
03/28/04 

==== Toy's In The Attic ... a Monster Truck Madness 2 ralicuit by Malibu350 ====


While wandering the web searching for a nice nature related desktop image I just so happened across a small website by a guy who apparently is quite nuts about slot car collecting and racing, he had a very large collection of cars but what caught my eye was the elaborate track set up he had built in his house.. so >>Thinking swiftly>>,  I said to myself hmmmm, hmmmmm? hmmmmmm!... I wonder if something like that could be done in MTM2?, would the model or texture count kill it before it was done? and if not would the track be any fun? would people think I was out of my mind? more so than they already do? would Cope stop sending me checks? would PG cut me out of his will? would Mikey not like it? LOL. 

Seriously I didn't know how well the idea would actually work when applied to mtm2 but felt if I kept the model complexity low enough, along with applying a combined minimum amount of texture expanse it just might fly. TITA is the result of my best effort to make it all work, and I like to think that it turned out fairly well with just one problem, and that's that it produced the access violation error when running in complex mode twice (out of a couple hundred laps), once at opposite ends of the track but never in sparse or normal modes so hopefully this will not be a serious problem for anyone.



.........TIP's..........

1600 shallow soft sets seems to work best, netting lap times well under 2:50.

If you fall off simply drive under where you fell and call the heli (duh).

Sparse graphic set's will only render the inside guard rails to block any short cuts. Normal and complex graphic settings will fill in the track with some other non essentials.

If you run in complex mode the goodyear blimp will pass through portions of the track since it follows the terrain height ignoring the models it comes across. If this presents a race view problem for ya, I made a fix, all you need to do is mount this tracks pod above your "startup.pod" in your pod.ini and the blimp will be gone.
I haven't been able to confirm this but I highly suspect that the blimp in combination with other unknown track view aspects triggered the AV's I experienced, so mounting the track at the top of the pod.ini 'may' also eliminate that possibility... it'll be interesting to find out.





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Thanks goes out to (in no particular order)..... 
TRI (Terminal Reality Inc.) the game.. http://www.terminalreality.com
PG, The Motivator, MTMG ... http://mtm2.com
WK, The Novelist, GOLD mode & beyondo -> http://mtm2.com/~trackville/gold.htm
GB, Traxx 1.4, txraw 1.11, http://mtm2.com/~traxx/
OP, Trackview, binedit, http://viaregio.de/pieper
RBIII, Binedit 2, http://binedit.com/
PSP5, the texture editor  http://jasc.com/
SLO_Cope, for his all around mtm2 support, reviews and humor
SLO_Jumper for the HOF pages at http://slojumper.com/hof_files/0hofset.html ...send in your times!
RIP_JM, Shaggy and the rest of the RIP team for their fast laps support http://www.rip-racing.com/
SLO_N8's site and all of Team_SLO for their support, http://www.teamslo.net/
Gary Larson for the poster up on the wall


...and to all those who enjoy the track, thanks.

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All my tracks are made for fun and everything in them is for anyone to use as they wish. I have all my previous models, textures, and tracks available at my site, and this tracks components will follow shortly after its release. Note that many of the models in this particular track were specifically made to fit with binedit so extracting the ones I used in this pod may not suit your needs, instead grab the generic models's that I'll post at my site soon....
http://malibu350.com

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"I really didn't say everything I said."

Yogi Berra





















































































































































.........NOTE's..........

The glass bottom hair pin at cp6 was the only work around I could come up with (short of removing it) so chase far drivers wouldn't be blinded around the corner.

Spot a few gaps? or a few ever so slight missalignments? Well that's because model rotation is not absolute dead nuts with traxx, that and the fact we're dealing with compound angles so there's bound to be some. A work around would have been to custom make each funky model section but I opted not to since the way it is now gives it a more realistic look, after all, those tracks never did snap together perfectly... at least mine never did. :)

I did not copy this layout from anywhere, I just made it up as I went along. (that's my excuse)

There is no AI for intermediate or rookie modes due to the fact this track exceeds a course height limit that they will follow (pro bots just barely cut through it at cp6)

The tracks name was not taken from the Aerosmith album/song by the same name, but from the lyrics of a Pink Floyd tune.

The track consists of 130 sections laid end to end, one by one. Don't even ask how many guard rails there are, I don't want to know :o).


have fun... mooooo!

