CarWorks - a different approach to car making

[Ryoma]

Yes, something that allow to change the dimensions of the car with differents ratios on X,Y and Z.

And adapt the wheelbase at the position of the wheels.

[Cas]

Yes, something that allow to change the dimensions of the car with differents ratios on X,Y and Z.

Oh!  I never thought that could be useful, but certainly!

And adapt the wheelbase at the position of the wheels.

Do you mean like to make the wheel positions that are in the RES file match the actual positions in the 3SH?

[Ryoma]

Yes differents ratio for each axis will be helpful to correct quickly a bad proportion of the car. I have to work again on the Mythos because the width is toi short. And maybe Duplode on the Skyline...

Yes for the wheelbase as said before : the 3sh give the wheelbase and the hitbox of the car.

[Duplode]

Yes differents ratio for each axis will be helpful to correct quickly a bad proportion of the car. I have to work again on the Mythos because the width is toi short. And maybe Duplode on the Skyline...

Note that the aspect ratio issues only affect the y axis. The Skyline car1, for instance, has 104 length and 40 width, which matches the real car proportions. If I left in a mistake, it is only in the height. (By that way, just in case: make sure to have aspect=true in the [render] section of the DOSBox configuration.)

[Ryoma]

Another issue with differents ratio : it affects the dimensions of the wheels, I had to update Shamal, Mythos and 641 consequently.

[Ryoma]

Another improvement for Dash manager :

When we use some mask (inm1 &3 , ins1 & 3 and even whl1 & 3), we use differents size and coordonate for bitmap.

And dashman apply only the values of ins2 and whl3.

Maybe in the F2 menu, we could ne modify this.

What about if like the Vector, the wheels is to the right limit of the screen, seems the dot are limited to 256 in X position...(I understand something during writting this)

[Cas]

The INS/INMs all being at the same coordinate is an issue I should indeed fix. I have to make a lot of rewriting, though, but yes. About the 256 value limit for the X for the DOT and the instrument curves, there's nothing we can do. That's stored as a byte and it's impossible to make it go any further.

[Zapper]

Hi,

I've used dashman recently to fix speedometer coordinates and I guess that it whould be an aid improvement if next to the point number, it could indicate the correspondent value of MPH (point # x 2.5MPH) and RPM as well (point # x 128RPM).


(Reference wiki.stunts.hu Car_parameters Speedometer_needle_movement)

[Cas]

Thank you for the feedback, Zapper!  In fact, I wasn't sure about the proportion when I made it. I'll make sure to include that on the next one. As a matter of fact, the CarWorks and Dash Manager I've uploaded here are alpha versions and I'm currently working on the first actual version of the program, CarWorks 1.0, which will be beta at the beginning, but will be what it's supposed to be. It already does some things. Dash Manager will actually become a part of CarWorks 1.0. I'll try to make this version available as soon as I can and I'll make sure to add an indicator for the RPM and MPH that are represented by the clocks!

[Cas]

Alright, I've posted the first snapshot of what will be CarWorks 1.0 in the project site at http://www.raceforkicks.com/projects/carworks.html. The alpha version (CarWorks 0.1) is still available because the new one, while looking much better and having some additional features, still can't do a couple of things that the old one can (namely, align the car wheels, for instance). There is still a lot to add, but most of the functionality of CarWorks 0.1 is covered already. You'll have to keep using the old DM for now, but I'll soon start implementing it in CarWorks 1.0 as well.

This new version includes:
- Completely comfortable parameter edition, including car name and showroom information, torque curve marks and all
- Ability to load 3SH, OBJ and RES files and save 3SH and RES (OBJ will soon be available for saving too)
- Four-view shape management. No shape editing so far, but you can cycle models with M and paint jobs with P
- Add and remove paint jobs with CTRL+P and CTRL+O. Change paint job colour by pressing Enter on the 3D view
- Auto-shade with CTRL+A. Good for imported OBJ files. Then you can change the colour easily
- Auto-set wheels and collision information with CTRL+B
- Copy one model to another with CTRL+C and CTRL+V

Try it out!

[Ryoma]

Thanks...but actually I stall. I have New idea for à New car. I become lazy.

Edit : I give a quick look, I like the module physical parameters

[Cas]

Alright. I've updated CarWorks 1.0. I think I've reach the point at which all the functionality in CarWorks 0.1 is already available in CarWorks 1.0. It also has many more features, even though it's still unfinished. At this point, while it needs some grooming, I'm pretty confident that you can completely work with CarWorks 1.0 + Dash Manager 0.1 without needing CarWorks 0.1 at all. However, because of the potential of bugs, I still provide the alpha version at the project site as well as the new one.

I have included a "manual" in the zip file with the key shortcuts (which are abundant in the 3D section of the program). You will notice that you can easily ruin your work with just a key combination  I've made sure that all potentially damaging functions require you to press CTRL plus something, so always think twice before pressing the other key if you're holding CTRL. Of course, this all happens in memory, so you can just relax if you've saved your project already.

Some of the newest features added are:

• Ability to generate wheels out of thin air. So now you can load your OBJ and create wheels. You no longer need to borrow wheels from another car
• You can move both the wheels and the car and you can adjust the wheel dimensions (width, radius and rim size)
• It's now possible to cycle paint jobs in both directions. It was annoying to only be able to do it forward

Some known and reported bugs:

• When you paint your model, if the previous paint job was a custom one, CarWorks will fail to detect it correctly. You can avoid this problem by auto-shading the car and then changing the paint job colour, but this will kill any details, such as lights or windows, as everything will be turned to the selected colour, so this is good only for a new model that still hasn't been painted, such as an imported OBJ. Alternatively, you can make a copy of the current paint job with CTRL+P, then work on it and if you don't like it, just retrieve the previous one by deleting the new one with CTRL+O.
• I have been told that removing a paint job is not effective when the file is saved, but I've been unable to reproduce this and the source code looks fine.
• The 3D rendering is not perfect and while it looks acceptable for car0, it's pretty buggy for car1 and car2. Still, it is good enough as to be able to let you see what you're doing. I'll find out what happens and fix it. Also, I still haven't implemented grilles. This is not a bug. I just haven't done it yet. It's not hard to do, but I would like to solve the actual bug first. Wheels are also not rendered in 3D. This is going to be a real pain in the butt, so I'm leaving it for the last moment.

As always, you can get CarWorks 1.0 from http://www.raceforkicks.com/projects/carworks.html

[Cas]

I'm now working on the Dash Manager part of CarWorks 1.0 and I'm having problems. Since I'm being a lot more careful with this project than with the old CarWorks 0.1 and Dash Manager 0.1, many issues have become apparent, but not enough to easily solve them. One thing has to do with the coordinates of ins1, ins3, inm1 and inm3. These four dash items provide X and Y screen coordinates that do not match anything. At first, it looks like they should be relative to the coordinates of ins2, but not really. I can see that there are slight deviations, which explains why there were problems with the old version. KyLiE has also been telling me that something similar happens with the location of the gear box. I reckon maybe Ryoma and Zapper can shed some light on this, as they are the most experienced ones in car making. If you guys can give me a hint, I'll appreciate it:

How do you calculate the correct  instrument image coordinates from the VSH based data?

I'll keep on researching. Maybe the "unknown" words and bytes have something to do with this.

[Ryoma]

In fact, Every time I tried to understand ins1 and cie, I failed.

So I tried to not use them. And if I need, I made the sames dimensions as ins2. And after, I modify lightly the x and y values in stressed. I always failed the first time...

[Daniel3D]

As far as i know ins1 is a free floting layer.
The only restriction i believe there is is that ins2 has to fit on or in ins1.