View Full Version : Having some thoughts
_Edward_
10-12-2007, 12:20 PM
Hi!
I'm just having some thoughts about CSOs... It was said that one could not (easily) make custom cars to Rollercoasters because of the movable parts (wheels, restraints), but would it still be possible if one skipped the movable parts, for example some of the transport rides, flumes or rafts?
Also, what about tracks, like making custom track elements? Would it be too difficult to implement a spline option into the current Object Importer for the coaster to follow? Or what about water ride tracks like the White Water Rapids? As far as I can tell the raft follows a force but is free to move anywhere on the track. I've always wanted to add custom elements to that thing because I find the few special elements to be too few, and sometimes I've wanted a wider track, or even split it! And what ever happened to the bubbly rapid sections? Only for the regular rapid rides?
Anyways, feel free to tell me if this is possible or not.
/Edward
Old-Spice
10-12-2007, 01:50 PM
Its not.......... We dont even have a way to do animation without rewriting windows.....
er we do have animation if you have access to the modders forum on Vodhins, it's just really hard. There's still alot to be uncovered in rct3 before we can consider this really though.
The_Cook
10-12-2007, 02:46 PM
Hi!
I'm just having some thoughts about CSOs... It was said that one could not (easily) make custom cars to Rollercoasters because of the movable parts (wheels, restraints), but would it still be possible if one skipped the movable parts, for example some of the transport rides, flumes or rafts?
Also, what about tracks, like making custom track elements? Would it be too difficult to implement a spline option into the current Object Importer for the coaster to follow? Or what about water ride tracks like the White Water Rapids? As far as I can tell the raft follows a force but is free to move anywhere on the track. I've always wanted to add custom elements to that thing because I find the few special elements to be too few, and sometimes I've wanted a wider track, or even split it! And what ever happened to the bubbly rapid sections? Only for the regular rapid rides?
Anyways, feel free to tell me if this is possible or not.
/Edward
Short answer: no.
Long answer: The problem is not with animating objects which is possible, but with rebuilding the coaster objects which we can't currently do and probably won't be able to do. Even if we were able to rebuild the coaster object there is an issue to do with the coaster object pointing to other objects, eg. coaster cars. In order for a new car to be added the person adding the car would need to get the models for all previous cars that had been added so that they could recreate the coaster with all of the previous cars and their own new car. This would be a nightmare to administer and their would soon be a proliferation of incompatible coasters released by unthinking and unaware CSO designers. A similar issue arises with track segments, plus the categorisation mechanism isn't fully understood, nor is the bezier path format and don't even mention the control sequence bytecodes.
Splitting a rafts ride would be impossible since that would require changes to the codebase which we don't have access to and the existing codebase doesn't really have support for diverging tracks.
Unless Frontier release details of the file formats, or someone spends a lot of time and effort trying to reverse engineer the format, which is highly unlikely, then there's not going to be custom cars, track or flatrides.
RCT-Spanky
10-12-2007, 04:28 PM
Its not.......... We dont even have a way to do animation without rewriting windows.....
Rewriting Windows .... that's one of best ideas ever here. Could anyone please start with this.
Belgabor
10-12-2007, 04:56 PM
Rewriting Windows .... that's one of best ideas ever here. Could anyone please start with this.
Like this: http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html ?
_Edward_
10-12-2007, 08:58 PM
Its not.......... We dont even have a way to do animation without rewriting windows.....
Two things... One, we can animate without rewriting windows or the game. Two, I did say without the movable parts, meaning no animation but the moving of the WHOLE OBJECT on the tracks.
And just wondering, it isn't simple enough to just get the messurements of other cars, then copy all OVLs to a project folder, create new OVL, and edit the "list file" to include the new OVL?
Nah, maybe not that simple...
Now here's something I wonder. If people have been able to reverse engineer so much to be able to add static scenery items, why isn't there an OVL to 3DS/ASE/"Object Importer Project File" converter so that one can like extract a coaster car and put it just outside a ride like a "Test out the seat" thingy, or to edit other scenery items (like space steel walls) so that there are more pieces like it or change some flags so they can be placed anywhere without problems.
/Edward
Klinn
10-12-2007, 09:25 PM
If people have been able to reverse engineer so much to be able to add static scenery items, why isn't there an OVL to 3DS/ASE/"Object Importer Project File" converter so that one can like extract a coaster car...
Back when JonWil was originally building tools, there was some concern that Atari or Frontier would be upset that we were mucking about with files and reverse-engineering them, to the extent that they might decide to encrypt them (as others have done) or change the executable to prevent the use of CSO's. Companies get even more concerned about this sort of modding if tools start popping up that could be used to extract their copyrighted models & textures into a standard format that potentially could be used in other games. So I think there was a deliberate decision to avoid exporting to stay in Atari's good graces.
Vodhin
10-12-2007, 09:36 PM
Er. No. We cannot change or add to tracks or cars. It has nothing to do with animation and everything to do with decompiling code (which, technically, is illegal), interpeting that code (I'd rather learn Martian first), understanding the interpeted code (again, little green men come to mind), creating new models and the code for them (yeah, right), and then re-compiling (with fairy dust, probably). So you see, it's not animation, but the whole game itself.
Actually, it can be done but why bother. It's better to make your own game: it will be easier. Hey, what do you know: that's TPB3D!
But on another note: Custom scenery is just that Custom Made Scenery- there have been a few upstarts here where folks have modified existing scenery- but beware: that is illegal. Case in point, the Glass Walls modified now contains only NEW pieces, the modified existing files must be copied over on your own computer from your own installation- a safe way to do this, and it prevents re-distributing the files from another company.
Dark_side300
10-13-2007, 07:29 AM
_edward how about you give it ago?
Old-Spice
10-13-2007, 10:14 AM
Two things... One, we can animate without rewriting windows or the game. Two, I did say without the movable parts, meaning no animation but the moving of the WHOLE OBJECT on the tracks.
1. It was supposed to be a joke... An example on how hard it is....
2. I know what you said, i can read just fine. I gave an example.
To Clearify:
you wanted to do something with rides, like make your own cars and stuff....
I said its not possible atm. and we cant even do animation easily...
Didn't sr3d try that? I do believe that he tryed to make custom cars by just replacing the modle.... and he did not seceed
_Edward_
10-13-2007, 09:07 PM
Well, I know that they've already encrypted (or changed slightly) the OVL Sound files in Wild (or Soaked) because now I can't easily extract them for my RCT3 Vids (http://bleuf.org:37600/edshare/RCT3.VID). I did manage to make a backup so I could extract the sound files and continue these vids.
But if Frontier is gonna continue like this (no custom anything but what you see and we bend/break some rules to get what we want) then I don't think RCT4 is worth a second look...
They should get Robb Alvey (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0994791/) to overlook their work, or something... Just so they don't miss out on what people want, and what a coaster actually can do (and all options inbetween).
*Puts on a Pirate cap and storms out*
/Edward
Didn't sr3d try that? I do believe that he tryed to make custom cars by just replacing the modle.... and he did not seceed
Along those lines but I believe it actually reads from a hidden list / list file first step would be to find where the coaster.unique ovl points to I think, then you've got to find a way to add it to the file, THEN making a new coaster car with a unique ovl :bulb: so yea, alot of work, might not even work. (Most likely)
The_Cook
10-14-2007, 05:58 AM
Along those lines but I believe it actually reads from a hidden list / list file first step would be to find where the coaster.unique ovl points to I think, then you've got to find a way to add it to the file, THEN making a new coaster car with a unique ovl :bulb: so yea, alot of work, might not even work. (Most likely)
You are correct, within the coaster segment of an OVL there is an internal list of cars that it uses. In order to add a new car you would need to recompile the coaster segment with the additional car on the internal list.
This then leads to the problem that I outlined earlier of what if two people want to add their own new cars to a coaster, the second person would need the first persons work in order to recompile the coaster. This is an even harder problem to solve than recompiling the coaster segments because it involves a human element and humans are notoriously irrational and illogical and which will screw up any system put in place to resolve the issue.
Vodhin
10-14-2007, 10:40 AM
^ Ah Ha! I knew it- The_Cook is from Vulcan....
CoasterSim.Fan
10-14-2007, 02:55 PM
Couldn't this just be solved by making coaster duplicities, I know when the whole train switching thing was going around I was able to make a duplicate of the extended coaster following the instructions in that topic.
So then lets say some one makes a new dive coaster train they can just duplicate the dive coaster with there new train, instead of the default.
The_Cook
10-14-2007, 06:11 PM
Couldn't this just be solved by making coaster duplicities
But then you wouldn't be able to add a new coaster car to an existing track you would have to recreate the track from scratch using the duplicate coaster?
It's all a bit of a mess because it wasn't designed with collaborative content in mind but with a single person (ie. someone at Frontier) organising the generation of the entire set of scenery.
I thought whe doubelling a coaster, the tracks are taken over, too?
I thought whe doubelling a coaster, the tracks are taken over, too?
They are.;)
CoasterSim.Fan
10-14-2007, 07:37 PM
But then you wouldn't be able to add a new coaster car to an existing track you would have to recreate the track from scratch using the duplicate coaster?
I dont think having to recreate a track to use a different type of train would stop the community from using this if available.
Especially with the no collision detection option text option you could just build right on top of the existing coaster then delete the old one.
Belgabor
10-14-2007, 08:09 PM
They are.;)
No they are not. It seems like they are, but it doesn't work. A saved track will always use the coaster version it was created with.
No they are not. It seems like they are, but it doesn't work. A saved track will always use the coaster version it was created with.I remeber reading something like that some time ago.
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