Number System Revamp

[KTM57]

I personally feel that one way to make this game look amazing is a number system revamp. I thought of this while watching High Point and the genius of it is overwhelming. (I think so, at least)

I suggested placement of the numbers under the norm and spec maps as well as separate number fonts, both of which were shot down, but please consider this because I think it could be very effective.

OK. You guys have seen plenty of skins made with AMA-style plates. The traditional number plate .jms don't really work well for this, and the numbers on the 2010 KTM are annoying when the skin doesn't have AMA-style plates. (AMA-style plates references the way that the sideplate numbers are only 3 inches tall, such as on the 2010 JGR bike that I made graphics for)

Here's an example of a skin with AMA-style plates:


Now, what I thought of is a system similar to making number fonts for the game - you set a red pixel in the top right corner of each number. What if you did something similar, perhaps a box in red, to set where the numbers went instead of a .jm?

Here's an example of it. In the first picture, I have set the number boxes on top of the skin to show where it would line up. The second picture is just the number boxes over a gray background - essentially what the .png for the number boxes would look like. The number would probably need to be stretched to fit the box because the sideplate numbers are squashed a bit vertically, but don't mind that. Also, this could be done with 1 box for single digits and 3 boxes for condensed numbers. I would name it yz250f-2010f-JGR 2010_numberstwodigit or something like that.



If it would be possible to set the numbers simply on the bike UV, it would work very efficiently because the numbers could be under the normal and spec maps and look like they are skinned on, just like real graphics.

You could obviously set the rotation with the boxes if perhaps the left side was pink, the top blue, the right side yellow, and the bottom side red so that the game would know how to place the numbers. (I thought of this after I made the pictures, so that's why the pictures aren't like that)

[attacker5]

This seems genius to me, would make things look so sick, since with my rmz, i am having some trouble because some skins have different placement of numbers, maybe a certain color recognition in the skin that triggers the location of the number placement, idk, will have to be tuned but seems awesome. Will allow for some sick looking bikes and uniqueness.

[KTM57]

Forgot to say that these number box .pngs could be resized to 256x256 to reduce load time. (Ideally)

[DJ99X]

Problems:

1) The game wouldn't be able to read those rectangles as shapes. It needs vectors. You'd be better off having each corner of the box as a different coloured pixel to represent a vertice of the rectangle (would also solve the problem of rotation.

2) How would the game know which number goes in which box?

3) An individual number texture would have to be made for each rider. You would need a higher resolution for the numbers to look any good. That will result in alot of texture usage with alot of the texture being blank. You might as well draw the numbers onto the skin if that's the case. Which could use this: http://www.mxsimulator.com/benchracing3 ... =15&t=5176

Honestly, you'd almost be better off having _side_plates.jm and _front_plate.jm that can be skin dependent (similar to how normal and spec maps load). Only problem is, you still have the issue of not having normal and spec maps for the numbers.

[KTM57]

Yeah, I knew that this would be flawed. I just think that if anything like this could be implemented, bikes would look a ton better.

1) The game wouldn't be able to read those rectangles as shapes. It needs vectors. You'd be better off having each corner of the box as a different coloured pixel to represent a vertice of the rectangle (would also solve the problem of rotation.

Makes sense. I guess the box was just easier to visualize. More of a "this is the kind of thing" than a "do this exactly, JLV".

2) How would the game know which number goes in which box?

Even more different colors for each box, possibly.

3) An individual number texture would have to be made for each rider. You would need a higher resolution for the numbers to look any good. That will result in alot of texture usage with alot of the texture being blank. You might as well draw the numbers onto the skin if that's the case.

What if the numbers could be vector images in some way? Can the game read vector images? Would be a fix if possible.