CarWorks - a different approach to car making

[afullo]

For the moment, I haven't found cases in which they do not appear, in case I would discover one I will alert you...

[Ryoma]

Finally, I tried the new version. First of all, I want to recall how I made a car :
- modelize under stressed with the help of my Excel speadsheet and paint.
- carwork to edit res value and the speadsheet
- hex editor for torque curve with the speadsheet
- GIMP for dashboard with dashman.

With your new carwork, I lost 2 features :
- when I load with old carwork the 3sh and savez it, it created car1 and car2. Is it always the case ?
- in dashboard mode, I select the bmp file for the dashboard but it doesn't load it. Maybe I made a mistake.

[Cas]

when I load with old carwork the 3sh and savez it, it created car1 and car2. Is it always the case ?

Do you mean like load a 3SH into CarWorks and then save a model as OBJ?  If so, looking at old CarWorks code, it appears that only the car0 shape could be exported to OBJ. With CarWorks 1.0, you can export any of the shapes. You first need to select the shape you want to export and then save it as OBJ.

Loading an OBJ has also changed to be more flexible. In CarWorks 0.1, you would load the OBJ file to a vectorised shaped and if you later saved it as 3SH, the same shape was scaled and written to each of the three car0, car1 and car2. With CarWorks 1.0, you load an OBJ file into the current car shape and the other two remain unchanged. If you want, you can then use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy this shape onto the other two shapes. When saving, the shapes will be scaled accordingly. The thing is now you have the option of using different OBJ files for the different shapes if you want. Let me know if you have any difficulties with this feature.

in dashboard mode, I select the bmp file for the dashboard but it doesn't load it. Maybe I made a mistake.

Yes, this is a problem. Old CarWorks also had it, more or less. It happens because FreeBasic (the language I've used to make CarWorks) includes its own BMP loading routine, which is not perfect. It will only accept 32 bit uncompressed BMPs (not 24 bit, that is, they have to have an alpha channel). I developed my own TGA (Targa) library, so if you load from Targa, you won't have this problem. Also, you lose transparency when you load BMPs. I could solve this by making my own BMP functions. In the meantime, I recommend TGA.

Another FreeBasic programmer has made a library that supports several graphics formats based on a public domain library in C. I think I could incorporate it into CarWorks to provide better graphic format support.

[alanrotoi]

I think I found a problem with carworks. When you "play" with the physical parameters you may have unwanted effects. In common cars when you jump and land the car on road ALWAYS you increase the speed if you are accelerating. Always. I'm building Dodge Monaco Highway Patrol car with carworks and sometimes it happens.
It happens with BMW DTM and maybe (can't remember well) with Mercedes DTM too. It's not proper for this stunts version an effect like this. Was BMW built with carworks?

It never happened with car blaster. I say it because maybe the way you face the parameters from the code of carworks could add this unwanted effect.

[Cas]

Uhm... I don't see how this could be possible. I mean, CarWorks only reads the parameters and shows them as they are. You edit the values and it puts them back in their corresponding places in the file. In other words, it does the same thing as Car Blaster. Only difference is that it can read any ordering of the chunks and the ordering it uses when saving is not the same as the one Car Blaster uses. Reordering the chunks should have no effect on the physical parameters, but if you want to test that, I think you can reorder them with Stressed.

When the DTM pack was released, CarWorks either didn't exist or was in a very early phase (of the 0.1 version). Either way, I'm sure that Overdrijf did not use CarWorks back then.

If you find that reordering has an effect, I'm interested in knowing it!

[alanrotoi]

Oh I guessed those cars were new. So it's a problem of a bad testing cars. The effect is just what I said. Sometimes when the car lands after a jump it doesn't accelerates. It keeps the previous speed just like happens in BB 1.0. But it's only sometimes. You have to redo  the jump until it "catches" the extra speed. Seems to be a bad combinations of parameters from the user and not the programs.

[Cas]

Stunts physics engine is pretty mysterious. I would think that this effect might have something to do with the rounding of fixed-point numbers after division, kind of like what happens between power gear and car mass. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this effect also had to do with the car mass number!

[alanrotoi]

Also it might be related with some of the changes made between BB1.0 and BB1.1. This "unwanted effect" was normal in BB1.0 version and then disappeared in BB1.1.

Oh well now I think maybe not .

[Cas]

Well, I have to say that, while I love Stunts more than any game, I've been concentrating more on designing tracks than on becoming a good pipsqueak and being a good pipsqueak includes things like putting attention to the physics of the game, noticing subtle details and learning to exploit them well. You are certainly a lot more skilled than I am at this!  Many of the physics-related tricks and bugs in Stunts that are very well known and often documented in this forum and the wiki I had never heard of or noticed before I first read them here. I dare say, the only one I was aware of before coming across the Stunts online community was power gear.

[alanrotoi]

the only one I was aware of before coming across the Stunts online community was power gear.

Hey me too! I learned more in the first year here than before or after that year. The only bug I knew was power gear but only in INDY. So when I raced my 3rd race (the well known zct16 replay) the car was Acura and everybody started to talk about using power gear and my face was like O_O.

By the way this normal effect (accelerating when landing) it's not a bug.

[Cas]

CarWorks 1.0.3 released!

Some useful updates:

• Use * and / in the 3D editing section to change the snapping step
• Refer to the information panel also in the 3D section for the snap and move mode
• Current viewport is highlighted (doesn't look very good, though)
• Native support for PNG, Jpeg, GIF and PCX was added, plus a better BMP loading routine. This is not yet supported for saving, but will be soon.

As always, you can get it here: http://www.raceforkicks.com/projects/carworks.html

By the way this normal effect (accelerating when landing) it's not a bug.

You're right!  Rather, it's the lack thereof for some cars that is a bug. I wonder why that would happen...

[Ryoma]

Questions :
- is there automatic color ? For example, I draw in ref with palette from 52 to 55, and after the software create new paint (76 to 79 for example)
- automatic color for exp depending of color from car0...it's very boring to think about this..

[Daniel3D]

Questions :
- is there automatic color ? For example, I draw in ref with palette from 52 to 55, and after the software create new paint (76 to 79 for example)
- automatic color for exp depending of color from car0...it's very boring to think about this..

Why not make debris standard gray and black. Until there is a more elegant solution.

[Cas]

Yes, there is automatic colour and CarWorks can already generate debris based on current car colour. There is only one little limitation that I'm also going to solve. So, to use automatic colour, you do this:

- First, you make your model in Blender or another external editor and you give it colours there using the palette colour names as usual or... you may leave it colourless at this point
- Then, you export this to OBJ and import it with CarWorks. If you have used colours from the palette, they will be imported. Otherwise, you can auto-shade the car with Ctrl+A and then apply one of the paint jobs to it. Of course, if you do it this second way, all car primitives will be painted, so you may want to go back to Blender and paint windows, bumpers, etc., with another colour, then export and re-import
- From this point onward, you can add new shapes by copying from this one (Ctrl+P) and colour them one by one with the paint job list (Enter, while hovering over the 3D shape). If you use the classical paint jobs, this will work perfectly well. If you use custom paint-jobs, it's one-way (for now)
- You can generate debris (Ctrl+D) at any time and it will automatically select random primitives from the model for each of the paint jobs. The colours will agree with the current car colour. If you update the paint jobs, you should re-generate the debris, so that it agrees with the new paint jobs.

[Daniel3D]

Or, use shading in carworks, save
Load in stressed. Color windows and lights and other details, save
Load back in carworks and...

From this point onward, you can add new shapes by copying from this one (Ctrl+P) and colour them one by one with the paint job list (Enter, while hovering over the 3D shape). If you use the classical paint jobs, this will work perfectly well. If you use custom paint-jobs, it's one-way (for now)