TDR Arena 2009

Herro! For the fourth time, here's a revamp of the TDR Arena! But this time it's actually the original and done kinda correctly with novelty features etc. I fixed a lot of uvw map problems, did the smoothing groups, advanced lighting and spec mat setup, and optimized the preprocessing to prevent it from screwing my work. Also used the original minimap from TDR2000. Ah! Almost forgot that the crushers are now deadly  :D
You read that right, the crushers spin towards eachother and the bboxes go with them so they litteraly crush anything falling between them.

You can download it at Road Reaction | RR2000.

I learnt some more things once again: we can avoid the preprocessing screwing very thin planes by entering a very high ratio limit in the Tidy Up Kerbs window (like 100000) ; we were already able to zoom in/out or rotate the track map within PT2 but it is easy to translate it as well, we just have to add/remove the offset in pixels to the first two numbers of the last row in the map transformation matrix (those numbers are often similar to 320*240, I guess they indicate the center of the track map) ; I've developed a system to create interactive "floating" noncars, it is based on CESM's incased bbox trick but takes it further, this system allows the use of noncars with more than one hinge (these are WORLD_BALL_JOINT type of noncars) or even to control their behaviour around an axle or more, I'll soon write a tutorial on this ; the famous WORLD_HINGE_JOINT keywork for noncars doesn't work, its syntax is similar to the WORLD_BALL_JOINT but has one more coord entry, however nothing has effect but the first coord ; the INFINITE_I keyword for nocnars can be used to make unmovable noncars or at least prevent them to be moved by cars (and thus only activated by smashables or other keywords) ; the global lighting defined in the track text file isn't effective on materials using the "full lit trick" as these materials have their own lighting settings ; some powerups move on their own and these are the ones ranging from 66 to 88, the ones giving APO thus [I already knew that but never saw it written somewhere] ; there's a SPARKY keyword for noncars however I'm unsure whether it has an effect or not, it might be effective to make sparky the noncars with materials not defined as sparky in the materials modifier section ; the full lit trick is disactivated on materials that are set as funkable as well ; another thing I knew but never saw written anywhere is how the preprocessing and the amount of ratio can screw up the map or not, the preprocessing takes one of the larger components in your track and sever it in as much columns as is defined and then merge the other components onto each severed column. During this process the smoothing groups are recalculated, which screw them up, some materials have their uvw map messed around (see Tidy Up Kerbs) or some parts simply disappear. To avoid this just sever your track in as much parts as possible, splitting by smoothing groups is the best way for example, and then add a giant invisible plane under the track so that this is selected as the severed component during the preproc. However the amount of columns might lead PT2 to select several components to sever and it is somewhat hard to know which will be selected. Hit and miss is the best way to find the right amount of columns while preventing any visible component to get screwed by the preproc.

That's all! [I think]

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