Mod released!

Finally released my mod to the community. Had a lot of positive feedback :) Will probably go back and fix things like create some LOD's etc soon.

Download here
http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/20615-Hakosuka-240z

Gameplay video

Should of posted this when I made it but got caught up with all my uni submissions. Here's a gameplay video of the Hakosuka racing round croft circuit :) Thinking about releasing my mod to the public soon. Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC67ByE5Z6M

Finishing touches

There are just a few thing I need to sort out and fix then the hakosuka will be complete. I was struggling to fix some issues so I made a post on the official forums outlining what i was stuck with. I added pictures to show some of the problems and I also asked if anyone could help me with making a engine file. Heres the forum post... http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/18138-Hakosuka-mod-nearly-finnished-but-need-some-help

The things I was stuck with were firstly I couldn't get the brake lights or headlights working. User Tommy78 said my naming conventions were wrong so I changed them around and it worked! I didn't know what PS or DS meant at first. They mean Passenger side and Driver side so I had both brake lights as the same object when they needed to be separate They were also named as hakosuka_HLGLO_PS but I needed them to just be HLGLO_PS. Tommy also said he could make a engine file for me. There was then some disscusion about which engine, the stock road engine or the race engine. You can have both and upgrade ingame. Tommy is currently making the race engine as he said that would be more fun.

In the showroom the car was really high. This was a problem with the pivot points when I exported. The Body needs to be 0,0 but the wheels don't matter. I had the wheels 0,0 so I was having this issue. Also some of my meshes weren't showing. For this I just needed to add them to the spinner.gen file which is the showroom file. That was an easy fix and something I figured out myself.

Something else I figured out myself was the engine sounds. When I compiled my car into the full game I didn't have any sounds apart from the wind noise. So I extracted a mod I already had installed. This was the Mercedes SLS mod. I just copy and pasted the .SFX file from here into my own mod. So now my car uses the SLS sounds. Only problem with this is you need to have that mod installed too. So I might have to find out where to add the actual sound files. 

You can see pictures in the forum post and who helped me with what. Everyone on the forum was very helpful and they all seemed to be excited for my mod as not a lot of people are making ones for rFactor 2 yet as its still in alpha/beta. After I;ve handed all my work in Id like to release my mod to the public.

So all Im waiting on now is the engine file. Once I have that I can do some play testing :)

Compiling

Now for the compiling. This bit took me quite a while to figure out. I followed this guide which helped a lot... http://www.aplinet.org/realsim/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=236:tutorial-mas2exe-modmakerchm-how-make-a-mod-for-rfactor2&catid=62:herramientas&Itemid=154

To package the files together you use a program called the MAS utility. I used this way back to unpack mas files to sort out my file structure. All the gmt and dds texture files go into one file which you do by dragging and dropping them and saving as a mas file. Then all the code goes in another and then the teams folder which specifies different paint jobs for different drivers. But so far I only have one. And then im left with 3 mas files..

hakosuka (code)
hakosuka_common (textures and gmt's)
hakosuka_teams

Then comes the packing which is done using the same program. This is pretty easy, just browsing to all 3 mas files. Setting the name of the mod which I called Hakosuka. Setting where I want the mod to go which is in the packages folder like any other mod. Then choosing what type of mod which this is a vehicle. Then pressing the package button and then install to install the mod. That green square will show if this is done without any errors. Here's a pic of what that whole process is like.

Then I tried launching the game with my mod but once I got to the loading screen for the race I got several errors...

I was confused by this for quite a while. That file was in my mas files I packaged but it didn't work. Finally I just merged the mas file I already had when I followed the tutorial with my own mas file (this was the hakosuka_common file). This got it working which is great. My file names and structure is not very good. But to change it now might break things which might take a while to fix so I'm just going to leave them for now. The only visible problem I have now is the rear wheels on the players car are invisible. But on the AI they are visible. This is quite puzzling but as the player wont be racing in 3rd person this is fine for now. Also the texture for my tachometer is the default one, not the one I made. Anyway here's what my car looks like in game on Croft circuit which is a local racetrack. I also applied a HDR preset which makes the visuals quite dramatic.

Windows

For the windows firstly I had the model them as I hadn't done this already. This was the easy step, just extruding from the window frames with a quick unwrap. Now the hard part was setting up the material. I spent around 3 hours trying to get this to work in game. The windows would either be invisible or opaque. So I played around with pretty much every setting in the max material editor to get it to work. I also did some extensive searching on the forums and read all the posts about alpha channels. This is what my material setup looked like in max.

The one setting that finally got the material working was the material alpha value which was originally set at 255. It was just the normal setup in the code like all the other objects. I made the windows 2 sided originally but this made it quite distracting while driving with all the reflections. So I just have this for the outside view. Which may look strange but you don't even notice when driving about. So here is what that looks like in dev mode. Up next is compiling all this so I can play in the main single player with all the racetracks!

Marmoset renders

Here's my car so far. Its pretty much done now I just need to do the windows. I will also be compiling the game files so i can add them to the main game.

Exterior texturing

For the exterior I baked the normal and ao maps then began straight away with texturing all the chrome pieces. I originally made the car paint red but my supervisor said it would be nice to have one with decals on too like a proper racing car so I gathered some reference for this. As for the decals I added some I saw on my reference and ones that I thought were applicable. The way I unwrapped my car allows me to have deals on both sides without them being inverted. Normally in a racing game decals would be added within the engine so they wouldn't have this issue. I learned this from making a car in and year and finding my decals were inverted so for the cars number I just used 00.

I added a Yokohoma decal as the tyres on my car are that make. The PMC.S decal was hard as my unwrap wasn't perfect so it would be stretched. So I had to recreate the decal and warp it for both sides of the car. The rest of the them were fine I just had a problem with that one. I also noticed one problem where the car has the letter S and I forgot to separate these so one one side of the car it is inverted. Its nothing major but it is quite annoying and for my next car I will make sure I don't have this issue again.