Adjusting AI driving lines for usermade tracks (Need For Speed High Stakes)

[pete9516]

Not to forget to mention people like Martin Leps (i played with him and Ronny77 nfs4 via RadminVPN and his well made mod cars a few weeks ago)  who find it ridiculous to play and to mod a more than 20 years old game.. They just don't care anymore because they "went on" in life and left beautiful games like the first nfs series behind to just play some new generation console games and other crap. And this is not my opinion.
Cheers

[pete9516]

Does somebody know how i can edit the virtual road points in a way so that the car won't jump randomly into the air anymore? And is it possible to render a single block in T3ED? I want to even the VR points to the track mesh, but you can't see sh*t with the rest of the track mesh. Am i missing something? I've been observing all track editing tutorials i know which exist. :^/ Looking forward for an answer, peace out

[Zalcus20]

Time to return to fixing up some more of nfsfan83's cool tracks.  This time I am fixing his beautiful "Africa" track.

Fixed so far:
-Eliminated all sticky walls.
-Elminated 95% object pop-ins (better visibility).
-Fixed virtual road issues.
-Adjusted AI driving line and AI max speeds for the forward direction.  (SPDFA.BIN) This is much easier to do thanks to the newest edition of T3ED by JimDiabolo (Build 404).


What needs to be done (at least):
-Adjust AI driving line and AI max speeds for the backward direction.  (SPDRA.BIN)
-Close up the mesh holes.
-Maybe add shadows, depending on the results.
-Maybe add atmospheric effects by editing the fog regions in the Tr files. Not sure yet.

Known issues that most likely can not be resolved:
-Traffic does not spawn/appear on the track in Single Race mode.  This could be due to the fact that the track mesh is stretched. Scaling the track down might solve it but not 100% sure (haven't tested yet). Note that the traffic spawn correctly and you will see them in all Hot Pursuit modes only.
-Rearview Mirror will most likely have to remain off due to the messy LODs.

Stay tuned for updates...

[JimDiabolo]

Shrinking the track may be an option, I think the road is wide enough. It has many visibility problems, good to hear you alreay could fix a lot of them. As always nfsfan83 used nice textures.

[pete9516]

-Traffic does not spawn/appear on the track in Single Race mode.  This could be due to the fact that the track mesh is stretched. Scaling the track down might solve it but not 100% sure (haven't tested yet). Note that the traffic spawn correctly and you will see them in all Hot Pursuit modes only.

Ain't this just the virtual road border line being out of position? And the virtual road points?

[Zalcus20]

I had already fixed the virtual road problems by the time I noticed the traffic issue. Besides, the traffic was spawning correctly in all HP modes with the messed up virtual road previously.

So the problem has to be the 'stretched' track mesh (and it is).

Scaling the track by 0.75 factor fixed the problem. Traffic will now be seen in Single Race mode. 

Not to mention the track looks better and there is an improved sense of speed.   

[pete9516]

I had already fixed the virtual road problems by the time I noticed the traffic issue. Besides, the traffic was spawning correctly in all HP modes with the messed up virtual road previously.

So the problem has to be the 'stretched' track mesh (and it is).

Scaling the track by 0.75 factor fixed the problem. Traffic will now be seen in Single Race mode. 

Not to mention the track looks better and there is an improved sense of speed.   

Once in your tutorial you said that broken traffic would be caused by corrupt virtual road width data. So is this outdated now?

[Zalcus20]

If the ai lanes and center line were to be outside of the VR boundary,
this will bug the AI. For example:

1. AI cops will not be able to deploy spikestrips and roadblocks on
that section of the track.

2. If you crash or reset your car on this section of the track you
will respawn outside the drivable track and get stuck.

3. The bots will behave unpredictably. They might slam into the side
of the road (walls aka non-passable area), drive in that annoying
'congo line' style, crash into each other, and if you are racing with
traffic, it is guaranteed that they will crash right into them...
Every. Single. Time.

Not sure where in here you saw that statement where the traffic will not spawn on the track. Situation #2 only refers to the human player when performing a manual reset, which is different. 

IIRC, De-M-oN stated that nfs4 traffic works as a 'wave system' which is calculated based on the size of the track and they do not use 'manual reset' unless they are being blocked by something for a longer time.

Traffic seem to be the least affected by the virtual road data. Depending on how bad the virtual road is messed up, they don't pull over when a cop turns on their siren; they 'smash or ride' along the edge of the walls, or they do 360's (rare).

I do admit that now we know how float numbers work (thanks to JimDiabolo and Pomfrit), the tutorial is a bit dated. It's much easier to adjust the virtual road/driving lines now that we can manually drag them around like objects in T3ed. Nevertheless, I still think it's a good way to introduce someone into the basics. 

[Zalcus20]

I had a little fun playing around with T3ed and made the closed tunnel in Aquatica open. That tunnel has been under repair for way too long, lol.  Also programmed the AI racers and traffic to drive through the tunnel as well instead of the outside of it.

Additionally, AI racers have been programmed to choose which tunnel to drive through at the 'split tunnel' (before the neptune tunnel) and they can also choose to drive on the outside/inside of the tunnel between the "S tunnel" and the "Atlantica Tunnel" in backward direction. It's pretty fun to watch.

The attached files work with the default EA Aquatica track. Don't forget to make a backup first, and have fun!

[noise]

 nearly 25 years the tunnel was closed?

I will give it a try soon. Sounds like fun.

So you can force AI & traffic in other directions....nice.

[Zalcus20]

So you can force AI & traffic in other directions....nice.

Yes for AI racers. However, traffic remains unaffected  . But don't expect anything like NFS Porsche Unleashed though, lol. The road is pretty much one piece with impassable polygons in the center which gives the illusion of a split road (as you can see with Aquatica). Nevertheless, it's still fun to see which route the AI racers will choose. I share it just for fun. 

EDIT: I tried replicating this with the divided highway on 'Neighborhood Drive' but it doesn't work as intended  . Oh well. 

[JimDiabolo]

Nice what you did with Aquatica .

EDIT: I tried replicating this with the divided highway on 'Neighborhood Drive' but it doesn't work as intended  . Oh well. 

Maybe there is required information in den rest of the HSEXTRA data.
I modified the way T3ED stores it, for the next version.
It was only in long[7], now I use this structure.
struct HS_EXTRA {
    float WidthLeftLane,WidthRightLane;
   long unknown1;
   long nLeftLanePolys,nRightLanePolys;
   long unknown2[2];
} HS_EXTRA;
I haven't looked at the unknown values at all. But when you paste a vroad points data, it will be included.

[Zalcus20]

Maybe this HSEXTRA/unknown data contains more info about the traffic. It's just my guess, though. 

Traffic seem to ignore changes to the virtual road. It might have been a fluke that they obey the divided highway in "Neighborhood Drive".

Hopefully the traffic data is not hardcoded like the speed limit on tracks.

[pete9516]

Not sure where in here you saw that statement where the traffic will not spawn on the track. Situation #2 only refers to the human player when performing a manual reset, which is different.

I'm sorry, it seems i remembered it wrongly
I think though that this is the reason why the traffic will be present very lately on buggy/glitchy/stretched tracks because if they spawn, they would spawn offtrack

[PomFrit]

Maybe this HSEXTRA/unknown data contains more info about the traffic. It's just my guess, though. 

Traffic seem to ignore changes to the virtual road. It might have been a fluke that they obey the divided highway in "Neighborhood Drive".

Hopefully the traffic data is not hardcoded like the speed limit on tracks.

Or it can be amount of AI lanes. There are section of tracks where is just 1 light green polygon wich typicaly is 2 AI lanes, but some wide sections have 3 or 4 AI lanes still with 1 light green polygon.