Developer Blog

Where to discuss the official sequel. Developers blog, kickstarter, your experience with pre-alpha demo, ideas etc.
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FRUKIScze
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by FRUKIScze »

I have only one small question:
Is Kickstarter ready? If I search in kickstarter for Generally, no suitable matches found. Will be kickstarter, or not? And sorry, if I miss some post with this info :-D.

Cheers.
4 times pole-sitter in GRPL F2. Future GRPL F2POSTPONEDrace winner. 1 time best of the rest qualification in GRPL F1.
(last edit: 18/09/2020)
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LongBow
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by LongBow »

FRUKIScze wrote:I have only one small question:
Is Kickstarter ready? If I search in kickstarter for Generally, no suitable matches found. Will be kickstarter, or not? And sorry, if I miss some post with this info :-D.

Cheers.
AFAIK, Kickstarter is not ready yet but don't worry, I'm sure James will notify us when the time is right ;)
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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

It's that time again - we've updated the developer blog with a new post :bsmile:
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XYY
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by XYY »

U serious? 400 polies? :faint:
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puttz
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by puttz »

XYY wrote:U serious? 400 polies? :faint:
:down: Too many polies, GR was not meant for detailed cars. There goes my carmaking career down the drain, I won't be able to make something with that many polies up to standard.
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Trigger Happy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

I agree with you, however no-one forces you to use all 400 polies. When I look at the car in blog, then imagine it max. one inch small and from top view, there's seems to be a lot of work (like on bending of the tube of front bumber), which I guess was pretty much just a wasted time. But no one forces you to follow that approach, you can design car as you want, e.g. within 40 polygons. In practice of community efforts I understand it as rather ''practically unlimited'' number, not a number, which people will regularly hit as a ceiling (which is our current understanding of the limit). :)
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

400 polies is it? That will literally kill the car making community off for good, as it'll take a week to do just one car (at the moment, I can make a high-quality car in an hour or two). Not good. I can't handle more than 80/100 - which is all I've ever asked for. I appreciate you want a big leap from GR1 to GR2, but...

Also, it's all very well and good saying no one will force us to use 400 polies. Fact is, you'll pretty much have to, else you'll either be regarded as lazy, producing low-quality work, or just plain ignored. I cannot handle 400 polies. Also, how pathetic would an 80-poly car of mine look next to a 400 poly car? I wouldn't want that.
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Trigger Happy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

Lukeno94 wrote:Also, how pathetic would an 80-poly car of mine look next to a 400 poly car? I wouldn't want that.
Depends how shadows and reflections will be sensitive, but if the cars will be as small on screen as can be estimated, I hope no major difference will be noticeable between high-poly car and properly made model in 60-80 polies. If will be, I fully share all your concerns.

BTW quite surprised we didn't waited another 1/4 year for the next blog this time, James! :up:
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Bouncebackability
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Bouncebackability »

I also think new people as a result won't be intersted in taking it up, it would seem such a mamoth task.

And as TH says, if you consider the size of the car on screen why would so many be necessary...
also I realise the last two blog posts as a result we've done nothing but then complain :p
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AleksiNir
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by AleksiNir »

I bet most of you would instantly recognise my forum nickname if I said it here and now… but that would be too boring, so I’ll leave the guesswork for you guys!
J4ber? :cool2:
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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

I understand the concerns people are voicing here over the 400 poly limit, but let me clarify a few things:
  1. We'll be supporting proper format export from popular 3D tools such as Blender, Cinema4D and 3DS Max. What this means is you won't need to spend hours tweaking individual vertices in a third-party editor, but you'll rather be able to make use of mesh modifiers in various applications (e.g. things like mesh smoothing, mirroring, etc.). Car development time should remain fairly similar to what it is now, as you'll now be able to use proper tools.
    .
  2. To put this into context, 400 polies is less than 0.05% of the polies found in the average car in, for example, Forza Motorsport 4. This isn't an excessive number, and it will surprise you how quickly that number of polygons can be used up when you no longer have to decide if you want to have headlights or an air intake :) Please also bear in mind that things like a driver's helmet are part of this limit - we're no longer rendering a "coloured wheel" as a helmet. If you want your car to have a helmet, you'll have to throw a sphere in there yourself and that will count towards the poly limit. Also, contrast this with when GeneRally was released, a decade ago. 40 polys for GeneRally, and an average of around 20-30k polies in most of the racing games released around the same time, and you'll see we're at a roughly equivalent level now :)
    .
  3. As Ivo mentioned, there's no necessity to use all 400 polys. For example, the Mini shown on the developer blog uses less than 400 polygons. However, a prototype of the Kart that will be present in the Sequel is pushing the limit at 400, given the need to show a basic driver. GR has very few cars that don't max out the poly limit (at least, very few that I've ever seen) - that won't be the case this time around.
Hopefully that'll help to clarify our decision here. We knew this would be a controversial point, which is why we're not trying to hide it :) I think you'll be a lot less concerned when you get to see the cars on-track! Furthermore, Kimmo will be putting out an extensive tutorial on the car-editing pipeline (including some basic how-to content for Blender) in due course :)

We're obviously open to feedback, and we'll be continuing to monitor peoples' responses across the various community forums and replies to the @Gene_Rally Twitter account :)
AleksiNir wrote:J4ber? :cool2:
He thought it'd take you longer than that... well done :P
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

That's the other side of my point Bba (the one I didn't voice). Not only will 90% of the existing car makers not want to do that (after all, if they want to work on the more detailed things, they may as well go and make cars for NFS IV, with 1500-2000 polies or whatever, or some similar, older game), barely any new ones will take up the job. I say 100 polies should be the absolute maximum for GeneRally - 400 is astronomical.

And the LAST thing I want is to end up using Blender, Cinema4D or 3DSMax, as they are far too complicated for me. There is simply no way on this planet I will make a 400 poly car for GeneRally in a "professional" tool.
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Trigger Happy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

Lukeno94 wrote:And the LAST thing I want is to end up using Blender, Cinema4D or 3DSMax, as they are far too complicated for me. There is simply no way on this planet I will make a 400 poly car for GeneRally in a "professional" tool.
I agree, if we'd have to move into things like this to make any addons on a decent level, it'd be an epic fail, complete opposite what made this game so nice for all, who aren't IT nerds (thanks to trivial default editor and even simpler and omnipresent MS Paint only sky is the limit in trackmaking for everybody, I rather hoped you're going to offer something similar for carmakers too than ''go to Blender, Cinema4D or 3DSMax''). :worried:
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Paw »

Nice and, I believe, fairly easy to learn 3D software is Wings3D - I would like to see some support for it :) Or it would be possible to export and import into eg. Blender. We will see.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

Going to promote use of a dedicated 3D modeller is completely the wrong way anyway. At the moment, half the reason the car community is so small is due to the lack of an official editor. You can mess around with tracks without any difficulty, but cars, well, I bet quite a few new players don't even realize you can make or mod cars! We need a lower poly limit and we need a proper official editor, otherwise the car community will either die completely, or be even closer to death than it is now.
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puttz
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by puttz »

Lukeno94 wrote:
And the LAST thing I want is to end up using Blender, Cinema4D or 3DSMax, as they are far too complicated for me. There is simply no way on this planet I will make a 400 poly car for GeneRally in a "professional" tool.
Agreed. I want to be able to make cars in the same way they are currently made. No way I am going to learn to use some modelling tool, something after the style of Juan's car editor is good for me. I always thought it would be silly to make more detailed cars for GR because you usually don't see any details, especially on large [rwl] tracks. I don't even bother trying to put wheel wells or fenders or bumpers on my cars because I know they won't be seen on the majority of tracks anyhow. Having to do more complicated stuff will drive away carmakers, not gain more. If there was a 400 poly limit in the original GR, I would never have started making cars.

EDIT: Although I must say I am happy with the return of the spherical wheels :bg:
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LongBow
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by LongBow »

Well, I don't see things so negatively about the poly limit, as many of you do.
I think the right answer would be an official car editor which would allow to make cars easily. I presume that most of the polies would be used in car curves and this operation can be done quite easily in any official (or not) 3D editor.

I don't believe that a decent looking car needs all those polies and as Luke mentioned 100 polies would be enough for making it. 100 polies is even far too much for making a bus :P
Imagine a 400 poly F1 car on a 255 size RWL track. A waste of time making it as you wouldn't see even a third of those polies.
Another story would be making a kart, but than again you don't need to model the drivers fingers, do you ;)

I have seen once a tutorial about car making in 3Dmax. I think the guy needed about an hour to do foto realistic car with far more than 400 polies :cool2:

Even though I understand you fears guys, I believe the GR team will work something out that will work for all of us!
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

I'm sure they will work out something that works. The problem is, at present, the current thing is just unworkable. Also, if they make an official car editor, I want it to be in the same style as Juan's - or at least to have an easily accessible mode that does the same job.
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Haruna
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Haruna »

In this thread: long-time fans complain that new GeneRally is no longer GeneRally.

I like how most of the members that have posted about the subject of the car polygon limit are complaining that they can't work with 400 polygons. That poly count also includes wheels, so in reality the polygon limit may only be half or less than that. What's even more amusing is that these are the same people who were crying for more polygons.

With the release of a new game means the use of new tools. This is nothing new in the modding scene, so I find it really funny how fans are flipping out over potential changes to car making.
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Paw
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Paw »

Haruna wrote:That poly count also includes wheels
I understand, that
a 400 poly limit, excluding wheels/tyres
means the opposite?

Also one thing bugs me:
Other than that, we’re working to allow car makers to design livery textures to include with their cars that will be affected by in-game player colours, instead of having to colour each poly individually – colouring 400 polies would take forever.
Would it mean, that the cars are textured fully, or some workaround for per-poly coloring? Which doesnt have to be a hassle as along as you can select multiple polys with your mouse ;)
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

Yeah, Haruna before his lesson successfully managed to mess up facts about head(s) and wheels.
LongBow wrote:I think the right answer would be an official car editor which would allow to make cars easily. I presume that most of the polies would be used in car curves and this operation can be done quite easily in any official (or not) 3D editor.
Won't be? :scratch: Maybe I jump into conclusion too early, but if James says models exported from various 3D tools will be available, he also seems to be counting with allowing importing it into ''new .car'' file by something, so an own car editor? I guess so, but what what else, if anything, will be possible there? :scratch:

To make clear, I don't consider the option itself of such importing from advanced 3D modellers to be anything bad, in fact Juan's tool allows importing models from specialized and not common ''external'' tools like 3DSMax for years, so it's neither a breakthrough (contrary to the limit of polies), no reason why I would start to panic.

My only concern related to the news and particularly these tools (and what also Luke mentions among other things) is about increase the base of potential carmakers, I think the aim should be, that an average 10-12 old boy without any specialized education and interests is able to create quite easily with some practice a car on par with old dogs among us, same like in case of making tracks. So I merely would like not see the sequel going opposite path - further reduction of the base by requiring mastering some very complex pro tools as a minimal standard for creating anything decent in reasonable time frame. Briefly, as long as it will be only option (like when some trackmasters use Photoshop and other trackmasters not), then OK, but if it would be effectively a must-be, it would be IMHO either tragedy for the game or in better case keep the carmaking as same ''appendix'' as currently is. :shrug:

BTW if the game will have a commonly understandable car editor similarly like TE (which is so intuitive, that even doesn't need a manual), I don't really see a point in a care how much it resembles the old Juan's tool or not. :cool2:
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Ol7hYa »

On the subject of the 400 polys, I personally wanna 70 polys would be good! As I have been saying that many polys, I also say that! And GeneRally is one thing that makes it differ from all other car games: Simple graphics, but complex. If you change the polys do not put too many polys, because it loses the essence of the game.
Sorry for my bad english!
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

Yeah, the poly count doesn't include wheels. I'm not looking forward to making the head, either, spheres aren't my idea of fun. If people want to have some kind of "after touch" software to smooth things out, that's fine by me, but I do not want to have to make things out of 400 polies. I'd like the official CE to look like Juan's, but as long as it's a similar format (poly by poly placement, in the way it currently is) I don't care too much. The problem I see is that a 400 poly car would need you to use a 3D modeller, and that is just not something I can remotely support - again, no issue with it being allowed (that's already the case), but when it's the primary device... no thanks.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Whiplash »

I don't think polygon increasing is a bad thing necessary. I think it would give bigger challenge to all of the car makers. I'm just scared about game smoothness on a older PCs.
Btw, I read this:
"Next time, on the developer blog, Markku will be giving us some insight into the game engine itself and talking about graphics!"
Tell me the date baby! :yummy:
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

400 polies is less (by a long way) than in NFS IV, for example, older PCs won't have any issue. As carmakers, we do want a polygon increase, and the challenge that brings - but the whole fun of GR car making is that it isn't done with hugely complex 3D modelling tools. If I wanted to do that, I'd be making cars for the old NFS games.
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