Stunts Forum

Edit: The first release of this car is already available, at the new cars for 2009 (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2219.msg39116#msg39116) topic.

A couple days ago, there was a small discussion at the "Special Cars in 2008" ZakStunts thread around some comments by Argammon. Although I may have reacted rather badly at the time to those comments, they motivated me to kickstart another tuning project which was lying in my head for a while: coding a new, real car with accurately modeled performance. The chosen vehicle, as you guessed from the title, is the legendary Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R. Reasons for selecting that particular car are various; including, first and foremost, that I am a die-hard Gran Turismo old-schooler  ;) Implied of course is the fact that Gran Turismo 2 is a pretty viable testing plattform... but it goes beyond that. On its era, the R32 GT-R was among the very best, and most advanced, cars of the world. And it is very realistic to think of it as a possible Stunts car, for its release was on 1989! 8) Finally, the Stunts GT-R will be a "slow" custom car with realistic handling and performance, traits not seen so often as vehemently pointed out by Argammon.

Currently, the new car is in alpha-stage development. The difficult part, torque curve and gear ratios, is already finished. Handling still requires some testing, but the intent is to make it moderately above average taking NSX, Carrera and etc. as reference. More details will come when the car is ready for release, but before that I kindly ask your opinion about aesthetics... the dashboard is more or less settled for NSX, since it has a somewhat similar layout to the real thing (see pic below). The real problem is the 3D shape: all options aren't good at all and I can't decide which one is less bad... :-\ So, please vote on the poll above. If you don't remember how does a R32 Skyline look, check the pics below. Thanks and see you soon!
 
(http://www.skylinegtrhome.com/images/0853_2lo.jpg)

(http://www.skylinegtrhome.com/images/0853_6lo.jpg)

(http://www.skylinegtrhome.com/images/0853_4lo.jpg)

I think NSX shape would be the most appropriated. Good luck for your work.

great, I'm really looking forward to this car!

NSX would be closest to those pictures, but the Melange already has NSX shape... I think Audi would be better, but just becaust of that.

Isn't there any way to convine ZR1's tail light and NSX front? That would fit...

Well, now we might be a step closer to Chulk's suggestion...   :)

Anyway, final released is set to an undefined date (currently I'm always lacking either time or disposition to fine tune the dashboard and some other stuff). You can start teasing me should you get no news about it in a month or so, however  ;).

Also, does anybody owns Gran Turismo 3/4 or any other recent simulator with R32 Skylines in it? I would like to ask for cooperation on some sanity checks on the performance data I'm using...

Quote from: DuplodeAlso, does anybody owns Gran Turismo 3/4 or any other recent simulator with R32 Skylines in it? I would like to ask for cooperation on some sanity checks on the performance data I'm using...

Sorry, I don't have a PS2 console, so I stayed with GT 1 and 2 on my PS1.
But I'll check if this car is present in Forza (X-Box 1).

Quote from: Duplode on March 19, 2008, 11:17:05 PM
Anyway, final released is set to an undefined date (currently I'm always lacking either time or disposition to fine tune the dashboard and some other stuff). You can start teasing me should you get no news about it in a month or so, however  ;).

There is not a single valid word on the above sentences: a lot more than a month has gone by, there is a definite date for a public release (November 30th) and there are really loads of stuff to be fine tuned now we can make use of Stressed... :D Anyway, I reactivate this topic announcing that, with the small issues mentioned on the Dissecting thread solved, the car1 shape of the Skyline is essentially finished - from now on I'll scale it up and start working on car0. I have used 70 polygons for car1, the same number of Audi; therefore, there is no risk of frame rate issues. Stressed screenshots attached - as a publicity stunt, I'll withhold in-game shots for a while... ;D

PS.: Zak, could you please move this topic and the GT3 one to the Car Creation subforum? Thanks in advance.

Work on the Skyline remains steady. The first screenshot shows the current car0 working model, which already is reasonably detailed, although it has only 120 polygons (will try to insert some extra details later on). Now I will focus mainly on the dashboard for a while. I tried to start one from scratch, and even found a nice strategy using masks and layers to sculpt it (the set of masks is shown on the second screenshot). However, as my image manipulation skills go, making a pretty dashboard from those elements will take long, so for the moment I'll probably start over and try to make a composite dashboard from elements available elsewhere, as Cody is doing for his Ranger.

looks great, cant wait to drive it. mabey we can make a video of all the new mod cars...

Quote from: cody on October 30, 2008, 05:31:09 AM
looks great, cant wait to drive it. mabey we can make a video of all the new mod cars...

I think it's more important to complete these cars first: dashboards, "tuning" with CarBlaster... But of course we can collect the OBJ files/pictures about them.

Quote from: cody on October 30, 2008, 05:31:09 AM
looks great, cant wait to drive it. mabey we can make a video of all the new mod cars...

Grazie, and I was thinking about a divulgation video as well - YouTube is there to spread the news... ;)

Quote from: CTG on October 30, 2008, 10:32:59 AM
I think it's more important to complete these cars first: dashboards, "tuning" with CarBlaster...

Yes, that's for sure - our machines need to be really well polished for the big show starting on November 30th, especially if it is going to be broadcast all over the Internet  :). I'm somewhat fortunate in that respect, as most of the CarBlaster tuning for the Skyline was already done by early March, so other than adjusting the dashboard parameters in CAR*.RES, only some extra testing and possible last-minute corrections will be necessary. As for the dashboard, I managed to perform the limiting step, namely decomposing the NSX "dash" bitmap into its constituting elements, with less suffering and better results than expected, so I'm pretty optimistic about the progress of this part of the design.

Quote from: Duplode on October 31, 2008, 03:14:59 AM
As for the dashboard, I managed to perform the limiting step, namely decomposing the NSX "dash" bitmap into its constituting elements, with less suffering and better results than expected, so I'm pretty optimistic about the progress of this part of the design.

Great news! Will we be able to test it before the contest or are you keeping it top secret?

Quote from: Duplode on October 31, 2008, 03:14:59 AM

Quote from: cody on October 30, 2008, 05:31:09 AM
looks great, cant wait to drive it. mabey we can make a video of all the new mod cars...

Grazie, and I was thinking about a divulgation video as well - YouTube is there to spread the news... ;)

Well, I could be wrong, but if this is not a real very crypted message, crossed with JacStunts...  8) ;)

Btw, I think I still haven't told you that your Skyline is really very near to the original!  :)

Quote from: Mark L. Rivers on October 31, 2008, 09:49:00 AM

Quote from: Duplode on October 31, 2008, 03:14:59 AM
Grazie, and I was thinking about a divulgation video as well - YouTube is there to spread the news... ;)

Well, I could be wrong, but if this is not a real very crypted message, crossed with JacStunts...  8) ;)

That was mostly subconscious, but still... ;D ;)

Quote from: Chulk on October 31, 2008, 05:51:51 AM
Great news! Will we be able to test it before the contest or are you keeping it top secret?

Well, I would prefer to avoid having to do multiple releases, be in the form of a "preview" intemediate release or as corrections needed on an early "final" release. As I tend to get obsessive with double-checking the smaller details while finishing a project, the final release will be, in all likelihood, quite close to the November 30th deadline. So you can say it's more on the "top secret" side   :)

Quote from: Duplode on October 31, 2008, 03:01:58 PM
...you can say it's more on the "top secret" side   :)

What I feared... Damn!

Quote from: Chulk on October 31, 2008, 04:42:31 PM
What I feared... Damn!

Such anticipation... :) All I'm sure of is that I won't release a semi-finished version, though - Originally I was to fix release date at 30/11 as well, but with some luck it may be earlier than that. ;)

Quote from: Duplode on October 31, 2008, 05:01:09 PM

Quote from: Chulk on October 31, 2008, 04:42:31 PM
What I feared... Damn!

Such anticipation... :) All I'm sure of is that I won't release a semi-finished version, though - Originally I was to fix release date at 30/11 as well, but with some luck it may be earlier than that. ;)

Hopefully! I can't wait to test new cars!

Poll: what is your opinion on light blue/purple meter backgrounds as substitute for white ones, that can't be implemented due to the needle being white? Is the needle too hard to see? Does the color look strange?

looks sweet! i can see the needle no prob

Quote from: Duplode on November 03, 2008, 02:17:58 AM
Poll: what is your opinion on light blue/purple meter backgrounds as substitute for white ones, that can't be implemented due to the needle being white? Is the needle too hard to see? Does the color look strange?

I suggest to use slightly darker background color.

Quote from: Duplode on November 03, 2008, 02:17:58 AM
Poll: what is your opinion on light blue/purple meter backgrounds as substitute for white ones, that can't be implemented due to the needle being white? Is the needle too hard to see? Does the color look strange?

For Speedgate XSD I chose purple meter background just to see better the needle. White is not unvisible, but not very easy to see...

Plans aborted for the light-coloured meters: some extra googling led me to find the stock R32 GTR had no white meters, so I won't add that complication gratuitously. Maybe for the GT3 later on... but thanks for the input.

The Skyline is approaching completion faster than I thought... barring some tiny car0 details I'd rather overlay directly in Stressed, the .OBJ models for car0 and car1 have entered "feature freeze". The stda* part of the dashboard is, other than for smoothing a few rough edges left from the edition process, finished - and dashboard meters are functional already. Finally, performance is probably fine enough already; the only decision still to make being about grip levels - I need some extra testing to decide whether to keep current grip (~17% better than NSX, Carrera, etc.) or to lower it slightly.

Now, with car0 and car1 frozen, we can start thinking on paint jobs. Blue, Red, Yellow, Silver and Violet are sure to be used. Since I don't want to use much more than 7 or 8 colours (too inconvenient to cycle through all colours on car selection), please tell me suggestions on colours you think that can't be absent, so I can weigh more opinions for my decision. I would modify the poll above, but it seems there's no way to allow you to vote in more than one option by editing it... thanks in advance  ;)

Good news.
Anyway, as long as there's a yellow color, there's no need of other ones, except black/dark grey maybe.

Quote from: Krys TOFF on November 10, 2008, 02:20:26 PM
Anyway, as long as there's a yellow color, there's no need of other ones, except black/dark grey maybe.

You'll be pleased when you get to see the car painted in yellow then, I think it looks particularly good ;)

Anyway, I forgot to append to my post a list of some available colours, ordered by the (current) likelihood of me including them. Please comment if you have strong feelings on any of them:

Dark Grey (~90% chance of being included)
Golden
Dark Green
Dark Red (if possible, darker than the default Vette colour)
Light Blue (lighter than cyan, I still need to confirm if that's really viable)
Orange-ish brown (same as above, just had the idea and need to check feasibility)
Light Purple
Black
Light Green
Pink
Cyan (99% sure not to include it)

Quote from: Duplode on November 10, 2008, 03:48:05 PM
Dark Grey (~90% chance of being included)

Weeeeh!!!! That and having Silver confirmed is all I need

Quote from: Duplode on November 10, 2008, 03:48:05 PM
Cyan (99% sure not to include it)

Please don't

Quote from: Chulk on November 10, 2008, 06:33:48 PM

Quote from: Duplode on November 10, 2008, 03:48:05 PM
Dark Grey (~90% chance of being included)

Weeeeh!!!! That and having Silver confirmed is all I need

OK, probability has just increased to 99%  ;)

Quote from: Chulk on November 10, 2008, 06:33:48 PM

Quote from: Duplode on November 10, 2008, 03:48:05 PM
Cyan (99% sure not to include it)

Please don't

Please don't include it or please don't exclude it? :)

Don't include it. Or don't exclude it. I don't really care as I'll use Grey/Silver...

Now that Z100 is over and we won't have Skyline races for a while it seems a good time to spread the word on this little update. A few months ago I came to realize the Skyline 3D shape was designed without regard to the non-standard aspect ratio of Stunts, which stretches the graphics vertically. That led me to scale the vertical dimensions of the car by a factor of 5/6, which makes it look much more proportional and sleek, as well as fitting much better visually with the other cars in Stunts. This version is available (in fact since a few months ago) from the download area of Southern Cross site (http://scr.stunts.hu/mods.php), labelled as "Skyline 1.1". The important thing to bear in mind is that no changes to physics parameters or to the dashboard layout were made, and thus the car is 100% compatible with the older version for competition purposes. In fact, I actually used the corrected version for racing in Z100. The update is merely graphical, and if someone happens to miss it it will make absolutely no difference competition-wise. Anyway, better eye-candy is always good  :) I would be thankful if this update was added to the 2010 official ZakStunts download packages as well.

I most certainly will add it to the 2010 package just dont forget to remind me in December please.