A little retrospective and some news

By Toshiba-3, . Permalink

I've been working slowly but surely this past year and a half on diverse aspects of Carmageddon 1 and 2. So I thought I'd try to wrap it all in a new post. But first some overal news!

https://rr2000.toshiba-3.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/brand_header_0.jpg
MagnaChem Research & Development

I'm currently in a rush to release all the cars I've started and left unfinished all these years. You can check the topic here. There's still a lot of work ahead but I'm quite motivated! The idea is to be done with addon cars after that... I'd like to fully go into level design, there's work to be done in the field :)

Recently I also worked on C2 cars for Razor's upcoming Beta mod. I updated Purple Piledriver (again) with wheel-mounted blades and overal texture work. Set the icevan up based on Cameron's model and Carma64 textures. Updated Monster Beetle greatly texture-wise and fixed transparency issues. And finally set the famous (and missing) Digga up based on the original model, references and Loggerhead textures. They'll all be part of the new VanillaC2 pack and Purple Piledriver, Digga and Icevan will be uploaded to RR2000 too.

In case you hadn't noticed, I made a So you want to play Carmageddon? infographic. You can click on the pic on that page to enlarge it. I should already update it I think...

About Gourmet Carmageddon and VanillaC2 mini-pack: I've completely changed the Gourmet project planning and keep on updating the todo list. It's still scheduled for after VanillaC2. Speaking of which, progress is slowly made but my priority is still the smaller projects that I want to get out of the way :D

Now here are a fair lot of tricks and tweaks I worked on this past year and a half, just continue reading...

  • Been able to generate a 'rain' effect in Carmageddon 1. Can't work properly in C2. Topic here. Video here.
  • Also animated skies. Work for both C1 and C2. Topic here. Video here.
  • Made one hell of a post-combustion thruster effect by combining FUNK and FLIC animated textures, and GROOVES, especially a SHEAR controlled by the spinning speed of the rear wheels. Video here.
  • Another simpler thruster effect for the Blue Falcon ported to C1. Video here.
    Also later coupled it to a couple of GROOVES to make it float: 
    BLFALCON.ACT
	    not a lollipop
	    distance
	    circular
	        linear
	        0, 0.193187, 0   // -> actor's displacement must be reset
	        0.35
	        0.01
	        z
	    rock
	        harmonic
	        0.21
	        0, -0.04, 0
	        z
	        1
  • Modded the C2 Junkyard to add a kind of cannon using negative gravity to launch cars. Video here. Post here.
  • While working on a track for C2, I noticed a very interesting bug: if you scale up the actor of a noncar, when you hit it ingame it reverts back to its normal size. Doesn't sound overwhelming? I have a lot of ideas just from that!
  • On the same note, I noticed that groove animations set to "constant" only update when the camera is within ~5.5 BRU of the animated object's pivot. This can serve as a script trigger and allows for gameplay elements such as barriers coming from the ground and blocking your retreat (as their collision is updated as well). More about this in the topic of the following point:
  • I made a complete track texture swap turning the castle into a Doom level. Video here. Topic here.
  • Ported the Anvil Launcher powerup from Carmageddon: Reincarnation to C2! It replaces the mine-related powerups and is pretty brutal! Topic here. Video here.
  • Played with cockpit elements in C1 for a port of the Quarantine cockpit which I bundled with the Borgnine. Topic here.
  • But also played with HUD elements in C2! Turns out you can change a few things which I illustrated in my port of TDR's Eagle Mk4. Topic here.
  • With that port, I was also able to find a trick to force full lit textures on cars. Makes for great effects :)
  • I think I'll just simply quote the list for that port as I played with more stuff:
    - main model, shell model, simple model are all compiled into a single DAT file.
    - same with materials, all in one.
    - all textures can be smashed without the game crashing (just have to remove the impact effects to make it stable apparently).
    - I don't know about you but I only finally understood how CAMERA TURN OFF MATERIALS works. You set the materials that are affected by the feature (and update the amount above accordingly) then for each material you can set exception(s), for example the totally smashed glass can be turned on as you see through it.
    - it's possible to set full lit textures on cars (here used on rear lights). Just have to use the material identifier of a REG material (here engblowb and engportb from one of the powerups) but use FUNK and/or WAM to set another texture to that material.
    - you can customize some elements of the HUD for a car. Just create a 64x48x8 folder in the addon car's folder and duplicate DATA/CARS/64X48X8/eagle3.txt into it and change stuff. New pixelmaps go into DATA/64X48X8/PIXELMAP/tiffrgb. I'm not easy to follow? Just look how it's done with this car :)
    - I don't remember why I listed "ACT/DAT identifier problem" on my list anymore. Though I vaguely remember wanting to rename the model identifiers properly (like I do with C1 cars) and C2 not liking that. And thus the model identifiers end with the .ACT extension as usual.
    - noticed that the more geometrically dense your bbox is the more solid and tough your car is.
    - if you apply a smash on a material and you use that very material as its own shrapnel material, then the effect of shading are doubled or something like that. Makes for a more contrasted look.
  • Then I ported the same Eagle Mk4 to C1 and manually wrote working crush datas thanks to Jeff and Errol's work. I elaborate in this post, and Harmalarm has started working on a maxscript!

That's all!

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