MTM2.com

I'm going to build a new track..they always take me a while so it won;t be in the net month or so..it's going to be a while.

What I am wondering is how good are the racers these days.

When I did Snowbound I had two objectives.

#1
I wanted it to be a work of art. I wanted the track to look as good as possible considering my artist and realistic limitations. I also wanted to stretch the boundaries of what was possible within the game. I changed the color of the stock water to blue (not a big deal these days). Made mist at the bottom of a water fall, and figured out how to make a tunnel without using square ground blocks. I wanted people to enjoy the scenery as much as racing the track.

#2 i wanted the track to be fun to race. To do this i bet tested the layout and asked questions about every bump and turn inthe track. My beta process resulted in a track that at the time, was fun to run, competitive and had good replay ability. after a few laps a racer, or casual player could pick up the visual cues I had left and stray on the track.

What I did not want is; frustrated racers, one mistake to take you out of the race, or to see comments like "that ones too long", "I hate that track I always fall off the (insert, bridge, jump, obstacle here), or the speed of your computer to give an advantage.

**

Back then half the people that raced were on dial up, so size was a consideration(some tracks took up to 45 minutes to download), the other half had p-166's with the voodoo 2 cards so lag was big a consideration too.

So what I am asking;

*Is lag still an issue? If so, what's the worst cause.
*are racers still able to navigate something like YM's Anaheim, or an YM MX track without getting frustrated?
*Is size of the POD a really big issue these days.
*Does anyone listen to track music, or care if I include "new stock music" for the game.
* Did I miss anything that may cause a problem, that's new today and wasn't an issue in the past?
*If I wanted a short list of testers who can A.) run a track well B.) be willing to test often, and C.) keep it to themselves until release time, who would you suggest, and how do I get a hold of them

Thank you all for your time, and thanks to everyone who pointed me in the right direction when I showed up a day or two ago. I appreciate the help.

--Sky

I also ran a few tracks and looked at some trucks. Wow, there are some good really good track and truck makers.

The advances in the support programs and in game models/tricks has been incredible.

Remember we started with a P-166 4 meg video card (megabyte not Gigabyte lol!) and dialup. Just being able to race someone online was amazing back in 1996.

FWIW the physics and game play are so good in this game it keeps people coming back. i haven't seen a racing game in which the vehicles respond so well to the terrain, and throttle input since. some come close but MTM2 really did a good job with physics and control.

My hats off to the programmers, track and truck makers. I've seen some sweet work, and nice breakthroughs.

Alot of People in the community now do Drag racing(realistic Monster Truck Courses) however, there is still a vocal contingent of Circuit/Rally Racers, the few times I play, I enjoy both, but I usually(and not alot lately due to life) Drag race Online. I would love to run some MX/SX style stuff online, but Life again, and would have to knock some series dust off....
as for whats an issue and whats not.

Lag can still be an issue, alot of objects in a small amount of space can still tax the game
I would think a MX style track wouldnt give people to many problems, some people would just have to knock the dust off
I dont really think POD size is a problem at all anymore
Beware of certain kinds of Graphix Cards, some of the newer ones dont like MTM2, and sometimes VISTA and 7 can be alittle crotchety with MTM2

I make drags, I make circuits.

Do both!
-------------------------------
And get rid of the dern dial-up. Go with cable.

EDIT:
1. Less lag, please.
2. Don't run it anymore.
3. Eh, not really...
4. I don't care. I put my own music on anyway.
5. FILE EXTENSIONS!!!
6. I can't, sorry.

EDIT 2: Kmaster you d-bag you got here before me .

*Is lag still an issue? If so, what's the worst cause.
- Always have been. Well us, racers, are kinda used to it. We always recommend turning off downloads, close programs and that kind of stuff.
*are racers still able to navigate something like YM's Anaheim, or an YM MX track without getting frustrated?
- Absolutely.
*Is size of the POD a really big issue these days.
- Not really. Phin is still encouraging the use of PodZip, and he's right by doing so, but nobody acutally uses it since some mtmers do not mount stock tracks.
*Does anyone listen to track music, or care if I include "new stock music" for the game.
- Yes, well, I have the in-game music off cuz I listen to my own music while racing, but yes, a lot of people would love to listen to custom music in tracks.
* Did I miss anything that may cause a problem, that's new today and wasn't an issue in the past?
- File extensions, please turn "show file extensions" on before making your track.
*If I wanted a short list of testers who can A.) run a track well B.) be willing to test often, and C.) keep it to themselves until release time, who would you suggest, and how do I get a hold of them
- you can go to mtm2.com/chat anytime and ask for testers.

Thanks for your replies, I really appreciate it. I went to you tube and watched a couple of stadium track runs. I can see the draw in the stadium setting, but don't understand why they don't race too .

The stadium races look kinda like fun too. looks liek a lot of work goes into them.

I think it'd be cool if the chat room/racing lobby was a little easier to find from the main mtm2 site too. it took me about 30 minutes to find an actual person.

I appreciate the input it looks to me like there are a few guys in the community who have worked hard to keep it together, and keep people playing,. My hats off to you for all your work.

Thanks for giving me a site to come back to.

--Sky

Glad you are still into it Sky.....

Keep in mind that people do work and go to school, so during the daytime hours you may not find a live body in the chatroom for the most part. In the evenings, that is very different after school/work.

Always welcome to open a window for www.mtm2.com/chat and leave it there while working on tracks or at work/school and switch over to it to see what's up.

Heck anytime my computer is on, I'm logged into mtm2 chat. When people swing by to see who's on, if I'm there I'll say Hi. : )

That's a good idea. I'll start opening up chat when I log on so I can at least maybe get in touch, if not maybe run a race or two.

I definitely need to get a joystick with a throttle control, or I am in for a big schooling heheh.

Oh by the way. i took a look at dry falls for mtm1 last night. Yeastman realy does have a knack for good looking tracks. That's one heck of a convincing environment. Brought me back to the good ole' days heh

Thanks
--Sky

If I can add a few notes.

Concerning lag, too many vertices will still give you the TRI D3D error. If you're just under the limit, then the game will stutter. However, today, unlike years ago (because nobody used them), too many large textures will cause some serious chugging as the game swaps them in and out of memory. Keep an eye on the number of 256x256 textures you use in close proximity and you should be all right.

Yes, file extensions have always been a problem. Note tho that Traxx 1.5 should solve that. It's wise to set things right in folder options anyway, but traxx 1.5 should not be overlooked.

Speaking of program updates, be sure to check out this page

http://malibu350.com/m350/

Not only will you find traxx, but the binedit update is nothing short of amazing.

Lastly, the chat is an experiment and will eventually be replaced by something that, I hope, is better (ie. less of a resource hog).

Has traxx been updated to fix the glitch that made it impossible to directly enter the height of models?

Don't think so. But S/X will get you close and the roller will fine tune.

Thanks Phin,
I was curious about 256x256 textures myself. I was wondering if with today's hardware a guy could use those 256 textures on the ground for a more detailed road etc. It sounds like that would cause way too much lag?

So in theory could a guy use a few 256x256 on the ground without causing too much lag, if they were used sparingly, and only where needed to convey detail?

As for the windows bug with extensions, no worries here. The extensions are one of the first things I enable on a new install of Windows, it;s one of my biggest pet peeves. People running windows,, and not having a clue about the differences between a .exe , and a .txt . On the phone working with customers a guy won't know the difference between and icon, and .exe, or a another file.

I am curious how this transfered over as a bug. I always figured it was just a viewing preference. i had no idea that it had bearing on the actual file names themselves..God to know for future reference.

I've seen screenshots of Spaceballs some really cool work there. Are there any other really innovative tracks I should have a look at to see what can be done these days?

Bin edit, Wow my hats off to oliver if he was the one who came back and updated it. back in the day you only had so much time before your memory would fill up, and it would crash. frequent saves were the only help. Windows or bin edit was going to crash always, it was just a matter of when.

I haven;t had a chance to really dig into traxx 1.5 is it pretty complete these days??

Thanks again for all the help, and the weclome.

Phin,
I have a server and ,so if you are ever in need of bandwidth, you are welcome to any you need. just get a hole of me via E-mail and we'll set you up.

Thanks again,
--Sky

I have a quick question. I am starting to work on road textures and i am wondering if anyone has the image that the 45 degree roads were taken from.

The textures would be okay, but the original template for the road that has 90 degree turns, and 45 degree turns with 45 degree road textures would be nice.

That way I could load it up and paint it without having to lay out al the corners and 45 degree angled roads. I don't mind doing it by hand, but if it has been done, and the image is still around I'd sure appreciate a point in the right direction.

We didn't have templates when I was building tracks. Wow, that's another huge break trough. We would just load up all the textures we wanted redone and place them in an image one 64x64 square at a time, re-paint and then cut back up.

I really owe a big thanks to whoever did all the work to make the templates that's for sure.

Like I mentioned i am not needing the texture templates, just the image they were made from so I can do my own.

Thanks in advance
--sky

Hi Skyman, great to see you around again, I know I have run a number of your tracks in tourneys I've hosted, I remember especially Lost Mines Revisited and the Rumble King

Go to this link http://cownap.com/~mtmg/templates/
then page 11 and in particular the MTMG notes. Hope it helps.

So how big is this models placement bug?

I didn't know it was an issue?

what is s/x and the roller?

Thanks for the compliment shadowprincess, I sure appreciate the link too

Too bad, this glitch kind of killed track making for me, became too much of a challenge to place models.

Just don't create big city tracks like Slayer and you won't get the error

Well it killed me when I was trying to make a sky resort track. It was so difficulty to build the bridges because I couldn't align each piece, I gave up.

I've never had an issue with model placement. Did something happen that made it worse?

Or just business as usually. It's hard to place models withe tr4axx, use trackED2 for ultra exact model placement?

In latest version, if you try to manually type a height, it ignores what you type. You have to use the S and X keys to position models, which is very inexact and tends to make every model have an +-.05 difference in height.

And it's tedious. Press key, open propertise and check if its right height, no? try again. repeat.