No matter how busy I get I will always find a rejuvenated interest in this game around the same time I get excited for SX IRL. However, it's clear this game is not what it used to be.. I know the rF scene was a big draw with the replica racing in terms of me downloading the game ages ago, so how can we capture that experience and give this game a jolt of life through advertising? I'm sure JLV has avoided marketing to a certain extent due to copyright issues with bikes and licenses and what not, but as a marketer it pains me to watch something that I've loved slowly lose relevance. This is still the premier mx simulation bar none (replica racing, suspension, 40 man gates) and it needs a shot in the arm in terms of marketing.. we're not going to die yet!
Anybody else who's wired in digital marketing feel the same? Something I've thought about for awhile.. am I alone in thinking that there's an untapped pool of people who don't realize how much they could get sucked into this game/experience?
Nah. I just need to be more productive. Good products market themselves.
Going to have an update soon that ties up some loose ends in the track scripts along with probably the dumbest mod ever. After that I'm going to start doing some major overhauls in the rendering system.
Josh Vanderhoof
Sole Proprietor jlv@mxsimulator.com
If you email, put "MX Simulator" in the subject to make sure it gets through my spam filter.
jlv wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 1:12 am
Nah. I just need to be more productive. Good products market themselves.
Going to have an update soon that ties up some loose ends in the track scripts along with probably the dumbest mod ever. After that I'm going to start doing some major overhauls in the rendering system.
This is awesome to hear! Thanks for constantly striving to make this game even better than it is. MXS is such a huge part of my life, I love this game with all my heart. JLV, thank you so, so much for creating this masterpiece.
jlv wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 1:12 am
Nah. I just need to be more productive. Good products market themselves.
Going to have an update soon that ties up some loose ends in the track scripts along with probably the dumbest mod ever. After that I'm going to start doing some major overhauls in the rendering system.
Does this have anything to do with this? Just curious.
jlv wrote:I think you might be fill rate limited. Does it speed up when you reduce the size of the window?
I did a bit more playing around. No, it is not impacted by window size. I went through and played with pretty much every setting. Reduced model detail, turned off a few things, got rid of all models, and barely an impact to FPS.
Reduced terrain definition, and voila, ~80fps. Switched everything else back on, returned all models, ran at 100% model detail. Ran slightly lower than 80fps.
In terms of triangles, the difference between a setting of 10 for ground detail and 50 ground detail was a jump from 3500 to 26000 triangles, which is eff all in the grand scheme of things, but a change of 30-40 fps. Not sure what else the ground detail impacts? Less vertexs being interpolated per frame? I wouldn't think it impacts any of the physics calculations, should just be purely visual.
Monitored the performance of my computer with the two settings.
a) I don't know why both GPUs are being used. Not sure if this is a contributing factor
b) They both have a higher loading with the lower ground detail, which suggests to me that it's limited at the CPU on higher ground geometry. But the analytics don't really show that as being the case.
Any thoughts?
This is the engine's worst sin. It renders the terrain in fans of 8 triangles so 26000 triangles is 3250 draw calls. The basic algorithm goes like this:
Starting with the entire terrain -
If I draw the whole section as a fan of 8 triangles, will it miss by too much in screen space?
If it's close enough, draw it.
Otherwise, break it into 4 sub-sections and start again with each sub-section.
It's a bit more complex than that in practice since it also has to force subdivision at texture edges and also can't skip a level on adjacent sub-sections, but that's the general idea.
This was pretty good for old hardware because it didn't waste any polygons but it's terrible now. For new hardware I could replace the 8 triangle fan with a 512 triangle grid at essentially no cost. Another problem with the current terrain engine is it has some really complicated code to accommodate texture size limitations that don't exist anymore, so a rewrite should actually simplify it. Probably going to tackle this pretty soon since it's currently the worst performance problem in the engine right now IMO.
You do realize if this game go marketed today. if we got the attention of the masses, this game would get shut down. Peoples lives would be ruined from being sued. There is so much more that needs to be done before was try to market the game and make it big
MOTOZ293 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 3:33 pm
You do realize if this game go marketed today. if we got the attention of the masses, this game would get shut down. Peoples lives would be ruined from being sued. There is so much more that needs to be done before was try to market the game and make it big
That's why I touched on that in my post if you read it.. just trying to start a conversation of how we could market the game without opening up that wormhole!
Snopro704 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 1:03 am I'm sure JLV has avoided marketing to a certain extent due to copyright issues with bikes and licenses and what not, but as a marketer it pains me to watch something that I've loved slowly lose relevance.
VUSTTOS wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 9:42 pm
I agree, seeing Mx Bikes stats and that it gets updates pretty often, there's something to be done if ya want mx sim to remain the main mx game on pc
MXB is fun to muck around with some mates on but as far as racing goes it can't hold a candle to MXS.
I'd like to know how many 40 man gates they've dropped in MXB in online sessions? It has serious lag spikes/freezes when another player joins. It's so serious that you have to pit in and rejoin the track in order to load the player skin instead of the placeholder neutral skin.
jlv wrote:If it weren't for Havoc I'd have been arguing with the 12 year olds by myself.
TeamHavocRacing wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 4:38 pm
I'd like to know how many 40 man gates they've dropped in MXB in online sessions? It has serious lag spikes/freezes when another player joins.
Online experience has been getting better. If you check the official MX Bikes discord channel, you can see Piboso doing daily improvements on the online side among other stuff so it's just a matter of time.
TeamHavocRacing wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 4:38 pmIt's so serious that you have to pit in and rejoin the track in order to load the player skin instead of the placeholder neutral skin.
Well, this is still better than a "request restart" and wait till the other 10 years old players doing transfers with their friends want to click on restart too.
VUSTTOS wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:51 pmWell, this is still better than a "request restart" and wait till the other 10 years old players doing transfers with their friends want to click on restart too.
You haven't played MX Sim in a while I guess. It will automatically restart if those kids haven't passed a gate in a while. It really screws up my transfer sessions.
jlv wrote:If it weren't for Havoc I'd have been arguing with the 12 year olds by myself.
