Can someone give me a 10000 foot explainer on what the normals are doing and how you guys are making the normal maps? I'm curious if I can forego shading the actual truck textures and use the normal maps instead to get a similar effect.

So played around with Comm Patch 3 for a bit, no major issues so far (where'd you get all the extra Army clips?), except that, even though I had movie clips switched off, I was unceremoniously greeted by Hulk Hogan upon running through a drag bracket. Nothing big but annoying nonetheless.

Excellent ...

Incredible! That looks better than a lot of modern games.

I hate to be the non-programmer guy asking the programmers for new features, but I was thinking about what would make my life easier for fixing my trucks up for the recent Comm Patches, and something that jumped to mind was a clickable face list. Basically, the Browse Window in BE currently, but ...

I could write a long diatribe about this, but I'll keep it short. It's great if all these limits are increased and the detail of the trucks and tracks can go to the moon. I won't be building trucks and tracks to meet those standards, though. What I love about MTM2 is that it is a moment in time, how ...

Cale, someone said they needed to delete their monster.ini after getting a crash. Did you try that already?


That fixed it (though I had to start the game in 640x480 to get it to run). DX11 works great! On Vulkan truck textures were low quality for some reason and vSync didn't work.

Also ...

First try running it, crash:

===== MTM2 CRASH 2026-07-29 19:55:35 =====
code=0xC0000005 addr=0x0043D828 (READ at 0x000004C6)
eax=07E001A8 ebx=07E0015C ecx=00000080 edx=00000027 esi=0000047A edi=F820031E
eip=0043D828 esp=001AFB68 ebp=001AFB9C
[ 0] monster.exe+0x3D828
[ 1] monster.exe+0x37877
[ 2 ...

So something that breaks with the new renderers is the translucency hack that many of us have been using for some time. Looks like it defaults to full transparency, maybe because the fidelity to the actual coordinates on the texture are better. This is in Vulkan. Not a gamebreaker by any stretch ...

Fila wrote: Sun Jul 26, 2026 2:36 pm Which truck is that? (so I can test it easier)

And how was the hack achieved so that I can either try to replicate it.

https://www.mtm2.com/%7Etrucks/trucks.p ... h=gunkster (the truck image shows how the effect should look).

Here's how it works: https://malibu350.com/tnt/transfaces.htm

So something that breaks with the new renderers is the translucency hack that many of us have been using for some time. Looks like it defaults to full transparency, maybe because the fidelity to the actual coordinates on the texture are better. This is in Vulkan. Not a gamebreaker by any stretch but ...

Are there any unused verts in the models that get exported?

Check the .TRK file and make sure there's nothing in that that is wonky first, especially the scratch points. The body itself should not be a problem, I have 2000+ vert trucks that load in game fine.

Aesthetic question for everyone: Do you think the HD trucks would look better without highlights now that the game can handle proper reflections?

Something popped up in my mind as I was doing a dusk race at YM's "Tundra Madness in LA": Increasing the number of moving objects to maybe try to get stadium lights proper.

So a couple of things:

First, I've uploaded a Bigfoot (Shine Test) truck. This is the HD Bigfoot with the bed cover, KC lights, and full undercarriage all set to "normal" face type, which should give the new reflections effect the best look. Let me know what you think - this is easy but tedious so ...

PS. Can someone tell me what fiberglass bodys means in the context of MTM2?

"Fiberglass" was an early term for hollowing out the MTM2 body models and putting 3d chassis underneath them. They got the name because real monster trucks use fiberglass shells over steel tube chassis - hence why body ...

Cale, I hope it's ok.


How dare you save me all this work! :lol:

It's all good. I have very little time and motivation right now between work, baby, and other things in life, so there's no issues. The thing I do want to do next is change the tonneau covers and any undercarriage stuff to normal ...

Alright, so I finally got to play around with this, and I didn't see any major issues in the few races I tried. The "Sonic Trucks" certainly are something, the extra speed is cool and makes them more competitive, but there's obvious times when they are too aggro and end up wrecking themselves. In a ...

It should be noted that the game also looks for the actual .TRK files for the stock trucks when loading tracks. If you notice, truck starting locations are associated with specific .TRKs in the .SIT files. Those trucks need to be podded or it will crash. This was the issue I was having with my 2.1 ...

MTM2 was promoted with the notion that MTM1 trucks would work in it, but I don't think anyone ever really tried because the MTM2 trucks were such a step up in quality. This is neat and maybe opens the door to MTM2 just being a more stable MTM1 emulator of sorts. Again, a toggle for the 2 pixel ...