Stunt Rally - version 2.7

[duststorm]

Wow, simply stunning. That mountain track is really nice.
Have you switched to Ogre 1.8 now? I see in your changelog you're using the RTShader system, did you add any custom shader effects to it?
The terrain lightmap on the car, is it static like in most games, or does it change depending on your position in the track? If it is static, do you generate that lightmap dynamically or do you have some generic lightmaps, like "snowy landscape", "desert", "forest", .. ?

[Crystal Hammer]

We released 1.4 with Ogre 1.7.3, but if I remember correctly 1.8.0 works too.
We used RTShader just to generate shaders in case of materials having none (just few from HUD), this was needed for DirectX11 support which is being developed by ahmedismaiel. We have now our materials generated in cpp code, using few settings, like shader quality (in GUI). Shaders generation depends on this setting (removes some parts for lower quality), and also shadow parts of code are removed when no shadows. The config files for material generator are .matdef, you can check it (mainly in data/materials), they have some options now.
Terrain lightmap is just terrain shadow, it's once generated at level start. Then when driving with car in a shadowed mountain part, car is shadowed too (grass,trees,water also).

[scrawl]

Have you switched to Ogre 1.8 now? I see in your changelog you're using the RTShader system, did you add any custom shader effects to it?
The terrain lightmap on the car, is it static like in most games, or does it change depending on your position in the track? If it is static, do you generate that lightmap dynamically or do you have some generic lightmaps, like "snowy landscape", "desert", "forest", .. ?

Some comments from my side, to answer your questions and clarify things a bit.

Yes, ogre 1.8 was tested and is working with the game, although it didn't work anymore to have the HUD on a seperate (transparent) viewport like we had it before (to prevent the hud being rendered in compositors)

The RTShaderSystem is right now only used to generate shaders for BaseWhite and BaseWhiteNoLighting (since D3D11 requires every material to have a shader)

The terrain lightmap is generated once per track, it is a 2d image that specifies which parts of the terrain are in shadow and which not. Think of it as a top-down view of the terrain, with black parts being in shadow, and white parts lit.
We've just projected this lightmap onto the car (using it's world position) and it works very well (except for high bridges, obviously - so we added a simple switch that disables terrain lightmap on the car when its distance to the terrain is too big)

Also I wanted to give some details on our new material system. All the shaders and materials are generated dynamically in cpp code now. We've made a file format (.matdef) where you can declare all your materials, and using these files, the game will generate them based on the user's settings (shader quality, texture size, etc). Right now the shaders support pssm shadowing, per pixel lighting, normal mapping, specular mapping, light mapping, environment mapping (cubemaps), integration with paged-geom wind effect, and many more. I've even considered releasing this as a seperate library because it's grown really big and maybe could be useful to someone, but there are still some limitations (only one directional light is supported)

For more details you could have a look at source/ogre/common/MaterialGen

[duststorm]

All the shaders and materials are generated dynamically in cpp code now. We've made a file format (.matdef) where you can declare all your materials, and using these files, the game will generate them based on the user's settings (shader quality, texture size, etc). Right now the shaders support pssm shadowing, per pixel lighting, normal mapping, specular mapping, light mapping, environment mapping (cubemaps), integration with paged-geom wind effect, and many more. I've even considered releasing this as a seperate library because it's grown really big and maybe could be useful to someone, but there are still some limitations (only one directional light is supported)

For more details you could have a look at source/ogre/common/MaterialGen

That's very interesting! I will definitely have a look at it soon.
This is just an idea, but maybe your code could be built around (or into) the new RTShader system for Ogre, since that is exactly what it is. It's a system for dynamically generating shaders by enabling and disabling shader effects (eg. per-pixel lighting, hardware skinning, normal mapping, pssm) together with hardware fallbacks. You can specify the shaders to use in the material file or using code. Your new effects could perhaps be added as RTShader modules, that way they could even end up in Ogre core.

[tdev]

i still think our projects should work more closely together to fix and improve problems we both experience
http://www.rigsofrods.com

[Crystal Hammer]

We've been featured with an interview in FLOSS weekly:
http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/202

[duststorm]

Nice, I've watched it (at least part).
You should definitely think about building a more user-friendly and fancy site for it, add a forum etc. The community thing is a real interesting aspect. Googlecode issues is good for tech people, but won't attract many others.

[Crystal Hammer]

Version 1.5 has now Multiplayer mode, and Championships/tutorials.
Full changelog can be read here: http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/wi ... ionHistory

There is also a video of us playing multiplayer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwQnUqssGmE

and a wiki page about it:
http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/wi ... ultiplayer

@duststorm:
True. We could really use a good game website with forum and all.
I like the most MARS shooter's page http://mars-game.sourceforge.net/ (is an awesome game btw), seems like its completely on sourceforge so would be free.
But we have no experience with making website on sourceforge, we're just programmers . If someone could help us, that would be great.

[almondega]

Amazing project.

Suggestion: Change the velocimeter color, because Red + Green is a hurtful contrast for people with SubRed/SubGreen daltonism

[drwbns]

Very cool to see multiplayer in any Ogre game congrats

[Crystal Hammer]

@almondega
The new 1.6 version has now few gauge types to choose from.

[old_man_auz]

Hey mate.
I just tried your game. Its pretty fun. I loved the game "Stunts" from way back in the day. Your game reminded me of it alot.

A few comments/feedback if it's something that you find helpful:

• I am running Ubuntu 12.04. I ran the game from a directory with a space in it: "stunt rally". The script file failed to run because of the space. I don't know a lot about linux scripts but here are the changes I made to get it to work. I don't know if this is good or bad practice though (this is my complete file):

  Code: Select all

  #!/bin/sh
  cd "$(dirname $0)"
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH={$LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:./lib
  export OGRE_PLUGIN_DIR=./lib
  
  ./bin/stuntrally
  

• I'm also running an AMD HD5830 and I was getting some really square and blocky shadows, especially on the walled section of the track. It almost looked like saw teeth. As I got closer though, the "jaggedness" of the shadows requced to levels where you almost didn't notice it. I'm pretty sure that this could just be the AMD drivers under linux but thought I would rasie it just in case.
• On all the desert maps I tried (the maps with really yellow beach like sand, NOT the reddy dustry desert maps), the terrain was completely black, except for a radius of about 5 metres around my car. So as I drove around the track, the blackness of the terrain would fade into its proper textured state. It was kinda like it was night time and there was a spot light hanging over my car illuminating the terrain as I drove around it. The track wasn't affected by the blackness though, it rendered fine. (This was with no effects enabled by the way). No other tracks that I tried had the same problem. Again, this could be an AMD driver issue because the terrain example in Ogre 1.7.4 is affected by a similar problem

[scrawl]

Thanks for your feedback, the last 2 issues are indeed driver issues and we can't do much about them The startup script will be fixed in the next release.

Edit: I just tried it and its working here with a folder with spaces. What exact error did you get?

[old_man_auz]

Yea, one day I will go back to NVidia I think. From my experience, their cards run much nicer in Linux.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I look foward to future versions.

[old_man_auz]

The error I get when I run the "stuntrally" script is:

Code: Select all

./stuntrally: 18: export: Rally/StuntRally-1.6-linux64/lib: bad variable name

The directory I run the script from is:

Code: Select all

/home/oem/Downloads/Games/Stunt Rally/StuntRally-1.6-linux64

When I saw the "Rally/StuntRally-1.6-linux64/lib" I just assumed that it was having issues with the space in the name.

As a test just then, I removed the space in the directory path and your script ran fine, so it is definately having issues with the space on my Ubuntu machine.

[scrawl]

does this version work?

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

# StuntRally unix launch script

# function to find the folder this script resides in
FindPath()
{    
        # absolute path to this script, e.g. /home/user/bin/foo.sh
        SCRIPT=`readlink -f "$0"`
        # absolute path this script is in, thus /home/user/bin
        SCRIPTPATH=`dirname "$SCRIPT"`
        echo $SCRIPTPATH
}

LIBPATH="`FindPath $0`/lib"
BINPATH="`FindPath $0`/bin"

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBPATH"
export OGRE_PLUGIN_DIR="$LIBPATH"

"$BINPATH/stuntrally" $*

[old_man_auz]

That verson does work!

Question: Why are you using absoulte paths instead of relative paths?

[scrawl]

That's necessary in order for the script to work when it's started from another folder (e.g. from home)

[Crystal Hammer]

Hi.
It's been a while and we have a new release version 1.7.
Now there are dynamic objects on tracks in game. Can be placed and simulated in editor too.

Editor has now quick brush presets, and align terrain to road tool.
The tutorial video got updated (finally after 1.5 year) and has now 10 chapters, 44 minutes total:
http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/wiki/TrackEditor

We have now 99 tracks total, 20 were renewed, and 8 are VDrift tracks on asphalt (for racing cars), rest are rally and stunt tracks.
All cars got fixed parameters, so all are now drivable, but remember each one is a bit different and some fit asphalt, some rally (check car description text).
There are also few new championships.

And the newest cool game feature is Rewind (to take car back in time after crash, or such).
It is demonstrated (with all game features) in the new 1.7 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuBFzo6_UHo
Have fun.

The development in now mostly done by me, so if there are any programmers who would like to join and help improving the game (or editor) post in our IRC, #stuntrally on freenode. Can also be used for multiplayer players seeking, comments/ideas, etc.

[duststorm]

Very nice progress!
I'm happy to see that it's still being developed. This is a brilliant showcase of what can be done with Ogre.

[hangzhou51]

hello,

I downloaded the version 1.7 and i'm under Kubuntu 12.04 .
Stunt rally starts normally until the first race : after clicking on Simple course - New race, the game crashes
and I got the following message :

INFO: Car loading was successful: ES
[MaterialFactory] generating new materials...
An exception has occured: OGRE EXCEPTION(2:InvalidParametersException): Named constants have not been initialised, perhaps a compile error. in GpuProgramParameters::_findNamedConstantDefinition at /home/scrawl/Downloads/ogre_src_v1-8-0/OgreMain/src/OgreGpuProgramParams.cpp (line 1441)
INFO: Exiting
* Shutdown: Gui
* Shutdown: PointerManager
PointerManager successfully shutdown
* Shutdown: InputManager
InputManager successfully shutdown
* Shutdown: SkinManager
SkinManager successfully shutdown
* Shutdown: SubWidgetManager
SubWidgetManager successfully shutdown
* Shutdown: LayerManager

Can someone help me to solve this ?

[Crystal Hammer]

Yes, we know this issue now.
Just to confirm, what GPU do you have ?
Could you post your ogre.log here:
code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/issues/detail?id=171

[Crystal Hammer]

Version 1.8 is up. We are now using shiny material generator: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71117
This should also fix crash on amd and intel cards.

I must say it's been really a pleasure to develop shaders with it. Before we had shaders generated in cpp code.
Now what ever I needed, mostly ended in just editing .mat file with shader, using some #ifdef's there. Didn't need recompiling, nor editing 3 files.
We have now also new look for water and mud, much more lively/contrast.

I also made a Gui page [Tweak] in editor with edits and sliders that change all water/mud material parameters in realtime.
You can check it: in editor, enter Options, Tweak. By default I6-Flooded is loaded, so pick Water_blue material from combo, sliders will appear.
Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/72kyc

[Crystal Hammer]

We have a new release 1.9.
Big changes this time, both in simulation, and in look.
Simulation is now "proper", fixed and more real. Also there are 2 modes: Easy and Normal.
By default it starts in easy, and should be really easy to drive.
All tracks were renewed, gaining new grasses, and few have now completely different look. Also 2 new sceneries Autumn and Moss.
Check out screenshots, made over 100: here.
And finally we have now our own FORUM.
Downloads: here.

[Crystal Hammer]

New version 2.0 is up.
There is a new video for this release with great lanscape views from tracks:
[youtube]O5BY8aq2xPE[/youtube]

This is probably the most stable version ever made.
Many bug and crash fixes were done, and few optimisations, so it should have more Fps and also splitscreen has lower requirements.

More info from links on homepage.