Author Topic: Support_GaugeClusters concept  (Read 1063 times)

Well, we've achieved engine sounds with gears. But now I thought of something else.

Gauges?

So, I know we've got a car or two that actually already have working speedos, there's Teneksi's Crown Vic, and I think that one guy's Amarok also had it (don't remember). The thing though was that only the speedometer would work, and it was also functional with only fixed positions that it snapped to on the gauge based on wheel speed.

So here's what I'm wondering. Is it possible to add dynamic gauges? Like let's say we took Filipe's Tutto. The tachometer and speedometer would have their own animations from 0 to max (idle to redline for the tachometer, and 0 to whatever the top speed is for the speedometer), and the wheelspeed/gearing would move them dynamically rather than just with fixed positions. This could probably just be included with the car in itself without the need of a support mod, like how the Tutto has shift animations.

For the tachometer, my assumption is that that would be configured the same way as sounds are configured with Support_EngineSounds, like it switches gears at defined wheelspeeds (let's say a five-speed car would have wheelspeeds configured at "0 20 40 60 80" just for simplicity's sake).

In the configuration of the car's engine sounds and tachometer, max pitch would define the pitch of the engine sound when the tachometer is at redline. Let's say I have a max pitch of 1.0, and the gears are switched at pitches less than that. In this regard, gears that shift at a pitch of 1.0 will shift at redline, gears that shift below 1.0 will shift before they hit redline.

Speedometer could be configured by the car, easily. Because that's just wheel speed and that's all you'll really need to configure.

If you're wondering how the animation stuff will work, I have an idea. In Grand Theft Auto V, driving animations, when played back, show the player model turning all the way from the left to all the way to the right, and that's it. So my assumption is that the way they do it is that the playback marker is in the center of the animation's timeline, when you're not turning in either direction. Then it'll scrub the timeline left or right depending on how much you turn and in which direction (i.e. turning left scrubs the timeline left, turning right scrubs the timeline right).

It would be the same in this regard. The tachometer and speedometer's timelines show them going from min to max, and then the timeline is scrubbed to the right when accelerating or scrubbed to the left when decelerating. For the tachometer, it scrubs to the right when accelerating then goes to the next gear and scrubs back to the left.

I know this is hella complicated, but I'm proposing an idea and setting a foundation of some kind. For all I know I could be saying bullstuff, and I probably am. :P

I'm the guy that made the Amarok. The speed dials will either use threads, of which you only have 4. So you can only animate 4 things total, including stuff like the steering wheel. The gauges in the Amarok use objects which I then hide/unhide based on the vehicle's speed (my planes do that as well), but you will soon run in to the object limit. This object limit isn't a hard limit, but will start throwing wheeledVehicleExepctions in multiplayer and crash the server since it can't fit all of the object data in a packet to send to clients. What you COULD do is mount a bot to a vehicle and have the bot display the gauges, which will circumvent this object limit. Please refer to bot todesengel Conan for help with this.


Yeah I would agree with TaG on this, Blockland in this version of Torque engine does have it's limitations and it becomes very costly when you keep adding on and on, so it really depends on what you want overall, and sadly we can't have all of it without having advanced mechanics implemented...