track tweaking to get the feel right – still a work in progress.
-    I’m leaving the detail for last, so it’s going to look barren for awhile. No grass, no texture blending on the terrain, only some smaller road signs, chunky terrain in the distance, no trees, only a couple rocks… it goes on and on.

I’ll probably give another update before the weekends done – must. sleep. now.

Some slow weeks

I managed to get a little more done over the weekend, but not enough to give a grand update. Work has been stressing me enough that i tend to either work on the weekends or spend them doing things that don't remind me of work.

I think it'll chill out enough in the next couple of weeks that i should be able to get back to the track. My intent is to finish the track before the end of the year when my BTB license expires and i need to renew it. The creator of BTB has been on a hiatus lately and it sounds like renewing a license can be some trouble. So - i'd goddamn better get the track done in the next 6 months or so.