MX vs ATV Unleashed - How can we prepare

[DirtTwister]

I just figured I would kick off this new forum with a thread to discuss what we already know and what we can figure out about MVA in preparation for it's release.  I would love for this thread to be kept at the level of a real discussion.

My first thought when I heard that it was coming out for the PC was what can I do to prepare for it (beside begging for a Beta copy).

Background:

I own MVA for the XBox even though I hardly ever played it.  I bought an XBox a few months ago and picked up a bunch of used games and haven't caught up yet.  Even though I hadn't spent much time on it, I've got tons of laps on ATVOF 1 & 2, and MXU Unleashed on the PS2.

I'm always amused by people commenting about how easy any of the above mentioned games are.  Unless the top 100 people on any given track have lap times milliseconds apart the only person qualified to say how easy a track is or isn't is the fastest guy.  If it was easy you would be the fastest person.  My point is how easy a track is or isn't is purely based on how fast of a lap time you are trying to achieve.  All tracks get tough when you are trying to beat the fastest person on it.  I don't believe very many people are going to be buying the PC version for the "game" as much as a tool for online and ghost racing on as many tracks as they can get their hands on.

One thing that I also do with most games is rather than complain about it's physics, handling, view point, I try to find a way to relate it to reality so that I can play it better and enjoy it more.  For example, with MCM 2 I bring the view down and zoom in closer to the bike so that I can try to get a feel of what it's like on the bike.  I find that even though I see the bike it's more of a guide of how I should be blending with the terrain.  I find that view also exaggerates the vertical speed so that it's easier to tell when you are going to crash.  I also think it helps you appreciate the jumps more.  I make the most of what it has.

I wanted to get a better understanding of what we'll be getting for tools by doing a few experiments:

Experiment 1:

I've done a few experiments in MVA, and I would encourage others to do the same.  I am trying to get the right mindset for what things I will try when I actually get my hands on the editer. To better understand the physics I did a few experiments.  I encourage others to try this also.

1. Use the cheat code TOOLAZY to enable everything in the game. (unless you already have everything enabled).
2. Set your controller so that you are using analog throttle.
3. Set the physics to PRO
4. Goto SuperMoto (500cc). Any track.
5. Set your view to the same as MCM 2.
6. Ghost race
7. Ghost race for several laps.
8. Experiment with the throttle and brake.
9. Experiment with adjusting your weight forward and back as you turn.
10. When you think that you have set your fastest lap. Change your view to the helmet cam.
11. Race your ghost.

After doing that I think that you will see that there is alot more subtleties to the physics in MVA than in MCM 2.  A lot of potential and it should get your creative juices flowing.

Experiment 2:

1. Pick the simplest SX track. Probably the first one.
2. Select ghost.
3. Select the Trophy Truck.
4. Race in the similar view as MCM 2.
5. Ghost race.
6. Remember to use your brake and partial throttle to smooth out the jumps.  Just don't drive full throttle.  The SX tracks are slightly extreme for the trucks but you can get a feel for what the potential is.
7. Race your ghost with the helmet cam.

This gives me ideas for some tracks that should make this more fun than LeadFoot.

Here are my first impressions from doing the above experiments.

1. The bike behaves much better than the MCM 2 version.  You no longer can just hold the bike wide open and make your turns.   The bike pushes at speed with neutral weight.  You need to let off or move your weight forward or both to go around the turns.  On dirt, the bike slides with the weight forward allowing a tighter turn, but with the loss of traction.  This is most noticeable on the  tight S turn right before the finish on the Mesa supermoto track.  This behaviour is basicly the same as MCM 2 but MCM 2 doesn't do it very well and at speed this behaviour goes away completely in MCM 2 as you are glued to the track.  MVA does a better job at how it handles it across the speed range.  In MCM 2 rear wheel traction seems to be either 100% or almost zero.  There is granularity in MVA. 

2.  Traction maps seem to be much better in MVA.  The difference between the pavement and dirt is noticeable.  It will be nice if we can make portions even slipperier than the dirt portion of supermoto tracks without it turning to ice.

3. The preload seems to be easier to do and more pronounced in MVA than MCM 2.  It makes it more of a challenge to do smaller amounts of preload to smoothly blend with the terrain.  There seems to  be more of a penalty doing max preload all the time.  MCM 2 makes it where on a lot of tracks you can just blindly throw the bike as fast and as far as you can.  I believe the bike and riders reaction to terrain (ie casing jumps, whoops, etc) will make it where racing is better and user made tracks will really be able to take advantage of these subtleties.

4. Looking at the pavement in the supermoto tracks shows what to expect from textures.  The lines around the edges give a good indication of what kind or resolution of textures we'll be getting.  It doesn't seem much better than we have right now, but I want to do a test with various textures in MCM 2 and look at the pavement lines.  I think I'll try a 2.0 track to see what it looks like.

I also plan to spend some time (haven't picked which track yet) to compare the MXU bike to an MCM 2 bike on an MXU track. 

Let me know what your thoughts are.

Bruce

[MCMnut]

2. Set your controller so that you are using analog throttle.

How do you do this?  I always use Preset4 which uses a button for the gas.  Is this an XBox thing because I only have the game on PS2?  It almost sounds like you've setup the other analog joystick as a throttle. ?

Jeff

[DirtTwister]

On the XBox there are two analog triggers/buttons that you can pull with your index fingers.   On the PS2 the buttons are pressure sensitive.  When you push a little there is less throttle then when you push hard.

On the XBox  I noticed that the bike behaved differently if you used buttons vs the analog.  You can push both the gas and brake with buttons but with the analog triggers you can't wthout having the throttle go away.

Bruce

[Garasaki]

I think it would be nice, albeit probably unlikely, if we could find out the file parameters for the new track editor.  Like what size disp maps (512x512 still?), how the perimeter tiles work, etc etc etc.

IMO the thing that sets MXU (which is what I have for the XBox) clearly apart from MCM2 is the turning physics.  Especially in tight turns.  My fav part of MXU is taking the inside line of a corner with a brake slide technique, then powering out of the corner and seat bumping the jump out of it.  It feels terribly realistic, and is completely impossible in MCM2.

I agree with many of your observations about traction being more gradient, which seems to make a big difference in gameplay.

[DirtTwister]

Kamshaft, DaveU, and the active TD members have put together a list of questions that was sent to Rainbow.  We have asked for more details on the same things that you are asking.  We haven't got a reply yet.  Coming up with the questions to ask made me think that I could do some of the homework with my Xbox.

I also like how the bike works over the whoops.  I think it's funny to see the MVA rider in that position.  Not that it's funny but it seems funny after watching the stiff MCM 2 rider for so long.   The rider and bike reactions to terrain, casing, stoppies, etc is nice to see. 

I spent some time riding the MXU bike and then switching to MCM 2 and riding the same MXU track.  The MCM 2 bike felt like it didn't have any suspension and you could so over jump everything easily.  You had to work it with the MXU bike to make some of the jumps.  The MCM 2 bike would come along and jump about 30+% farther.

Bruce

[VMX_SKYmx99]

Garasaki....

257X257 is the size we have now.  I would love 512x512 or higher.  

Bruce let us know what Rainbow says.

[Kamshaft]

I sent off the email last week, let's all keep our fingers crossed.

[Garasaki]

Lord wouldn't it be great to be a beta tester!!!

[RXR_MX322]

Love to be a beta tester! Also tell me we can use a joystick god i hope & pray. When can we have some screenshots???
Rode alot with game pad just hate it period! Bought every joystick i could find for a x box all of them had issues with settings!

[AUS_Twisted]

Love to be a beta tester! Also tell me we can use a joystick god i hope & pray. When can we have some screenshots???
Rode alot with game pad just hate it period! Bought every joystick i could find for a x box all of them had issues with settings!

I answered that about Joysticks in the other thread. To cut it short, any controller that properly supports Direct INPUT under DirectX should work no problem. The amount of adjustable settings for controller setup MX vs ATV has in game is another story.

[Kamshaft]

Unfortunately, I have a few fears (from the MCM2 dayz) about what Rainbow is going to do with the game and after the launch.

Are they gonna patch the game, if someone figures out a way to cheat?   I know in the past they didn't patch their games.  I didn't like that. Not Cool.

Fixing our editor, and not just the game either.  Patch the editor AND the game if needed.

I just don't want Rainbow letting us down again. That's all.

I'm sure it's gonna be fun after six years playing again!

[VRT_RIDEBLUE]

Something that I like about the Nascar 2003 by Papyrus is if guys opened up the power (no restrictor plate) then you would smoke the tires, so it was really no advantage to have more power and go faster, but the problem with MX games they dont wear tires, I would like to see if guys get more power it would make the bike unrideable. I know that is not the only cheat for mcm but there has to be a way to identify these  (remember Abc etc etc in mcm1)  and a place to race where you could see the hp settings that were used by each player after the race would be nice too. But the bottom line is the reason why guys quit mcm was the cheaters, it will always happen, just hope Rainbow does the best they can.

[AUS_Twisted]

The only 2 stock tracks that use a restrictor plate in Nascar Racing 2003 are Daytona and Talladega, if you changed the chassis to normal (Speedway chassis) in the track.ini you can average around 30 MPH or more faster then guys in a big draft train on restrictor plates. But every client that joins a server uses the hosts track.ini settings of each track so it's the same for everyone.

[Metla666]

In rFactor if your files don't match the ones on the server,boomfa.out you go.

Though I gather a program run seperate from the game to change settings after launch would get around it, Code is able to be hacked, and even the games with the biggest budgets and most to lose still have cheaters.

Think it depends on how much the community embraces it, and boatloads of people used the speed hacks on MCM2, but then again, on the otherside of the coin not one single action was ever taken to prevent it happening by those who should have given the go-ahead for releasing the patch.

And then of course we had the XP speed bug, that was massive bad luck, and a number of well known players jump on the hack bandwagon.

Damn, MCM2 was a mess.....

[DirtTwister]

Startgate actually locks certain files so that they can't be changed after the launch.  MCM 2 doesn't read certain things from the profile after it's launched either, so there are ways to prevent cheating.  In MCM 2 we now have a way to completely replace all bike settings to control what people have. We could force all bikes to the same weight, and powerband.  I'm hoping we'll be able to do similar things with MVA.

I'm the one that told Robb about the problem with the powerbands in the profile.  When I found out that they might not release a patch I sent an e-mail to several people at Microsoft complaining.  The e-mail addresses I used were all ones that had been on e-mails that I got during the beta. 

What surprised me the most was that they seemed to be more concerned about where I got the internal e-mail addresses.

This really made me mad, but no where near as mad as what happened because people were calling the Microsoft support line.  I wish I could tell people about that fiasco.

Bruce

http://dirttwister.com/mcm2_powercurve_bug.html

*#*#* hit the fan the next day.  The patch ended up being written but never released.

Bruce

[ToaDsiX]

I'm hoping we'll be able to do similar things with MVA.

Im sure you will. With what you guys did with mcm2 you can probably go leaps and bounds beyond that.

[Metla666]

The emails are a real eye-opener Bruce, I knew weird things were going on behind the scenes but that puts a face on it, They should have given you and your crew a cut of every game sold.

[AUS_Twisted]

What annoyed me a lot also was that there was known bugs reported in the beta's which were never fixed in the final release, And to top it off the so called patch dissapears into thin air as explained above.

When I beta tested 4x4 Evolution for Terminal Reality, I found a big bug near the end of testing which was causing the trucks to slow down online randomly for no reason at all. Those guys worked really close with me to figure out the problem which I eventually did, I told them after alot of testing to figure out that one bug it had to be something to do with the animated radio aerial moving around from bumps and jumps etc and sure enough the devs told me that was the problem in the end which was fixed. Anyway the whole point to that was those guys wern't going to release the game with known bugs before release no matter how big or small. I sure hope Rainbow/THQ work like that now.

[TMD_MickyD]

Will we be able to use .SLT files with MVA?

I don't think this issue has been adressed, or at least i couldn't find it. But if it doesn't then theres going to be a strong demand for a converter. And if it doesn't then will Rainbow be providing us with a Max plug in so that we can create our own objects and then what version of Max ( i asume it will still be Max ) will we have to use with this plug in?

[DirtTwister]

We have no idea about any of your questions.  We hope we will be able to do similar things with MVA that we do with MCM 2.  So far Rainbow/THQ has shared no information with us.  We have been asking. 

We have sent a list of questions to Rainbow in the hope of getting information prior to the release of the game. We had hoped that they would be interested in helping out the existing sites get ready for the release.

Bruce