[cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

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AleksiNir
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[cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by AleksiNir »

Hey all!

I was looking at the some of the tracks I made in the good old days, and with Pumpkin Laek, I thought that it is an excellent track, but with relatively little effort it could be made a lot better.
I thought, why not, and decided to do it, cause what better way is there to spend a Sunday? ;)

This track was originally posted in July 2009 (10,5 years ago!?!) and I made it with Darjo.

The changes are:
- Adjusted POV
- Lmap facelift
- Reworked kerbs
- Reworked (removed) much of the walls
- Reworked the pit area and top left and bottom right areas
- Made the wooded areas denser

I think that's it. Not that much work, but very effective, I think! And I had a good time doing it :bsmile:
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Pumpkin Laek.zip
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revisited 2020 version
revisited 2020 version
original 2009 version
original 2009 version
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Kikwik
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Re: [cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by Kikwik »

Hello AleksiNir !

It's a pleasure to see you around again with a new track, after all those years of creations. :hattip:

Speaking of the track, I tested both ; the old one and this new one.

Layout was already fun as it was before (love this downhill, and just after the serpentine curves, it's really fun !), but removing those walls add to the natural vibe of this track, and sand traps + more visible kerbs (grey to black) made it more of an intended professionnal racing circuit (don't know if I will be understand correctly :sweatdrop: ) and make it more pleasant visually.

Thanks for the new pits ! With the old one, I struggled a few times to enter and to leave, but now that you add some width and change walls to road cones, it's easier and add a nice contrast as well with the surroundings. I always struggle to leave though but my driving sucks so don't mind ! :P

Visually I found it better as you zoom in more on the track which is always nice to have a better look at what we do, you put more mud to rural roads around to be more clear, and the bottom left corner is no more empty (not so empty at the beginning but now I can't complain anymore on anything, as little as it may be :D ).

Concerning lmap, I wondered long time ago why you named this track Pumpkin Laek without seeing any pumpkins... Then I saw weird and unnatural colors in the water and I said to myself : There's something hidden in this little lake, and I will find it. Thanks to the Track Editor, I discovered not one, not two, but a ton of "easter eggs" ! It was a pleasant surprise, to say the least... and now I know why it's called Pumpkin Laek, among other things :rofl: !

By the way is one of you is a member of WWF ? I already saw this panda in an another track of yours, Spockerino. Or do you simply love pandas ? :D


So thanks for this revisited track, it was worth the effort and, if it was a pleasure to you to do so, chances are big that we'll also have pleasure in it (it's the case for me). Passion is transmitted from one to the other. :goodvibes:

"Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate." - Jon Bon Jovi
Last edited by Kikwik on Wed Feb 05, 2020 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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AleksiNir
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Re: [cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by AleksiNir »

Thank you for the thourough comment, Kikwik!

The bottom left corner is empty in the older version, because in the earlier versions of GR, POV things worked a bit differently. So when playing in an older version of GR, that area isn't visible, even though the POV settings are the same.

Concerning the WWF logo, I've used it because it's a very nice logo, and it works well and easily in GR, since it is based on two colors and it looks good and remains distinguishable even in low resolution. I am very sympathetic towards their cause :D But I'm not their member, although I am a member of a similar Finnish organization.

Yes, I was amused by the easter eggs as well, when I opened it in TrackEditor... :D
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TuomoH
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Re: [cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by TuomoH »

Nice to see other old dogs in here! :greybeard:

The track was nice before but now it's even nicer. I think the more rural atmosphere makes things much harmonious. I haven't played much in ages so the AI beat me very badly. :doh: :D

You guys are talking about the POV and this really reminds me how difficult the GR POV's sometimes are. Also depends largely on the screen size how much you see. That's why I've moved towards using the default values in recent years.

A brand new track would be a nice surprise. ;)
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AleksiNir
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Re: [cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by AleksiNir »

Nice to hear from The Oldest Dog ;)

Glad to hear that you like it. I have wondered whether making the AI the absolute fastest it can be is actually the best option. It's probably not very fun to play if the player can't compete with the AI. Obviously, the AI skill can be altered, but there's always variance between tracks at how fast the AI is.

Yeah, the POV stuff got kind of messed up in the 1.10 update (I think), where widescreen resolutions were introduced, and also the way the game "interprets" some of the POV values got changed, I think. So now if you open up a track made for an older version, the POV may be mismatched. That is the case especially in tracks where the POV is finely tuned, such as in fullscreen tracks.
TuomoH wrote:A brand new track would be a nice surprise. ;)
:scratch:
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TuomoH
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Re: [cir] Pumpkin Laek Revisited

Post by TuomoH »

AleksiNir wrote:I have wondered whether making the AI the absolute fastest it can be is actually the best option. It's probably not very fun to play if the player can't compete with the AI. Obviously, the AI skill can be altered, but there's always variance between tracks at how fast the AI is.
IMHO there's a range where the AI line should be - it can be a little too fast or it can be somewhat too slow and it's still alright since it goes within variance of the tracks. However, there should be factors that make it possible for both the AI and human to succeed. I've taken the good enough approach ages ago - the AI should be fairly good when driving on its own but I don't spend much time polishing it once I've gotten it to a certain level. And if the track type makes it difficult to get a good AI, I make sure there's plenty of room for the player's mistakes to even it out. :scratch:
AleksiNir wrote:Yeah, the POV stuff got kind of messed up in the 1.10 update (I think), where widescreen resolutions were introduced, and also the way the game "interprets" some of the POV values got changed, I think. So now if you open up a track made for an older version, the POV may be mismatched. That is the case especially in tracks where the POV is finely tuned, such as in fullscreen tracks.
I think you're right. I just ran across an old fullscreen track where the game area occupied maybe 40% of my 16:10 screen. At least I could see behind the scenes. :mrgreen:
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