Messages

Firstly, great tip on low sun angle, wow did that make a difference. That said, my only worry is that such a low sun angle - which brings out some of the smaller terrain variations really well - would make the overall lighting too dark. Is there a simple work-around for that?

You can do a lot of lighting adjustments in the .amb file. Not quite sure if you can make it much lighter, but it's worth a try.
All RGB files in the .amb file are in 0-1 scale. Lets say you want your red to be 240, simply devide 240 by 255 and the result is what you use in your .amb file.

Oh btw. you don't have to compile the .map each time you edit your .amb file. Simply reload the .map in mapview or change the weather. In game simply reload the track.

Thanks. I've been toying with the amb file a bit, pretty cool how much you can change the coloration of tiles (especially unsaturated ones) with that toy. I'll keep playing around, but again, thanks for the tip, was actually able to see my bumps after doing this, so now I can move on to refining them on the heightmap.

Looking for help/a tip, hope this is a good place to do so...

I'm wondering if anyone can share a "best practices" type of tip for ways to get bumps and smaller ruts to be more visible on track. My elementary thinking is to modify my "path" texture mask, basically making the bumps and ruts a bit lighter to distinguish from the rest of the on-track texture shade. Really any general tips for building in roughness (i.e., larger or smaller brush size, more blurred or sharp, spacing, etc.) and making it as visible to the player as possible would be greatly appreciated - whether it's tile/texture/decal related, some masking trick, etc, I'd love to know how you guys do it so well. I'm pretty confident in figuring out the first part, the actual design of the roughness into the heighmap, but the visibility is something I'm really struggling with.

Thanks!

A low sun position will do wonders, so you can play around with the sun position a bit and see if you like it.
What you said about making the bumps and ruts a bit lighter is exactly what I do. Pretty sure Snappe does that for the stock tracks as well.

I think Snappe and I do our layers the same way too, it's a very basic set up, but you can do a lot with it and it's good on performance:
First (bottom) layer = dark dirt
Second layer = light dirt (use mask to make the ontrack darker while leaving bumps a little lighter, this is also the texture I have my 4k/8k normal map overlay on)
Third and on = additional textures like grass

Both first and second layer need to be the same texture, except for the brightness off course, to make it work.

Firstly, great tip on low sun angle, wow did that make a difference. That said, my only worry is that such a low sun angle - which brings out some of the smaller terrain variations really well - would make the overall lighting too dark. Is there a simple work-around for that?

Great reference to have, thank you!

Looking for help/a tip, hope this is a good place to do so...

I'm wondering if anyone can share a "best practices" type of tip for ways to get bumps and smaller ruts to be more visible on track. My elementary thinking is to modify my "path" texture mask, basically making the bumps and ruts a bit lighter to distinguish from the rest of the on-track texture shade. Really any general tips for building in roughness (i.e., larger or smaller brush size, more blurred or sharp, spacing, etc.) and making it as visible to the player as possible would be greatly appreciated - whether it's tile/texture/decal related, some masking trick, etc, I'd love to know how you guys do it so well. I'm pretty confident in figuring out the first part, the actual design of the roughness into the heighmap, but the visibility is something I'm really struggling with.

Thanks!

St. Loui is not showing up for me in game, for some reason...what am I missing here?

Just done a few laps and really great job for a first track!

Really enjoyable sections, I love the double triple triple and the big jumps when you jump back down from the top. Take off's are super smooth and a very whippable.

My only suggestions at this stage would be 2 things.

1. Make some of the landings bigger, some of them are small and it feels perfect, others are small and it feels sketchy lol

2. consider flow, like on the whole the track flows really well! But one spot for example, the step up to the 2nd level, maybe try adding some roughness to the run up to make it difficult to get lots of speed and maybe half the height of the takeoff so you feel like you're properly stepping up - I overshot it by about 50 feet on the 450 lol

Seriously great job though especially for first track, keep at it!

Thanks for taking a couple of minutes to provide feedback. Brief backstory - this was a track I made for MXS a number of years ago that I always thought was fun, and more importantly thought would be a good first step at getting some of the basics down in MXB building before trying to bring over some of my replicas (Charlotte, MXGP of Indo, '16 Lommel) and/or other custom tracks. I did a lot of work on the terrain to try and make it fit MXB physics better; removed much of the "rough" layers, smaller/non-bermy inside ruts, and almost all of the dug-in rut types (haven't figured out how to make those work in a way that "feels" right); and just an absolute ton of time learning the texture & material layers setup, masking, etc. (thanks again for that in your video, was a huuuge help). Altogether I'm pleased with how it's come out, but it's also a bit intimidating since I know there's still so much more to learn to make a fully polished track up to the standard I'd like - I mean, I genuinely have no clue how to do simple objects like bales or banners and the like.

Your point on the landings is well taken. In my fiddling with the terrain, I really struggled to get a few of the jumps to shape up in-game the way I was expecting and mostly just focused on the take-offs, probably should have spent additional time on landings, but it's a learning experience. On your second point - I actually had that step-up jump lower and further back but worried that it would be too difficult, so I justified the change as saying "it's a scrub speed jump," but I agree with you that it could be cooler as more of an elevation-up launch. Oh, and there actually is some very soft/slight roughness in that run-up, I just turned the opacity down quite low since it was making me wheelie in an unrealistic way for some reason...I honestly kind of forgot about redoing that bit toward the end as I had intended to lol should have gone with smaller brush size to make it a bit choppier similar to the run up to that hip/ditch jump, but oh well!

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated, and glad you enjoyed the track!

Really good job man. Track is super fun and I really like the fact that throttle control is essential to put down a good lap.

Thanks for the content, keep up the good work

Thanks Nick! Very happy to hear you like the track!

[Honestly didn't think I'd have multiple tracks on this map when I released the MX layout, but here we are...so I wanted to keep them all in 1 place and not spam this forum with posts. Scroll down to the last of the 4 tracks in this OP for the HYBRID layout, the most recent Blue Quarry track posted on January 9th. Cheers]

Honestly didn't think I'd have multiple tracks on this map when I released the MX layout, but here we are...so I wanted to keep them all in 1 place and not spam this forum with posts.
Scroll down to the last of the 4 tracks in this OP for the HYBRID layout, the most recent Blue Quarry track posted on January 9th.
Cheers!

Blue Quarry MX '19
This track is my first to post in here, mostly because I've yet to learn how to do everything involved (most notably, objects), but contains what I hope is a fairly solid heightmap and textures/masks consistent with what I've read/learned are standard practice in MXB track building. My hope is that this track can be fun for some of you to rip around - and I would love any/all feedback on the ride-ability (or anything at all) since that will help to inform future designs. Big thanks to those of you who have helped answer a few questions along the way, and to tfc for his recent tutorial videos as I've gleaned some info from those, as well (texture/material setup, especially).

Anyway, I understand this is not full-on "complete" with all the pretty objects, etc., so I'm treating this as betaV1 as I've seen others do on here - hence the "'19" at the end of the track name, which will change to '20 (or other) with additional updates - but I certainly think/hope this is something that could be fun for us to have in-game as an extra option when we get the itch to play.

Sincerely hope you enjoy!

DOWNLOAD MX TRACK HERE

Blue Quarry SX '19 (Top)
After a lot of tinkering and brushing up on my sx track building, I'm happy to release "Blue Quarry SX '19 (Top)" for your enjoyment. This is the SX track located on the top level of the map which also houses the previously released Blue Quarry MX. I plan to build another SX layout on this compound-ish map, hence the "TOP" designation with this one. I'm admittedly still a bit rusty in track making, but I'm really finding it fun to get back into mx game track design (and really enjoying MXB in general) and fully plan on learning more so that I can bring some of my mxgp heighmaps into mxb in a more polished manor. That said, I spent a lot of time tweaking the layout, jumps, etc. here, and while I still know there is obviously room for improvement on the basic presentations of both this SX track and the MX layout, I'm pleased with how both have come out and feel as if I'm constantly learning how to do some of this stuff better every time I work on one of my WIP's. Certainly hope you enjoy this one, and feedback is welcome, as always!

DOWNLOAD SX (TOP) HERE

Blue Quarry SX2 (2020 Arlington Replica)
For the final (next?) layout on my Blue Quarry map, I've given replica SX building a try with the 2020 Arlington layout. I focused on spacing as best I could, feel like I had a bit of poor jump/obstacle spacing on BQSX1 in a couple of spots, and with this being a replica, it came with it's own set of unique challenges to scaling vs a track map/graphic. It's always tough to make an IRL layout "work" in a game, and the split-ish sand lane was particularly challenging to get to a point that I was pleased with, but I'm overall pleased with my first go (in a long time) at producing an in-game replica SX track. Hope you enjoy!

DOWNLOAD SX2 (2020 ARLINGTON REPLICA) HERE

Blue Quarry Hybrid

The "Hybrid" track is a combined single lap layout comprised largely of the MX, SX (Top), and SX2 tracks, but with more than a few tweaks and changes. Most of the changes happened in response to feedback and/or things I felt didn't end up riding how I'd have hoped. The obvious "new" bits are related to how the tracks were connected, so some sections were changed up a bit, which you will notice. This should be a long - but hopefully fun - laptime, hope you enjoy!

DOWNLOAD HYBRID TRACK HERE

I think I may be getting a sense for why there are so few track creators in MXB...this is incredibly frustrating!

After my last update, I wanted to work on the heightmap a bit, so I made some tweaks here and there to test out. Saved the heightmap, re-saved the mask_mud since there were some opacity changes in my layers, went through the trackED process of loading/opening/merging/re-saving the centerline, ran map.bat and trh.bat, and guess what - MXB crashes upon trying to load the track! Hooray....back to this...

Really no clue what's going on this time. All I did was tweak the heightmap and that 1 mask, and I was sure to re-merge the centerline since I'd read that not doing so would cause game crashes, but still, no dice. Any ideas as to what I could try out would be appreciated....ugh 

Thank you sir, this was the issue...feel fairly dumb about it tbh lol but I guess that's part of the learning curve. I've been pretty sick for the past number of days so haven't made any real progress of late, but hopefully will pick it back up once I'm caught back up at work.

At first you should run map and trh and then use TrackEd. I am also making my first track and this is something I stuck on too. But as soon as you get the correct procedure, it is not as frustrating.

I think I may be getting a sense for why there are so few track creators in MXB...this is incredibly frustrating!

After my last update, I wanted to work on the heightmap a bit, so I made some tweaks here and there to test out. Saved the heightmap, re-saved the mask_mud since there were some opacity changes in my layers, went through the trackED process of loading/opening/merging/re-saving the centerline, ran map.bat and trh.bat, and guess what - MXB crashes upon trying to load the track! Hooray....back to this...

Really no clue what's going on this time. All I did was tweak the heightmap and that 1 mask, and I was sure to re-merge the centerline since I'd read that not doing so would cause game crashes, but still, no dice. Any ideas as to what I could try out would be appreciated....ugh 

Thanks for the encouragement fellas. My next big learning curve is going to be object placement. I've messed around in Blender before, but that's been years ago by now, so I'll basically be starting from scratch with that - unlike the heighmap and masking work I've done in PS.

I'll also need to figure out where to find necessary objects, but I'm assuming I can do so by just searching around these forums. The big one that I don't fully expect to find is the stadium element, since the track is built within the dirt oval track in Charlotte - but maybe there are some granstand type objects out there that I can use as a stand-in, which is basically what we did with the track in MXS, too.

Finally managed to tackle the trackED portion of this (for now) - centerline, placing pits and grid - and after only 4 or 5 attempts to load the track which resulted in my game crashing, I've gotten it to load! What a small victory lol

Here's an utterly atrocious wip screenshot with bare-bones .ini shading rendered to save time running map.bat, but you'll forgive me if I spend my free time in this project in working on the actual track and not diving into how to get the best looking screenshots (plus, my PC probably wouldn't be able to produce them anyway  ):


DL link in the OP should be updated as of 12/4

OK...deep breaths...lol

Had to backtrack a few steps, but the track will at least open in-game again - same link should work.

Thanks for the reference Doc, will definitely check that out as I go along.

LOL

Perfect...this is why this is so frustrating.

Had the track at least load-able, attempted to do the centerline in tracked, did all that work per the pibs walkthrough, and now can't even load the track (grid is full error or something like that). Better yet, after trying to load the trh, the centerline I created is just gone...lovely.

Off to a great start...

Getting my feet wet in track creation as I've found my interest in MXB renewed for some reason lately. The 2016 MXGP of Charlotte is a track I built (along with "Storken") in MXS, and since it's basically a man-made track (i.e., not a lot of elevation to mess with), I thought it might be a good/more basic one to start with.

Given my lack of experience/knowledge of building within MXB, I thought I'd try to just keep a running, updated BETA download link, along with any updates/roadblocks/other info I run into, here as I try to work my way through figuring out how to do all of this stuff. In the off chance one of the more experienced designers wants to hop in and offer advice, I'm obviously all ears and appreciative, but my intent here isn't to pander to those experienced designers for a step-by-step guide or anything, just to be clear.

In my first couple of weeks of learning, I've run into what I imagine are "easy" issues that I just had no clue what to do with, requiring hours of reading/searching/trial and error to figure out - as is always these case with these types of endeavors. So I guess the plan with this thread will be to update on progress, the status of the BETA download (will strive to keep the link the same as what's in the OP here for simplicity sake), frustrations/things I can't figure out or am working through, etc. In my experience, so much of the fun and enjoyment in designing is the interaction within the community - the give and take of help, advice, encouragement, critical feedback, etc. - so in a nutshell, this is my attempt to do that here for the first time.

As to this initial BETA, I'm not completely set on the terrain by any means, but was pleasantly surprised with how some of my testing in the heightmap worked out without a ton of extra effort. There are a few jump lips/takeoffs that I'm not completely thrilled with, and definitely some ruts/berms that will need looking at as I've tried a number of different styles/techniques for testing how might be best to build those - this being my first attempt at MXB design, I'm kind of flying blind as to which method might be best, so there's a lot of trail and error going on at the moment. It's been a while since I've dove into heightmap design for a MX game, and this has kind of given me the itch to keep going, been fun thus far. Anyway, point being, the initial terrain here isn't final obviously, but I think (hope) it's a good start. Oh, and I've slightly altered the section which is located outside of the "bowl" from the irl layout for the sole reason that there were too many flat, straight sections for a video game lol so I threw some sand rollers in there for fun (though the shading/shadows in that texture are...underwhelming...that's a "need to figure out" item).

So...in sum, long ways to go, pleased with the start, but yea...still tons of work to do to make it a polished product, and not nearly as much time to do so as I used to have! But keeping updates/info/etc in here should be fun - or at least that's the idea 

As promised, here's the download link for the BETA (1.0 is first, will update to "1.1....1.2...etc." with additional updates as needed), feel free to give it a whirl and provide thoughts if you'd like (.rar file, but open track folder):

https://www.mediafire.com/file/hzf9s0ckbj23tl7/mxgpchar.rar/file

Cheers!

Thanks for the video referral, checked that out earlier today. And appreciate the tips Ruben, makes really good sense and will definitely be trying it out sometime in the (hopefully) near future. Cheers!