• Welcome to PiBoSo Official Forum. Please login or sign up.
 
March 29, 2024, 09:48:21 AM

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - pleclair

1
RIDE is falling apart by the day on steam.  Milestone is absent and do nothing to fix all the problems with their game, and there are a lot of unhappy customers, me included.

I tried getting a refund, but its impossible.  So I'm actively promoting gpbikes in their popular forum.  You will likely see some new people around, so please be nice to them :)



2
Tracks / Re: Shaders explanation
May 08, 2015, 02:03:03 PM
It pains me to see this thread still unanswered after all these days...  I tried my best to come in here with a positive attitude, given the fact that it clearly doesn't look good from a new customer standpoint.

pCars is out now, and it turns out a lot better than I would have ever hoped.  It is actually a simulator, and a very nice one indeed.  In a month from now, we'll be in the process of moving to a new place, so we'll be in a lot of turmoils, and I won't be able to do much, regarding working on tracks and conversions. 

If this thread would have been answered, I would have put pCars on hold, and continued my learning process here with WRS until the move happens.

So, I'll wish you guys the best, I'm out to play pCars for a while.  I'll drop back when I'm ready to resume, and see if things have improved/changed.  I would appreciate if this thread was answered when I drop back, I could start work right away. 

Sincerely disappointed.

PS:  I will still finish the textures upload, feel free to use them.  I put it on hold since the uploading make pCars choppy at times.  I'll try to do it at night.
3
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 07:58:04 PM
Yeah I know, it was the very first track (except victoria) I tried.. and it made my eyes bleed :P  I never seen this version before.. but the com8 version for rfactor 1 already is much much better.

That's actually the worse I've seen so far.

Yeah it does seems that the engine needs some cleanup, etc.. but if these issues can get sorted, and what we have now, works without glitches... as it is, if the game was made with 1 engine, and with dlcs for the categories, and released on steam, I'm sure it would be among the top seller for a few days after release... that would bring some real money in the game.  Steam is a must for small developers.. and should be an eventual target.  Otherwise, it might never take off as you say.  People are becoming more paranoid by the minute, and a lot of people, like to buy their game thru steam for the security, among other reasons.  The devs that sells only on their website will sell less, even if the same traffic was to visit this site, than those who would see it on steam.

But by all means, a steam release must never be rushed, cause the community can be unforgiving over there.

That's sad tho... cause the fact that dirt: rally and RIDE have both been recently released on steam, if wrs/gpb was there, it might get quite some spotlight from the deceived ride buyers, and/or dirt.  Plus, a lot of people likes to see what else is available.  And will buy both to compare themselves.

4
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 04:23:10 PM
Yes you do :)  Heartbreaker!   :'(

You are right, the competition in the cars market is certainly fierce.  But when you know where you stand, it's easier to make yourself a position. 

AC and pCars are in a league of their own.  They traded a bit of simulation for more eye candy.  And that's what the Gran Turismo fans are after.  And they get better physics at the same time.  In some regards, rF2 and AC are not really competing with each others, as they are targeting largely different audience. 

By the look of things, WRS is aiming to follow in the footsteps of rFactor and all gmotor engine based game.  More simulation, less eye-candy.  So knowing this, and the fact that many sim addict accept the fact that the graphics needs to be step down a notch, then it's not that far off what it should be competing with. 

Also, the reason why it lags behind is because all the different titles uses a different version of the base engine.  If that was put as one, it would help development of all titles, since there would be only 1 engine to deal with. 

But its main problem atm, hurting sales, is the content.  Not the game itself.  The FFB/physics might not be what they should be, and kart pro certainly looks to have an edge, but it could certainly be enjoyable, given there was a lot more content for it.  At the moment, its barely worth playing it, since the tracks are non-existent, and cars will behave like the default one.  So that will likely put off many potential buyers.

Having the game as one, would also help increase sales as well.

Sure it would certainly need an AI, but seeing what Piboso can do, I'm sure this won't be a mystery to him.

But given the fact that dirt simulation and terrain deformation is coming in WRS.. this is a huge plus... and WRS is far from dead imo... this will likely spark some new interests when it happens :)  If we can make rally tracks.. it would be awesome.. but for this, we need no segment limit, and some more optimization to have such a track...cause i doubt the current engine could support 15-20km of tricky roads with plenty of trees, houses, etc...

I'm sure WRS could find a place among the hearts of those who play gmotor based games.. 

I would certainly play it if I could have more cars and the nordschleife :)  All I ask :) 

Also, having one base game, would mean that those who haves more than 1 content package, would be able to race cars/bikes/karts/mxbikes together.  Then, I'm sure that will generate a lot of spotlight on every sim racing website... and sales would skyrocket on steam.


EDIT:  I'm gonna try those two tracks today, and I'll let you know!  Thanks for the heads up, it might have taken some time before I would have downloaded these by myself, cause I only raced the suzuka circuit in games like shift, and I don't know paul ricard at all.  Never heard the name either.


5
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 02:51:47 PM
Well, I'm not saying that victoria is a touristic attraction, but it certainly looks pretty good for what it is.  There is no mountains or anything fancy around, but what is there is good.  The texturing is pretty good, and the grass that changes colors near track is a nice touch too.  There isn't much to say about it really.

Althought, it's not my type of track, I don't like the layout, so I don't really race it.

The kart tracks are pretty good too, and those I tried, I quite liked too :)
6
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 02:49:20 PM
Well, you are right, GPB suffers less than WRS... but WRS suffers highly in term of content.  There is nothing for it.

But can you point me at the best looking track there is for gpb at the moment, if its not mugello?

I haven't tried many, cause most of the tracks I see in the gpbikes track folder, are tracks I don't know about.  So I don't want to learn to control an entirely new vehicle, physics, on a new track as well.  So I tried those I knew a bit. 

And those are:  Nordschleife, Silverstone, Laguna Seca, Mugello. 

The rests of the track, I either know by name, or might have raced on them in other games, where I didn't had the chances to choose my tracks (like in games like shift) to progress.  But I'm rather picky with the tracks I like. 

As you can see from those 4 I mentioned, I like one that flows well, and you aren't forced into 1st and 2nd gear every 2 corners.  So most recent modern f1 circuit, I don't really like.  Silverstone being an exception, I dig the triple S corner a lot, and the fast right hander.

7
General Discussion / Re: Textures
May 05, 2015, 02:35:23 PM
The uploading is still ever ongoing :)  I have finished the nature textures of gametextures collection, and have started to upload vol8 of the trees, which will fill up this mega folder.  Then I will need to create a new one to host the rest.  But this one will take some days to complete as it is 14gb.

8
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 02:28:27 PM
At this point tho, it might be worth pointing this out.

As you can see, all these successful simulators from ISI, Kunos, SimBin and Reiza have one thing in common.  Well for one, ISI, SimBin and Reiza all use the gmotor engine.  And kunos have their own.  But what is common to all of them, is how open the platform is.  You can mod everything easily, and you have everything you need to know right from the start.  The tools works good and don't crash very often too.  You can even mod the whole UI for all these games.

BeamNG also follows in the same footsteps.  They are coming off very nicely, and I expect them to be amongst the top in a few years from now.  Their platform is the most open of them all.  You can do just about anything with it.  Simulate a copter?  No problem.  A boat?  No problem..  A caterpillar, no problem :)  You can do just about anything, and again, the modding community is very strong.

When I visited x motor racing forums and this one here, both games are running for quite some years already, and the modding support is not what it should be.  One reason... the platform is too closed.  As it is, I cannot work on anything for this game, since I don't even know how to setup the shaders, beside doing some simple bump/spec mapping, which really, is no good for terrain and track surface.  I need to know how to do diffuse+detail to make it look good.  This shouldn't require me searching for days on end on the matter.  It should be either selectable in an editor, or in a max plugin, or at least, the wiki should contain every possible definition a shader can have.  Cause if the wiki list everything possibility, which is bump, spec, reflections... I cannot think that Piboso built his track using only this.  And this is the reason why only piboso is able to make really good looking tracks so far.

I'm still new here, and this game seems to have quite a few years already of existence.. this shouldn't be this way.  Since piboso can't put out the much needed content by himself for now, since he haves so much to do in other fields, by letting full access to shaders, his models, his textures, physics (you can reuse anything from ISI and Kunos's sim when working on tracks for their own respective sims.. so if you want the grass of limerock park for your track, you are free to take it, as long as the track is for rfactor, and that makes sense)... modding won't ever be able to do some proper content for the game.  I know a few mod tracks looks better than some others, but I dont think I can say I have seen anything that looks anywhere near the default piboso's tracks, or anything from the other sims.

The mugello track for gpb is probably the best, since it comes from AC... but it still looks far from what it looks in AC and could look in here if we knew how to work properly.

As it is now, I have a lot of free time.  Since I joined the forum, I could have pumped out probably two WRS conversions, if not more, from AC... but I can't... 

I'm gonna have a lot of time for maybe another month or two.. after I might not... so... that's sad...

9
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 02:10:07 PM
 :-[

Sorry I didn't meant to :)  Lol, I dunno who then, I would have to look at my pms, but anyway, I thought it was you who sent me that video.   

Lol, curry :)  This stinks!

Well, ISI and Kunos are both indie in technical terms.  Not that long ago, ISI had rFactor 1, and had very little licensed tracks and cars, and made their own fictive things.  They relied on modding to get the brand name cars and tracks. 

Kunos was about the same a few years ago with netkar pro.  The fact that sim racing picked up popularity, and the huge success of rf1 and simbin games have helped a lot.  They were able to build some wealth and for their next respective product, they were able to license stuff. 

They are by no mean a AAA studio in term of size, wealth, and customer support :)  But compared to beamng, wrs, gpb, xmotor racing, one could consider them to be.  They are not tied to a publisher either and they do as they please and are not restricted in any way, except by money and time.

You also have to remember that both of these studios are closely tied with some real life racing teams, working with them.  ISI have rfactor pro, which I heard, many f1 drivers use to train when off track, and also heard that kunos have some pro grade sim for race teams as well.  So this helps making money outside selling to individual user.

SimBin have the raceroom cafe at the nordschleife track. 

But all these were rather small a few years ago. 

And reiza is coming up fast too... their sims are pretty darn awesome.  And both simbin and reiza started as rfactor mod teams. 

:)  AAA don't make simulators.  Still too niche for them, but I wouldnt be surprised to see them try in the near future.  It's certainly nice to see codemasters go back to their roots with dirt: rally.  I highly suggest you check it out if you haven't already.  It is highly promising.  They went early access with this one, to gather feedback as they build it.  So far, people are mostly very very happy.  With a few kids saying this is too hard, but its good :P  This is not a full blown simulator, as the visuals are still a bit too high to leave that much room to simulate everything, but still, its a lot more closer to simulation than arcade.. and far from the simcade dirt 3.  As a matter of fact tho, the visuals are a bit step down from dirt 3.  They also look a lot more realistic, with good saturation level (not too saturated)..

We are so off topic :P

But a good discussion nevertheless :)



10
As I cannot start working on the nord yet, I thought I would get myself familiar with the rest of the process of getting a track into the game here, and I tried to convert silverstone-international from AC.  Well I succeeded, and I drove it in WRS.

But I noticed something...  the original kn5 which includes both mesh and textures is 350mb.  When I export in Max to .map, it becomes 815mb.  That's quite a difference for the very same thing.

As a result, the 815mb map file dont load in tracked (well loading the trp, that must acces the map file for textures), and crash.  It uses too much memory and tracked must be patched to use 4gb to load such a map file.

Silverstone is 315mb as a kn5, and Nordschleife have more than 900mb worth of kn5 files, as they aren't in one kn5 file.  So if I do some quick math, the map file of the nordschleife track will be around 2100mb... which I doubt is going to work in any way, even with a patched tracked.

Is something wrong with the map files?
11
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 01:00:57 PM
Quote from: HornetMaX on May 05, 2015, 11:50:37 AM
Quote from: pleclair on May 05, 2015, 11:36:18 AM
Oh that makes sense :)  I don't play AAA studios games :)
But 64bit only vs 32bit only vs 32+64bit is not really tied to be an indie or an AAA. As the request to have GPB on 64bit proves :)

Quote from: pleclair on May 05, 2015, 11:36:18 AM
a few days ago, after seeing a video of you on youtube with gpbikes, I noticed you were playing another bike game called RIDE.
It may have been me playing GPB, but not a video of me playing RIDE: I only got as far as trying the demo version for 30min before concluding "No thanks, not for me". And I'm sure I didn't put that on video :)

Quote from: pleclair on May 05, 2015, 11:36:18 AM
I wasn't aware of it, and it looked fabulous.  Since its tax return time, I was able to get that game as the last one I will be getting now, and I'm realllllllllllly deceived.
You should have read the comments about RIDE on this forum: most likely you'd have avoided the purchase :)

Quote from: pleclair on May 05, 2015, 11:36:18 AM
When you have such problem with an indie title, you can rest assured that things will be taken in good hands.  When dealing with a AAA studio, if the money is flowing in, why spend money to fix things when it sells anyway.
Not to say AAA will give you always plenty of support (most of the time they don't, but in some cases they still do a pretty decent job), but I wouldn't bet too much on the "(with an indie title) you can rest assured that things will be taken in good hands". If GPB had had 1/10th of the requested support, the game would now be a marvel. But Indie are typically small teams and they still have to eat and pay bills: the support goes only as far as they can afford (not criticizing too much here, it's just the way it is).

MaX.


Well, I dunno if it was you, but I believe it was, someone sent me a video on youtube (I mean linked a video here, in PM, I believe), and the name was girlracerstacey I think or something.  And that person also had many RIDE videos.  So I thought, if that person is so into gpbikes, then RIDE must be good too.  And after seeing the videos, I was sold out. 

I had my doubts when I saw Milestone, but as Codemasters redeemed themselves lately, I figured that milestone might have, and they seemed to be asking about what people wanted and about bugs in their forums, but after trying to get my wheel working, I noticed that many of the bugs people were reporting, were simply ignored.

As for 32bit vs 64bit, indie vs AAA... you're right, it has nothing to do... but I haven't seen a 64bit only indie game yet.  Usually they are supporting both.  That's what I meant when I said that makes sense for me, as all the titles that was in the list you shown me was all AAA stuff.

And as for support... well, it depends on the indie dev team size too.  GPB/WRS might not be the best example since it is made by one guy, and one guy can only do so much anyway.  But usually, they do try to please everybody.  At least, until ungrateful people start showing in and bash the game for no good reason, without giving any constructive comments.

But I can give you many many examples which what I said stand true.  Space Engineer, Medieval Engineer, rF2, AC, Next Car Game, BeamNG, The Forest, Project Zomboid, SNOW, 7 Days to Die, Interstellar Marines, Divinity, The Long Dark, and the list could go on...

These are all titles which have been listening to their community and building on their feedback a lot.  Development speed of Space Engineer, Medieval Engineer, The Forest, Project Zomboid is very good. 

On the other hand, I have sent a few requests for help to EA, Capcom and Blizzard in the past, and of those three, only blizzard listened.  EA and Capcom don't give a crap about you.  I bought SFIV when it came out.  I wanted to have a go at it last year, and I didn't had it no more on my computer.  It wasn't on steam back then, so I looked my emails, looking for the download link, since I bought it right from capcom, and it turns out the link had a 2 years life.  I couldn't access what I bought no more.  I emailed them about it, and there was nothing to be done about it.  They could not send me what I paid for, give me a steam key or anything...  I will never buy a capcom game again..  and tbh, only the SF series interest me...

12
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 11:36:18 AM
Oh that makes sense :)  I don't play AAA studios games :)  Most of my library consist of indie/early access games, I've ditched the big studios a few years ago.

There are few exceptions to the rule tho, as I lately got dirt:rally and I'm happy to see that codemasters finally listened to their fans for once, and done something right. 

But usually, I like to support small dev teams, that puts out original content.  Content that no AAA would ever attempt, because it would not net them enough cash.  But that's another topic :)

Most of the time tho, it does not go this way... a few days ago, after seeing a video of you on youtube with gpbikes, I noticed you were playing another bike game called RIDE.  I wasn't aware of it, and it looked fabulous.  Since its tax return time, I was able to get that game as the last one I will be getting now, and I'm realllllllllllly deceived.  Buggy as hell, no controller mappings, cannot play with wheel, and purely arcade.  Hitting a wall sometime just makes you bounce..  you can hit the rear brakes while leaning to max in a curve and nothing happens.. (all this on pro physic level btw)...

So yeah... I felt really bad purchasing that one.. Specially knowing its milestone.. they won't be fixing it up. they never fixed mxgp or any of their previous broken games...

When you have such problem with an indie title, you can rest assured that things will be taken in good hands.  When dealing with a AAA studio, if the money is flowing in, why spend money to fix things when it sells anyway.

For me, indie/early access gaming is the only way to go :P
13
Tracks / Re: Tips for crashing tracked
May 05, 2015, 10:51:22 AM
I don't recall a single game tho that was 64-bit only.  Usually, you add a x64 executable, not replace the 32bit one :)

Most recent simulators are using 64 bit, because its very easy to max out a 32 bit scene nowadays.  For most regular tracks, it is fine, but in some cases, there is just nothing you can do.

Something is striking tho.  The mesh+texture .kn5 of silverstone-international is 350mb.  The mesh+texture .map of the same track in WRS/GPB is 819MB.  So right there, you have a huge increase of memory used.  I'm wondering why it becomes so big.. more than twice the size.





14
General Discussion / Re: License Key
May 05, 2015, 02:13:06 AM
Its almost instant, but as docfumi said, it arrives in the spam folder for some reason.  I received it there too.
15
Tracks / Re: Shaders explanation
May 05, 2015, 01:06:46 AM
Quote from: Hawk UK on May 04, 2015, 11:44:03 PM
Quote from: RiccoChicco on May 04, 2015, 11:35:41 PM
.shd files are in textures folder before export but you don't need them once your scene has been exported (the shader data is "boxed" in the .edf/.map).

More informations on how to do a .shd file :

http://docs.piboso.com/wiki/index.php/Track_Creation_Rules#Shaders

So the exporter totally ignores any normal/spec  maps applied in the Maya or 3ds Max? If so then that is very poor.

Hawk.

It would be nice if the exporter carried these definitions over to the proper shd file.. or as I mentioned, and as AC does, put the mats inside an xml file... much easier to work with, all of the mats are inside 1 file...  You can do some easy search and replace too.