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JS7 Compound by TFC and Asdrael

Started by 𝖙𝖋𝖈, September 08, 2016, 12:51:09 PM

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𝖙𝖋𝖈

September 08, 2016, 12:51:09 PM Last Edit: September 20, 2016, 12:38:30 PM by TheFatController
Here is the James Stewart Compound for MX Bikes!



I sent Asdrael a PM about starting this project on July 7th, so being as this is September 8th this project is almost 2 months in the making to the day.

Complete with a National Loop, SX South (Clay) and SX North (Sand). Additionally, a Free Practice version is included, allowing you to practice on whatever track you fancy.
We hope you will enjoy the track as much as we do – and as much as we enjoyed working on this project for the last two months together.

DOWNLOAD HERE
(MXBC Link possibly coming soon)

A lot of time and effort has been spent to make it as rideable, enjoyable and realistic as possible, while keeping it fairly low on computer requirement (heightmap and masks are 2049). All layouts come with their set of marshals and cameras. If you run with deformation, it will add a bit of challenge but is largely manageable. Plus, it looks pretty cool due to the use of different texture layers.

Free Practice Layout
The base track. It's built using a combination of the National, SX South and SX North centerlines. Practicing and falling should allow you to reset properly as long as you were somewhere close to the actual tracks. A few weird resets are still possible but should be extremely rare. Couple of laps of National, bit of try-harding on the SX North... up to you!

National layout
As it says, the national loop. Intended for lap times and races. 40 bikes pit, 2x20 start gate


Two different SX tracks have been included in the compound. Please treat them as practice tracks to enjoy them even more. Fast lines do exist, but each track has a ton of different options to practice different skills every lap. Try a full lap using only the inside lines for example! No tough blocks on both tracks.

SX South (Clay - Easy) ~ 50s laptime.
This is the easier of the two and should be considered as a stepping stone to SX. It is very forgiving, flows well, and does not require any special technique to complete fully. Based on the 2015 layout. 20 bikes pit, 2x10 start gate.

SX North (Sand - Hard) ~ 1min laptime.
This one is the opposite. It is brutal and unforgiving, and should be attempted only when running lap cleanly on SX South can be considered easy if you want to avoid frustration. Throttle control, seat bouncing, break sliding, you'll need it all to run fast laps. Based on the 2016 layout. 20 bikes pit, 2x10 start gate.

The compound

The scale is as close to 100% as was sensible. The dimensions are scaled up ever so slightly but were not talking much, and all in the interest of making it both a realistic replica and a fun track to ride.

Personally, this is the first track where I've made the objects in Blender and have managed to get trees with alpha working 99% - There are a couple of errors but they are barely noticeable. All objects are 100% original, made and textured by myself and probably took about as long as the national track heightmap!

Asdrael and myself have slaved over all aspects of this track, and it's a real labor of love. I couldn't have brought the national track to it's standard without his input and I'd like to think I helped out on the supercross tracks, although he is miles ahead of me in that area at least I could ride them well enough to properly test them! Textures were a shared job on the whole as they bounced back and forth changing a little bit each time and all credit has to go to Asdrael for the race data, cams, layouts, deformation, marshals and track imagery.. He is far more organised than me  ;D

The Skydomes are borrowed from GP Bikes. I tried to reach out on the GPB forum to find out who made them but nobody came forward. Since they're used on quite a few GPB tracks I assumed they are just available..

The screenshots you see below have no 'background.edf' in the folder. Personally I like to run this track without it, as the trees are already intended to provide enough background. Running the track without it allows you to take better screenshots from above the horizon point of view.

I don't know about Asdrael, but this is going to be my last contribution to Beta 4.

So from both of us, we hope you guys enjoy it! Looking forward to riding it online with you all.

https://www.youtube.com/v/Sb1wyobucBY












Asdrael

September 08, 2016, 12:58:48 PM #1 Last Edit: September 08, 2016, 01:01:35 PM by Asdrael
Aaanndd... it's out  ;D

I'm really glad TFC and I came together for this on his own initiative. It was a great experience teaming up with this cool dude. As he said, and even if he came up with the National and me with the SXs initial drafts, we had enough back and forth that we can consider this whole compound a real team effort. Except the Blender effort, this is all his. /hatsoff.

So all in all, happy building it, and even more pleased with how it turned out - I hope you guys will enjoy it as much as we do. Just don't fall in the trap of spending more time trying to make nice screen shots insteaf of riding it ;) Hope to see you online!

(hoh and don't pussy out, enable deformation at least in offline play. Even in SX it's very doable!).

- PS: if you want the game to get more traction in the MX gaming community, it's up to us now to try to make cool youtube videos out of all the material we now have. hinthint.
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teeds

Looks the biz guys, thanks very much for your excellent work.

:)
"Damn dirt bikers!" - Bubba

nico_ktm19

Omg, this is cool to see the stewart's track in MXB thanks !

Borke

Ohhh yeeeees this is so fun, thanks guys .

philiaN


Asdrael

September 08, 2016, 09:01:09 PM #6 Last Edit: September 08, 2016, 09:04:42 PM by Asdrael
Well I hope you guys will enjoy it after putting some laps in.

@ the server host - I think it would be better to put up the Free Practice layout instead of the National layout so people have proper resets when they try to do the SX tracks. Free Practice layout start line and split lines are the same as National, only the centerlines makes a detour through the SX. No checkpoints there either, so runing the national loop on the free practice layout will give your proper lap times. Thanks for hosting it though :)
Donate to me -> feed my coffee addiction -> get more mods!
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𝖙𝖋𝖈

Phil, the sx tracks are a work of art too.. Practice on south, 250, mid soft, 52 gearing.

Thanks for hosting teeds :)

GDUBMX



YES!!!! thanks boys!! this for sure my re entry back into the game :D
<br />GDUBMX YouTube<br />

Braap570

Same Here, was awesome to Put some laps on it today. :)

Mace-x

Wow!
I love this game so much, this track is fantastic!  8)

2 questions:

-Why didnt you guys made some more detailed track textures (like paleta or glen helen)?

-This is the lastest layout?

sorry if i bothered with those questions, track is freaking awesome guys!
would be nice to see the previous layout (mx vs atv one) to make some comparison  ;D

𝖙𝖋𝖈

September 09, 2016, 08:41:05 AM #11 Last Edit: September 09, 2016, 08:45:23 AM by TheFatController
Good questions Mace..

1. We didn't want to over do it here, or under-do it. The compound is complex as far as surfaces go, with at least three different types of sand / soil visible, all with very unique details. If I was to texture it as I have previous tracks firstly the masks would have taken a huge amount of time, they would have had to be 4k, and we would have needed to use more layers to get the deformation to work. I'm also not sure I could have really made them work or done the track justice by drawing on ruts over actual heightmap ruts such as in the sand sections.

We wanted deformation working here as Asdrael does it well with his tracks and loads of people request it from me every time I've made a track in the past.

We we're also not sure how this track would turn out performance wise. Originally the heightmap was 4k to accomodate the sx tracks, but we were able to downsize it to 2k once complete without losing too much detail. I wasn't happy with The textures on Glen Helen compared to Paleta as they were downsized to 2k. The overall idea is that this track needed to be optimised for online so there you go :)

2. This layout is the latest as far as Google maps and YouTube goes. Its very hard to find current footage as even videos uploaded recently are of older layouts, only one or two vids show the latest and although this might have changed now it's the best we could hope to do.

See https://youtu.be/CZRj93wxInI - Freestone ride day.

I'm also fairly sure that even the layout from the latest MVA Supercross is ancient, I don't think it's changed since MVA Alive and there have been several iterations of the JS compound since then.

Asdrael

As TFC said, the goal was to have it playable online for everyone to try to push up activity. The 4K initial verison we had was very laggy on some computers so we decided to drop to 2K and go with simpler textures, trying to giv eit a "just pampered" look.

As for the layout, regarding the SX, I messed up :p We decided to go with the Google Maps layout (2016 apparently). I open Google Earth, do the SXSouth, and then realize it's the 2015 version on Google Earth but the 2016 on Google Maps. Woops. Decided to go with it as we both liked the track and it was easy and forgiving enough, as the goal has been from the start to have an easy and a hard SX. Then decided to go with the 2016 SX North as it has a start lane and doesn't look as boring as the 2015 one.
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EdouardB

September 09, 2016, 10:11:29 AM #13 Last Edit: September 09, 2016, 10:14:24 AM by EdouardB
Hey guys (I'm Asdrael's brother).

To Mace: regarding the textures of the track, I tested earlier versions with more detailed textures. To be honest it was making my framerate go down (more than any other track ever) so I asked Asdrael if it was possible to get better framerate and they did a great job with that. I think this concern was legitimate because my PC is more or less a below average gaming PC (it was very high-end... 6 years ago) and we were sure other people were also going to run into problems.  The textures don't look any worse now and if anything, the track looks actually much better because since that early version TFC has added trees and everything.

To TFC: I never got to thank you "in person" so really, congratulations on this track, awesome job, I had fun testing it from the start and it kept getting better and better :)

StoneRider

epic track guys... a big big thanks to both of you. but for me, it's way too smooth and not challenging enough. the sx tracks are super great, but the mx is way too easy i think. it need to be more rough !
still a really fun track... we needed it :) tanks you guys