Re: Re: MTM2 Beta Patch 0.51 - We've got x64... and then some

[Fila]

Feedback regarding Hotfix 7:

• As for the level-cache feature, I've got two questions: Will there be a way to manually cap/uncap the amount of storage space used, and would there be a button one can press to automatically build the cache for everything in the current pod.ini load order?

I'm adding several options to increase/decrease the cap from off to 4GB. Considering the size, not sure if pre-caching makes sense, especially since once it reaches max size it starts recycling and the recycling logic was to do away with the track that was run long time ago. If the precache hits the limit while in the process of doing it, it will just eat its own tail.

That is, unless when you asked me this question you were thinking of going up to somewhere like 16GB. Then doing a pre-caching button would make more sense.

[Fila]

I did a quick .png backdrop test out of curiosity, 1024x1024 and holy moly it totally changes the look of the game. This backdrop doesn't even tile very well, I just did it as a quick rush job but wowza. All it needs is some HD trees converted by someone

backdrop_test.jpg

Works surprisingly well at night too.

backdrop_test_nighht.jpg

[OG_RuDeE]

Backdrop looks great. For the trees I'd just copy the ones that are closest from the pod and rename them to replace the trees in Farm Road. I even went as far as to edit the 8,0 facing trees out of Autumn Leaves (Rachel's Park).

Sorry to report, downloaded hf7 again this morning, and my bed is still shiny on Dx11 and Vulkan. Did you forget to put the files in before reuploading? Looks like it's working on your end.

Edit: One other note on this topic, since normals are generally unit vectors, the blue channel is determined by the red and green channels already. So, the blue channel can be freed up for something like roughness or AO or whatever you want.

[Fila]

Backdrop looks great. For the trees I'd just copy the ones that are closest from the pod and rename them to replace the trees in Farm Road. I even went as far as to edit the 8,0 facing trees out of Autumn Leaves (Rachel's Park).

Sorry to report, downloaded hf7 again this morning, and my bed is still shiny on Dx11 and Vulkan. Did you forget to put the files in before reuploading? Looks like it's working on your end.

Edit: One other note on this topic, since normals are generally unit vectors, the blue channel is determined by the red and green channels already. So, the blue channel can be freed up for something like roughness or AO or whatever you want.

That's because I want to want to keep it all to myself!

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/Beta0.51_hotfix8.zip

- Regarding the in-game version of the Monster Manual, all of the pages in the Windows Troubleshooting category cannot be opened for some reason.
>> since that info is also severely outdated, i'll treat this as low priority for now and get to it at some point.

- There ought to be an option to mark the vanilla tracks from both games in the Races menu, like (MTM1) and (MTM2).
>> reluctant to do it because the screen is already getting too busy

- Any possibility of adding true surround-sound support in the future, as well as HTRF for headphone users?
>> I dropped the old surround option. Now you can go into the sound options and select Surround 5.1 and then you can control each channel individually. If someone doesn't have 5 channels but only 4, you can still select 5.1 and unselect the "Commentary from the Center" and it rewires Army to the front speakers instead (you can do that anyway if you want. Right now front speaker is reserved exclusively for Army and his new found dialogue powers)
>> Also added a headphone(3d) option. I can't vouch how well it works because my headphones do 5.1 natively so just selecting the surround 5.1 for me worked fine.

>> Graphics>Advanced now has a selectable Level Cache Size for what the cap is for the cache folder. Goes from off to 4gb for now. Default is 1GB (what the current default is)

>> Split screen now works on Vulkan

>> Xmas tree has the same font as MTM2 overlay

>> Fixed legacy shadows turning the truck darker at a flip of a switch. Wasn't really noticeable until I did some AO testing and I thought AO broke the game.

- The game now does AO too.

AO works — ship <stem>_AO beside your diffuse.

Greyscale. White = open, black = fully occluded. No file = no occlusion.
Separate file, not packed. Export the normal map and the AO exactly as your baker gives them — RGB normal with real Z in blue, AO as its own greyscale. The engine merges them internally; don't pre-pack anything.
Works with or without a _N. Occlusion alone is fine.
Size needn't match the normal map or the diffuse. Matching is fine too.
Bake it into the same UV layout as the diffuse — the normal way — and it lines up by itself.

[OG_RuDeE]

That's because I want to want to keep it all to myself!

You're evil! Haha

Checked it out in hf8, and it looks great!

Screenshot 2026-08-25 172418.jpg

Notice my own truck reflected in various parts of the body though? Kinda funny!

Will try out the new _AO stuff. Woo!

[Fila]

Yes the own reflection is a thing that some trucks show more than others. This was a compromise back when I first implemented the reflections. I have to revisit to see if it's doable to fix since a lot has changed since then.

[OG_RuDeE]

Do you have a best practices / workflow for baking the _AO map? Should I bake them from the 2d textures, or is the engine expecting something different?

[Fila]

Bake it into the same UV layout as the diffuse.

I've never really done AO/Normal mapping work so I'm a bit clueless to this (and also my head is in 5 different places).

[Legend_Of_Wii]

Do you have a best practices / workflow for baking the _AO map? Should I bake them from the 2d textures, or is the engine expecting something different?

As from me on giving advice, you can always try all your ideas and report back to Fila which ones worked or failed.

[Fila]

That's probably a good idea. Lol

[OG_RuDeE]

dern guys! Haha

[Legend_Of_Wii]

I'm just being honest, RuDeE. XD
Sometimes you just gotta rule out all the weak stuff that doesn't work good and keep only the strong stuff that works the best, that's what I would do.

[Fila]

lol. Burn Rudee!


Anyway, in the meantime I silently updated the HF8 (so redownload if you want).

The main thing, AO broke the normals on the terrain and objects but worked fine on the trucks due to different paths. So Normals and AO are now fixed and work correctly everywhere. Even more so, legacy terrain and legacy objects (with 64x64 textures) can now be given _N and _AO. Don't know if anyone would but the possibility is there.
I have also added a toggle in the graphics>advanced that says No Self-Truck Reflection. This does away with your own truck appearing in your own reflection but keeps everything else working the same. The reason this is a toggle is because it is expensive and eats FPS. Basically up until now there was one single reflection pass that was spreading the love to all the trucks. Now there are two passes, one for the player truck and one for the rest which means extra work (literally the whole world is drawn again just for your own truck) which is why it eats up quite a bit of fps.

[Legend_Of_Wii]

Lol, I wasn't trying to burn anyone intentionally. XDDD
Heh.

Sounds interesting, Fila!

[OG_RuDeE]

It's ok. I'll do my best to figure it out. Gonna try some AO with the HD trees first, since I think it makes sense there. But from what I've read, AO maps need to be baked with the whole model / scene in mind. So, having _AO maps tied to each individual texture doesn't make sense to me at the moment, but I will play with it.

I know I suggested having the blue channel of the normal map be AO. So, I'll have to go back and refresh my memory on how things worked in that setting (where AO is per texture).

Can Claude give any hint here?

BTW, here are materials I once was somewhat familiar with: https://tads.me.uk/wfwiki/index.php?tit ... c_material

Here is another cool tool I found recently, that I will try first: https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/

It makes normal, displacement, ao, and specular maps. Probably what we want.

[Fila]

Oh that normal map online is superb! Gonna have to add it to mtmg

[OG_RuDeE]

Here are three examples on the HD tree using MAPLYELL texture; see attached zip:

MAPLYELL_examples.zip

Which is the favorite? IMO, they all look pretty dern good in screenshots!

1. Normal, specular, and AO inverted

Screenshot 2026-08-25 204904.jpg

2. Normal, specular only

Screenshot 2026-08-25 204717.jpg

3. Normal specular and AU as in the attached .zip

Screenshot 2026-08-25 204546.jpg

If you already have the HDTrees.pod, just throw these three files in and check it out.

Time for me to wrap it up for the night.

Edit: I'll add my process. For the normal map, I removed the alpha channel of the maplyell texture, used gimp's built in normal map plugin / filter (adjusting the depth slightly). For the specular channel (alpha of normal map, I just used a lightened up desaturated version of the maplyell texture), then for _AO, I also used a lightened up, desaturated copy of maplyell texture (Example 3). Example 1 came from inverting the colors on the AO from Example 1. The website I linked was not used, but could be tried in place of this process. Once we have it nailed down I'll make a video of the workflow.

[Shockwave_S08]

Seems the surround-sound and headphone audio is heavily distorted on Steam Deck, with certain sounds failing to play at all (namely the airhorns/screams/bells when passing through checkpoints. Switching back to stereo audio fixes this.

[Kmaster]

Which is the favorite? IMO, they all look pretty dern good in screenshots!

number 2 seems to have the more realistic colors/shadows for me but yes they all look amazing. how about a hd replacement of all the stock assets huh? okay, maybe i'm asking too much.