Was this part got cut off to save space in minimap? Because it was quite a nice bit of road and now my layout fails at that part. Also it seems that concrete slabs become nonsolid once they are out of map bounds although that was in previous patches aswell.
Yes, I did switch off the physics on some "out of bounds" surfaces at Westhill as they were increasing the size of the map squares system. It was related to the map because my task at the time was to restrict the physical area to the actual area we want to have mapped. That is important because the map only has a limited area available on the screen, and we don't want the map to appear too small.
It also has the side effect of making the map squares smaller which can have a performance benefit (though I have not tested this specifically).
I know what you mean but that area is really meant to be "scenery".
I wonder how many people drive outside the outer boundary fences at Westhill. I spent quite a while on this taking care not remove physics on any areas that you could drive to. I wasn't expecting to find out that people like to drive beyond the outer boundary fences!
There is no physics on objects beyond the map squares system because there is no map square to register them on.
Map squares are a typical optimisation used in games, so you only need to check objects that are registered on nearby map squares, instead of running through huge lists of objects.
EDIT: If I only had know before better about this, I would had plan things much better. There is also event series planned to have on this certain layouts...
Do not get me wrong, the minimap thing is still awesome, I just could not thought this one coming...
Feelings for me gets crossed. I feel fine for having this, but also feel disappointment cutting this off. Hours and even WEEKS will be wasted to trash can... uggh... ( But, are every track area sizes decreased? )
But, you did not know this one, and we did not know either... After all, it is okay, I think I have to spend weeks again to do these, hehe
P.S. Yes, there is actually QUITE many driving out of boundaries, because, it is indeed fun to find some spots and other things to create. That's why LFS is so addict. If there is not so much actual racing, there is so much everything else gathered in this one masterpiece you develop.
Oh well, but hey, this is still a test patch, and there is always way to do alternative, after all, not bad at all anyway.
Yeah, I don't want to spoil the fun. I'll remove the code that switches off the physics in those areas, the map squares system will be the same size as before.
I'll need to figure out a different solution for the Westhill map, but it shouldn't be too complicated.
Oh this is so gorgeous! Skid marks make concrete much more "alive"! One thing I noticed - is WE car park supposed to go off screen (picture)?
One possibility would be to allow users to move the map around with mouse, maybe even zoom? OK, I'm going off track...
E: Oh and yes, off-track parts are very important. There's "Finnish Rally Server", it makes layouts which utilize most of the track but as I see everything's fine so I'm happy!