Developer Blog

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

Post by XYY »

Well, now it's time for me to add my :2c: .

I think that modelling cars only in external editors such as Blender, 3DSMax or others isn't the right step. It would most certainly even decrease the already quite low interest in carmaking (at least compared to the tracks). I also don't think that removing the original head is the best thing you could do. I can imagine myself trying to make an appropriate-looking sphere and spending waaaay too much time on it.

If there's going to be an own car editor included in the game, no matter how many polies we have, I think it's a good step to make car editing more popular. :scratch:

Wouldn't there be a possibility to keep the basic idea (polies and vertices in a classic way), combined with a free number (or maybe limited to 10 or sth.) of spheres? The "first" four spheres could be marked as tyres and would thus leave tyre marks. The other ones can be used to make the car more fancy, e.g. head, lamps etc. I think this would give us great opportunities while we're keeping the basic idea. Also it would be better for special vehicles (Buses, trucks, Tyrrell six-wheeler :D )...

Of course, if all additional spheres have to be made by vertices and polies, it's (a) very time consuming (at least with the current editor) and (b) a stupid job :| . In this case I actually see a use of the 400 poly limit. However, if my idea could be realised, the poly and vertex count wouldn't have to be increased so much. In that case (or also if the current combination of tyres and head remain), I think a number of let's say 70 vertices would be enough to make many details and to not loose the GR spirit.

I just fear that there will be less carmakers (because they think good cars have to use all vertices) and that the car forum will get more quiet. And I also fear that the GR cars will become too fancy :shhh:


After all, I think my opinion alone won't have a big impact on the choices of the developers, but I think that the whole discussion here shows it's a controversial idea. I would certainly think about it again... :?
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by FRUKIScze »

I don't have to say much about car making, but i thing that somewhere between 100-200 polies count will be good. And what about vertex count?
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Otto Wilson
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Otto Wilson »

400 polies, i think just 80-100 is enough... excluding head and wheels of course, and the car editor needs to be similar to Juan's...
also, it would be cool if we could add more wheels too, to make those weird F1 with 6 wheels...

in contrast to the polies issue, i like the idea of making car skins, even though we should not make complex skins, it would look messy in game.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Ol7hYa »

And if you want that amount of polys, do most things with better details on a new version of GR
e.j: Version 2.3 with many graphics
Version 1.3 with graphics as the previous GR
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Paw »

I tinkred a bit with creating models, and there's one thing that I would like to point out: shading.
I'm not a specialist in that matter, but in original GR we have palettes, which mean, that there are big "steps" between shading levels.
The image in devblog seems to use soft shading, which IMO is a bit too "literal", as contrary to GR's "cartoonish" feel of cars.

I made a car (304/156 triangles/vertices, not including tyres) and rendered it with hard and soft shading. It's just a food for thought, especially as GR perhaps doesn't use typical hard shading. Also bear with those lightning bugs all around :sweatdrop:
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Haruna
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Haruna »

Would it be too difficult to try implementing 'shaders' that would make the GeneRally sequel look similar to, say, Borderlands, Auto Modellista, or maybe even Virtua Racing? One of the things that set GeneRally apart from other racers was that "not-quite-cartoon, but not quite real" abstract, polygonal "future-retro-arcade" look it had.

I think trying to go solely for a realistic look would be really jarring, especially considering that the car's wheels are still spherical - so my proposition is that the 'technical' side of the art style should be changed to reflect these choices in art design.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Garbre »

I prefer the one with the hard shader on, and I agree with Haruna's opinion. The outlook of GR now could be described shortly as "ugly, but simple". But with the sequel it could be " neat and simple". The most appropriate word for cars in my opinion would be cute, and I would like to have them as they are, with bigger poly and vertex count. Additionally with some spherical texture on the tire and a simple face texture on the driver.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by TuomoH »

First of all, great read once again, thanks for the post, James (and J4ber). :up:

Then, after reading the discussion I understand people's concerns but I'm not that pessimistic. Granted, I haven't really made cars so can't comment so much on that but I think this gives more freedom even though also more challenge - but challenge is good. ;) However, I agree with the others that an official Car Editor would definitely be required. :2c:

And finally, I'm also with Haruna and harder shading camp. ;)
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Buka »

I wonder, how big the GR2 would be with all those new looks? :scratch:

And on topic: Mini car looks nice, but what's the point of it if we have 255 size tracks?
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Haruna
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Haruna »

Buka wrote:And on topic: Mini car looks nice, but what's the point of it if we have 255 size tracks?
We also have sub-100 size tracks, and full-screen tracks, and sub-100 full-screen tracks.
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

I do agree with Haruna on the shaders.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Krisu »

I absolutely support the limit of 100 polies. A limit of 400 is so much greater than 40 we have now, it would make the sequel's cars way too much different from the cars we've used to have. Not saying a 400-poly car wouldn't look fantastic in its own way, but it won't be GR anymore, a very plain fact. Add there shaders and other "pro" things, and you have cars that look not much unlike what we've seen in older-generation racing simulations. Take the good old Gran Turismo 2 for example. The cars were made of about 500 polies. Sure the game is old and graphics have improved vastly, but I couldn't imagine playing GR – even if it's graphically updated – with cars that look similar to GT2's. It would give me bad shivers: "is this really the successor of Generally?"

The other aspect why I'm against a limit higher than 100, is challenge. Even with 400 polies, pretty much anything you want to make could be made – very nicely – so it would be hard to improve and come up with creative ideas. I'm saying this with years of experience in car making. Yes, 40 polies and 30 vertices is indeed a bit too harsh of a limit, probably. But I still like making GR cars – not only because I like cars, but because the challenge the limits set up. And because it's Generally, looks Generally and feels Generally. Heck, even tastes Generally.

Think about our beloved Super Mario: Why haven't the characters' looks noticeably changed over nearly 30 years? In case of the first Super Mario, back from 1985, NES had its limits and that's one of the reasons why Mario was quite literally a bunch of pixels. For Super Mario 3 and again for Super Mario World the character got updated looks, but it remained very recognizable after all. Again for N64, we got 3D graphics and stuff – still Mario looked quite the same. Now we can take a look at Mario from Super Mario Galaxy 2, for example. Can you still say it's Mario? Definitely. With a console like Wii, you could make a pretty much photorealistic looking man, add there a beer gut, red jump suit and mustache. That could make us think "hey, it's Mario right?" – just like the clumsy TV show years ago. But would it still feel the same? The Mario we used to love, now looking like a real human in a cosplay suit? I don't think so. Why didn't Nintendo use the benefits of more powerful technology to make Mario look more "realistic"? Because it wouldn't feel the same anymore.

In a nutshell: I strongly disagree with a poly limit over 100, because it would destroy the GR feel, be a jump on the graphical mayhem bandwagon of today and in short be a silly overkill.
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Haruna
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Haruna »

Krisu wrote:In a nutshell: I strongly disagree with a poly limit over 100, because it would destroy the GR feel, be a jump on the graphical mayhem bandwagon of today and in short be a silly overkill.
This is the first time I've ever actively disagreed with you on something, and I think there's a lot of jumping to conclusions in this thread, from my own viewpoint included, admittedly.

Yes, it is true that Mario's look and "feel" never made revolutions in the artistic side design as the console tech got better, but I can easily make the counter-point that Mario and the graphics engines he was fed into still went through plenty of updates to make him more technically nice to look at. Look at him on say, Mario Kart Wii versus his appearance in Mario Kart 64 or Super Circuit. In the latter two cases, he's a two-dimensional sprite that rotates according to user input (camera angle, whatever hits him, etc.), but in the Wii version, he's a completely three-dimensional figure complete with animations for when he steers his kart, or does pretty damn well in a race, so on. Despite the artistic intentions not really changing, the technical side improved to give Mario a little more life.

Additionally, I think it's very hipster and arrogant to say that GeneRally's successor is jumping on the "next-gen graphics bandwagon". If that were the case, then there would not be a hard-coded polygon limit, the wheels sure as hell would not be spherical, and there'd be a brown CodeMasters Crap Camera Filter (TM) in effect at all times. Also, should the new graphical engine handle things like detaching body panels, I think a lot of my car models would look outwardly the same as the ones I make now - but now I have so much room to put in all sorts of cool details beneath this "old" model when the car gets turned into a smoldering wreck.

I'll be honest: If I wanted GeneRally to stay more or less the same with no new major renovations in gameplay or artistic feel, I'd just go and play the original GeneRally, not beg for a sequel that does everything the same. If GR's successor tries too hard to be its old self and not much else, I'll be really underwhelmed and ashamed to be a part of a game whose development team decided to choke on the exhaust fumes of a bunch of hipsters just for the sake of trying to be "as faithful to the original as possible". I want new because I'm bored.

And your point on challenge is just self-fulfilling masochism. I'm willing to bet a number of would-be car makers aren't making cars because it's too damn hard to make the car they like that really, really resembles the car they want. You can argue "Haruna you should lose your Car Master title then, because you don't know how to do anything in 40 polygons creatively", and maybe you're right.

Krisu, whatever respect I had for you is gone.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Glen »

I do not care about the poly limit, if you want to use only 100, use only 100! I think than the only thing that have to stay is the Sphere tires, that makes for me a generally car.

Same Point Of View, same tires, same car physics! For the rest, do what you want. + online mod :D
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Paw »

Haruna wrote:Krisu, whatever respect I had for you is gone.
But please, don't get too personal and don't start new dramas, this thread has enough of them already. :roll:
XYY wrote:I can imagine myself trying to make an appropriate-looking sphere and spending waaaay too much time on it.
That's where 3D programs come in. In any of them you can create sphere with given number of polygons as it's one of the primitives. Also I understand anyones lack of will to use 3rd party software, though this task shouldn't need much learning.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by bduddy »

Glen wrote:I do not care about the poly limit, if you want to use only 100, use only 100! I think than the only thing that have to stay is the Sphere tires, that makes for me a generally car.
I know I'm not a carmaker, but here's my :2c:... When I was thinking about what should be in the sequel I thought a lot about car poly limits... if you've read anything I've had to say about GR 2, you'd know that I am generally very opposed to any kind of numerical restrictions or limits on things like AIs, race length, track size, whatever. But I think the poly limit, and what it represents, is a little different. Why? Because it represents a standard of quality. What do I mean by that? Well, if 400 polys or whatever is the limit, then at some point it will become the standard. People who make 100-poly cars, or those making cars without 3D modelling tools, or making large numbers of cars in a pack quickly like is often done today, will be... well, I wouldn't say "looked down upon", but those kinds of cars will not be what everyone wants to see. "Old-style cars" will be looked at right now like tracks made by amateurs with only TE; you know, the kinds of tracks that get comments like "Use dithering!" or "Use Paint!" or "Keep practicing!".

You may say, well, this kind of thing already happens with tracks, what makes it so bad for cars? The difference is that, although they may be a step above TE, the external programs people are using to make tracks are still easy enough for most people to use. But stuff like Blender, Cinema4D and 3DS Max is beyond most people, and unless the included car editor is the most intuitive 3D editor ever made it will be impossible to make a decent car without hours and hours of study. Also, as has been said, the carmaking community is significantly smaller already - probably less than 10 people consistently making what the community would call high-quality work - and I'm not sure you can afford to increase the barrier to entry any more.
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Krisu
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Krisu »

@Haruna: I probably went too personal with my post, but so did you. At least I was pretty much honest about my opinion, and it's not bad to disagree with people once in a while.
/end of drama now.

I have never said (or meant, for that matter) I liked the limits we have now when making cars. But I liked the challenge it provided, even if it was playing with impossibility more than sometimes that was, indeed, frustrating at times. Track making has its own limits too, like worlds size, fixed objects and textures. Indeed, those limits aren't relatively as harsh as for making a car.

If I start being more rational now, it's not strictly the poly limit that I don't agree with, it's the feel, once again. What I personally can say about the car pictures posted by Kimmo and Paw, they look good, but the departure from the old cars might be a bit too much "all of a sudden", despite keeping spherical wheels and head. It's not because I want to be "tr00" and such, but I really want to keep, maybe even refresh, is the GR feel, and radical changes might change it for the better, but more likely not, considering a concept like GR that has been very successful up to date.
Also as bduddy said, making things too complicated is the worst thing could be done with the sequel. Track making "complexity" is at okay level now I think, the use of most external programs isn't that hard to comprehend after all. And the track editor itself is superbly intuitive to use, very encouraging for newcomers to try making an own track. Car making is a little different. True, GR cars can't be very complex really due to the limits, but it isn't that easy to make a first decent car, been there done that, I was once a newbie too. Car making shouldn't be made much more complicated than it's now, just as well as track making shouldn't be. I'm sure the developers are trying to make the new car editor even more intuitive and easy to use, but that shouldn't be "countered" by too complex cars themselves.

To water down all this debate from my side, we and me as well should just wait to see pictures of new cars in action to see how they fit the overall feel and looks :2c:

All this is just a very much personal opinion of mine, not any more valuable than someone else's, I just think "slow and steady" improvements/updates will work better for GR and its sequel(s).
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Haruna
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Haruna »

I think your points are logical and valid, but I don't think that many more polygons would make the car making more "complicated", especially if the graphic engine will take care of polygon rendering order, etc.

If there were video and image/slideshow tutorials demonstrating how to use the new car editor, I believe car making would be a lot easier. A step-by-step understanding on how one could use an official car maker/editor would be damn ace if said editor shipped with the game.

But this is all way too early for me to start calling names, and I take back my more inflammatory comments.
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

Krisu's hit the nail on the head, for me. I do want a bigger challenge, but the challenge 400 polies gives is the wrong sort of challenge, and would make GeneRally pointless to work on (I might as well go and work on an older NFS or similar). 100 polies remains feasible for me, whilst giving enough of a challenge to both make and make accurately.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Glen »

bduddy wrote: the kinds of tracks that get comments like "Use dithering!" or "Use Paint!" or "Keep practicing!".
I often get the dithering comment :)
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

Krisu wrote:All this is just a very much personal opinion of mine, not any more valuable than someone else's.
That's what counts! We all would agree with an actually empty phrase like ''we want to keep all from the spirit of the original game'', but what's that spirit? Only posts like yours can give us answer, it's no plain complaining that ''new gr is no longer gr'' (which some above blames people of doing), IMHO it's absolutely fair to tell anytime, when one feels sequel goes beyond what GR is supposed to be. James and co. have no patent on the only one and right truth, because it's not only about facts like 40 polygons limit. They also mostly rely on feelings, impressions and opinions gained by extensive playing the game, both their own and also of other people. It's all about trying to help them to find right balance.

BTW for me good current GR car is following (most mentioned already):
spherical wheels
cute
with no extreme detail/soft shadows or reflections
somewhat abstract
free of any editor-masturbations (adding features into model only for sake of looking cool while looking at it in an editor but visually game-play-wise completely irrelevant in game itself)

I hope the ''GeneRally Car of Tomorrow'' will be like that too. :shrug:
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by DuklaLiberec »

Trigger Happy wrote:
BTW for me good current GR car is following (most mentioned already):
spherical wheels
cute
with no extreme detail/soft shadows or reflections
somewhat abstract
free of any editor-masturbations (adding features into model only for sake of looking cool while looking at it in an editor but visually game-play-wise completely irrelevant in game itself)

I hope the ''GeneRally Car of Tomorrow'' will be like that too. :shrug:
Seconding that. ;) If I am allowed to put my :2c: on that, I would say the future GR may provide the carmakers more latitude. Car making should not radically change within a short period of time, but I would be okay with a rather slow "evolution" of :gr: vehicles.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by LongBow »

Wow, this 400 poly limit is really boiling some blood :rofl:

I think you are all overreacting a little bit...lets wait for the developers to shows us some more to see how things really work and look.
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Lukeno94
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Lukeno94 »

You may think that, but I am categorically not going to work with a 3D modeller, and have no desire whatsoever to make anything approaching 400 polies worth of car.
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

However you're not in position to give any ultimata, Luke. :shhh:

And not to mention, how unwise is to do any categorical statements, if you have almost no further info to put the limit into the context of future events (e.g. features of any hypothetical CE).
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