Talk:N64 Rainbow Road (Torran)

Download

Download link???--Snake 15:25, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

It's more than likely not finished yet. --BulletMKW (talk) 16:58, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Jump vs Slope

How about putting a jump in the beginning instead of the slope? It would mimic the feel of the original more closely. invis (talk) 20:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Jumping is an indirect result of going very fast along a downward slope. Technically you could make such a jump in Mario Kart Wii as well if you had enough speed. But I have no reason to force you to go fast just to moonjump though. --Torran (talk) 22:42, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Itemboxes

With Guilmon35249vr's approval, could probably put the N64 Itembox from Retro Raceway onto the track. Wouldn't that be grand? --Michael (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

No, those itemboxes are ugly and they look nothing like the itemboxes from Mario Kart 64. Anyone who thinks they bear any resemblance need to get their eyes checked. --Torran (talk) 22:42, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Textures

Hi Torran. I would like to help you to improve this track a bit. I've noticed the colours of the neon faces look a bit weird in your port. I could resize them properly to avoid awkward colour mixtures, but firstly I need to know if you are still active creating custom tracks. --Enzeru (talk) 06:25, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you understand why they appear this way. The textures are taken directly from an N64 emulator. They are then alpha blended to produce transparency. This alpha blending uses color intensity (or the lack thereof) to calculate alpha values. Therefore, any color that isn't pure white will not be fully opaque and would therefore appear slightly dimmer. The original does not alpha blend the neon signs; they are actually black around their edges, but because the sky is so dark you wouldn't normally notice this. If you tried increasing the brightness of the textures, I already did that, and the resulting colors will begin to wash out as the brightness increases. --Torran (talk) 14:13, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Nice to know the actual reason of it. In that case, we could use images with actual transparency. Is transparency supported this way? Or perhaps a workaround to avoid this issue (even if it involves remaking the images).--Enzeru (talk) 19:03, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Images could probably be given alpha by using a mask in something like GIMP. --ZephyrNidorino (Guilmon35249vr) (talk) 19:08, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

And that is exactly what I did. I masked a color image with black to produce alpha. But colors are simply varying degrees of black and white. Therefore, any color image that you attempt to mask will inherently mask out some degree of color. This is unavoidable unless the original image was produced on an RGBA range, which it was not. --Torran (talk) 19:20, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Let me get this straight, because I may not be fully understanding this. I have done an alpha blending in a video editor program which consist in using an image with an any-colour background, then using a second image which is to be done in gray scale, being the background black and the image fully white. The result is 100% accurate with this method. Is this what you used?--Enzeru (talk) 19:53, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Check the textures used in the course model. It uses the original textures from Mario Kart 64, plus an alpha mask that I generated. --Torran (talk) 20:36, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The alpha channel is independent of the rest of the image. In fact, you can select the alpha channel and increase the contrast on it directly (white=opaque, black=transparent.) You can also draw/paint directly on the alpha channel to make it cleaner. --Jefe (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Tried that too. The resulting blend produces a black glow around the neon colors, which when drawn behind another XLU draw causes the artifact to become prominent. --Torran (talk) 20:35, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Then I think a viable solution would be recreating the images. Photoshop is very useful at creating alpha channels, since it respects "transparency levels", so while it leaves the opace figure in full white, the borders are left in gray scale, producing an accurate result in the alpha blending. I think I could do that myself.--Enzeru (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

If you want to recreate or vectorize the neon signs, be my guest. If they turn out really well, I'll probably use them and give you credit for doing so. --Torran (talk) 23:44, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Could try re-adding the missing color without editing the alpha channel by editing the RGB alone. --ZephyrNidorino (Guilmon35249vr) (talk) 00:16, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I checked the alpha channels and that's actually where the problem is.--Enzeru (talk) 08:20, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I really hope you use them because the only reason I'm doing this is because this is my favourite track of the whole series. Here's Mario's neon sign; I made the image 10 times bigger, it doesn't have colour loss when alpha blending, neither "black glow" issues: https://mega.co.nz/#!cQMHnBpY!NGXCY688jUdFzDX242Y-yC9oI9NfKotaoJoEyDiVij4 In this case you'd have to alpha blend the image to see the actual result. I thought about increasing the glowing effect but since I made the image almost limited to the edges (just like the original), it's not going to be at least easy; but then, remembering the blur effect of MKWii (or Wii in general), I think that will do the job. Please, tell me what you think. I will gladly remake the other 9 (and give you this one in layers), however it will take time to make the rest of them.--Enzeru (talk) 08:20, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

This is how it appears ingame: http://puu.sh/bOC7W.png . I think it turned out quite well, nicely done! If you are also happy with these results, then continue with the rest of the neon signs. Remember that some signs animate and you'll need to generate an alpha mask for each frame of the animation. If your images use a native resolution, try keeping them to powers of 2, otherwise I'll just scale them down. For example, the sample image was 640x640 so I scaled it to 512x512. --Torran (talk) 14:46, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Noted, I will generate them in 512x512 from now on. I like how it looks but seems too bright for some reason, and the cyan colour is looking white in your screenshot, are you applying more brightness in the track configuration for the images?--Enzeru (talk) 14:55, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I didn't alter the images other than scale them. Like I said, alpha blending does things. --Torran (talk) 15:12, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Then how could I fix that? I did test the alpha blending on my side to check for any problems and it turned out fine. How do the colours of the image look without alpha blending? Is the Wii using a different kind of alpha blending? Would giving you an alpha channel with transparency (like the ones you put in the track's textures) help to correct this?--Enzeru (talk) 15:39, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

AH! I found the problem, my apologies. I was using a shader that doubled the intensity of the RGB range, which I had created for the original images, but I forgot to remove this when I applied your images. Here's how it should look: http://puu.sh/bOGzo.png --Torran (talk) 15:56, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Ha, I'm glad that got sorted out :) now it looks fantastic! By the way, how can I contact you in private so I can send you the rest of the files later? --Enzeru (talk) 16:46, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

The best way to contact me is through Skype, my ID is: watorran . Alternatively if that isn't an option, emailing me through the Wiiki should technically work. --Torran (talk) 16:54, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

V 1.1

The version or update has no 1 Lap count. It have three laps. Pity. --Snake (talk) 14:38, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

This update is designed to work only with CTGP Revolution and thus uses the lap count modifier. --Torran (talk) 14:40, 4 May 2015 (UTC)