Twisted DIRT Forums

Something I found interesting.

I have upgraded to Windows 10 and have also purchased a new monitor around the same time. Ever since I did, I no longer get the terrain glitches. I'm not sure if maybe certain display drivers cause issues or if Windows 7,8,8.1 are causing the issue.

Hold that thought, I was just banned from their Steam discussion page. I then messaged them the question on Facebook and they blocked me. Class acts. Don't get into the gaming industry and buy IP's if you're incompetent to handle the people when they criticize you or ask for answers. And meanwhile, they release DLC pack after DLC pack and apparently the servers are still broken. (y)

I posted a question to the Steam discussion page about 4 times now, checking every hour or so for responses and they have all quickly been deleted from the page.

Here is what I asked:

"Nordic, explain something to me. Why were people able to unlock the "massive content update" with the $20 version of the game as far back as like two weeks ago? Is it because all you did was lock those features and they were always in the game files? Now it seems you're making it look as if you did something productive when all you did was unlock the game files and add an extra $5 charge. An explanation would be great, because if you're trying to pull the on-disc DLC stuff that other companies are doing, you won't last long."

People have apparently been able to get into the game and unlock all of the so called "massive content update" for weeks now. They bought the original game alpha that had like nothing included. Now Nordic is charging $5 for stuff that is already available but was hidden? If this wasn't true why wouldn't I get some sort of response? Instead I get a childish removing of my legitimate question. I find this entertaining pushing their buttons since they won't even respect their customers with answers. They are known to delete questions that are not "when is this coming out" "omg i love the game add xxxxx", they avoid constructive criticism and i don't see them lasting long.

Quote from: JamieT on April 06, 2015, 09:51:33 AM
I've looked into the files, and I believe the water can be at any height.  To do this, there would need an update to DE.  I'll let Laurie know, and hopefully it should be easy to include into the next update.

Underwater tracks?

Quote from: Fixer on March 28, 2015, 03:41:03 PM
It's the weekend now, so you're probably going to get a response on Monday...

I just find it strange that I ordered it at 4 p.m. EST yesterday (Friday) which would have been about 1 p.m. for them and they didn't respond to me. And I figured they would have a disclaimer on their website explaining that they aren't active on weekends because some companies are and if they aren't they typically tell you.

I've ordered Leveller last night. It's been 24 hours and I haven't gotten my download link, and I've emailed them with absolutely no response. Has anyone had this experience? I really don't want to cancel, but it says to give them up to 24 hours and I have. Some kind of response from them would have been nice, too.

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 28, 2015, 01:21:58 PM
Do you have the MXUI_DLC008 files in the /Database folder as well?

This. The download under the "downloads" tab doesn't have the MXUI files in the .zip folder, but this link does.

Choose "Beta Track DLC Files" and download that and drag those into the Database.

http://twisteddirt.com/smf/index.php/topic,2996.msg22915.html#msg22915

Did you put both "MXTables_DLC008a" files into the database folder?

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 26, 2015, 02:23:56 PM
Thanks for the feedback Snare, would you mind sending me the track and supporting files for the track that crashes DE so that i can try loading it and see where DE is having trouble?

It was a test track and I have already overwritten it because I figured having so many objects was the reason it had an issue loading and so I didn't worry about it. I could probably easily reenact it if needed.

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 27, 2015, 10:28:00 AM
Your gfx card is the exact same as Yellow2Ks?

That suggests it's not the GPU, if it works on one, then it should work on them all. So it can only be the bits that are different - cpu, memory, drivers - or maybe a timing issue where cpu tasks and gpu tasks in Reflex aren't finishing when they should.

Are you guys running full screen or windowed. I wonde rif you slow the GPU a little - like running windowed with a video playing in the background maybe will make the issue better or worse?

I'm going to contradict myself here, but..

Since he has a different manufacturer of his card than Yellow it makes sense. Each card brand has a completely different card to each other other than the GPU core itself, most have their in-house PCB's and VRAM and everything unless it's a reference card (970's do not have a commercially available reference card to my knowledge) so it could be certain brands and the components being used, maybe?

I had a 7950 up until about new years eve and the terrain issue was never a thing until I upgraded to the 970. My buddy and I have very similar PCs and when I got him to play Reflex with his 7950 and then his R9 290, he had no issues as I played on his rig a bunch. We both upgraded to the 970 and we both have the issue now. We both have the G1 edition from Gigabyte, and something I have noticed is I haven't heard anyone running on board Intel or AMD graphics having this issue, it's all the newer Nvidia cards from what I see, so it must be the Kepler and Maxwell architecture not getting along with the game. Any other game has no kind of issue.

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 26, 2015, 02:25:48 PM
Interesting Snare, i hadn't heard anything about that, not sure why a skin pack would conflict like that do you know which Xenuh pack it is?

It's his most recent skin pack that allows people to install them in any open DLC spot that is used for gear (10-13 IIRC?).

I've actually noticed an issue with a different gear set (http://reflex-central.com/skin_profile.php?skin_id=96) changing the names of bike skin names. Like my throwback skin set on Reflex Central gets the names changed from what I named them to names from this pack. My suzuki will be named like "Monster helmet" instead of "RC replica". I don't know if it's just me that has had that happen or not. It seems to me that there is some overlapping or something between the DLC slots that is causing weird things. The skin pack I have linked is for DLC 13, and my skin pack is DLC 14. Are they too close and mixing?

Apparently Xenuh's skin pack is causing a lot of crashing issues and is some how conflicting with some of the stock skins and I've only heard of people crashing while being on custom tracks.

Quote from: TwizardT on March 26, 2015, 01:03:07 PM
okay, so if i make th emap 1024 by 1024 it doesn't work and with 512 by 512 not to.
i think i might make a tutorial for the water.

and for the trees the game keeps crashing now. i have 600+ trees now. m,aybe reflex cant handle that much?

I had over 1300 trees and about 50 other objects (towers, bleachers, etc.) at one point and my game never crashed. My problem was that DE wouldn't open the track file anymore and DE itself would crash if I tried opening the file. And so I tried saving the track and trees separate by saving the ecosystem to a file of its own. I tried opening the eco file and it would either not open or it would open and the trees wouldn't be there. Having so many trees and objects like us is honestly just asking for trouble.

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 22, 2015, 11:57:34 AM
Does the 850M use the same core technology as the 970s?

(didn't see the second page of comments, my bad)

Yup, Maxwell. Also, some people with the old Kepler stuff claim to have issues as well.

I've actually had the terrain glitch so bad that it made the terrain raise into mountains right in front of me; although when it did do that, it was after I had minimized the game while racing an arcade race and went to open dxtory and when I reopened the game it went nuts and did that. That happened only once and I'm not sure if i could replicate it, but kind of makes me think it's more than a visual bug if it can make the game do that.

Quote from: JamieT on March 16, 2015, 11:39:53 PM

Quote from: St. Angers Snare on March 16, 2015, 05:51:43 PM
I am completely parallel with the terrain (so I'd be able to see the jumps and everything from the angle, so essentially a side angle that I believe it defaults to when you open a new track) and all that appears is the base texture with none of the height map changes of the height map I imported, but I will try what Jamie said. I'm going to "pick up" Photoshop tomorrow or Thursday and start working on it again as my trial is about to run out.

I've heard alot of people are using other programs to generate a heightmap (leveller, earthsculptor, a few others) rather than manually doing it in Photoshop and I plan on making a track with lots of elevation changes that are extremely sudden, do you get any benefit from those other than the simplicity of seeing everything in 3D? IE more elevation?

Might be because you have the camera set to orthogoraphic rather than perspective.  At the bottom of the 3D view there's a button thats kind of multi coloured, click that and see if it fixes the issue.

As for Photoshop vs Leveller..
Photoshop only allows you to make heightmaps of 8bit quality.  That's 2 times 2 times 2 (8 times)...  Which equals 256 different height levels.  One you get high elevation, it starts to look like stair steps with 8bit data.

The solution is either use the "ViewDisp" tool to smooth the stair steps, or use 16bit quality images.  Only problem is that DE doesn't import 16 bit grey scale images.  You need an image like ViewDisp will generate which has the 16bit of information spread over two 8bit channels (Red & Green).  This why your height map looks green when you import it into DE.

Leveller is the only tool I've found which lets you output this 16 bit Red & Green format.  I don't believe Earthsculpt lets you do that.  It means you can create huge mountains, as well as having small whoops because there's higher precision with the elevation.  It costs $50, but it's WELL worth it for that alone, not to mention the other things it can do very well.

I did what you said to do by choosing to save as a compiler first and I haven't seen the flat terrain issue, although I am having an issue but I'll get into that soon.

What you said about Photoshop makes perfect sense. I've made tracks with elevation changes and it was literally nothing but the stair step effect everywhere unless it was flat terrain. I've seen the tools that smoothen the picture, but it honestly seems to dull and round everything way too much in order to make the stairs to go away, especially at how bad my stair step is because I'm essentially making huge mountains. I may have to look into Leveller and fork over the money.

Quote from: JamieT on March 15, 2015, 10:22:02 PM
Flat terrain issue... You need to make sure you save as compiler track first.  Then save as beta track.  You only need to do this for a brand new track you're starting.

I guess that DE needs files located in a folder along with the *.track file for it to compile properly.  Once that first save has been made, you won't need to save as compiler file again if you don't want to.  But obviously you'll need to if you want to save any changes.

I will try that, thank you.

Quote from: mcm2boys on March 16, 2015, 09:53:04 AM
Yeah you do need to run it as admin every time. You can set this in the icon properties, under the compatibility tab.

I have not heard of the disappearing terrain before, is it possible that the camera is looking downwards and you are below the terrain? Do you see the objects on the track and no terrain or do you see the 3D view filled with the sky color? There are 2 buttons with cameras on in the navigation panel clicking on these will give you horizontal or vertical camera views, that should tell you where you are relative to the terrain or use the q/e/w/a/s/d buttons to move around.

I also noticed that on my system after testing in Reflex when i switch back to DE the 3D view will be completely white (maybe this is my system doing what yours does when it doesn't show the terrian), but if i change to another tab (log or terrain) and back to the object tab the 3D view appears as normal.

Thank you for clarifying the admin thing. And I am completely parallel with the terrain (so I'd be able to see the jumps and everything from the angle, so essentially a side angle that I believe it defaults to when you open a new track) and all that appears is the base texture with none of the height map changes of the height map I imported, but I will try what Jamie said. I'm going to "pick up" Photoshop tomorrow or Thursday and start working on it again as my trial is about to run out.

I've heard alot of people are using other programs to generate a heightmap (leveller, earthsculptor, a few others) rather than manually doing it in Photoshop and I plan on making a track with lots of elevation changes that are extremely sudden, do you get any benefit from those other than the simplicity of seeing everything in 3D? IE more elevation?

I'm using the most recent DE, yes. I downloaded it last night actually. Sometimes it'll show the terrain in-game, sometimes it won't.

Do I need to run DE as an admin everytime I use it? I've installed it by running as an admin, but i don't think I've actually opened it as an admin (i've just been clicking on the shortcut) so maybe that's my issue like you said.

And I honestly don't know what is wrong with the whole format being wrong.

I have an issue now that when I import a height map into Reflex, it'll show the terrain in the DE window, but when exported into the game the terrain will be completely flat.

I have DE and Reflex on my B drive, but I will move DE to the C drive.

Another issue I have found is that after I am done exporting the height map into Reflex, I go to test it, minimize the game and go back to DE, the height map disappears from the objects tab and if I try to change something it tells me something along the lines of not having authority or something. And then when I try to load a project it says the format is wrong. I know I'm being vague, but maybe that's because I have it on a different drive? I will reinstall it to my C drive and update if it changes anything.

I was going to install DE and everything to make a track, but I have a question about drives.

I have Windows on my C drive (obviously)
I have Steam and games on my B drive.
I have extra stuff on my A drive.

I don't remember where, and I can't seem to find it, but I read that you need Reflex to be in your program files on your C drive.

Could I make a dummy folder of the reflex directory on my C drive, and then copy the files that DE makes and put it in the real reflex database folder on my B drive? If so, do I just copy the folder names or do I need the actual files in there as well?

Thank you.

I was wondering if it would be possible to make the AI ride custom skins? So if you are for some reason playing single player you wouldn't look so out of place with the only custom skin. I wouldn't know where to start and I know this isn't exactly a common question and I understand alot of people don't care, lol.