Reflex editor - Digital Earthworks - release

[mcm2boys]

After a lot of coding and testing (thanks Bruce, al167 and Stevo) the first release of the Reflex editor is ready for general release.

It has been partly re-written to accept plugins for different titles - no surprises that the first plugin is for Reflex. It is still under construction but it is at least at a stage where it does more or less what the compiler did. It is pretty much the Unleashed editor stripped down with the Reflex compiler code grafted into it. I will be adding a simple image editor next so that some of the textures can be edited (eg the overlay mask) and the effects of the edit viewed directly on the rendered terrain.

You will need to have the latest DirectX 9.0c installed and the PhysX drivers from nVidia, you will be shown the link in the help file if they are not already installed.

You can download it from here: Digital Earthworks v0.8.0.6

As you can see due to the change in direction of the editor, targetting more than 1 title, there has been a name change to Digital Earthworks.


Bug work around for light map issue reported by Al167:

Al167 reported that wet look lighting wasn't working properly. This is because the wrong texture was being used for the Spherical reflection. If you download and save the file below and use it for the Spherical Reflection map under the Terrain tab, it should fix this problem. You will need to do this for each of your tracks, until the next version of the editor is released which will have a permanent fix.

You can download it from here: DefaultSphericalReflection.bmp


Have fun..
Laurie

[JamieT]

Hey Laurie, I'm loving that you are spending time on the next generation of track editor! Its great that Twisted Dirt still makes editors for these Rainbow games after all these years. So just wanted to say big thanks for the current effort.

Also, I'd like to vote 'objects', as the next feature for the editor

Jamie

[mcm2boys]

Thanks for the thanks..

Objects +1..

Objects and splines are my next step, but i think i will lean more to the objects, let's make more interesting tracks and then make them raceable..

Laurie

[al167]

thanks for the hard work Laurie . we wouldnt be modding reflex without you thats forshure!!!

yeah i agree, objects should be next.

i dont know anything about objects for gaming. although i do know solidworks and autocad quite well, so its gonna be a bit of a learning curve for me.
but im looking forward to it.

i hope to release one of my tracks ive been working on within the next week or so. (it will be compiled through the new editor!!)
cheers Allan

[mcm2boys]

Thank you Al for your patience and testing..

I will start with just the stock objects, custom objects will be further down the road so you will have plenty of time to practice object building. Custom objects will probably start with export from Milkshape3D, because i have a code base for doing that - plus it's a little harder to write plugins for the commercial 3D design software..

Looking forward to seeing what you can do with the editor..

Laurie

[karpuha]

mcm2boys
Hello,    Digital Earthworks dont work on XP ??

[mcm2boys]

It should do, what's the problem as much detail as you can give me..

[al167]

i finally figured out what is wrong with the lighting.
the mask map alpha isnt working right. im not shure what the exact problem is, but instead of making the terain shiny(wet look) it just overlays the image with a grey fog like look heres some images.
the first image is with the editor with a completely black alpha in the mask map,second is editor with white sections on the alpa, third is 1.09 compiler wit the same mask as used in the second pic.

hope its not too tricky to fix....

cheers allan

[mcm2boys]

Ok, I'll take a look at that and get back to you..

[mcm2boys]

I think I have found the problem, the editor is using the wrong texture for the spherical reflection map. I have linked the right file in the first post. You will need to replace the spherical reflection map in all of your projects with the new one..

[JamieT]

Hey Laurie, could you take a look at the bump map that is being generated from the rgb mask? I'm sorry, I don't have any screen shots at the moment, but there is a problem with the alignment of the bump map, to the textures. I can't describe the problem too well, as there seems to be no logical flip or rotation to the bump map's orientation. Hopefully you will see it in the code!

Cheers

Jamie

[al167]

i tried that new spherical map. its better but still not right. there is some sort of grey reflection that looks like fog rather than being shiny.
it now looks somewhere inbetween the second and last pic from before.

[mcm2boys]

JamieT

I took a look at the bump textures on a newly created track and they look aligned to me, so what did you see that made you think that they weren't?


Al167
hmm, it worked on my test track, i didn't see any fog just wet mud.. Do you mind PMíng me a link to the files that you are using and i'll try to compile it here..

Cheers
Laurie

[JamieT]

Here's a video of the track.

http://youtu.be/2r-b486MAF4

this is what I see, bump maps that don't match the textures... :/

I will email you the track files tomorrow, as I am on my way out the house as I write this...


Jamie

[cr125]

how do you use the editor (make tracks)

[mcm2boys]

Ok thnx Jamie, now i see what you mean, i thought you meant the bump texture was oriented diferently to the dirt texture - that they didn't match if you overlaid the 2 textures, but now i see you mean when they ar eapplied to the track. This is something that the shaders do. I am using the RBW shaders in the editor so you should the same effect in game as in the editor - but there isn't much i can do about it at the moment - you will just have to choose you're textures carefully and maybe overlay them with some transparency in the R,G or B channels to get a nice fade - so no 'sharp' color edges in the RGB channels of the mask.

cr125 - not trying to be smart but i could cover a lot of text about creating tracks for Reflex, i would suggest you install the editor, read the help file and the Wiki then start importing some Disp maps andsee what you get.. There's a few people around here who are pretty knowledgeable about the process already and can help you out..

[al167]

hey jamie. going off the vid it looks like your mask map alpha channel is completely white where the track is. make the mask map alpha completely black(for now until we get the "wet look"working correctly). im not having any issues with bump maping. your bump maping should look like the samples in the wiki.
great track so far its my sort of track (narrow and technical)!!

cr125- as mcm2boys said but this will help to:
if you want to make Reflex Custom tracks.....

what you need:
-twisted dirt editor
-beta slot files
-photoshop
-one spare weekend

all the info on how to make tracks each componen of a track is in the wiki section. Also read through the forums especially this one http://twisteddirt.com/smf/index.php?topic=2996.0
this one will help you the most.

you will find the old  compiler and the beta slot files in that forum post too.

watch these tutorial videos.
-the two armadillo videos on the twisted dirt downloads page are great for making the diplacement map
-boblob(another reflex track creator) has put up a video on youtube on how to make tracks for reflex.
good luck

[JamieT]

cr125 - This is the video that I watched, to help me understand reflex and it's files. It's really helpful and easy to understand. (Big thanks, boblob) -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLE8MUdV7LU&feature=youtu.be


al167 - Glad you like the track, It's scaled to AMA supercross size, with correct spacing between jumps etc. I am asuming, (and sure I read it somewhere) that 1 pixel = 1 foot for the disp map, so hopefully that is right.  But for my alpha map... that is completely black. Have you tried using sharp edges to your textures on your own track? I would be interested to see if you get the same result as me...

Laurie - hmmm I dont really understand what you mean about the shaders... You say you are using RBW shaders... Was there some shader files I needed to copy over from the reflex folders to the editor? Or are they shaders given to you by the guys at rainbow? Anyway, it's not a huge disapointment, and I can wait a while for a solution. I'm having alot of fun just making the disp maps at the moment, reflex really seems to work well on the replica scale tracks like mine. Also separate drag / slip maps is a big improvement from what they were with unleashed...

Also, on a sidenote, after my first time using the editor, I closed the help file, and now I can't get it back... Anyone else have this problem?


Jamie

[mcm2boys]

Jamie

The shaders i took from the game files, the shaders are copied to each track as part of the compilation process so it's nothing that you needed to copy. They render the track to the screen and so completely control how your textures are applied to the track. I don't fully understand them since i haven't worked much with shaders yet and what i see is the low level shader code not the high level code which makes them harder to understand. I would have to write new shaders to override the way the RBW shaders work - which is why it will be a while. 

For some reason i have removed the help file button from the toolbar i'll put it back in the next release.. In the meantime you could make you're own shortcut link to it on your desktop, it's the *.chm file in the same folder as the *.exe file.

[JamieT]

Thanks for the full explanation Laurie, I understand a little better now I cannot begin to imagine what you have to go through ( with code etc.)  to be able to do what you do for this game... Many year's worth of experience with coding I expect