French connection

[FranknFurter]

Another French car you might have noticed in the background of some pictures is the Citroën CX by Cosmo, his 'Citroen Cx '74'. I have reworked my old textures' set recently so I might post it here again for 'testing'.

It doesn't have that 'opening door' trick that the SM has to keep the mesh load for the game low, so it supposed to run also as a police car on european tracks even without the VEG patch running, the .fce mesh is only 465kB.

It comes without an 'American' texture again, instead of that the Car00.tga is customizable as a racer (police option -> unchecked) while it otherwise comes with a blue 'French Gendarmerie' and two fictional liveries for Germany and UK.

Additionally the French texture can be exchanged by a newer one with modern yellow/white license plates (Frannew.tga), furthermore the (fictional) black and white UK texture also comes with old French license plates if you like the historic b/w livery better (the scheme existed earlier that way in France), it is named Franold.tga in the Car.viv.

I loosely created the performance by a 1978's CX 2400 GTI datasheet, nevertheless its overall performance is far below other NFS class 'B' cars like for example the default BMW Z3.

Here are some screenshots at first:

[FranknFurter]

.. the Car.viv (Serial #22)

[FranknFurter]

.. and the editing files plus a Vidwall

Have fun with it,

Greetings
Frank

[FranknFurter]

I finally got now Cosmo's OK (he is the original author of the CX '74 base for it) for publishing the new CX as an 'official' release so it can now be put into the download area for everyone ... (after adding the usual legal stuff and so on ...)

Question .. do you like this combined Racer/Pursuit car principle or do you think it would be better to have two seperate cars with different serial numbers with one being a customizable Racer and the Pursuit CX - like the standard way cars come along?

Do you think everyone will understand this method of Racer and Pursuit car in one file? I explained in earlier threads how to change that again to have it the 'traditional' way, but I'm not quite sure if everyone knows how to do it (or how to use NFSWizard at all?) .. and regarding the fact that no-one ever reads readme files normally

Thanks ..
Frank

[noise]

Nice work.You reduced lots of polies by replacing the wheels.Now also the name is correct, CX Gti wasn't released yet in 1974.

I believe the racer version should have it's original wheels back.And when pursuit is unchecked in fedata, the car still has that blue light on the roof in the showroom.

Thank you, I like what you're doing.

[FranknFurter]

@noise:
thanks for your feedback, I appreciate that very much. Yes, that's one of the compromises when combining Racer and Pursuit version in one car.viv, even if the police parts are hidden by alpha channel (as a racer) you still see the siren dummies in the car menu

I took over this method from HP2 where Police cars were just normal Racers with additional Police parts and seperate textures and police parts added.

I simply tried to adapt this method into High Stakes with the already mentioned compromises.
You also have to make all police parts 'non-reflective' because even if those are hidden you would still see the reflections in-game.

As a serial number 22 it is ok for just the European tracks, but when it is used as an auxiliary police car like serial #12, #20, #32 or #36 it only makes sense when the car is an 'undercover' cop car with not an explicite police texture.

I'm just conferring with Lukasz as the original owner of the CX model, I will still add or change some small details on it before I prepare an 'official' relase for it. He made some good suggestions still what yet can be done to the base car such as chrome side molders, a windscreen whiper and some other minor details.

I admit I based the Carp.txt on a 1978 CX 2400 GTI performance datasheet for a better in-game performance but I wanted the car to be as realistic as possible. This prototype picture shows what I had in mind when reworking the car. It has those simple painted steel rims with chrome hubcaps and chrome side molders (and still no bumper molders made of rubber) as it shows an early 'series I' CX 2200.

Greetings
Frank

[FranknFurter]

 .. since Lukasz (Cosmo - the original author of the car) gave his OK for uploading the reworked CX 'as it is' I will now prepare an official release of it.

I made some really minor changes to it like the wheels' rims and the windows' normals and decreased the indicators' texture colour saturation value as it can be seen seen on prototype pics .. but I didn't change a thing in general .. the side molders cannot be properly added since they get in conflict with the police textures, and if I try to hide them by alpha channel's 'cutting-out' method the reflections would still be visible ingame .. so please forgive me concerning this issue .. also adding windshield whipers or other stuff would raise the polycount too much .. I did this car (many years ago..) but recently having in mind that not all might use the VEG patch. The recent mesh's changes concerning the wheels already raised the mesh's .fce load from originally 465kB to 472kB, I found out that NFS (without the memory expansion by VEG patch) quits working at roundabout 500kB limit for each car (in Pursuit mode), so I did not want to raise the polycount in such measure by adding too many details still.

Nevertheless, If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to post it here, I will consider it before I prepare the final upload.

Greetings
Frank

P.S. (OT) '.. Ceterum censeo ... ' Donald J. Trump needs to be ceased before something 'weird' is happening ..

[FranknFurter]

In consultation with Cosmo I reworked the CX a bit still .. like the bumpers, some body lines and I added a small chrome emblem on the rear, hope you like the new look.

I will prepare the car and send it to Remko for an official upload asap.
As for a recommendation from Remko I will seperate the Police and the Racer version into two different cars again.

For those who might like the 'combined' cars option better I will provide a short instruction how to make this if you are not so familiar with NFSWizard.

Greetings
Frank

[FranknFurter]

So these are screenshots of the very last updates to the CX .. I created an 'American' Car00.tga as said for the pure 'Pursuit' version of the CX (PCCx), the other ones show the car itself in its latest state of progress, the racer CX (in front) caught in Paris with the 'Franold.tga' (old France National Police) texture cop car exchanged for the default 'Gendarmerie' Fran.tga (in the background) as well as the default Fran.tga 'Gendarmerie' livery with a newer Citroen BX being ticketed on Cliffside Rally, my France 'Night' track.

I will then provide the new files for an upload .. tomorrow

Greetings
Frank

[Remko]

Looking good, I can't see anything wrong with it.
You don't have to send the files to me first though (unless you want my feedback on something) otherwise you can just use the upload script.
Is there also something different on the police man's uniform? Not saying there should be, it's just that I don't really have them memorized.

[FranknFurter]

Ok, thanks Remko .. although I'm not sure of how I can handle those upload pics again

Needs a bit still, I haven't separated the cars yet, and I will still try to implement the original wheels (as for noise's suggestion) -which are somewhat highpoly- into the 'Racer only' car but with the updated tire textures remapped to them, but I can nevertheless upload the plain Pursuit version as soon as I have separated it from the 'combined' version, but that should not make such effort

I can predict though that the game will crash (without the VEG patch installed) at least in Pursuit mode with those original highpoly wheels reimported .. I also believe that those rims came with later versions of the CX (ver. II) in the eighties, but ok ..

Another question still: Does an official upload car need to have ALL different country FEDATA entries implemented? The original car only had an English one (FEDATA.eng), and for a proper usage I had to copy that for the German version .. please excuse all these additional stupid questions btw ..

Greetings
Frank

[FranknFurter]

All right folks,
I think the both CX versions are now ready for an upload, I separated the Pursuit version and the Racer car.

As for noise's request I implemented the original highpoly wheels into the Racer car again, nevertheless I managed to keep the mesh .fce load below 1MB (929kB) by reducing the wheels again although the polyload is still at 5322 polies. Therefore I adjusted the normals so it doesn't look improperly.

I hope it is ok like that ..?

Nevertheless I will make a separate Car.viv (for the Racer CX) with still the 'lowpoly' or simple steel rims since this version runs fine also without the VEG patch installed because of its much lower polyload.

Since now with the 'Racer only' car two light dummies were left over (from the sirens) I made the tail lights look like that (.._lights.jpg), appears to be more realistic, what do you think?

The last pic shows the now separated two different cars, 'Pursuit CX' and 'Racer CX' with the highpoly rims.

Greetings
Frank

[FranknFurter]

I could again decrease the (highpoly) wheels' polyload by 9kB by deleting some polies .. does it still look ok?

[Remko]

I do agree the hi-poly wheels look better than the low-poly ones, those took a little away from the overall quality of the car.

You often mention the overall size in kilobytes, but I wonder, is that really important? As far as I know (and I'm not suggesting I know everything) avoiding game crashes was mostly a matter of polycount. Could be your experiences with this are different from mine, though.
5322 polies is still in the safe zone IMO when it comes to racing full grid, without VEG patch. In pursuit races the limit may be slightly lower, I don't have too much experience with that.
Having extra rear light dummies looks realistic to me, is it me or do they look somewhat orange in color instead of red?

There are no (unwritten) rules about language versions as far as I remember, it's up to the author how 'complete' you want your release to be. Lots of cars are released with only fedata.eng but yeah, that means extra work for German fans who have to modify that for their own use. Over the years, I have encountered maybe a handful of mod cars that only came with German or Spanish Fedata.

[FranknFurter]

Thanks Remko,
I must admit I like the highpoly wheels and especially their rims, too I did those lowpoly ones in those days as said to avoid game crashes .. and yes, the polyload in kB of the .fce (mesh) matters somehow in my experience.

I may be wrong but I experienced that the same mesh (with the same amount of polies) doesn't crash when the .fce mesh is smaller size in kB, I determined (as said in my experience) a certain limit of approximately 500kB for each car in Pursuit mode, that's why I always tried to stay below this certain limit.

The VEG patch's description confirms this in a way since it preserves more memory buffer (which avoids crashes when loading highpoly meshes that consume more memory of course) Pursuit mode is different because beside the cars' meshes also the cops' and the helicopter's meshes have to be loaded (and all that other stuff like medians, flares... and not to forget the sounds from siren.bnk and so on ..)

A mesh's .fce filesize can be decreased by merging seperated normals of a spline's vertex into one, that's what CarCad does when you 'remove unnecessary verts' or use the ZModeler's 'Auto Vertex Uniter' function.
Normally you have three different normals on a single edge vertex pointing in three different directions (like 'vectors' x,y,z), if you merge them there is one one left pointing in one recalculated 'interpolated' direction. This makes the impression of a 'rounded' edge, so it is not appropriate in all cases since it makes parts look less precise concerning especially their shadow reproduction, it looks simply 'smoother'. When normals are pointing in nearly the same direction like for example on a surface you cannot really see a difference in most of the cases after merging them.

As said, the same mesh with the same amount of polies(!) can differ very much in .fce filesize if you reduce (or merge) normals carefully and where it seems appropriate.

Those 'pleated' old steel rims from prototype pictures have very much the same mesh structure like I saw it on the SM, I will also try to rework the Police version to a better look still .. Police cars didn't have such costly Aluminium rims but the cheaper and sturdier steel rims

Do you think in general I should the provide both cars (Pursuit as well as Racer) in two different versions, a highpoly and a lowpoly one? That would mean four versions with a possible additional 'combined' version still means five .. This might conceivably start to become a bit confusing

Yes, the dummies look 'orange', you don't have to recalibrate your monitor
Beside the red 'shining' dummies (and if enough dummies are left) I define those smaller orange or even yellow 'bulb' dummies but I place them a bit deeper.

I often do that on older cars, if you observe carefully you can often see the lights' bulbs glowing through the red plastic taillight coverage which appears sometimes then as an orange shining 'point'. This produces a certain 'transparency' and 'virtual depth', do you like that?

It also looks somewhat 'authentic' if you copy the default white headlight dummies with orange ones but with one value lower than the headlight is, this also makes an 'old car' impression ..

BTW .. just got reply from Paul Spain .. finally!

Greetings
Frank