45 replies to this topic

[delgs]

Yes, to really do it properly, it needs someone who is good with Gpl Wallchanger to add maybe an extra tree-row behind the main one.....but even that wouldn't be perfect. Perfection would be removing the tree-rows and adding individually-placed trees. Which is way beyond the scope of my talents, and much more than what I was attempting, which is just a relatively quick fix to give the track a different, more historically accurate look. I'm not capable of Spa 67 standards! However, if there's anyone who's good with GPL Wallchanger or The Racing Line or similar who wants to help me, I'd be massively grateful.
Oh, and the BRM? T. Laechele's BRM steering wheel, from which I removed the taped-on spanner (for 1965) , and the mirrors are my own, something I was working on years ago, and never quite finished.....as you do. The Laechele steering wheel's on here somewhere, but damned if I can find it. The rest of the BRM cockpit update is in the 65 updates thread that's in the 65 Mod section of this forum... I think.

OK, I'll crack on with Spring Brands, hope to have something to release soon.

[Alan Davies]

This looks really good.  Well done delgs

[davef]

Looks fantastic, thanks delgs !

[gliebzeit]

[leon_90]

Here you go Delgs   http://gplr.srmz.net...php?showforum=3

You have a PM

[Pavel]

With Wallchanger you can add new textures to the 3do files but you can not add new row of polygons. And with Racingline you can add objects to the track but they should be placed within track bounds. At Brands Hatch track ends with treewal so you can not add object behind treewall with Racingline (if only there is walkaround).

BTW somewhere there was good quality race video from 1967 Race of Champions. I downloaded my copy from vimeo I think. But now I don't see it there or on youtube.

Edited by Pavel, Jan 29 2015 - 02:34 PM.

[Border Reiver]

Pavel, on Jan 29 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

With Wallchanger you can add new textures to the 3do files but you can not add new row of polygons. And with Racingline you can add objects to the track but they should be placed within track bounds. At Brands Hatch track ends with treewal so you can not add object behind treewall with Racingline (if only there is walkaround).

You can actually, but it requires a trick. The thing that matters for The Racing Line (and the standard track compiler actually) is that the 0,0,0 point of the 3do that you add is placed within the track walls, i.e. between wall 0 and wall n, where n is the largest wall number. If you make an object which has a vertex at point 0,0,0 (or quite often I place a single invisible polygon with one vertex at this point), you can then offset the rest of the 3do such that it will be outside of the track walls and it will still appear in game and behave like a normal TSO and not an outfield/infield object. It is effectively anchored at the 0,0,0 point so is inside the track even though the part that you see is actually outside the track. Two options are either to make a tree 3do which looks like an X from above and offset this to be e.g. 5 metres to the left of the 0,0,0 point and place that, or to get clever because an srb also has an anchor point and so make a 3do to place the srb 5 metres to the side of the 0,0,0 point of the 3do of the same name, rather than the default 0,0,0 point for that type of 3do file.

I think I made a .cln file for Brands67 (which will be posted somewhere on this site) so I think that anyone who wants to have a play around with this can do so should they wish to.

Delgs, nice work! The screen shots look really good and definitely add a good atmosphere. Something that would appeal to my mind is updates like this to Brands, Snetterton, Goodwood etc., as it just looks like a cold, bleak winter / spring morning when you could imagine going to one of these tracks to shake down a new car and do some testing ahead of the new season!

Rob

Edited by Border Reiver, Jan 29 2015 - 02:55 PM.

[Pavel]

Rod, I thought about same method. But will be there problem of drawing order in that case? TSO will be placed in track's 3do like normal infield object but actually all its polygons are outside the track. In older Papyrus games there was problems of drawing order in such cases and I manually fixed TSO's lines inside track's 3do. But how GPL handle it?

[Fat Rich]

Hi Rob!

Didn't you say somewhere that you added scenery objects to the horiz.3do at one of your circuits? Was it Wigram Airfield for the Tasman Series.... would that work for Brands too?

I guess that might sort out any draw order / clipping issues.

Edited by Fat Rich, Jan 30 2015 - 03:40 AM.

[Border Reiver]

Pavel, on Jan 29 2015 - 11:41 PM, said:

Rod, I thought about same method. But will be there problem of drawing order in that case? TSO will be placed in track's 3do like normal infield object but actually all its polygons are outside the track. In older Papyrus games there was problems of drawing order in such cases and I manually fixed TSO's lines inside track's 3do. But how GPL handle it?

I am not sure, I guess some trial and error? It depends also what else is around that area. At Surfers Paradise there is a stand of trees to the right of the twisty part near the end of the lap and although all trees there are placed as normal in track TSOs, the file to make it work and the order that the trees are placed in the file for the compiler to work correctly is not logical or sequential and was only found by trial and error to figure out which tree was making things clip and then moving it up or down in the order in the TSO file until all the trees in the group (mostly) stopped flashing or clipping with each other as you drove past. The nice thing with TRL is that you can try it and if you don't like it just delete the copy of the track.3do you were working on, adjust the TSO file and try again. To avoid draw order problems one solution, (although it would be extra work) is to remove all existing tree objects by replacing them with a blank 3do of that same name and then replant the forest with TRL using trees of a different name. That would solve the problem as you now have total control of all tree objects that get placed in the TSO file and you can change the draw order by moving them up and down the file. If you have trouble with the treewall clipping, again this can be replaced with a blank texture and you can plant the new trees behind it which won't clip. I don't know why, but for some reason I always found that TRL was better at not causing clipping than the standard compilers and also that it was much better at drawing a nice looking groove than the one the compiler makes even for the same input files. Not sure why, just something that I had noticed when I played with it before.

Another way to solve the draw order problem is to make a single object that sits outfield, but which  is anchored within track limits that contains all the trees and that way they can't clip with each other since they are now all the same object.

Fat Rich, on Jan 30 2015 - 03:37 AM, said:

Hi Rob!

Didn't you say somewhere that you added scenery objects to the horiz.3do at one of your circuits? Was it Wigram Airfield for the Tasman Series.... would that work for Brands too?

I guess that might sort out any draw order / clipping issues.

Wigram has an inner and an outer horizon so there are objects in the middle distance which help add a feeling of depth due to parallax. Horizon stuff is always drawn first so any objects within the track then always get drawn in front of / on top of it, so you have to be careful that stuff put into the horizon does not end up within the track walls as you will drive through them. My personal "best" horizon object is the one I made for the Corsica rally stage which contains a complete mountain that the track winds its way around and through, although I think that Phil Flack also did something similar in the stage he made for GPL Rally 2 as well. Actually, the stadium in the GPL Rally stadium tracks is also a horizon object as well, complete with the roof mounted spotlights.

Bottom line with most of this stuff is try it and see and you soon find out what you can get away with. MadCowie was always good for that actually as he'd suggest all sorts of crazy ideas to try, and maybe 80% would actually work or be possible, but it was a good way to learn.

Rob

Edited by Border Reiver, Jan 30 2015 - 05:45 AM.

[delgs]

Working away at it. Getting the grass and tarmac to match in nicely in terms of colour, saturation ets. Also a slightly more accurate Dunlop Bridge for the '67 RoC.

 1967_brands_hatch_race_of_champions__dan_gurney__eagle-weslake_t1g_.jpg   126.34K   134 downloads

 gplc65 2015-01-30 21-49-46-50.jpg   118.73K   160 downloads

 gplc65 2015-01-30 21-48-42-06a.jpg   89.44K   163 downloads

 gplc65 2015-01-30 21-42-55-99.jpg   93.67K   159 downloads

Just matching in all the trackside objects and adverts to do next. I've done some already, working on the rest. Then I'll try to match the horizon mips to the tracks altitudes a little better, if I can. See-through tree-rows mean you see a LOT more of the background, so it'll play a big part in the feel of the track.

Have to say, I love driving it at the moment..... I'm driving it to check how things look, and I wind up hot-lapping for an hour! Brands never used to have that effect on me.
 gplc65 2015-01-30 21-41-09-13.jpg   122.22K   138 downloads

OK, it's not perfect, and I don't have the skills to get it anywhere near current GPL standards....but when you're driving it, it really doesn't look too bad. It's definitely got an atmosphere, and as someone who lives fairly close to Brands, I can say it certainly has the feel of an early spring day in south-east England. Anyway, I'll keep going with it.

[davef]

Looks very nice delgs !

Maybe some fog settings could help hide the green trees in the horizon mips too.

[delgs]

I was hoping to do something about those by editing the horizon mips. All fog does is stop you seeing the horizon altogether. I'll probably do the horizon last though, once I've got the trackside objects looking how I want them.

[gliebzeit]

Add fog in very small increments..... it works really well.  

[Nicolas]

The first thing I think about when hearing "spring" is not exactly "early cold grey British spring" but that's what Brands Hatch was during that race, and you seem to capture it very well! Keep up the good work!

[Jackseller]

G.Spinning, on Jan 29 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

Give proper credits, but please don't hold it because of lack of permissions.

Sometimes, you can have bad surprises.


About Cerne's Wood, here is a funny souvenir.
Sit down kids and listen to grandpa GPL story (fireplace noise in the background).

In 2008, i decided to include it to the 2009 F1Legends championship calendar.
The textures were a bit too low res for my eyes, especially those ugly "Sleepy Hollow" trees.
So i made a graphic update for this track (autumn version). Once i finished it, i sent an email to Richard asking him authorization to release the update.
His answer was short and harsh : "I don't allow graphic updates for my tracks".
I was a bit... disappointed.
So i never released this update.
The "funny" part : the day of the race, we were 72 drivers and EOLC has a race at the same time (same server shared). This track crashed the server and all F1Legends and EOLC drivers have been disconnected in the middle of the race.
So i never used this track again.

But Delgs, if you need some dead trees for your update, i can send you mine. They are brand new, never used !

Edited by Jackseller, Jan 31 2015 - 03:34 PM.

[delgs]

Jackseller, on Jan 31 2015 - 03:30 PM, said:

G.Spinning, on Jan 29 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

Give proper credits, but please don't hold it because of lack of permissions.

But Delgs, if you need some dead trees for your update, i can send you mine. They are brand new, never used !

Sounds good to me, Jackseller, and thank you, that would be hugely appreciated!



And.....I'll bet your graphic update for Cerne was beautiful.

Edited by delgs, Jan 31 2015 - 03:55 PM.

[Nicolas]

Unused textures are the best! No faded colours, ragged edges and all that... And most of all, yoour work will finally get good use!

[ginetto]

delgs, on Jan 31 2015 - 03:52 PM, said:

Jackseller, on Jan 31 2015 - 03:30 PM, said:

..
But Delgs, if you need some dead trees for your update, i can send you mine. They are brand new, never used !

Sounds good to me, Jackseller, and thank you, that would be hugely appreciated!
...

Super cool   
Brands spring Update from Delgs and Jackseller!
Bet it will be nothing less than  gorgeous

[Jackseller]

It's a quickly done 2008 graphic update, so don't expect too much .