MTM2.com

Finally getting it together. Comments and observations welcome.

Download it here (edit. link removed)

Thanks from Alpine and me.

Ran this last night solo, and again just now with RAZ & Jump. I'll post some pics/comments tonight.

1st i dont dig that 3 laps around the loop at the start line.
Got small glitches further down the road. Rest of it look not bad at all. only had couple laps so far so i'll post more about it later tonite.



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Jumper
Only those who will risk going to far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Agreed Jump,

I don't like the little circle track at the start. Literally, you are driving in circles, instead of being out enjoying the rest of the track. I know this is an Alpine touch, cuz he's done it many times before in some of his past works. But it annoys me. Just my Opinion.

Other than that, I love it. Until.... you get to the invisible bridge. Which is a cool idea, and a nice touch, until you accidentally drive off of it. I'd add some invisible walls to it.

Bot trucks are stupid too, they don't follow the track very well.

I don't see any misaligned textures or anything, I love the layout, and the color palette doesn't screw up any of my truck's paintjobs, so that's a plus too.



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Replica Fan's Garage

> until you accidentally drive off of it.

There are road cones to guide you. And try it on complex scnery level for a considerably different look.


> I don't see any misaligned textures

Thanks but there are a ton. I've done everything I can to reduce the obviousness of them, so it's nice to hear there was some success in that dept.

If you decide to keep the alpine twist in the circling, I noticed that the computer trucks only did one lap around it for me and then continued missing all the checkpoints.

Yes. They can't do the circuit.

> Bot trucks are stupid too



<font size=1>Edited by Phineus (31-03-2003)</font>

Didn't get a chance to post here last night, but I'm here now.

Let's see, for starters I recall wanting to boycott this track with picket signs and the whole nine yards lol because of that "redizzy" section in the beginning. In "3-Hit Combo" & "dern, Who Cares" it was cool, and if those tracks were on any of our track lists I don't think anyone would have a problem with them at all. Maybe I'm off a little here, but I think in terms of layout, that's one characteristics racers would rather not revisit. For this track in particular it seems to work against it because there's so much more to the rest of the track.

Still, with that said, my guess is you're set on leaving it in. The good part is overall the track is a heck of a lot of fun to run, so for that reason alone I'm sure most will tolerate the redizzy section in the first half.

Texture alignment issues. Yep, plenty of those types of flaws, and here are 1 & 2 of the more noticeble ones. The 59 others I saw don't stick out nearly as much, so I didn't take pics of those lol. If there's anything more that can be done with these two areas...in particular the farm road textures, great. If not...then I guess that's all that can done. Not a tragedy by any means.

Lag - I don't know what causes the lag hit here , but it's fairly significant. Is it the texture change? I have no clue, but it gets your attention, and in a bad way. It doesn't appear to be enough models there that would cause that sort of hit.

The other spot where there seems to be a little lag is here . Not on the same scale as the other laggy spot, but it's there.

And speaking of trees, Some are set to collide (like the ones in the shot above) and some aren't. I think they should be one or the other, and if I had to pick, I'd say make the trunks collide.

Checkpoints - CPs 9 is missing a pole on the left. CPs 10 and 11 are set to collide on the right side, no collide on the left.
Finally, CPs 14 and 15 could stand to be moved further back from the road to be consistent with the others. CP 15 isn't too bad, but 14 kinda reaches out and grabs ya lol.

Back to trees again. Up by the observatory and windmills - I thought that area could use a few nice trees. Don't have to saturate the place, but a little wouldn't hurt. Just a thought. Hehe not sure how you would work em in with your windmills though. I like em, that's for sure.

Lastly...or at least til I take 3 or 4 more trips thru, I'd like to make a comment about the splash page. I know I'm probably flirting with the boundaries of where beta testing begins and ends, but I'll say it anyway. As nice as it is to look at, my thoughts are figures with apparrel of some sort would be a better choice. I'm far from being a prude, believe me, and again, it's definitely an eye catcher (distracting even lol), but as we all know there are lots of youngsters out here, and I think you probably know I'm going from here lol. Again, just telling you what I think, that's all bud.

Going to take a few more spins thru it tonight and tomorrow - see what I come up with.

PS - Fogot to say that there was some pretty nifty blending work done on this baby. Nope, not saying it was perfect, but I was lookin Hehe.


<font size=1>Edited by SLO_COPE (31-03-2003)</font>

<font size=1>Edited by SLO_COPE (31-03-2003)</font>

I'd just like to know if the circuit section is at all challenging.

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Car down low! Car down low... Clear low!
- Alpine #23<IMG SRC="http://groundzero13.hypermart.net/snorkie.gif" border=0>

Also, are any of these tests done multiplayer or what? The circuit area is there to see some NASCAR style racing, seeing who can race that line the fastest without losing it. Here you can either get a lead on the others or not. I know its a pain driving this circuit section offline but it's not meant to be an offline feature, it's meant to be driven with others.

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Car down low! Car down low... Clear low!
- Alpine #23<IMG SRC="http://groundzero13.hypermart.net/snorkie.gif" border=0>

Thus far I've only run it with Raz and Jump. In the races we had it seemed only to serve as a means of eliminating a few racers early on due to crashes and inadvertent takeouts. LOL but now that I've read your post, that seems to be the intent, which is fine.

After thinking it over, however, I suppose it could be a lot of fun once you get used to the idea...not to mention driving that part of the track. I'm not being wishy-washy here; I'm just saying after 3 or 4 more spins on it with others (which I intend to do tonight)...who knows, I might say, "you know, that part isn't so bad after all" lol. It's happened before, believe me.

I'll let ya know more tomorrow, Alp!


<font size=1>Edited by SLO_COPE (31-03-2003)</font>

PS - My plan is to get 5 racers (pros...which means Phineus won't be there lol) on it and see how it goes.



<font size=1>Edited by SLO_COPE (31-03-2003)</font>

I only ran the track solo, in sparse setting with a stock truck.

I get a steady stream of minor lag hits approaching the first cp and all throughout the 3 lap dizzy nascar area... further up the road I get a pretty bad hit here then minor hits throughout the following loop around the barn area... yet a bit further down the road right about here I get another jolt followed with minor hits around the general vicinity.... there's little doubt that the culprits are too many 256x model textures coming into view at the same time... I could not even concider running this online at this point, the course and terrain altitudes are terrific A+ magnifico, but the lag kills that option for me :o(

Quite by accident I ran into this , at first I thought it was an object box left at sparse setting but discovered in traxx that a buried light pole is the culprit :o), still, it needs to be set to complex/normal.

another 'accident' lol lots of those meandering about you know :o) I found that this reflector post is set to collide and consequently flipped my 10,000 lb truck lol.


that's it from me, seeing that everything else seems to have been covered by cope and the rest.

That loop got a small cut by the lake, well hehe very small lake...
cut1
i think you really should reconsider that loop thing but hey it's your track so it's your choice.

also found cuts going from cp 12 to 13 Made a replay of it, tot that would be more visual. Again, it's your choice to keep or to close them cuts. personnally i'd move the cp to deni the cuts.
between cp12 and cp13

And another small cut from cp14 to cp15
between cp14 and cp15

Lag spot was mentioned by cope so i wont mention it again.

rest of it been pretty much covered. Hope this help
Wish the replay could record more than few seconds but i beleive nothing can be done to fix that.

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Jumper
Only those who will risk going to far can possibly find out how far one can go.

<font size=1>Edited by SLO_Jumper (31-03-2003)</font>

Son of a friggin *****!

I just typed a long message here and clicked POST and it said my name was registered to someone else and I click BACK and the text field is totally empty. Son of a friggin *****!

I wanted to thank all you guys for helping test.

I can't help the lag unless someone knows which models if any have 256x256 textures.

The too many lights error - you're all gonna have to kill your headlights before racing.

The cicrcuit section - for those who don't like it - there'll be two versions of this track, one with laps and one without. So should I make it go once around and then jump or just go straight for the jump?

Finally, it won't be too long before I hit you guys up with 'Alpine's Crazy Nights'. It's Alpine's Crazy, totally redone with Phin's new textures and new models, and it'll be lit up too. There's also some slight changes to the course that I'm sure you'll approve.

- Alp

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Car down low! Car down low... Clear low!
- Alpine #23<IMG SRC="http://groundzero13.hypermart.net/snorkie.gif" border=0>

Hey Alpine, before you go doing the two version thing, let me give it ago with a few others and see how it works out. In all honesty I shouldn't condemn it unless I've run it thru a battery of trial runs.

Sorry to hear about your vanishing post. I've had that happen before, which is why I now prep reviews/long post in Word first lol.

as far as the triple circuit section goes i hate it, but at the same time i love it, it's different, sure it's been done before but it adds an element of creativity, kinda throws people for a loop, or three lol, an Alpine signature if you will, good stuff imo :o)

the lag... if you go into gold mode then hit z, you'll get the polygon count 'within view' in the uper left hand corner of the screen... now the biggest lag hit i get on my wimpy p2 450 is here (actualy down the road a bit further at the water) I get (in sparse) about 3000 polys max 'in view'... now the lesser of the two big lag hits i get on the track is here but the visible poly count is pushing 10,000, three times what the previous BIGer fr killer shows... so thinking swiftly lol it's not the number of models/polygons/faces within imediate view but the number of whole textures that need to be rendered/drawn at that point.... so what you need to do is not thin the model herd so much but eliminate the whole textures that need to be drawn within those areas or remap the group of models to a lesser texture acreage.

with a tad more fine tuning, you have a sure fire very fine race track here, good stuff Alpo.




<font size=1>Edited by Malibu350 (01-04-2003)</font>

You're not gonna believe this but I just discovered a trick for the game that let's me run five of BidDoGGe's infamous track flooding Bug Off trucks with no lag and no flooding, even in the most laggy spots. I have to run a couple more tests then I'll upload the fix. This should work on all tracks and should allow you to run with reflections turned on too. I can't believe we haven't thought of this before.

lol.. When you need a miracle, you can pray god and wait to see if he'll make it for ya or pray Phin and ask when it will happen. hehehe

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Jumper
Only those who will risk going to far can possibly find out how far one can go.

<font size=1>Edited by SLO_Jumper (01-04-2003)</font>

Is that circuit section as challenging to anyone else or is it just me? I consider myself a pretty decent driver but I can't get the same prefered line every time. This is what seperates the men from the boys, so to speak, and I definately need more practice before I graduate! heheh

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Car down low! Car down low... Clear low!
- Alpine #23<IMG SRC="http://groundzero13.hypermart.net/snorkie.gif" border=0>