Track List :: Competitive Computer Trucks

Teknor · Post by **Teknor** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 9:38 pm

Ok... that was weird.

I'm going to side with.... (drumroll) ... both of you.

If you have both Farm Road 129 and Farm Road 589 in my pod list at the same time... MTM2 will list them both as the track that is in the pod list first... and that is the track you will play when you choose either one.

For example:

If Farm Road 129 is earlier in your pod.ini than Farm Road 589, then you will see 2 entries in MTM2 for Farm Road 129 and they will both play as Farm Road 129.
If Farm Road 589 is earlier in your pod.ini than Farm Road 129, then you will see 2 entries in MTM2 for Farm Road 589 and they will both play as Farm Road 589.

I've never seen this with any other MTM2 tracks. These two tracks could not be much more different from each other. So why does this happen?

As for Farm Road 589, while it is easily VERY and different... on my systems the AI fails miserably and from the way the track is laid out, I would expect the AI to fail miserably.

I'll keep Farm Road 129 and dump Farm Road 589. Just my opinion.

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:15 am

That is exactly what I have done!.....Because I had fr129 first in my list, I did not realize that fr589 was podded. The result was that it did not get tested by me, but slipped through the cracks as it were, and got added to the list without testing.
But when I spotted the problem (and with Phineus' advice) I was able to test it, and I agree that it is not that good!

SLAYER: I wonder if you could open the new zip, extract the fr589 track and the pod.ini......Remove the entry for fr589, change the total number of tracks to reflect this, and then put the pod.ini back into the zip, before Phineus downloads it?
It would solve the conflict problem, and remove the poor AI track!

Thanks in advance!

Post by **Phineus** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:06 am

Teknor wrote:I'm going to side with.... (drumroll) ... both of you.

I wasn't siding. I was explaining.

Teknor wrote: MTM2 will list them both as the track that is in the pod list first... and that is the track you will play when you choose either one.

I've never seen this with any other MTM2 tracks.

It is known as a name conflict. The same thing can happen with trucks, with textures and with models. In fact, it can happen with any file in the pod.ini list. It is also the principle behind the fix pod. It's a fairly common occurence and we actively try to get people to use unique names when they make anything for the game.

Disposable wrote: .... before Phineus downloads it?

Yeah, right

Slayer · Post by **Slayer** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 11:09 am

I think Phine dl'ed it two days ago lol

But I made the edit anyways

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 1:49 pm

Sorry Phineus! But I thought you hadn't downloaded it yet because the read me on the list site still says 125meg!

I will change it to 148meg.

SLO_COPE · Post by **SLO_COPE** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 11:40 pm

I downloaded the track zip this morning and began sifting through it, and here's what I noticed:

º First of all, the zip contains two truck zips - MTF.pod & 99extcab.pod.

º Stock tracks: I recall what you said about people tinkering with their mtm 2 directory. By in large this list is for newcomers, so I doubt you'll see issues with people tinkering with their mtm files. On the off chance that someone does and it creates a problem, we'll know about it soon enough.

º I noticed you removed the summit.pods (all three rumbles) in the pod.ini. Not a good idea. A few add-on tracks make use of files from the rumbles, so if you have room to leave all the stock tracks in place it's best to do so. If you insist on removing the rumbles to make room for additional add-ons, I'd suggest going through your list and fire up every track to ensure it launches without an error.

Here's what I'm going to do for this list on our site:

º I'm removing Farm Road 589 and the two trucks. I'm also removing the stock tracks from the zip.

º In the pod.ini I'm including ALL stock files/pods. I'm also editing it to include Fixmore4.pod.

Lastly, with the stock race tracks removed, the zip size falls to just under 100 meg. With cable/dsl users file size isn't really that much of an issue, but at the same time, why have an extra 50 meg when it's unecessary?

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:15 am

Every single track has been run,without the rumble tracks being present when they were tested for suitability, and they all work as expected. The rumble tracks being present make a mockery of the idea that these are OFFLINE tracks, that is why they were removed. And they are not needed to run these tracks!
Fixmore4 was removed wrongly, and I appologize for that.
On reflection you are right about the stock tracks, as a new (beginner) mtm player will probably have them podded anyway. But the tracks are left in because they will overwrite the ones already in mtm folder anyway, and if they have been removed, they will be put back!
Another reason the various pods are left in the zip is because new mtm players are not going to be sure of what to remove and what to leave? This way they only have to overwrite everything and it should work!

PS: Never checked my Truck addons! Silly me! I will correct the zip. But I will leave the rumbles out as they are not needed in this list!

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:27 am

Phineus: I have a request please?
I know you are busy, and it is getting to be a bit of a pain, but when you have time could you please extract the pod.ini from the zip and remove from the pod.ini these entries:

fr589.pod
MTF.pod
99extcab.pod
2.1ONANINTNNASTRUX.pod

and add FIXMORE4.pod, and change the total to reflect this, then drop the pod.ini back into the zip.

Also, could you please remove the 4 pods from the zip, and drop the FIXMORE4.pod into it.

This is the last ever change needed on this list and zip. I will correct the list to reflect these changes!
Thanks for your help Phin.

Slayer · Post by **Slayer** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:31 am

to be honest i agree with disposable, i have frequently seen people delete the stock tracks, and rumbles are waste of room.

and as far as needing the tracks, this is why we shouldn't use podzip, it causes problems like this. Thats what I believe anyways.

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:44 am

I asked Phin to remove the 2.1ONON__NASTRUX.pod as well, because this pod drops about 10 trucks into your truck list.

SLO_COPE · Post by **SLO_COPE** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:26 am

Sounds good. If you've already ran through the list w/o the rumbles and all the tracks fire properly, then sure, leave the rumbles out. I don't have a problem with you leaving the stock tracks in the zip either. I still feel it's unecessary, but to each his own. I submit to you, however, that if someone removed them the first time there's nothing stopping them from removing them again lol.

As for fixmore4, I would suggest not including it in the zip. If (it's probably more accurate to say "when") fixmore gets updated you won't have to reupload the entire track zip because of that one file.

Teknor · Post by **Teknor** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:53 am

My thoughts are ... don't make a pod.ini for the set.

Let the user decide which ones they want, what to add, and how to add them.

They may not want all of the set. I know I didn't.

Just me thinking out load. [;)]

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:06 am

Beginners are not going to know what to leave out, unless they first try them! That is the whole reason for the zips (and pod.ini) existence. Otherwise you can just download the individual tracks.
it is a simple matter to change the pod.ini to reflect the changed FIXMORE status when needed, as it can be removed from the zip and altered then put back, the same is true of the FIXMORE4.pod file. There is no need to upload the whole zip again.
Just double click on the zip to view it's contents, then click once on the file you want to edit/remove, then click on "extract". When you wish to put a new file into the zip, you just drag and drop!

Post by **Phineus** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:34 pm

Disposable, I can make the changes you ask, no problem. However, please note that the files on mtm2/cownap are not on a home computer and it does not run windows. I have to download, make the changes and then reupload.

Slayer, podzipping pods is good for a number of reasons. Paid server space and bandwidth has become much more reasonably priced but it still costs nevertheless. By podzipping the lesser known and lesser used tracks, we've saved a gig and a half of hard drive space, tons and tons of bandwidth, and backups still fit on a single dvd. For people who don't want the stock tracks, they can use the podzip.pod or just disable the sit files using cpod. There is no reason to get errors because something has been podzipped.

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 3:07 pm

Phineus: I didn't realize there was so much involved. But thank you for being willing to make the changes!

Slayer · Post by **Slayer** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:07 pm

ive never heard of the pod b4, cool.

include the pod.ini otherwise this is pointless.

if a new version of fixmore comes out, and the person really wants it, they will just update the list themselves, and its not a lot of work to make the update, its not as if fixmore is updated every month.

and use cpod to disable sit files? how would that help you?

SLO_COPE · Post by **SLO_COPE** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:49 pm

". . . it is a simple matter to change the pod.ini to reflect the changed FIXMORE status when needed . . ."

Hehe trust me, I'm pretty familiar with this game and how to manipulate files. I simply made the suggestion to potentially preclude ending up with a pod in your track zip that isn't used or has become obsolete.

Anyway, it looks like you have things under control, Disposable. Goodluck with your list! ;)

Drive2Survive · Post by **Drive2Survive** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:45 am

Slayer wrote:and use cpod to disable sit files? how would that help you?

Disabling the sit files disables MTM2 from loading and displaying the track. You can do likewise with trk files for trucks.

Doing so allows you to keep the pod mounted in the list, without the track/truck appearing as playable in the game. You would do this in the situation that you need to keep a pod mounted so that the other files in the pod (textures and models, etc) remain available for MTM2 to use with other things that need them (such as podzipped add-on track and truck pods), but you don't want the 'donor' tr?ck in question to show up in the game.

It's also useful if you deal with merged pods and only want some tracks/trucks out of the set to show, or if you are making your own replacements for stock tr?cks.

Slayer · Post by **Slayer** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:00 am

does it effect the limit, like if a track is podded but disabbled, does it count towards the 99 tracks in mtm2?

Disposable · Post by **Disposable** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:02 am

That is a useful tool (cpod), But beginners would know nothing about it's use for disabling trucks/tracks etc. Slayer didn't know this and has been a member of this forum for some time.
This list is primarily for beginners!