Re: MTM2 Beta Patch 0.50 - Spreadsheet menus begone!

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/Beta0.50hotfix7.zip
https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/Beta0.50_manual3.zip <--- for those that want the working original-ish MTM2 manual

At this point... these are not really hotfixes anymore but eh, I don't want to start a new thread plus these are the last additions that I am going to do unless you guys find stupid stuff I missed.

- i've gone through an extensive test to use the interface with buttons only (and no mouse). I am reasonably happy with how it is right now. Let me know if there's any issues standing out.
- >>Getting Help from Microsoft Technical Support page displays twice in the Monster Manual, the first instance having significantly less text than the other. <--- in regards to this one, it looks like it's a strange set up in the original help files. And since I cannot open the original help files to know for sure how they worked, I am leaving it as is. The converted .chm files have this too and it's definitely a specific folder/cascade structure but I can't replicate it. So it doesn't affect anything, just more of a visual quirk.
- Shockwave... I tried testing on my deck and the manual displayed correctly on my end regardless. So I've tried to do some blind fixes like I've done with the sound and hopefully one of them lands for you.
- this one has the skidmark around the pyramid fix that i forgot to upload last night ;)
- Added art for the theater and manual pages (if using static background)
- figured out Kimiko's comment about the game black screen-ing itself. It was when the monitor went to sleep and woke up again, it broke the game. Fixed now.
- fixed a bug where the pause menu would still be clickable while you were typing/clicking in a different program (it refused to give up focus)
- added reset to default for wheel/gamepad. They have separate defaults. It only resets the current active one that is plugged in and shows up as being used by the game. It only resets the sliders, does not reset the key bindings or axis assignments. If it does, it's a bug!

Oh and there's a surprise for the MTM1 tracks.

[Fila]

And I'm getting sleep even though it's late. I'm off tomorrow ;)

[OG_RuDeE]

Menu pad suggestions / QOL improvements:

In the menus on pad, when in a list window like tracks, holding down on the dpad should start scrolling slow and get exponentially faster up to some limit. Right now, holding dpad down does nothing and one must press it a million times to scroll through a long list.

Once on your selected track in the list, pressing A should immediately highlight the GO! button (needs an exclamation ;) ) so you can Press A again and jump right into the race.

On that note, when sent to a screen with a continue or go button on it, that button should be automatically highlighted when you arrive on the screen. Then you can just spam A on pad / wheel or Enter on keyboard to quickly move through the menus.

Edit: There's still a bug where when I pause a race, sometimes the sound continues --engine, etc...-- and rumble on the pad continues while paused.

[Shockwave_S08]

Feedback for Hotfix 7:

• All of the Monster Manual's text renders properly now, only some minor formatting issues with massive indents on pages with bullet-point lists, and the Meet The Drivers video remaining inaccessible.

• Races menu is comfortable for gamepad use now; massive kudos for bringing back the MTM1 track overviews, even works with the official add-on tracks!

• Regarding the Garage menu, would it be possible to scroll down from Hard Suspension, directly to the Transfer Gear slider, and to be able to scroll up to that same slider from any of the bottom buttons?

[Ford-chan]

MTM1's J Drags are now prone to red lights 100% of the time after crossing the finish line, kinda like how it used to happen in Beta 0.43, only even worse.

[Shockwave_S08]

I think I've figured out what's going on with the spazzing water in The Heights and other tracks like OLD_8s: some weirdness is going on with how the rear-view mirror is rendered onscreen, as the issue immediately went away as soon as I manually disabled it during the race.

[Fila]

ooooooooooooooooooooooo, that's good to know. i never run mirror so that's probably why i missed it. let me check

Found it. It happens on the desktop too so it's not steam. On my end it DOES behave slightly different but I'm pretty confident it's the same bug and it was hard to spot due to being more subtle, happens on specific locations and I don't use mirror

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/Beta0.50hotfix8.zip

- implemented all of rudee's recommendation for the dpad behaviour. hope they work
- rudee, i cannot replicate the sound bug but the AI thinks it found a cause and it can be system specific (depending on framerates etc etc, so it could happen on my system too just a smaller chance percentage)
- i am leaving the garage behaviour as is for now, might revisit
- fixed the J drags. I totally missed this. changing the validation to tires only messed up a bunch of logic code with the way drags were written. It should all work now. In addition, i made it so that if you reverse in a drag, you get DQ (as per the rules). Also added back the pre-stage/stage commentary.
- hopefully i fixed the The Heights water bug (which was really an overall water+rearview mirror bug for Vulkan). Shockwave, if it is indeed fixed than both your bug and mine were the same, just slightly different look.
- there's a new option in Options>Game, can't miss it. Higher numbers magnifies the HUD. Lower numbers makes it smaller. The "correct" look for 1440p resolution is 3x for example but it suddenly looks like you are back in the 640x480 era. So i made the default to 2x (the AUTO is the default). For me 2x works great at 1440 but there's options for everyone to find their sweet spot.

[Fila]

Vulkan has the old truck problem back and I seem unable to fix it. I fixed the truck problem and now the trucks don't handle correctly anymore.

[Shockwave_S08]

Feedback for Hotfix 8:

• Spazzing water in the rear-view mirror seems to be fixed now.

• The addition of a Restart Race option in the pause menu was sorely needed!

• HUD Size default of 2x is way too big for the Steam Deck's 1280x800 screen; had to set it back to 1x.

• Strength of controller vibration on Steam Deck seems greatly diminished compared to Hotfix 7, even when set to 100%.

• FMV cutscenes currently cannot be skipped with a gamepad's buttons.

• In the Races menu, the position of the Edit Favorites button overlaps the text of the Favorite Opponents option, and doesn't evenly line up with the Edit button directly below it.

[Fila]

Feedback for Hotfix 8:

• Strength of controller vibration on Steam Deck seems greatly diminished compared to Hotfix 7, even when set to 100%.

The hell, I haven't touched the controller code. sigh

[Ford-chan]

Vulkan has the old truck problem back and I seem unable to fix it. I fixed the truck problem and now the trucks don't handle correctly anymore.

It's not happening on my end with Vulkan, if anything, Vulkan works flawlessly on my end now.

[Fila]

I sneaked in the fix at the last minute. It was also very hard to spot because it mostly affects Alpine's trucks.

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/Beta0.50hotfix9.zip <- the sound.pod is not really needed but adding it just in case anyone skipped HF8, they can just download this without needing anything from 8.

Ok this is genuinely crazy. The amount of stuff that gets broken in this game due to having higher FPS is crazy (and the fact that everything is tied to a dynamic number). So I never touched the gamepad code like I said, what I did touch was the Vulkan truck bug. Which apparently saved another 5-10fps on the deck which was enough to push the force feedback logic past a threshold where it threw its hands up and said "I don't wanna work no more". And I've spent 2 hours going around in circles until the AI threw a random suggestion of capping the FPS to 30 and see what happens and suddenly the rumble worked. Sheesh

So anyway:
- the rumble is back on the steam deck.
- rumble is probably stronger all around. Rudee, check your wheel because this should affect your wheel too. And the pads.
- can now press buttons to skip the intro video too on steam deck
- i realized the control page on the deck was very hard to navigate due to a bug involving the test axis. Fixed that now

Shockwave: I will eventually allow for each individual HUD piece to be scaled on it's own instead of all of them at once, but that requires a bit more work to set up so it's not ready yet.

[Shockwave_S08]

Feedback for Hotfix 9:

• For all existing menus, main menu especially, currently the D-Pad must be pressed up or down before anything can be selected with the A button. Ideally, any menu should have the first button immediately highlighted without any player input.

• Is there a way to add an "Are you sure?" yes/no prompt when selecting Restart Race from the pause menu?

• In the Races menu, the text of the Randomize button hardly fits within the button's bounds. Picture attached.

20260806095342_1.jpg

[OG_RuDeE]

Love the bigger HUD, super fun! Will the menu elements be getting a scale factor as well? I wouldn't mind all of the menus being about half their size.

Rumble is working fine on the pad. 100% is so strong I end up turning it down.

I was wondering if FF was tied to fps, maybe that's what was causing my sound / rumble bug in the menus? I haven't encountered it so far today.

On classic steering, my wheel does seem much better. At 0 sensitivity, I still have a dead zone from -45 to 45 degrees, but this is a definite improvement, and on 10 sensitivity, I basically have full range of steering now.

Also, very happy about the restart race button, I've been hoping for that.

On buttons, somewhere, maybe in the solo play window, it would be fun to have a random quick race button. Clicking that chooses a track a random for you. I'd even be up for random weather. If people don't like random weather, could just put a "Random" checkbox next to the track types at the top, and if it's checked you'll be thrown into a random race with your choice of weather when you click GO!

Got sidetracked there.

More controller menu QOL suggestions:

Would be nice if the left stick also could move you through the menu, so dpad and stick both work.

On pages with lots of buttons at the top or bottom, e.g. menu or races screens, it is traditional to have LB / RB cycle through those. Then if one is down in the options list, they can hit LB/RB and immediately move to the next page (or at least have the selection jump to one of the buttons up top).

In general, when one arrives on any page, I think something should be highlighted, e.g. on the first page highlight solo play, on the solo play page highlight quick race, etc... On the races page, I think the list should be the first thing highlighted. Then you scroll to your track hit A twice, and you're in a race. Aside, could have LB/ RB jump you to buttons on bottom here too. On Driver Check-in, highlight truck selection, in garage: transfer gear; I think whatever the most natural thing you think the player is going to want to change on each window.

Other things:

Dpad buttons change view in cockpit view while in pause menus.

The Buttons on the Pause menu don't fit in their box and almost go off the screen.

F4 doesn't work when in the pause menu, and I think it should.

Overall, man! Everything is coming along very nicely! It's amazing what has been accomplished in this short period of time. Still very exciting!

[Fila]

Rudee, for the pause menu buttons, if i make any menu changes and you have menu_layout.txt it's going to override the settings that come with the game. Your sound bug was related to framerate but in a different way, this wasn't due to high fps but a more subtle connection.

[OG_RuDeE]

I have been waiting on changing the menu_layout.txt since the menus have been changing. I think you've added a couple buttons in places since you released the menu tool.

Ok about the sound. Were the wheel issues related to the FF / fps connection?

[Fila]

Good question, I'll have to double check as I did one other change to the code when I worked on the fps/ffb, found another bug where the system could iterate devices wrongly and that could have affected you're wheel too.

My wheel was never affected because it has its own software that I can set to override the game and I've been running mtm like that since 2010

Anyway, it looks like the game is in a solid state now with just QoL improvements so I'm going to change gears and shift back to working on features. I'll add these QoL updates with the features updates instead of doing hot fixes.

I said Comm Patch 3 would be next but I'm going to do one more beta where the key is going to be "no news is good news". Going to transition the code to the latest toolkits and switch to 64bit executable in preparation for the new texture formats and pipeline (in addition to the old way, that stays).

[OG_RuDeE]

All sounds good to me. I'm going to be away from the big pcs until middle of next week, but I'll have my laptop. So, probably won't do much testing after tonight / tomorrow morning until I come back.