Turbo Sliders 0.98 Beta Thread

[Mike Nike]

Thanks Ande, for the new Log.txt information

Lineexample:
Race starting: 8 laps in sausatoo with 1 players, non-ghost race

What would be nice (but not totally necessary), is the information about the starting order...in a race with 20 people with Antislider for each with the big kind of circle as track, you know ...12.666 or something like this my laptime was there in a race. In this case, the first car has definately the most chances to win and in later coming statistics that might be an important information (to know how the first lap were so slow for some drivers for example).

Question might be also, if it's necessary to include information about the possible cars to select - actually no, it isn't. I would only use them for higher statistics, but these are not important.

Lines:
<DateTime Information>
Log started | Log ended | Local cup started | Client cup started

All logs from one day are put in one file. Actually no bad idea
It's also very good, that the information Local and Client cup is shown...
Bug: a Log session, which starts with "Log started" sometimes does not close itself. When there is a new one coming, it often says "Log started" before it says "Log ended".
Is this a bug or not?
I can email you an example file, if you want...

Line:
...<car>

Nice to see, you included the car information
And thanks by the way for including the option "random car" as autocarselection

[joevicentini]

Is there any chances of developing more cars to the game before it ships? I think 5 cars is not enough, and creating more cars would certainly add precious value to the product. I don't know if that's me, because i'm used to have the PU cars installed in my machine since my first day in TS , anybody has the same feeling as i have?



P.S.: The fact that you have to adjust manually the server prediction is another thing that bothers me a lot. I've never seen something like that before. Can't it be automatized?

[Flexman]

Is there any chances of developing more cars to the game before it ships? I think 5 cars is not enough

I don't think so. I think 5 car's are enough. If there are too many cars it confuses, and also only a small anmount of cars are used. So it's better not to have so many cars to keep the overview over the competition.

It it is also difficult to make a lot of cars which are competitive with each other, because it is no use if there is a super-car which will be used by 99%.

Same with Slicks'n'Slide. There were lots of cars but in general you only changed between three: Formula1 for most tracks, Sportscar for faster Tracks with less curves, and the Motorbike for Tracks with Snow etc. There other car's like UFO, Tank, etc. were funny but not really usable in a serious race.

[Ande]

P.S.: The fact that you have to adjust manually the server prediction is another thing that bothers me a lot. I've never seen something like that before. Can't it be automatized?

Actually, it has been automated compared to 0.86b. It may be that as you are playing from long distances, you still have to use pageUp/down, but in games with decent pings (less than 150 ms), there should not be any need to use pageUp/down any more.

Or do people have different opinion on this?

[freek]

P.S.: The fact that you have to adjust manually the server prediction is another thing that bothers me a lot. I've never seen something like that before. Can't it be automatized?

Actually, it has been automated compared to 0.86b. It may be that as you are playing from long distances, you still have to use pageUp/down, but in games with decent pings (less than 150 ms), there should not be any need to use pageUp/down any more.

Or do people have different opinion on this?

I didn't have to use pgup and pgdown until now i guess, but the Playtrix-server has been very having very low pings... So under 150, I guess you are right (and the option to do it manually should stay too, it's a good thing if you have pings varying from 50 to 250). Maybe there should be an option though for having a fixed prediction or having an automated one?

[Punatiainen]

joevicentini wrote:

...because i'm used to have the PU cars installed ...

I personally think PU-F3 could be nice add-on. It is different enough compared to existing cars. And not too competitive.

[evktalo]

Hi Ande and everyone,

my comments so far, playing solo.

Graphical update is a success. In my opinion it was horrible when Slicks and Slide got updated graphics for 1.30, but TS really looks a lot better now, very good in fact. (Of course, if TS also ran in 320x200, cleaner and plainer graphics would probably look better). Granted, water looks very bright, but I don't actually mind. It also looks good in the new tracks. I agree about the "skidmarks", water verves when you drive in the water, they're too dark.

Actually, I'd suggest additional graphical tiles for "muddy" water - when you look at the track Mudfun, the water does look too bright for that kind of environment.

Testing the beta tracks, it seems there are no new ice and snow tiles.

The cars - I welcome the new car, Spinner, to compete with Antislider, which I think made any online races, where it was selectable, boring. Now there will be more variation. But frankly, I'd have preferred simply removing Antislider from the cars - we are slipping away from the designing principle to recreate original sliding driving from early S&S.

Music is quite good and does not annoy you as a background music even after repeated listening (kudos especially for "track loading" -ditty in this matter). Title music's guitar sample is goofy, but hey, it reminds me of some SNES game soundtracks, it has retro value! ;)

Predicting camera rocks - it's fun to drive with it and 1.3 zoom selected.


I've only thought of one definite request of improvement: you should be able to move in the menus by pressing the arrow keys down instead of needing to tap them repeatedly.


--Eino

[evktalo]

I now drove through all the new tracks and I agree with Serpents, they are better than the old ones. (Although I do love some of those classics). There's some good variation and many corners feel well considered.

Playing with zoom though, you can see that the tiles are not fit together very exactly, and it shows while zoomed in.

A button for screenshots would also be nice.


--Eino

[AntiSlider]

Are u joking man? Removing antislider from the game.... lol. That would as stupid as drink paint.

[freek]

Ande, please check my newest track, called flyover @ http://members.home.nl/freekjo/turbosliders/ (if you want me to removed screenies or even tracks, please say so, I'm sorry if that's the case and they'll be gone asap).

Anyway, check the point where i built the jump. See what happens, it was quite surprising to me... Maybe that should be changed? I mean, jumping over a fly-over would be more fun and more 'real'. Also, it's strange to see the car has already landed when it comes out of the tunnel... Dunno if it's a bug, but it looks a bit strange to me...

[Guest]

Nice starfield in the chat..

Setting your car in the chat with /car does nothing now, as you get the selection screen. Perhaps you could set your first choice with it, but maybe it's just useless.

Are y/n -answers in the language file? I get something like this: "Haluatko varmasti keskeyttää cupin? Paina y:tä varmistaaksesi."

--Eino

[joevicentini]

I didn't have to use pgup and pgdown until now i guess...

Yeah, when i connect to servers from Brazil i don't have to use pgup-pgdown either, but since the beta server for 0.98 is in Europe, i've realized of this problem and how it can be extremely painful for people that's not connecting from a near place.

I mean, this won't be an important issue in South America and Europe anyway, because there are plenty of servers in Brazil and Europe, but there are some important places, like Pacific Asia, that probably would have to use pgup and pgdown to adjust the prediction, and i can say it firmly, i've tested both versions, and i haven't noticed any improvements. Maybe the improvement is there, but for my distance range is unrecognizable

I know that lag is something some of us have to learn to live with, but sincerely, adjusting the server prediction manually should be something Ande should banish on later versions.

[Ande]

I know that lag is something some of us have to learn to live with, but sincerely, adjusting the server prediction manually should be something Ande should banish on later versions.

Yes, that should indeed be good. It is not so simple matter, though, and it is easy to break things when adding too much automation. And with pings of much over 200 ms, the game starts to get quite unplayable anyway if there are lots of cars to collide with and it is impossible to predict where all the cars are going. But I will try to think of ways doing it better without breaking anything existing.

[[GPOR]Menth]

Hello everybody, I'm new!

I have the 11 sec. keystroke lag in menus, too. This makes the game unplayable. I tried to disable music and to reduce resolution, but nothing happened.
Windowed mode works fine, but it's quite small and if I change window's dimension it becomes too slow. (and I tried in offline races only, with just one player: me)

My computer:
AMD Athlon 800
384 MB RAM
Sound Blaster Audio PCI
nVidia Riva TNT2 (32 MB)

[joevicentini]

I would like to ask Ande if he used a special graphical tool to rotate and put lights in the car sprites.

If there's a tool like this it would be a lot easier to create cars with the graphical quality of the new version.

Probably Photoshop does it, but i'm looking for a simpler tool, possibly developed to do this kind of stuff only.

I really want to make new cars. Because as everybody here knows, 5 cars are just not enough for me hehe

[Guest]

A button for screenshots would also be nice.

If you don't have this button just get a new keyboard. The botten is called "Print" and makes a screenshot of Windows.

[Flexman]

Are u joking man? Removing antislider from the game.... lol. That would as stupid as drink paint.

No that would make the game more like Slicks'n'Slide and more like the Original.

Although if the Spinner is competitiv or better it also would be finde. But the car look should be changed because the spinner looks like one of those 2-wheel lawn-mowers.

[Aeuk]

A button for screenshots would also be nice.

If you don't have this button just get a new keyboard. The botten is called "Print" and makes a screenshot of Windows.

I think the button is more often called "prt scr" though, not "print"

From one subject to another - I've never really understood why some people keep complaining about antisliders as "the cars that ruin the game". I can admit that heavy usage of antislider has rusted my sliding skills a LOT (I can only dream about the ancient Slicks'n'Slide sliding days of mine) but still I don't label antisliders as shit. Why not?

Cause I see antisliders as a sort of ... "miniature touring cars", dont know if that's realistic or not but ... I mean that in a game where there are just antisliders and fair playing (=gentlemen/women truly racing) from start to finish - the competition can be very tough. It just brings some touring cars etc racing series to mind: Tight racing, mistakes not tolerated, some contact might happen here and there yet the fight goes on, possibly coming to finish line very closely.

The way I see it - if the antisliders would really (though I can't see it happening) be taken away from the game, the game would lose one side of its' appeal. If people want plain sliding, they can form sliding servers, etc - right? Or it that's not enough, go back to narrowminded Slicks'n'Slide with plain slidy cars around

I think all the cars are nice, nothing at all to complain. Also the "random fixed car" in this new TS version is very neat - with that you won't get too antislider'minded either cause you never know what car is ahead. Have to know how to drive em all to be able to "survive".

[Ande]

I have the 11 sec. keystroke lag in menus, too. This makes the game unplayable.

The new version will most probably fix this. The problem was probably that some cards could not handle hardware surfaces that were as wide as the font files were.

If you want to test if the fix works, mail me (Antti.Mannisto@iki.fi) and you can get a patched exe.

[Ande]

I would like to ask Ande if he used a special graphical tool to rotate and put lights in the car sprites.

New graphics were not made by me and I don't know about the details. All I know is that there are 3D programs that allow one to first model a car in 3D and then render the car from different angles and that is how I guess it was done .

[Guest]

A button for screenshots would also be nice.

If you don't have this button just get a new keyboard. The botten is called "Print" and makes a screenshot of Windows.

I think the button is more often called "prt scr" though, not "print"

One screenshot at the time is not very flexible anyway. Or am I just being a dummy and missing something?

Well argumented on the Antislider subject, Aeuk.


--Eino

[Hengari]

I noticed some minor graphics "bugs" when testing TS with 1024x768 resolution and 1.2 zoom. Here are the screenshots: http://jumi.lut.fi/~wallin/ts/ts-098_lopjum-scr_1.png and http://jumi.lut.fi/~wallin/ts/ts-098_sandycur-scr_1.png
The graphic bug is more noticeable in lopjum.

[Flexman]

A button for screenshots would also be nice.

If you don't have this button just get a new keyboard. The botten is called "Print" and makes a screenshot of Windows.

I think the button is more often called "prt scr" though, not "print"

Or it is called "Druck" on a German language keyboard.

From one subject to another - I've never really understood why some people keep complaining about antisliders as "the cars that ruin the game". I can admit that heavy usage of antislider has rusted my sliding skills a LOT (I can only dream about the ancient Slicks'n'Slide sliding days of mine) but still I don't label antisliders as shit. Why not?

I think racing was funnier when everyone had a slider. With the Antislider it is like formula 1 - it's not so easy to overtake and if you start from behind you only can hope that others make mistakes.

Also Antislider drivers always block users of other cars.

But I think that shouldn't be a problem - if there are enough players we'd just need a Slider only server and that will be fine.

[Aeuk]

Also Antislider drivers always block users of other cars.

That's quite a generalisation. I never block other ppl when I'm driving with antislider (or any other car for that matter, if I notice I'm notably slower etc -> I let faster ones go past).

But then again, you did notice that I mentioned "gentlemen / women" drivers ... intentional blocking (one example when you make an error, drive offroad -> hurry back to race to be able to block that one car that is racing fast, probably making a lap record -> BANG! nice blocking!) is stupid, as stupid as ramming into others in corners with full speed.

But .. You know ... the ppl who block others with antisliders, tend to block others no matter what car they had.

[Flexman]

Also Antislider drivers always block users of other cars.

But then again, you did notice that I mentioned "gentlemen / women" drivers ... intentional blocking is stupid, as stupid as ramming into others in corners with full speed.

Yes, but I think that is also part of this game. If someone don't want to get blocked or pushed at all than he has to play on a ghost server. Because in many tracks it is not possible to collide at all. So there would be only discussions in the chat if we make some rules against blocking and pushing.

Yesterday I met some guys who said that blocking is okay while pushing isn't. Strange view... either both or none I think.

But .. You know ... the ppl who block others with antisliders, tend to block others no matter what car they had.

Yes but usually Speeders and Sliders are faster on straight parts and there the need more often to change the line so that they can block the other cars.