Dissecting the Stunts files, trying to. Anyone know more?

[CTG]

Silver Spirit logo is a kind of Stunts hack? I just checked it: text on the rear wings, colorful Indy... LOL, it's funny!

[Duplode]

Just to reinforce the message about this version of stressed:



It works like a charm!

[zaqrack]

Corrida! I love this.

My recommendation: As stressed will probably soon result in an huge amount of different modifications made by the community, it should also contain later some kind of a "theme and resource switcher", where you can select the available mods from an internal database and load them into the stunts files before playing. Like we have 40 cars in the database, and with stressed-switcher you can select the 12 you want to use in the game, it renames/loads the resource files for you, and then you can start stunts

[zaqrack]

while playing noRH FTT yesterday I realized we only need one modification in the game code to eliminate RH: just need to make the "continue driving" menuitem disappear. Problem solved.  I know these parts of the game are pretty much hard-coded but maybe someday it will be also possible.

[Chulk]

We have news everyday on this topic! Great pic Duplode! And also great for Zak joining FTT!

[dstien]

Is it you on the picture ?

Hehe, I'm not that cool.

It works like a charm!

Swell, thanks for the feedback. I'll start working on shape support.

My recommendation: As stressed will probably soon result in an huge amount of different modifications made by the community, it should also contain later some kind of a "theme and resource switcher", where you can select the available mods from an internal database and load them into the stunts files before playing. Like we have 40 cars in the database, and with stressed-switcher you can select the 12 you want to use in the game, it renames/loads the resource files for you, and then you can start stunts

We tried to standardize the deployment of mods in the Midtown Madness 2 community to avoid incompatibilities. The problem was that nobody cared to make the effort of merely naming their file soup correctly as long they just got their mod loading...

while playing noRH FTT yesterday I realized we only need one modification in the game code to eliminate RH: just need to make the "continue driving" menuitem disappear. Problem solved.

I suppose this would only block yourself from unconsciously RH-ing? You'd still have to trust the other pipsqueaks?

[Duplode]

Is it you on the picture ?

Hehe, I'm not that cool.

Krys missed a rock reference?! No, that can't be!!

My recommendation: As stressed will probably soon result in an huge amount of different modifications made by the community, it should also contain later some kind of a "theme and resource switcher", where you can select the available mods from an internal database and load them into the stunts files before playing. Like we have 40 cars in the database, and with stressed-switcher you can select the 12 you want to use in the game, it renames/loads the resource files for you, and then you can start stunts

We tried to standardize the deployment of mods in the Midtown Madness 2 community to avoid incompatibilities. The problem was that nobody cared to make the effort of merely naming their file soup correctly as long they just got their mod loading...

Standardization is a good thing... Stunts file name system is so simple and pure, we need not complicate it with  Anyway, a nice smaller feature for the future on the direction Zak suggested might be a specific importer for colour data. (if there would be any real gain for making such a spin-off from the shape editor of course)

while playing noRH FTT yesterday I realized we only need one modification in the game code to eliminate RH: just need to make the "continue driving" menuitem disappear. Problem solved.

Zak probably meant killing the button code, which is probably too hard coded. And it would only eliminate Advanced RH, not "Save" RH...

[BonzaiJoe]

It would also eliminate primitive RH... But if you say it's not possible, I believe you

[Duplode]

It would also eliminate primitive RH... But if you say it's not possible, I believe you

After seeing BJ's post I realize Zak was refering to the "Continue Driving" menu item, not to the "Continue Anyway" dialog box button. That would be very revoultionary indeed... and who knows, maybe we can break or switch off menu items by resource file manipulation...

[Paleke]

I remember I talked about it with Cas some time ago. He said he could find a solution for this, not modifying Stunts original files. It was kind of tricky, and I don't know if I can explain his idea properly (so I won't try to) but I have to make the same coment I told him then (he also said this is posible): the replay file should be "marked" or "signed" to avoid cheats.

[Mark L. Rivers]

Well, I'm not so expert about all this materia, and maybe I didn't read all previous posts so accurately, but, about succeeding to made a "safe" NORH race only modifying Stunts internal code, I have two questions.

1) If someone will succeed to "hide" or "cancel" the "continue driving" menuitem, how will it be anyway  possible to know if a *.RPL is made with a original Stunts version or a modified Stunts version?

2) Assumpting that the modified Stunts version "writes" in the file *.RPL a character or a string, marking it in a way it could be identified (maybe with a new version of InfoRPL) as a replay made without RH, won't be possible for a expert coder, editing a file *.RPL made with RH, so to insert posteriorly the character or the string so to make it a file *.RPL that seems made without RH?

[dstien]

Shape support in stressed is shaping up. I've compiled a list of the shape materials, and the patterns seems to match the originals:



Also, here's how animation is done, it's just cycling through the paint jobs:



I have to do some more debugging before checking in the code...

[zaqrack]

editing obstacles is very promising! We can substitute blovk houses with giant ramps and such

[CTG]

My problem with this editing thing is similar to church vs making clones. It's nice there are people able to change things in this game but I think the original one with all the silly bugs and mistakes is a perfect one for having fun.

[BonzaiJoe]

Zak: good to see you're listening to Tiger Tunes a nice band from Århus.

CTG: I don't think the original will be substituted. This is just for some variation when you're bored with the original. That does happen to me sometimes after 14 years...