Progress report (15 january 2005)
Scawen's Progress Report
For the last two weeks i have been working mainly on the car models. I started by making a nice dashboard flip function, so that only the dashboard (and not the whole car) needs to change side when you drive on the left. In the process, i noticed that some apparently simple things in the modeller were much more difficult to do than they should be, due to the increasing complexity of the car models over time.
For example a side grill or a headlight were not automatically mirrored, and needed separate construction and mapping on each side - a lot of duplication and it was hard to be accurate - for example the front grill on the old XF GTI was a slightly different height on each side.
So i did a thing to make that all happen automatically and worked through the meshes deleting all the extra info. I noticed other flaws as well, the lists of mappings were all over the place so i added some buttons to organise them. I didn't like the huge texture areas needed for some things that were in fact repeating patterns, for example the grill on the RA or the dashboard on the FZ. I implemented tiled textures and now those large areas use a tiny texture that repeats, so saving memory while increasing resolution.
I kept finding more irritating and confusing things in the modeller - things that always cost Eric some minutes here and there, where it should have been seconds, things not being visible or easy, not working as they should etc etc. Eric asked for a tool to rotate a mapping, so i added that, again allowing more efficient use of textures in various places. I improved the glass and alpha system on cars to be much more flexible and easier to use. The LOD meshes have been added to the formula cars so they now have an accurate shadow.
So, the most recent Alpha patch had hardly any gameplay or physics improvements, but improved car meshes and mappings, various optimisations and fixes in the program, quicker load times, and pit-out glitch reduction. The modeller work was very worth doing as it will help Eric in future, and provided immediate benefits as well.
Well that's the end of the report, i hope it just gives a little insight into how sometimes the weeks go by without massive visible improvements to the actual S2 version, but the underlying system becomes stronger and more reliable. Maybe it helps to explain why we can't give time estimates. In this case, the dashboard flip function which took around half a day to do, suddenly inspired a two week long session improving the modeller and texturing system. And there's no way i could have foreseen that! Eric's very pleased with the new functions and i can say that the new Blackwood is looking very good, and i hope to get a drive on it this week if i'm lucky!
There were some interesting developments in the Alpha version, in December, but we won't tell you them because we are saving some surprises!
SOURCE :
https://www.liveforspeed.net/?page=report_jan2005
newazimuth
05-11-2004 20:51
ADSL:1200/200 (1536/256)
dommage dommage ....
