Improving the Old Mine

[Alayan-stk-2]

This track has a long story of redesigns. About 10 years ago, the route was completely redone along with visual improvements from "make eyes bleed" to "low quality". Then a few years back, samuncle did a graphical overhaul with much better lighting and somewhat better models and texturing.

== Route ==

This track's route is really challenging, which is good when it comes to allowing comebacks and making skill matter. But it's frankly unfriendly to newbies, and while its difficult character should not be erased, some adjustments are needed.

The beginning is fine, a curve into an almost-straight.

• [ ] As the path plunges down towards the right corner, open a new wide tunnel to the left, between the wooden pillars 1 to 3 from the machines. The exit point where it merges back with the current track should be after the nitro/item box that follow the wooden bridge. As the main path isn't straight, the new section needs to turn left, right and back left into the main road. It should be significantly slower than the wooden bridge section (assuming crashless runs on both paths with good trajectory, around 2-3s, which is less lost time than a crash but very significant otherwise).
• [ ] For competitive players, in most situations the wooden bridge path will remain the preferred one. With making this section of the track not too harsh for newbies not a concern anymore, the bridge can be made more twisty. Increasing the bends will require a more careful trajectory and force some turning. It should not be overdone however, as some speed/physics change should also make curves more challenging. Tests should also be done to ensure that a kart ahead crashing has a low probability of making a kart following behind crash too.
• [ ] Add auto-rescue planes left and right of the bridge after the left loop. It's currently possible to just fall down to the path below and have to redo the loop entirely. In reverse, it's rather unlikely to happen by accident, but it will prevent the lap from being counted which is something that should be avoided.
• [ ] Remove the minecart that shows up every few seconds to hit kart passing by. Having to slow down or not to avoid it, and being hit or just passing through when forcing at red light, is much too random and this obstacle has created much more frustration than fun.
• [ ] The 8s section between the left-loop-bridge and the start line is probably the least interesting of the whole track. I suggest a redesign that would increase the slopes and add new bends that aren't easy to take at full speed. This will add to the track's complexity and variety.
• [ ] The redesigned final section could feature a secret shortcut that's only slightly faster, under certain conditions.

=== Item positions ===

• [ ] Move the gift boxes close to the start (after the line) further along the almost-straight right curve.
• [ ] Move the gift boxes close to the start (before the line) further away, before the big room.
• [ ] After the long curve, add a second small nitro bottle to the left close to the wall, to reduce the player-ahead advantage there. Afterwards:
• [ ] Item adjustments in spots that have been affected by the changes.

== Modelling ==

Looking at real mine pictures is helpful to gather ideas

=== High-level ===

• [ ] Model the new tunnel for the "newbie path" and add some specific decor so it doesn't look too bland/generic
• [ ] Modelling changes required by the redesigned final section.
• [ ] Most of the tunnels are completely surrounded by dirt. While dirt shouldn't be removed entirely, many parts should be made more rocky (with grey-brown rocks to keep the dominant brown color of the track). "Dirt pillars" look particularly weird.
• [ ] Extensive rework of road-wall transitions. They look unnatural with their straight line property. The road-wall transitions should in most spots not be a smooth curve. The transition boundary should have a more irregular-looking shape, especially when instead of a crafted right-angle the wall has some slope before joining the road.
• [ ] Remodel the wooden bridge from one big model that is painted with a plank texture into actual separate planks. The most noticeable changes would be in plan-to-plank transition (not silky smooth) and in the bridge borders (instead of all planks being cut perfectly for a smooth border, they would be cut into rectangle and they wouldn't align perfectly on the borders).

=== Medium-level ===

• [ ] Add some boulders on slopes outside the drivable area in spots where the tunnel isn't crafted precisely.
• [ ] Remodel the walls/ceiling in general. In high graphics, they are often darker because not directly lighted, but on low graphics the less than ideal shape is quite visible. One of the worst offender is the ceiling when going from the room to the final tunnel part leading to the finish line, as here lighting highlights the terrible shape. The wall-ceiling transition after it are very bad too.
• [ ] Add two or three spots that look to be leading to other tunnels, but are barred and can't be accessed. This helps make the track feel less like a closed loop and more like a part of a bigger world that is used for a race.
• [ ] Add a decorative elevator somewhere ? Many mines have one.
• [ ] Make the water look better
• [ ] Add a splash effect when falling into water.
• [ ] Fix the many beams that have one side properly attached to something but the other just floating unnaturally.
• [ ] Make it even less possible to completely cut short the loop when, at very low speed, turning right very strongly (from after the bridge in reverse direction).
• [ ] Fix the unnaturally smooth wall in the interior of the loop (going reverse, it's the wall on the right of the passage below the bridge)
• [ ] Make the minecart visible in another spot of the track too.

=== Low level ===

• [ ] Some boxes go inside the ground instead of being put on it, and look weird as a result.
• [ ] Fix water "going up" in waterfalls.
• [ ] Add some lighting source that make the big machines with the cables more discernible.
• [ ] Improve the polycount of the big digging machines with cables.
• [ ] Add some new small mine element.

== Shading == Once again, I've no real advice on this topic.

== Textures ==

• [ ] Replace the horrible dirt texture used for walls and ceiling
• [ ] Replace the low-quality road dirt texture

== Audio ==

• [ ] Add some localized sounds for waterfalls
• [ ] Add some localized sounds for machinery

[7wells]

Hello, I see that there's a lot of things ongoing under the hood. ;) This track and also the Black Forest track are resigned. Are there other tracks also planned for changes? Will the current status of these tracks somewhere be "conserved"? I.e., will it be possible to still use the old (current) versions locally? If not, will the new versions ask for higher gfx performance? It would be sad to not be able playing these with the kids on older but still decent hardware. Sorry, if this is not the right place to ask. Should I then rather ask in the FreeGameDev forum?

Anyway, I admire you people for what you are doing for the STK community. Thank you so much, and all the best for you. Cheers! 👍😀

[Alayan-stk-2]

Black Forest isn't going to change much for 2.0 (hopefully some poor textures will be fixed, though). It's our reference track when it comes to complexity and quality, and making sure that new or updated tracks aren't more demanding on hardware to get decent FPS is one of our goals. The new versions will be more demanding than the old ones.

However, most current STK tracks are far from that demanding, and also far from looking anywhere as good or being as interesting to drive.

Improving or replacing many old tracks so as to improve the baseline of graphics quality and gameplay quality is important to keep making the game better. We have a basic renderer available to give playable framerates on crappy integrated graphics and mobile graphics, but we can't indefinitely hold back quality improvements to cater to those.

The current versions of the track (in the future, old versions) should remain available as addons.

Improving the overall performance of the engine so that the same quality/complexity gives higher performance is another long-term goal, but it's nothing easy.

[7wells]

Thank you. I do not know if Amazon's Fire TV, Android TV, or IGPs like the 610 fall under the category "crappy", but I know that many families cannot afford platforms with dedicated high-end gfx cards. Just my 2 Ct. 😉