WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD
For some this may all be a bit over the top and uninteresting, but I spent a lot of time on it, and it helped me to understand how the course editor works (if only a little).
I, like most of you it seems, am intrigued by the possibilities of the Course Generator. After watching videos from people who already have the game, and videos released by PD, I was sort of confused as to how it works. I noticed that it seems to scrap whatever changes you made in one sector if you change another sector too much. Someone suggested that it just rotates the view of the track so that the sector you are editing is in a more convenient location.
This sounded promising, but I wasn't sure. I started thinking about how to test this, and further explore (as best as I can without the game in hand) how the generator works. Here is what I did:
1 Watched the video posted to youtube by Coolma777 (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGr-jPwzThM), pausing it every time the track was edited. I took a screen shot of each edit, recording what edits had been made.
2 I loaded the shots into photoshop and compiled them all into one file. I set each layer to 'overlay' so that I could see each configuration.
3 I had originally planned to try to line up the circuit, using the start location as a landmark. However, it soon became clear that this would not work, as I will explain later. Instead, the topographical lines provided a perfect means of lining up each iteration of the track.
4 I had to adjust the size and relative location of each layer (track iteration) to get the topo lines to match. Once I had lined up each iteration, I compared each one to the previous and next ones, to see what had changed. This will all make sense when you see the pics below.
First I will post the original screen shots from the video, with a caption to describe it:
1 The Default layout, prior to any edits.
2 Increased number of sectors to 7.
3 Decreased Sector 1 complexity from 5 to 3 (also edits road width and corner sharpness, but this has a negligible effect on track layout).
4 Increased Sector 2 complexity to 10 (Road width again edited, but no large effect).
5 Increased Sector 2 corner sharpness to 3
6 Decreased Sector 2 corner sharpness to -3
7 Increased Sector 3 complexity to 10
8 Increased Sector 3 corner sharpness to 5
9 Decreased Sector 4 Complexity to 0 (road width also increased with negligible effect on layout).
10 Increased Sector 4 corner sharpness to 4.
Even just comparing these pictures side by side, I found it difficult to see how they were related, which is why I decided to use photo shop. Below are the composite images of each edit's effect, along with my commentary on how the edit has effected the track:
(
1+2) This one shows the increase in number of sectors from 4 to 7. You can see from the relative sizes of the word "start" that I had to blow up the larger layout to get it to the same scale as the default layout. I didn't find anything unexpected here, with the increase in number of sectors, the start/finish remains the same, but the track is lengthened in order to allow for more turns. You can also see a few of the places that I didn't align the topo lines perfectly, but you get the idea.
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2+3) You can see that the first sector is indeed made less complex, going from 2 corners to 1. Most of the rest of the track remains relatively unchanged, only straightening out some of the corners between sectors.
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3+4) Here is where things become peculiar. When Coolma777 increased Sector 2's complexity, GT5 moves the track to a different area perhaps so that Sector 2 can make more sense with the topography.
(
4+5) Here, Coolma777 has stayed within the editing of Sector 2, but has increased the corner sharpness. GT5 again moves the course to another location. I am at a loss to explain or understand why it does this leaping.
(
5+6) Coolma777 decreases the corner sharpness back down, but the track stays in a more similar location. GT5 sort of bends Sector 1 so that Sector 2 will lie in an area with less sharp corners.
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6+7) Sector 3 is made more complex, and is 'scooted' further north to a more complex area of the map (more intense terrain changes).
(
7+8) Sector 3's corners are made sharper. We can see that the corners are indeed sharper on the new (further to the left in the above pic) layout.
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8+9) Coolma777 decreases the complexity of Sector 4. Accordingly, GT5 reorients the track so that there can be fewer corners in the Sector.
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9+10) The corner sharpness of Sector 4 is inreased, and consequently the 'straight' of sector 4 becomes a slight bend.
(
1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10) All the various layouts combined into one. Besides the obvious, that there is a lot of variety in the different layouts, it strikes me that many of the layouts are seemingly unrelated. There are at least 3 different start/finish areas.
The game seems to be under the impression that any section of x number of corners of y sharpness must be pretty much the same
. Either that or it just doesn't care.
I really think 'Generator' is the proper term here, and that calling it a 'creator' is incorrect. I wouldn't even really call it an 'editor' because as soon as you attempt to edit one Sector, all the rest are reset.
For those of us hoping to create specific things that we might have imagined, it looks like we are out of luck
. However, I am still really excited about the possibilities
. I think it will really help keep things fresh, especially if it plays a large part in GT mode (which I suspect it will, given the number of tracks confirmed).
It seems almost as if PD has made a gamble, that including a feature such as this will be more important than pre-designed tracks in the long run. With Rally in mind, I think this will be particularly the case. Rather than spend who knows how many hours it would take for PD to create real Rally stages up to their own self imposed standards, the game can create consistently 'unmemorized' tracks for us to fling ourselves around. By unmemorized, I mean that it isn't really feasible to memorize a Rally layout if it was generated 5 minutes prior to racing on it. On the other hand, if you stumble across a stage that you really like, you CAN save it, and invite your buddies to join you
.
I don't know if this post will be of any help to anyone, but I was curious to figure out to the best of my ability how the generator worked. If nothing else, I seem to have mapped out the topography of the Eiffel theme pretty well. What remains to be seen is if the same theme will always have the same topography.
As I post this, we have but a mere 2 days and 9 hours until my local gamestop opens (no frickin midnight release:censored
to provide me with my CE. Until then!
thanks for letting me know... so basically the only input the user has in the track editor is the sharpness and frequency of turns? oh and width too..
