Mario kart reloaded - official thread

[calvino]

Hi guys,

here is the official thread for the "mario kart reloaded" I intend to make by retexturing all the maps of the game. As some of you may have read in the other post, my plan was to load several textures for a unique texture reference. I now finished retexturing toad's turnpike, and thought i would give you an update about it.

Here it is:

GP2

GP3

not done yet

GP4

A video is available HERE


As you can see, the road uses 3 different textures when the game is supposed to use only one. The system I implemented on the plugin consists in providing a set of texture in the following way:

MARIOKART64#334564F1#0#2_all.png
MARIOKART64#334564F1#0#2_alt0_all.png
MARIOKART64#334564F1#0#2_alt1_all.png
MARIOKART64#334564F1#0#2_alt2_all.png
MARIOKART64#334564F1#0#2_infos.txt

the "alt" is for "alternative", and the txt consists of the following content:

# COUNT
3

# SHUFFLE
no

# PERIOD
60000

# SYNCHRONIZED
yes

COUNT is the number of alternative textures

SHUFFLE gives the ability to choose randomly a texture amongst the set (by default, the plugin will loop sequentially on the textures: alt0, alt1, alt2, base, alt0, alt1, and so on)

PERIOD is the number of milliseconds a texture should be displayed before switching to the following one

SYNCHRONIZED provides a way to synchronize the change of several textures simultaneously. For toad's turnpike, I had to implement this feature in order to switch the walls and road at the same time for example. If the "synchronized" flag is set to "no", the texture will work as a "standalone" texture, on its own. This fashion can be seen in the video if you look carefully at the ghosts There can be only ONE set of synchronized textures. You can't tell the plugin: "synchronize this texture with this one, this one, and this one" for example. But it still was quite useful for me to have this option!

I'm satisfied with the result as I didn't experience performance issues atm (will try 4 players mode on it asap to check if it works fine). I have two other issues, though, but I will create another thread for that. I will be glad if you can help me on those!

I would also really like to hear from you if you have ideas about how to take the best of this new feature I added to the plugin, once you've seen the vid, so as I can implement them in the next maps

 

[mode7]

the tracks seem nice, but for the vehicles could need some work. It's just prictures of the SMW enemies.

And now for something completely different:

OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This feature is so awesome!!!
The possibilities are infinite.
Just think of animated textures, flags, or trees or clothes swinging in the wind, think of special effexts added, man we could even have the skies animated (ok if your video card has something like 2048mb of memory)
Think of detailed terrains in places where you could only see the same grass texture over and over again...
jeez I'm feeling dizzy when I think about it..

just one question? Where can I get this plugin??

 

[calvino]

just one question? Where can I get this plugin??

i uploaded it here and here

The pack contains the debug and release version of the plugin + the pack for toad's turnpike. As mentionned in the other thread, you should use the debug plugin rather than the release as the release version seems to have some issues with this system

Tell me if you encounter some problems, but I hope it will work fine

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

much better the BATA 1.

 

[death--droid]

Unless you release the source code changes to 1964Video your release is in breach of the GNU Public License v2.0.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Anyway if you have a google email I can give you SVN access to the 1964Video svn.

 

[calvino]

Unless you release the source code changes to 1964Video your release is in breach of the GNU Public License v2.0.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Anyway if you have a google email I can give you SVN access to the 1964Video svn.

Hi dd,

I will be more than happy to share the modified source code with anyone who wants, including the official dev team of course

I got the source from the svn, but didn't intend to commit any modification until someone allows me to do it. Plus, i'm not sure that the things I've added are done correctly, and it would be helpful if someone can look at it.

It's only like 10-11 blocks of code added in the source. I just had to comment one line and replace it with another, for the other blocks, I took care of adding but not altering any line of code. Every one of the blocks I wrote is bound with "CODE MODIFICATION & /CODE MODIFICATION" statements, so it will be really easy to check it up

The modified source code is available here, and the files that were modified are the following:

RSP_GB1.h
RDP_Texture.h
TextureFilters.cpp
TextureManager.h

(just CTRL+F on "CODE MODIFICATION" and you'll find the changes easily)

integrating those changes in the standard release might be the opportunity for me to have the two issues i'm facing solved (see other thread), so if you need any kind of approval for it, I'll sign in a heartbeat =]

 

[death--droid]

Ok, cool thanks Calvino.
The coding doesn't seem to bad to me, just wondering, If you have Tortoise svn can you create a patch file please.
Makes it easier to examine the changes.

 

[mode7]

Sorry, I think I got something wrong. I thought it would also be possible to use the alternative textures to make the tiling different.
Like you have a wall with a single texture on, but once it repeats it uses a randomly choosen texture among the alternative set. This is what I meant with making a detailed terrain.

So the use is clearly for animations.
One bug: It doesn't work on textures with an aplpha (applied by the game), so no animated water yet.

I'll check out if this also is true for textures with an alpha.

 

[mode7]

Ok got it working: Just a little example how it could work:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mode777?feature=mhw5#p/a/u/0/5AMkupU1tCQ

 

[calvino]

Sorry, I think I got something wrong. I thought it would also be possible to use the alternative textures to make the tiling different.
Like you have a wall with a single texture on, but once it repeats it uses a randomly choosen texture among the alternative set. This is what I meant with making a detailed terrain.

that's what I intended to do initially, but unfortunately I don't think it's possible, or I would rather say that it goes beyond what I can actually do in the source. It looks like the way textures are rendered on the screen is handled by directx itself, not by the plugin, so it would be necessary to directly alter directx source code to have the thing working the way we want it to =]

from what I saw, the function responsible for that is called "Release", applying on a "LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE8" object. Maybe there is a way to override this function in order to bring the functionality we need, but I think such process would represent a huge overload in the memory use of the plugin. Maybe the official dev team can tell us more about it

So the use is clearly for animations.

yep, for now, that's the main purpose of the modification

One bug: It doesn't work on textures with an aplpha (applied by the game), so no animated water yet.

I'll check out if this also is true for textures with an alpha.

Maybe I missed some parts in the code which are responsible for that. Once again, maybe the dev team can help on that? =]

 

[calvino]

Ok, cool thanks Calvino.
The coding doesn't seem to bad to me, just wondering, If you have Tortoise svn can you create a patch file please.
Makes it easier to examine the changes.

I don't really know how to do that, I initially downloaded AnkhSVN, and installed it on my visual studio 2008

I tried to create a patch, but not sure if I did it correctly: you can try downloading it here

There is another file I had forgotten, which is ConvertImages.cpp. It isn't useful for the plugin modification I brought, but when I updated from the SVN, the project had a compile error on this class, so I made some slight changes to it

 

[death--droid]

Calvino pm me your email and I'll give you SVN access, just make sure you don't commit anything that isn't made just for your texture pack.

 

[Clements]

Very interesting modification of the plugin and a very nice idea. Allows for many new possibilities for enhancing games other than a straight replacement. You could say that it is the "PhysX" for N64 retexturing.

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

wow, this is great it RICE reloaded.
great job.

EDIT: the Budweiser add, did you get permission to use it?
if not, i thank it would be a good idea to modify/cut.
same for the WWF
legality issues you know.
the last thing emutalk or megaupload needs is a lawsuit.

 

[calvino]

thanks for the tip, NP4L, I will make sure to remove it before releasing it officially (I wondered if anyone would notice)

 

[death--droid]

Ok hopefully I will be able to get this in the next 1964Video, need to fix some crashing problem this is causing for me.

 

[calvino]

hey mates, short update!

now that the bug I was facing is fixed, I began to retexture "choco mountain" (gp2, map3). I will post you some pics or vid about it as soon as possible, but for now, I just wanted to tell you I brought a new update to the plugin: it is now possible to give a "per texture period" instead of a global period (when switching from one texture to another)

instad of giving the texture info file:

# PERIOD
60000

you give:

# PERIOD[COLOR="Red"]S[/COLOR]
100
100
100
1000
100

where each values matches a texture. the order of the periods is: alternative texture 0, alternative texture 1, alternative texture 2, ..., alternative texture n, base texture.

Here is a video showing what can be done with such feature: (all the textures when sliding have a 200 ms period, leading to a mention effect, and the two "main" textures have a 2000 ms period, which is why it gives the "halt" effect.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1M9M4UOQ

Of course you can still use the "period" parameter if you want the same period for all textures.

The next step I aim is to get rid of the "synchronized" option limitation (only one set of synchronized textures, see first post of the thread) and allow multiple synchronized sets, all of them acting on their own. Hopefully I think it shouldn't be too difficult to add that feature!

In MK, it will be useful if I want, for example, multiple "moving advertisement panels" like the one in the video: since each of these panels is composed of two different textures, I have to synchronize the two textures of the first panel together, the two textures of the second panel together, and so on!

 

[calvino]

hi everyone!

it's been some time now and i think it's time for an update, since i finished retexturing the whole second GP! here they are:

Toad's turnpike


Frappe snowland


Choco mountain


Mario raceway


Hope you'll like it! I'm now moving on to retexturing the first GP. I'll keep you updated =]

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

great job on the movable billboards.

 

[calvino]

just to let you know that this project is still alive, here are the pictures of the 1st GP:

Luigi Raceway


Moo Moo Farm


Koopa Troopa Beach


Kalimari Desert


hope you enjoy it and that i'll be able to work on the next GP in the next weeks (kinda had to halt it the last months because i had quite a lot of things to do)
i don't know how much time it will take but one day you'll see this project in the "completed" section! bet on it! :1964: