MX Simulator

This has all new terrain texturing code.

Windows users: http://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mx-2008-05-17.exe
Linux users: http://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mxbin-2008-05-17-28

Replace mx.exe or mxbin with one of the above files. I'd keep a backup of the originals since these aren't well tested.

Here's an update to Locust to use the new system: http://mxsimulator.com/tracks/zzzzlocustupdate.saf
The updated locust is only using 3 textures. I'll do a better job on it and the rest of the tracks soon.

FIRST DL...DJ

Thanks JLV

I forgot to say you should enable mipmap generation in the graphics menu. It's off by default because the driver for my laptop's gpu says it has the feature but it doesn't work correctly. A little searching around convinced me that a lot of other drivers have trouble with it, so it's off by default. But if you have good drivers it will make the textures look smoother in the distance.

Hmmm. The new grass texture looks weird in my opinion. I think that the tracks would look better with the grass tiles, but with the dirt decals. And everything looks too detailed. Like, the dirt decals might need to be scaled larger.

So whats the go with putting these in our own tracks? I opened the saf file, and it says that there needs to be a file called decals.gz. Whats the layout of this file

The dirt decal is actually a bit oversized. Look at the size of the tracks vs. the size of the tires on the bikes. They're both just placeholders though. I'm not completely happy with them. I'll post some of the other textures I've been working on in a bit.

Here's an example for the decals file (the .gz just means it's been gzipped):
[50 50] 0.0 40.000000 1.000000 @tmpgrassbig.png
[100 50] 0.0 20.000000 1.000000 @tmpgrass.png
[150 50] 0.0 20.000000 1.000000 @tmpdirt.png

The fields are:
[x z] angle size aspectratio texture

Oh, I thought the 1 represented the friction. I guess thats for the tilemap then.

The render time has severly increased for things like track editing, and even the tilemaps take a while to render properly even without decals

There's a lot more cached information now. When you edit things the cached textures aren't valid anymore and have to be rendered again. It would be possible to make an untextured mode to make terrain editing go smoother if it turns out to be a big problem.

Is the gameplay running smoothly at least?

Yeah, the framerate is running the same, I guess its up to the graphics card. It takes like a second or two to render the textures after ive changed view

I'll tell you what JLV, you have done an excellent job with this system. I have been putting in other dirt textures (which i must say are very easy to make), and it looks fantastic. I also like how you have made a flow feature for putting in the decals, makes it very simple to put in. Thanks for your hard work JLV!

OK ive messed around with it for a while, now i need to ask anyone who knows, how do i make the tire/ruts as overlays.

I am gonna sound dumb but I can't remember how to put the snapshot in the game. I have the suspension and gearing snapshot running, but I haven't fooled with any of the others and now I've forgot how to put them in. Sorry for sounding like a little kid but help would be greatly appreciated.

just put it into your root directory, rename it mx.exe, delete the old one, and make a shortcut if you want it

hey jvl,
i've just encountered a problem with the new decals;
whenever i run a an external demo of my vegas track, e.g. the one of your fast lap,
the decals do not appear to be appearing on the track and i am simply getting the underlying shading file and basic dirt tile.
Am i doing something wrong? Or is there some sort of issue with the texture system here?

Does it fix it if you fix the case in the decals file? The mixed upper/lowercase might confuse it when it's reloading cached textures.