Tonight I made a .fli reader. Fli files are animation files (stored in Data\Anim). Looking through them, I found some funny images that were obviously used during development before being replaced with the final versions.

Enjoy!

Oh nice, 'hidden stuff'! So are these images or animations? These look rather lame though, hehe, except the tracks images. Also good to hear you are getting further with the physics system, did the one you used in the video prove to be not suitable? Because I was under the impression you allready had a physics system to let the cars behave naturally... anyway, it all sounds wonderfull so far. Please do continue!

Yup "hidden" images... I've seen them before from browsing around inside the files with carmagedit...
it will be interesting to see what new things an be put in to this when its finished. (hopefully a better add on system for tacks and cars)

Any way this is quite interesting to watch as it develops cant wait for the beta :)

@Harm - no, the physics system that I used for the demo video just wasn't up to the job. Too slow, and too hard to get feeling right.

They are .fli animations, but those ones are all single frame animations (so images really)


@Doritos - yes, being able to put new things in is a big goal. To be able to easily override textures (e.g. otis.pix) by creating an Otis folder and sticking high-res artwork in there would be awesome :)

And adding new cars and tracks I agree should be easy too. Maybe new folders called Mods\Tracks, Mods\Peds, Mods\Powerups, Mods\Cars, where you just stick new items, without having to edit any other files.

I made the .fli viewer because some track Funks use fli files as animation (like the Sci animation in the football arena)

I really cant wait for this, Jeff. You're doing a great job.

Jeff, any chance you could hook me up with the physX sample when you're happy with the feel? I found something called PhysX.NET but haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

My attempts to code my own physics library sucked balls. I got gravity and newtons 3rd law working but when I tried to apply other forces the whole thing went mad. :|

I sort of went off on a tangent to Carma 2 XNA and I'm porting maps from other games now. Such is the life of someone with an attention span of a 3 year old ;)

-Errol

Hi,

Yep, physX.Net is what I plan to use. Its also what the demo I was talking about uses. Its here: [url]http://www.spieleplanet.eu/hchrome.php[/url]

Its not perfect (physics is really hard, right!?) but its one of the best physx vehicle demos ive seen, and definitely the best using physx.net.

Figuring the crush data out was really tricky. I havent got it all, but i think I know enough to have a go at implementing it in code. If you want more detailed info on it let me know.

Hey, ive been itching to get back to it, but been too busy on other projects. Im still working on the physx integration for the vehicle physics. I'll record another video later this week :)


Im using Maim street as my test track because I know it pretty well :) But what do you use to make a C1 track? Plaything2 just dies horribly on my pc.

Here I am doing the exact same thing that Jeff is doing. Oh well...

Interested to see some updates as I am fiddling around with XNA myself.

I was traversing the path of conversion from the infamous .dat/.act/.mat file to a more standard say .obj file. Interested to see if any of you know of a means of doing this?

Hope all is well.

Cool :) XNA is pretty good for playing around with this kind of stuff. How far along are you? I know I said I'd post a demo soon, but I haven't had any time to work on it, except for the last couple of days!

Getting back into it now

Great to hear from you again, was kinda worried it was over hehe

Yep, ive been off the project for ages, busy with work and [url=http://www.getsharepod.com]SharePod[/url].

Ive worked on it the last couple of nights, and now im *fairly* happy with the vehicle physics. Fairly meaning it still needs tweaking but works well enough to be able to drive around the track in a fun way.

Last night I started hooking up the car models to the physics model (previously ive been using a box with wheels), and using the real wheel positions and sizes. So for example Dumpy does a bit of a wheelie when starting to accelerate, and Firestorm is really hard to drive :)

Im on holiday for the next week, so probably wont be able to keep going on it till next week.

Does anyone know where the powerups are stored for each map? They dont seem to be in the race .txt file

lol - I wouldnt have guessed that :) I would have probably got to implementing pedestrians and torn my hair out for a while wondering what these unknown pedestrians were!

Edit: So is it possible to have a powerup which has a normal ped-path so that it runs away? :P That would be sweet

Edit2: Actually when I really think about it, powerups being in the peds file [i]is[/i] kind of familiar from old C1 editing days :)

Too bad you can't do that in C2.

Jeff, have you ever thought of making this project opensource or trying to port it to Linux? I can tell from experience that such a step can really revive peoples interest in games and software that is being treated this way. Making a working Linux port can attract a lot of player and coders that COULD eventually lead to the new Carmageddon game that i guess the entire community desires VERY much.

Couple of new screenshots finally. These show the car models sitting on the PhysX chassis & wheels.

The white box around the car is the bounding box. In the first one its not centered correctly, dont know why right now :)

[img]http://www.1amstudios.com/games/carmageddon/images/carma-physx1.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.1amstudios.com/games/carmageddon/images/carma-physx2.jpg[/img]

Killer, yes I would like to opensource it, but it needs a lot more work before its at a point where more than 1 person could work usefully on it. Linux support would be cool for the future :)

hey,

good spotting, those yellow boxes were for debugging the center of mass calculation :)

Yep, im going back to have another look at those bboxes. I am reading them from the car.txt Mechanics Section and think I translate them with the actor offset but will check.

For tonight: Hook up proper wheel models, implement a handbrake, simple car shadow if I get time.

Got the wheel models hooked up, the boundingbox issue sorted (I wasn't centering it correctly) and reading a few more settings from the car.txt file.

[img]http://www.1amstudios.com/games/carmageddon/images/carma-physx3.jpg[/img]

Hey, nice work there Jeff. I am really interested in the actual physics behaviour of the cars. You were talking about the crush data in your earlier posts, does this mean that the cars already deform on impact in this new engine? Or is this still something that needs to be implemented.

I honestly cannot wait to test this. The new phisics might give carmageddon a whole new feel to it, and the speed and visibillity improvements might be cool te play around with :p

What to think about higher resolution textures, engine better capable of having higher 3D models...:uho::zomig:

Hey,

I worked how the crush data is basically represented in the car.txt. At the time I had a quick go at implementing it, but didn't get far enough down the track for a worthwhile screenshot (it just looked like it had some missing panels!). Actually implementing it for real involves lots of work around detecting the type/postion/force/direction/etc. of a collision with a wall/car before the fun of moving the verticies around according to the car.txt. So short answer is no, not currently implemented :)

@ttr - high-res textures, definitely :) I really want to make it easy to drop new textures into folders and have the engine use them instead of the default pixmap files. I think I've given this example before somewhere, but take otis.pix. To re-texture it, create a folder called otis in the pixelmap folder and stick whatever size textures you want into it.

Also addon cars could just be placed into Addons\Cars folder and get picked up automatically.

In terms of model complexity, there will be no limit except what your graphics card can handle.

What about detachables and other stuff like that? Are you planing to implement those later on?

Non-cars, haven't yet. definitely on the list. Im looking forward to that :)

Tosh, thanks for the detail. Do you have a list of what else the actor/material names signify?

I read in the "track making tutorial" for C2 somewhere that the ampersand means something, or if the name starts with a number that signifies the material modifier (bumpy etc)?

How about links for track making/car making tutorials? They can be really useful.

I would like to support all the splatpack stuff, and yes, when overriding textures with PNG files, their transparency could be used.

Well by detachables i meant detachables like in C2. I do like the original carmageddon as it wasn't as rushed as c2 was and thus it was more complete than c2, but the thing I miss when playing C2 is cars actually dropping parts and having real 3d interiors. I thought that later on, after original Carmageddon functionality is done, functionality from c2 could be introduced(such as 3d peds and detachables)

Got car shadows going :) Need to work on the blurry textures in the middle-distance next :)

[img]http://www.1amstudios.com/games/carmageddon/images/carma-physx4.jpg[/img]

Is it possible to modifly the shadows so they match the car?

how do you mean? like include the shadow cast by the spike?

I think he means instead of just square shadows, make it so they conform to the shape of the vehicle. If that makes sense..

realistic shadows he means