Changes
between versions
| Mac
ports, beta's, alpha's. What changed and what do you need to do to update
your car/track? |
|
The Multiplayer Lobby has been changed, and this made compatibility with older clients impossible.
More importantly, the wings and aero center positions are now set relative to the NULLPOINT, rather than the CG. This means that if a car's CG has non-zero components, the wings will need to move too to prevent (subtle) physical behavior.
Graphically, the default 'ambient' color for shaders is taken from their 'diffuse' setting. The default ambient color was (0,0,0) which was unrealistic. However, this means that a lot of track can appear brighter than designed. The solution is to correct either sun settings in a track's special.ini, or explicitly defined 'ambient' values in *.shd files.
For the Mac version's sake, the PC car creators should make
their car updates compatible using 'version=050b6', and not 'version=050b7'.
Version 050b6 files are compatible with 050b7, so no need to require beta7 when
beta6 will do.
To check your car, select it from the 'Select car' menu, and
see if it complains. If you have that fixed, do another 'Race' with the car,
then afterwards check the QLOG file for any comments about your car.
This version fixed a lot of bugs, but also introduced some new
stuff which unfortunately meant a clean sweep of all existing cars (tracks are
mostly accepted, even though tagged with id's preferably from now on).
- Cars: all roll centers are now located relative to the nullpoint.
To modify the car.ini to work under v0.5.0b6, add the suspension location
(x/y/z) to the rollcenter location. X and Z coordinates can be ignored (it's
the height that's important).
- Cars: every tire now has its own 'tire_model' section. This
was done because the tire damping (damping_predict_lat) may need to be tweaked
per-tire. See the Fer312's car.ini for an example.
- Car ID's: all cars must be tagged with an ID. The setting
is in car.ini:car.id. The ID makes sure that even if someone installs a car
into a funnily named directory, the id can be recognized to uniquely identify
the car. This is used in storing best-lap information for example (for a Racer-Rank
type application).
- Track ID's; similar to car ID's, these uniquely identify
a track, regardless of the directory name in which it is stored. No 2 different
tracks should use the same ID. The track ID is used in storing best-lap information,
and will be used to communicate track names in multiplayer.
- Car versions; stored in car.ini:car.version, this version
string indicates the minimal Racer version that is required to run the car.
Since Racer v050b6 introduces compatibility issues, it has been necessary
to make a version system so that incompatible cars can be detected (instead
of the user wandering why the car handles like crap).
A version string looks as follows: '050b6' (without the single quotes). A
final version is indicated like '049f'. Alpha versions can be identified like
'050a1'. A simple string comparison can then check whether the car is acceptable.
Note that a '050b6' car will work in versions beyond just that one, as long
as no incompatible constructs are introduced. If this happens, then the minimal
version string will be upgraded to say '050b8' and the '050b6' car will no
longer be accepted until updated. I intend to keep incompatibilities to a
minimum, ofcourse.
The car selection screen, upon loading the car, will check the version and
give an error string in the comments line if a version mismatch is found.
- Track versions; in the same way, tracks can be given a 'works
for version <x>' version string. Currently though, since all tracks
are mostly compatible throughout all versions (except for model counts), a
warning is given (in the QLOG file) but no further actions are taken to prevent
a track from loading.
Ouch, so much has been changed and added since then that the
list would be too long. For cars, check out the car.ini files from the v0.5.0
releases. For the rest, check the reference
pages for documentation on what's currently available.
A small list of important changes:
- Nullpoints were introduced to get rid of the relationship
between the graphics model and the CG (center of gravity)
- Clutch addition; new parameters for starting/stalling the
car.
(last
updated
November 13, 2012
)
