Re: Centralize efforts at creating a racing sim?

There is certainly a lot of talent in this newsgroup, enough to create fully generic racing simulation games. But how should all the work be coordinated? We need someone who has the skills to develop the core of such program. My suggestion is that someone, or a few people develop a core program having interfaces to the following, Track Vehicle physics Collisions 3D Graphics Sound Network - Multiplayer AI Input Menu system and a few other things�. Each interface should have clearly defined responsibilities so that they can easily be modified. Interfaces should be written as orthogonal to each other as possible. Also, borrowing already existing file formats is a good thing. I plan to use the format of SCGT since I know there are several people creating nice tracks in this format. This format seems to be based on VRML, which is fairly simple to code for. When this core is working, it should be much easier for different developers to start adding features. Linux is supposed to be developed by many people at different locations but how do they coordinate their projects? Is there anyone in this newsgroup who has any experience of such development projects? /Jesper

Over the past few months I've seen or heard of several (unrelated) attempts at creating (parts of) a (generic?) racing simulation. One by Paul Hoad (of XXX TrackEditor fame), and several on this newsgroup (the most recent should be just below this one). Paul Hoad (at www.hoad.org) was trying to get a group of people together to create an OpenGL racing sim, but progress was/is slow. It seems to me that there are enough talented individuals in this ng and elsewhere to make this work. We have people with a keen interest in car physics, we have software engineers/hackers, we have track creators, we have people who can do car and other graphics, webdesigners, etc, etc. And we damn sure have enough beta-testers ;-) So the people are there, but do they (we) think it is a good idea to develop a "community" racing sim? I do... but who am I? I know what I could contribute: webspace, webdesign (HTML, PHP, databases) and web graphics skills, software engineer skills. Anyone else want to participate? Cheers, Herko

Er...I'm writing a little racing game myself in D3D. There's a screenshot at http://www.sbdev.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/car2.jpg if anyone is interested, but don't go thinking it's nearly done or anything, I haven't even started on the physics, collision detection or AI yet. I doubt whether a calaborative effort over the net would be successful. A big group of people, all with different ideas of what they're writing, all working at different speeds, only communicating by e-mail. There's good reasons why these sort of things usually fail. Still, I'm only being realistic, not negative, with the right people, it could be done. "Herko ter Horst" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:ik1F5.746224$Kw2.6885964@flipper... > Over the past few months I've seen or heard of several (unrelated)attempts <snip> > Anyone else want to participate? > > Cheers, > > Herko

Many of the shell replacements for Explorer (like LiteStep) were also done this way. -- Slot www.slottweak.com Tweaks & Reviews As far as file formats go, I think there are over 1500 add-on tracks for MTM2, some of them using actual photos for textures. There must be something to that. Jesper Adolfsson <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > > > There is certainly a lot of talent in this newsgroup, enough to create > fully generic racing simulation games. But how should all the work be > coordinated? > > We need someone who has the skills to develop the core of such program. > My suggestion is that someone, or a few people develop a core program > having interfaces to the following, > > Track > Vehicle physics > Collisions > 3D Graphics > Sound > Network - Multiplayer > AI > Input > Menu system > > and a few other things.. > > Each interface should have clearly defined responsibilities so that they > can easily be modified. Interfaces should be written as orthogonal to > each other as possible. > > Also, borrowing already existing file formats is a good thing. I plan to > use the format of SCGT since I know there are several people creating > nice tracks in this format. This format seems to be based on VRML, which > is fairly simple to code for. > > When this core is working, it should be much easier for different > developers to start adding features. > > Linux is supposed to be developed by many people at different locations > but how do they coordinate their projects? Is there anyone in this > newsgroup who has any experience of such development projects? > > > > /Jesper

Also I think you'll find most of the people who have something to contribute will be too busy with their own projects. I'd like to hear what sort of project you had in mind though. The term 'Generic Racing Simulator' has enormous potential. Image the following- - support for VRML, so anyone could create their own cars and tracks - simple editable "ini" files containing car specifications (physical dimensions, weight, grip, etc) - support for standard graphics and sound formats (bmp, jpg, wav etc) etc. Or all those things could be written into a few simple editors. With a system like this you could make an infinite number of games with the simulator, kinda like the total conversions you see for the Quake (1,2,3) engines. Huge potential.

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> "Herko ter Horst" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:ik1F5.746224$Kw2.6885964@flipper... > > Over the past few months I've seen or heard of several (unrelated) > attempts > <snip> > > Anyone else want to participate? > > > > Cheers, > > > > Herko

I'm not sure of all the details but sourceforge (www.sourceforge.net or just sorceforge.net) is a place for developing "open source" projects of this nature. It appears to have all the things in place (CVS and all kinds of stuff) of cooperative developement, lots of projects on the site. Jay Jesper Adolfsson wrote:

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> > There is certainly a lot of talent in this newsgroup, enough to create > fully generic racing simulation games. But how should all the work be > coordinated? > > We need someone who has the skills to develop the core of such program. > My suggestion is that someone, or a few people develop a core program > having interfaces to the following, > > Track > Vehicle physics > Collisions > 3D Graphics > Sound > Network - Multiplayer > AI > Input > Menu system > > and a few other things�. > > Each interface should have clearly defined responsibilities so that they > can easily be modified. Interfaces should be written as orthogonal to > each other as possible. > > Also, borrowing already existing file formats is a good thing. I plan to > use the format of SCGT since I know there are several people creating > nice tracks in this format. This format seems to be based on VRML, which > is fairly simple to code for. > > When this core is working, it should be much easier for different > developers to start adding features. > > Linux is supposed to be developed by many people at different locations > but how do they coordinate their projects? Is there anyone in this > newsgroup who has any experience of such development projects? > > /Jesper

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 21:38:21 +0200, Jesper Adolfsson <[email hidden]> wrote: >There is certainly a lot of talent in this newsgroup, enough to create >fully generic racing simulation games. But how should all the work be >coordinated? That's a problem; I'm doing a car sim myself, but I'm heavily restricted to real-life actual work. It's 4:30 am for example now, and I just got back from Belgium from some work. Next week is filled too, mostly. Progress is hard, interest is great though. However, the fun in creating a car sim is for me at least 50% the getting-to-understand-it-all. So every programmer will have his/her own view quickly. For now, I'm most interested in vehicle physics, which seems to be going ok, for graphics I'm using 3DS Max with .ase files (to be converted to a binary format, but well, that's secondary), sound is .wav ofcourse in DirectSound3D, gfx is OpenGL, input is DirectInput etc. As open as possible. But the thing in my case at least is I am interested in doing the car *physics* my way. I don't care too much about collision programming (for now) and some other stuff. What would be more effective, perhaps, is to have interchangeable *formats* rather than code that plugs into eachother. So throw open the VRML-like SCGT format (any URLs? I'm mighty interested after having seen GPL's sector-forward-backward count and BSP tree (probably mainly used for collisions)). Let's think of a flexible car format (the .ase format is a bit flat; a car should be made out of 3D components, like tires, a steering wheel perhaps, a driver etc). Hardest thing here is for me still the LOD, level of detail, how that would be nicely done. And ofcourse, for the network play a platform-independent DirectPlay like system can be thought of. I think it would be better if perhaps cars that are created can be imported into more than 1 driving sim, than to try to have us all work on 1 big sim. I think ideas will vary too widely about how it should be done. I, for one, know I want to do it a bit too much my own way, I think. Although I'm happy to share my DirectInput and DirectSound classes (they're a bit simplistic now, doing not too much more than is required by my sim). Things like Menu Systems are quite far away from car simming, in the end. One might even consider a common car sim interface, in which you could plug in your specific sim in a flexible manner. So 1 user interface for multiple sims. I truly think that could work, although sims that grow out to be more will probably want to deal with such things mostly by themselves in the end. Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25 MarketGraph : http://www.marketgraph.nl Pencil art : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/ Car simulation: http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/