GP4 Track Editing - new new thread

if anyone remembers my Brno had a very long - ~30 seconds - loading betwwen 'Drive' and the weather screen.
that was with the default pitlane, which was 3o metres in the air, and not connected to the track, so now i've built the real pitlane and loading time is zero
so, long 'drive' to weather time measn the pitlane is bad.

i'd like to know from other track makers what they do now.
the dat is finished, except for kerbs, and 1 or 2 minor things, but its ready to be made into 3d.
so what do yous do?
its been a while, but i normally convert dat->3ds and assign textures in gp4 and either export it as one object, or export as many objects as there is.
then import in 3de and away i go.

one more - any opinions on which wads are good to work with?

____
Tony

Wads and .gp4 files - Avoid Imola at all costs. Basically it seems that if even one object is removed from the .gp4, it causes crashes all over the place. Why? No idea

Generally, I make sure the .dat is almost completely finished, so that only heights need tweaking, but everything else is ready. Then I'll open up a track .gp4, make one new scene, and delete all others, then: "Add > Track from .dat" (both have to be in same folder to open simultaneously), and "Add > Pitlane from .dat". This actually tells you if you're going to have problems with either one because you'll get an error, and everything will add, but the graphics will be seriously screwed up. Then in a second scene, I'd add the kerbs just to avoid graphical conflicts with the verges / banks in scene 1

last time i tried that 'add track from dat' it made a real mess - i guess it was 'graphics will be seriously screwed up'
but it worked ok this time

the kerbs, in scene2, are a bit flickery

and these 2 problems - 1, other things are visible thru the track, and 2, the white line suffers some clipping.


the heights are usually the first thing i do

____
Tony

Have you named the kerbs "TRACK_Kerbxx"? Basically, you put the kerbs in the order they appear on track with TRACK_class (17.4 does it I believe?). This should fix any kerb problems.

It's bizarre that the line has clipping / you can see stuff through the track. Does it do the same thing when you create it from a .3ds > .gp4 conversion? I myself haven't encountered this problem before, have you given the default objects a class?

As for heights, I quite often work from vids so I end up tweaking for a while once I've started to make them as accurate as possible

i havent named any kerbs, or anyhting at all really.
just keep doing and re-doing the make-from-dat trick.
but Brno will be available tonite, so i'll get 17.4 for the next stage.
the nice lady at automotodrom masaryk sent me some good data for Brno, so i could do the elevations from the very beginning.
for me doing the elevations first is a must - too much fiddling around later :p especially when theres 70 meters in change

____
Tony

Hehe, I tend to stick it if they bugger round with where they put the track for elevations lol

I suppose the important thing is (I haven't used 17.4 yet so I don't know what funky things I can fiddle around with ) that you should really leave the stuff from the .dat alone and just make the run-offs and stuff on the banks. I don't know why, but they do cause some really weird problems from time to time

leave the stuff alone on the dats?
make run offs on the banks?
not following :p

also whats the deal with splitting things? either i'm doing it but not using the fancy name, or i'm not doing it at all.

____
Tony

@Zeppelin or Jimbob:

I really need help with my Istanbul track. I have edited the verges and banks, also by detaching and regrouping and now I have a strange error.

The track loads but when the progress bar is at the end it remains there and I can't get into the cockpit/start the session. When I press escape the menu appears which normally appears when I press esc ingame (I can click on options, leave session or back). When I leave and quit the game there is no error even though I have activated debug mode.
Once I was half ingame but there was a flickering between the loadingscreen and the track with many graphical bugs.
I tried version 16.0, 16.4 and 17.4 of 3DEditor and regenerated bins and col but nothing helped.
Probably there's a bug in the .gp4 but I don't know why there should be one

Perhaps one of you could check this - I would upload it for you.

Cheers

Is it flickering madly, and doing crazy stuff in general with textures? I had this problem, and have since discovered it depends on how you update your wad. Do you use GP4-Master? If you do, don't. Try updating individual files with Wadupdater, or extract the wad with that, and make it up again with Easywad.

I use EasyWad.
I just managed to get ingame but there are many bugs. I'll post a video in 10 min.

Ah I forgot to mention, if you drag and drop into a trackwad, then that causes similar problems, so you should recreate the wad with easywad, rather than copying and pasting files in

I suppose I do so. Anyway, I have been using EasyWad for a long time - and I never had problems.

Here is the video (only 1,2 Mb): [s12.yousendit.com]

Yeah, that is identical to the problem I had. Try extracting the wad with wadupater, update all the textures and files that you've changed/added, then re-zip it with easywad and see if that fixes it

No, I have tried at lest 6 or 7 methods - no one worked.

It's definitly the .gp4. I replaced it by an older on and it worked
I don't know what to look for in the .gp4 to solve this. Maybe it will run fine on another PC - I don't know.

May I upload it?

zeppelin101 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ah I forgot to mention, if you drag and drop into
> a trackwad, then that causes similar problems, so
> you should recreate the wad with easywad, rather
> than copying and pasting files in
>


are you sure? i'd doubt that makes a difference at all.
can you reproduce it?

____
Tony

Another aspect is that I cannot just keep on working with an older .gp4 because this one has so many new things and it cost me two or three days of hard work.
This .gp4 file has to work.

b-tone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> zeppelin101 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Ah I forgot to mention, if you drag and drop
> into
> > a trackwad, then that causes similar
> problems, so
> > you should recreate the wad with easywad,
> rather
> > than copying and pasting files in
> >
>
>
> are you sure? i'd doubt that makes a difference at
> all.
> can you reproduce it?
>

probably, it happened on my oval. All I did was drag and drop into the wad one or two .tex files, and the thing went hay-wire on me, showing the exact same effects as in the video. If I could be bothered, I probably could reproduce it right now, but I don't fancy rebuilding my wads atm :P

@Ruboy: Check textures in the .gp4 aswell. It's possible you have multiple instances of the same texture by accident

What does that mean exactly? I don't understand to 100%

Edit: I mean the issue with the multiple instances of the same texture.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2006 10:06PM by Ruboy.

something similar happened when i first tried 'add track from dat' and i never tried again till just now, and i always drag/drop with easywad, so i guessed it was the addfromdat as its never happend before or since.


____
Tony

Good point actually, because with my oval I had to add from .dat to cure the disappearing banks, so that's a point to remember

@Ruboy: You'll just have to run through the textures list in the .gp4, and make sure that there is just one copy of each texture, not several