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"MXB" of Charlotte (2016 MXGP) - WIP

Started by Big Smooth one3, December 03, 2019, 08:36:45 PM

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Big Smooth one3

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  ;D

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!

Big Smooth one3

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... :'(

Docfumi

I didn't lose the race, I ran out of laps.

Big Smooth one3

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.

Big Smooth one3

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  ;D ):


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

Asdrael

This looks good, better than a few tracks that were released anyhow :) and good that you are trying to make custom tracks, we need more people like that!
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FryedroPonics

Quote from: Asdrael on December 04, 2019, 07:37:29 PMThis looks good, better than a few tracks that were released anyhow :) and good that you are trying to make custom tracks, we need more people like that!

shots fired at me for releasing a shitty track xD

iNsane

December 05, 2019, 08:26:03 AM #7 Last Edit: December 05, 2019, 09:13:25 AM by iNsane | WeekendWarriors
Track starts to look really good! Awesome to see people messing around and trying to make content 👍

Quote from: FryedroPonics on December 05, 2019, 07:45:23 AM
Quote from: Asdrael on December 04, 2019, 07:37:29 PMThis looks good, better than a few tracks that were released anyhow :) and good that you are trying to make custom tracks, we need more people like that!

shots fired at me for releasing a shitty track xD

Nah! I really like your Sunset Hills track. You could try to improve the texturing a bit but the heightmap rides pretty solid!


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Big Smooth one3

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.

Big Smooth one3

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  :-\

Yirka63

Quote from: Big Smooth one3 on December 06, 2019, 06:22:56 PMI 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  :-\

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.

Big Smooth one3

Quote from: jirka63 on December 08, 2019, 11:50:40 AM
Quote from: Big Smooth one3 on December 06, 2019, 06:22:56 PMI 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.