List of Quality Tracks

Discussion in 'Locations' started by Kknorpp001, Jun 7, 2013.

  1. Wheelzpin

    Wheelzpin Registered

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    This is a really good idea, Kknorpp001. I agree completely that establishing criteria to measure tracks against will help almost everyone, both players and modders. For players, it will greatly help the "download and discard" issue that most of us have dealt with when trying out tracks. For new mod-makers especially, having some sort of standard to shoot for will help ensure their efforts are met with acceptance from the racing community.

    I suggest that you not exclude any track from the list, however. I think it should not strive to set off good from bad, but rather objectively measure each track on it's own merits and let people choose whether they want to try it or not. Different people have different needs. Those who race only online won't care if the track has good AI support, for example. And certainly, as we've seen in many other threads here,
    there is a dedicated group of racers who care only about physics. To them the graphic quality (reflections, HDR support, poly count, etc.) are completely unimportant.

    Some of your criteria were a bit confusing, as well.

    This is too open to interpretation. The AI is always going to have room for improvement in some small way. Perhaps the criteria should be more about there being no obvious ai problems that showed up during review.

    Same as above.

    I don't understand this one or how it affects the performance of a track.

    I'd also like to see the number of pit boxes available for a track and any issues with AI around pitting.


     
  2. ethone

    ethone Registered

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    That might be because there is no way to distinguish between an "elitist benchmark thingie or something" and an approach "meant to elevate the overall standards". In the end, intention is irrelevant if the damage is already done. You do have to consider unintended consequences.
    That obviously does not mean there is nothing people can do to help our community to produce better mods. I have mentioned a way to produce reviews that avoid almost all of the unintended consequences. We do not have a central place to put photos from when one of us goes to a track (I have over 8GB of photos from Spa gathering dust on my harddisk!). We obviously have an issue to get modders the info they need, for simple things or for more complex ones. I'll keep mentioning these things until we have them! :)

    That is quite demeaning and short-sighted. I don't know about you in particular, but I know people who are or would be deterred by such lists or other category-/elitism-enforcement.
    There is nothing that makes me mod but my own motivation. I'm not forced to mod by any means, it's neither a source of income (and I don't want it to be) nor is it my only source of joy or entertainment. If I am disheartened or pissed off due to some petty shenanigans, chances are that I'm not going to spend my free time modding for a few days. If I don't feel comfortable in the community I am not going to be part of it anymore, and with the complexity of today's track creation processes that's very close to stop modding.

    I spoke a lot about myself here, and I'm putting myself out there as someone who has produced reasonably well done tracks for about 14 years. Yes, I feel disheartened if you put down my work. I'm human and I've spent endless hours on making a track. I have spent days when I intended to mod doing other things because I didn't feel like modding anymore for some dude on a forum thought that being negative about anyone's work is going to make them spend more of their free time.
    I feel like I have made good progress to ignore vicious/ignorant/impolite people more than I used to, but I also feel that just having to do so is a step in the wrong direction and towards a community I might not want to be a part of one day.

    I also feel that you have absolutely no case to question my passion for modding.
     
  3. Bryan Birtwell

    Bryan Birtwell Registered

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    Howdy fellow race fans,

    Personally... I'd just like a "one stop shopping site" for all my and the F3 Fanatics!'s track shopping needs. The old "all tracks torrent" worked fine for "us".

    If you like the track... you keep it... if you don't... you toss it out. Doesn't seem to hard to me.

    The more complicated you guys make it... the less likely it is to happen or to succeed.

    Just my 2 cents,

    Bry
     
  4. Kknorpp001

    Kknorpp001 Banned

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    Please everyone let's stay on the same side of the table and continue to attack the problem.

    Ethone, to say that you are one of the best modders out there is an understatement and to reach some common agreement with you and other leaders will be key for any type of solution supported by the community.

    I guess the best thing to do at this point is to confirm that you believe there is not a problem because people should download and try mods to find what they like. Is that correct? Are you not open to anything other than that?

    If so, then we may just have to agree to disagree. I believe the ideas I have outlined above (the workflow/crowd-sourced support model) are fair and will also be helpful to modders. Did you read that? How would that demotivate modders? It is literally just a checklist and communication tool for the developer regarding what they are working on and what they need help with.

    This is vastly different from my original proposal and I thought you would like it. So please can you address what concerns you have with the latest vision?
     
  5. Kknorpp001

    Kknorpp001 Banned

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    Bryan you make sense and yes I am like you and will admit that I don't personally need this tool because I have been part of the beta and have kept up with tracks like you and rf2 is very much a hobby for me so I choose to spend time closely monitoring tracks, etc. for my purposes.

    The people I am concerned about are the newcomers who will be overwhelmed sorting through all the content. Will many of them be fine just plowing through and even enjoying the exploration and testing of tracks? Yes. Will many hate it? Yes. It's the second group I want to help.

    There are many things we can do to grow and retain the user base. This is one of them I believe.

    Edit. Another thing that occurred to me is that in some ways and for some people trying out tracks is more involved in rf2 than in rf1. For example, if you use the track map plugin, you have to use mas tool to extract AIW and GDb files. Can you imagine how long it would take for someone to do that for every track even at this early stage?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 12, 2013
  6. BlaringFiddle5

    BlaringFiddle5 Registered

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    This seems like a good idea - but i would think that realistic textures or ISI quality or something of that nature should be implemented as well. There are MANY tracks I've installed and uninstalled right away as the road didn't even really look like a road. Perhaps a measuring stick should be the VLM or Feels3 tracks or even the ISI tracks. Some of the former's tracks look better than the laters tracks ... My list would be like this:

    1) well done textures
    2) the rest of your list :)
     
  7. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    The point you raise about unintended consequences is interesting, doing damage by trying to help is certainly not a goal we should pursue indeed!
    Although I must say, it's quite a far strech from elitist benchmark to a checklist. The first one sounds rather pessimistic if you ask me. As I said before, if people are so easily put off, the lack of information would probably do to. Not everybody is like you, or me, who welcomes the idea, for that matter. There will always be haters, I saw guys on Virtualr slagging off one of Feels' track previews... I mean, really?

    I wish we could use the Wiki how it is intended, or people who have the time and knowledge to fill it up with correct and up-to-date information. Mind you, I spent an evening looking for information you posted somewhere hidden in a topic, which was exactly the info I needed! I shouldn't be looking for that for so long, hardly knowing where to look or what to look for. These are things which put people off, and that's only a freaking pitlight which is automated for 50% :p

    If you want to take it that way, fine, it was just my opinion, that is all.

    The part in bold is the most important bit of all I think. If you don't enjoy it, why bother, right?

    Not a single person likes when people put down their work. But with your experience, you know the difference between putting stuff down and providing constructive feedback. The latter should always be where you start if the other party is willing to listen and take advice when given. In this area, your idea of (objective) reviews might work really well since it would be pretty basic and in an informative manner, I take it.

    If one dude on a forum stops you from modding, well, that is tough, you're doing it for your own enjoyment and for others, not for that guy, or am I wrong?

    Don't take it personal, because I wasn't :)


    edit:
    Maybe instead of:
    "List of quality tracks"

    it should be:
    "Quality track checklist"

    A recipe with all the ingredients you need to build a quality track :) (in the comfort of your own kitchen)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 12, 2013
  8. SPASKIS

    SPASKIS Registered

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    I like the checklist concept you mention as it is much more aligned to kknorpp intention. However, as I have said before in other threads, Isi's contribution to track modding community is almost null. They should provide useful guidelines for new modders instead of spending all their track modders time just making tracks. As i said, track technology pdf is useless unless you already are an expert.
    To put an example, where are aiw editor instructions within isiforums?

    Dont blame amateurs for their ignorance. Others are making money with this and seem not care about the people that are contributing to their product. If it wasnt for the amateur modders we would have 5 stuttering tracks and 10 vehicles and nobody would be interested in this oroduct anymore

    Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk 2
     
  9. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    This is kind of a touchy subject. If they go this way, all the 'regular' user will moan endlessly demanding new content. If not, the modding guys, unless they already know what they are doing, will keep asking for proper documentation because for new people, it is really hard to get to know what the heck you should be doing.

    On the track technology I very much disagree. It is not ISI's place to teach you how to work with the tools, as they provide tools themselves which need to be documented. It is your own responsibility to prepare yourself before you start modding, it's only with rF2 that stage has become a bit less forgiving with realroad and the like. I think with the AIW editor you have a good example though. As I said, for newcomers, documentation can be lacking. I had to look through a couple of rF1 videotutorials on that before I had a clue about that one :p

    Talking about demeaning, I think there shouldn't be a distinction to be honest, for either group, complete and up-to-date documentation is really helpful, no matter who reads it. Add to that, most professionals were amateur modders to begin with if I'm correct.

    Or have a crapload of conversions that aren't worth downloading because of the technology gap, that is the other side of things.


    I found a document on this page:
    http://www.mbdevteam.com/download/Tutorials/index.html

    Where a lot of stuff is explained for rF1, Trackmaking tutorial by Scott Juliano (ISI), it's pretty good, something like this could be community written as well for rF2 :)

    The introduction alone basically states what I said before:
    edit:
    @
    JKA, If I knew you were going to post what I said in 25% of the lines I wouldn't have bothered :p
    A link to that tutorial would be much appreciated ;)

    edit2:
    Something else which is bugging me! If I'm correct, ISI have been known to create great physics, but lack in content, with rF1 at least. Now with rF2, I think we have great physics and really a great set of cars and tracks already, and still people aren't happy. Sometimes I get the impression they can't do it right, no matter what they do, that's just sad to be honest, those guys take pride in their work just as modders do...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 13, 2013
  10. Jka

    Jka Member Staff Member

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    Wow! That is very harsh comment and it's absolutely not true. Where did you get that kind of impression? If you do quick search on "Modding Help" over here, you will find plenty of responses from ISI to modders.

    They have provide all necessery information for track modding. Modelling tracks has not been changed significantly from rF1. We just have more features with rF2. Most of rF1 track building information is still valid, and we have tons of tutorials and other information in our hands. Track Tech documentation describes new features of rF2 and it's not ment to be inclusive bible of track modding from A to Z. Do you really think that it's ISI's reponsibility to teach modders how to use 3ds max? (though they have thrown us many usefull tips for max also...)

    AIW editor works same way as it works in rF1. ISI has wrote good tutorial for it back then and there are also plenty of youtube tutorials as well.

    Cheers!
     
  11. SPASKIS

    SPASKIS Registered

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    How can you say most rf technology is valid? When you convert an rf1 track to Rf2 people just say it is a piece of crap. The new things can be resumed in a 10 page pdf. If everything was so wonderful this thread would be unnecessary. We have been living with rfactorcentral tracks for years and now these thread becomes necessary as rf2 appears to distinguish between good and bad tracks. Sorry to disagree with you.

    How come is the tutorial you mention in a forum different than this? Why do I Have to google instead of isi doing the job of putting everything together here. Why should we feed the wiki?

    I repeat it is their business not ours. For us it us a hobby.

    We have our work, our family and hopefully some time to build tracks. Dont get enough time to google for info or feed the wiki to liberate isi from their role to help modders community.

    The tutorial scott juliano made should ve much easier to find and in this forum

    Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk 2
     
  12. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    Providing documentation on the rF2 side is their job indeed, on the tools we use it is not, or are you expecting them to explain to you how masks work in Photoshop for example?

    Track technology.pdf is in fact that summary, and it does its job, I used that and the example track to get realroad working without issue. The only issues I had were because I didn't read very well or made wrong assumptions.

    When Feels3 started building his first tracks, I think there was even less material to go with than there is at this point. Still, Croft looks better than most community tracks to this day.

    Generally, people enjoy their hobbies, so learning more about it shouldn't be a big problem I think. Time, is definitely one though!
     
  13. Jka

    Jka Member Staff Member

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    Conversion can be done proper way or just quck-and-dirty porting from one platform to another without implementing new technologies on it. Proper conversion requires almost as much work as building track from scratch. Quick-and-dirty port over rF2 can be done withing hours, which might lead (quoting your words) "piece of crap" -type unwanted result.

    Proper conversion requires original track model to be imported to 3ds max one way or another, refining and partially rebuilding track model for rF2 requirements, building new textures, setting up new materials and mapping them to new model. When that is done, then you have a starting point to implement new technologies and features on it. If you have followed Bahrain track project (for example), it's based on rF1 version of that track, which is "converted" to rF2 world, refined, added whole-lotta amount of details and animations, rebuild textures, polish everything, building new AIW, HDR profile ect. That is, in my opinion, a proper conversion.

    ISI's business is provide modding platform and all necessary information about it to us. And that is what they have done and probably will do so in the future too. Their business is not educate us to use 3ds max for modelling, for example. That is something which is on our responsibility, not theirs.

    Designing how to spend our valuable freetime is dilemma, which all of us have to face with our all hobbies, including modding. New platform requires certain learning curve, which needs lot of time. When we get more experienced, everything is easier and we can work faster. At least I am ready to invest my "valuable freetime" for that purpose.

    One hooking thing of modding (to me) is learn and discover new possibilities, found way to create some jaw-dropping effect or refine my workflow and technique to make things faster and better. I learn something new almost every day, which is rewarding. That is part of my modding experience. It's not just producing and providing a new track or whatever as fast as possible.

    I cannot understand how we can demand anything more from ISI. We have fully open modding platform, all tools required, documentation and support forum where they respond our questions. More experienced modders are ready to help newcomers, which will fill the gap what might be left over from ISI because lack of human resources.

    I don't know if you have done any tracks to other platforms before but I cannot remember any other platform, which is so good documented and supported as rF1/rF2. Can you name one?

    For example, Papyrus released to Nascar Racing 2003 Sandbox many, many years ago. Sandbox was track editor with virtually no support or documentation at all. Nothing, zip, nichts, nada. Therefore learning curve was big and it took long time before "top quality" tracks was released by community. In the end community made tracks outperformed Papyrus ones, when people got more experienced with sandbox. We are sooo much better position nowdays and I could only dream that kind of support back then.

    I can see we have different point of view of modding, and that is perfectly fine. I'm happy what I have in my hands. It's true sometimes it's frustating when information is not reach of hand when needed. But all necessary information is there. Sometimes you just have to search and do some trial-and-error learning. For me, that is part of modding experience. :)

    Cheers!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 13, 2013
  14. SPASKIS

    SPASKIS Registered

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    As you say we have different point of view. You all say that everything is fine but unfortunately the quality of most tracks is far from what it could be.

    Do you think that implementing rf2 features to an existing scenario should take months or, as you say, be as much
    work as starting from scratch?
    I dont agree on that.

    It everything was so straightforward as people say it should only take a few days.

    However I am fine with your point of view and i am happy for those who are satisfied with this situation and the way tracks are designed

    Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk 2
     
  15. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    That is what you will get when you take a final product and backwards engineer it to some kind of source material. The Bahrain example, if they still have the original source files, can be done in way less time, theoretically. And yes, especially older rF1 conversions would require so much editing and rebuilding and retexturing, that it would be faster redoing a whole deal of stuff only using the older track for direct reference.

    It is fairly straighforward, just a lot of work. Building a track is more than lofting the tracksurface, and as technology advances, this only gets worse :)
     
  16. BlaringFiddle5

    BlaringFiddle5 Registered

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    wow - how about we just do a nomination system - one member nominates a track - another 2nds the nomination - it gets included in the list. I doubt anyone will nominate / 2nd a track that has problems ... or if they do then maybe it also has redeeming qualities.
     
  17. filippu

    filippu Registered

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    Thinking that a list of good tracks might motivate the modders to do a better job is a little bit naive. Did it occur to you guys that maybe, just maybe, the modders are doing their best, and that the track they release is because they can't do better that particular time ? Not everyone has a job or studies background where they learned how to use 3dsmax.

    Indeed, it's better to bite the hand that feeds you (ie the modders). Clever :)

    http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/12327-WIP-Great-rF2-Tracks
    This thread isn't your first attempt at trying to stir controversy on this subject. If you're trying to get some attention, it took you a couple of tries, but it worked this time, well done !
     
  18. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    It is also an easy excuse for some I think, I can't think of any piece of software which has such a massive amount of documentation and tutorials. I really think it is possible to improve time vs quality if there is more clear information at hand to especially help new modders. Why would you not want to improve in abilities and do better work in less time, are people too proud and think they now it all just because they spend some free time? I really don't get that, anybody feeling threatened or something? Or is it frustration that they just could get by with what they knew with rF1 and now are lost with rF2 and don't feel like learning new stuff? I seriously don't get it, an attempt to overall improve on quality should be embraced, not met with contempt..

    *
    I never modded for rF1, so I don't know the exact differences

    Bringing this subject to attention doesn't need to be a bad thing :)
     
  19. Denstjiro

    Denstjiro Registered

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    Hey, If I started an rf2 track today it would prolly be a conversion from rf1, the easy-route to see what I can actually do, and if it worked out i would be so massively proud to have done this i would be releasing it instantly, regardless of how crap it is. just because I made something that actually works.

    Heck, i'm proud of myself if i can make a vmod for my server and it actually works :p

    Hence my posts in this thread to not just stop at a list, but at the same time provide information on track-making, so not just put a track into some category but trying to help out modders with proper or useful information, links to tutorials, guides, videos, whatever.
    And with a bit of luck info per-category, so that the bottom of the list will be provided with simple info on how to get started, top of the list with the more advanced info.

    In an ideal world both users, modders and ISI would try to contribute as it is in the interest of all to push the envelope together.


    But it seems 'nope we can't and we shouldn't' is the general consensus so i'm not going to bother anymore.
    The moment I have something to contribute in terms of spreading useful information (which will be when my league adopts rf2 and I have to figure out every little detail on server side etc) I will probably just create an isi-wiki page for it. But I definitely will not be asking anyone if its a good idea.
    Or just use our own league-wiki and help the rf community fragmentize all its useful info into oblivion.


    Oh and by the way Filippu, its all too easy to attack Kknorpp on previous discussions, and sure, he creates a million of them, and sure not all of them are are epic and revolutionary but at least he's doing something that in his mind is useful and in general they are generation discussions and info on whatever.
    That's quite a bit more then your 3 posts of which 100% are negative towards others.
    Like GTClub said to you earlier:

    Apologies for my negative post but i'm getting fed up with the no-we-can't attitude and you triggered it for me.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 14, 2013
  20. BlaringFiddle5

    BlaringFiddle5 Registered

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    perhaps we need a site that will list the tracks and cars and have them available for download. Allow comments / ratings about the content as well. I think rfactor central was the deal in the rfactor times but there doesn't seem to be one yet for rfactor 2?
     

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