-portfolio.game_mods.aboutmcm2-[laurence_lowe.portfolio] what goes into a motocross madness 2 track -displacement map: all terrains in the game are created by painting a 257x257 greyscale height-map. lighter pixels correspond to higher points on the terrain, and this is how jumps, banked corners and elevation changes are produced. -texture map: this is a colour map that is projected onto the in-game terrain. loz used a combination of terragen and photopaint to achieve this. terragen produces very realistic renders, which were like nothing the community had seen before. the game produces real-time shadowing on the bike and rider, but no shading is performed on the ground textures. care has to be taken that the pre-rendered shadows line up with the game's cast shadows -sky cube: the in-game sky is drawn on the inside of a giant cube. although a limited selection of skies is present with the track editor, loz has always created his own. terragen can produce stunning, photo-realistic skies, but getting those skies into the game can prove problematic. loz devised a method for rendering the necessary images to produce a seamless cube, which are then compiled for use in-game. -placement map: while trees can be randomly placed on a track by the editor software, loz preferred to customise the tree placement for realism and aesthetic appeal. this is achieved using a placement map, a 1280x1280 bitmap with different coloured pixels each representing a tree. the trees are then placed in these exact locations. -object positioning: some tracks contain miscellaneous objects (such as the fences in return to orchard valley) these must all be placed and rotated individually in the track editor. -spline: the game needs to know the path which the track takes in order to control the AI riders and penalize the player for taking shortcuts or leaving the track. this is accomplished by plotting out the spline. this is composed of three lines, one for each side of the track and one for the cpu's path. -track picture: this shows up in the game's track selection menu. the process of creating the track picture involves capturing a batch of screenshots and choosing the best one. traditional photographic skills are quite useful here. then text and graphical filters may be applied to provide extra impact. |