Speed property in ncp file

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ciccio
Posts: 40
From: Italy

Speed property in ncp file

Unread post by ciccio » Fri Oct 30, 2020 11:30 am

This suggestion is a thing creators may miss a lot. Now, there are some ways to mess with the car's speed, but none of them feel "right". Yes we could use a force field opposite to the car's expected direction, but this messes with the physics as well, especially if the car is traveling in a direction perpendicular to the force field's direction, not to mention that trying to accelerate against such a field is impossible for some cars and that it moves the cars back even when they are fully stopped.
Another way I personally experimented with is using a very high grip terrain: this naturally slows down the car itself, but comes with major drawbacks. First of all the car is constantly jittering around while on this surface; then, it makes turning unnaturally precise and if the car starts to slide on it it's almost impossible to recover, all around making this kind of surface more of a deterrent than a proper slowdown surface. One major advantage that the high grip surface has over the force field is that there is no specified direction, so it works regardless of where the car is going, making it viable for anything more than a pitlane in a real life track (for example offroad in a real life track).
But what if we had a property applicable for each surface that determined how fast a car should go while on it? Hear me out...
Hypotetically, if every type of surface had a multiplicator (multiplicator) to the car's top speed value, we could make every car slow down the same on a certain surface, or even speed up. Take for example my recently released SNES Mario Circuit 3. This is a classic tarmac track with sand on the sides, if you cut through the sand you could gain a lot of time, but I don't want to put reposition triggers all around the tarmac like Amco TT/Bitume do, it feels frustrating. Force fields obviously wouldn't work because you can cut through the sand from multiple direction, and trying to block them all would result in multiple force field that overlap each other, creating a confusing mess that leads to a manual repo when you get in the sand. High grip is the currently used option, and has it's drawbacks, as the car that drives on it tends to jitter and that can mess you up just by being on it. I could also remove all sand and just put a wall, but that makes it even more frustrating as a small mistake would cost multiple seconds instead of just a slowdown (imagine f1 monaco, but it's in every racing circuit). The universal solution would be a value that multiplies the top speed of the car that drives on it. Now the sand in SNES Mario Circuit 3 would slow down every car that drives on it down to 30% of the top speed, in terms of parameters just multiply the top speed by 0.3. This is exactly the effect many creators want when they try to slow down cars. But there is more: what if the multiplicator was actually above 1? Now we got speed increasing surfaces, and we could imitate or make our own "boost panels" or speed mods. For example we could create tracks where the speed is twice the usual one, without having to carefully place force field boxes around the track, but just by setting a property of a surface in a text file. It would work for every single car in every single track without any physics quirk.
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Manmountain
Posts: 50
From: England UK

Re: Speed property in ncp file

Unread post by Manmountain » Sat Oct 31, 2020 5:09 pm

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting implementing the physics (not the graphics) of Farce Fields, Objects and Surface Properties all in to one single edit/application ?

Which program/application would you use to implement this ?

Is it that you struggle to efficiently utilise Farce Fields, Objects and Surface Properties or does the game really need this update ?
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ciccio
Posts: 40
From: Italy

Re: Speed property in ncp file

Unread post by ciccio » Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:01 am

My suggestion is not to implement force field in another editor mode. My suggestion is to simply implement a % speed modifier on ncp polygon data. It would be a new line in the properties.txt that says "Speedmod" and a number in % of the top speed of the car, so that when the car goes over that poly it will temporarily set its top speed to the % specified in the properties.txt. Force field are not a % speed modifier and will never be, because they are directional and act regardless of the car. I can implement a slowdown terrain using surface properties, in fact I don't even need to make a new one each time because I can just copy the ones I've already made. The issue here is that we cannot arbitrarly slow down cars when they are in a certain surface without other physics consequences like strange turning behaviour or very slow recovery. Saff's pit lanes in her tracks also suffer the same issue, once you stop in the pitlane it takes a lot of effort to get out without a repo. Unless you can make a surface that slows the car down without breaking the physics then yes, I really think the game needs this update.
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Manmountain
Posts: 50
From: England UK

Re: Speed property in ncp file

Unread post by Manmountain » Sat Nov 07, 2020 4:32 pm

I fully understood the concept and purpose, that wasn't the issue.

Which editing tool/program would you be using to apply these percentage effects ?

Could this property be easily coded in to the game ?

PS, try a little punctuation in your posts, it would make them easier to read, lol. :D
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ciccio
Posts: 40
From: Italy

Re: Speed property in ncp file

Unread post by ciccio » Wed Nov 18, 2020 12:33 am

We wouldn't be using any program, it would be a property of any surface in the properties.txt. About how easy it is to code something in the game, I honestly don't know if it's going to be hard or easy, it would be a first in the changelog for sure, I don't know of any physics change in the game.
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