Release The Volcano map from old St

I understand that all maps are remakes of the old ones and they are very similar, but the Volcano and the Island arent similar at all, they are very different, the only thing they have in common is that they are an island and thats it. Its a pretty cheap way to get a new map, which this game needs.

last edited by Araxp

I have a feeling with the modding community all of the original maps will be released as mod maps. It's just a matter of time.

I think the more important thing now is when they will be in the workshop and be able to use custom objects in multiplayer. Hopefully it will not be too long before this is implemented.

well first thing that needs to happen for maps on steam is for the makers to be sure they change the file names in their maps or they will have to edit them. with the original game a lot of map makers just edited the value of objects but did not change the file names. which caused major problems sometimes. maps can be buggy and possibly crash or unable to load logs, etc...

as for right now the original maps have the same file name as the new ones, so that will have to be changed at least for them to work properly.

About workshop maps... People is hyped but Im not, not at all. A good map needs some skill to make and most of maps I played in the old ST were either absurdly difficult (they were for OP modded trucks) or defined paths that you were forced to follow, you couldnt ever go offroad to try to shortcut.

Thats why I value the official maps so much, there are roads, then sometimes there are room for shortcuts, sometimes there isnt.

The same can be said for modded trucks... Most of them are overpowered and its not fun to play with them. Even the ones that are very well made graphically.

@araxp said in Release The Volcano map from old St:

About workshop maps... People is hyped but Im not, not at all. A good map needs some skill to make and most of maps I played in the old ST were either absurdly difficult (they were for OP modded trucks) or defined paths that you were forced to follow, you couldnt ever go offroad to try to shortcut.

Thats why I value the official maps so much, there are roads, then sometimes there are room for shortcuts, sometimes there isnt.

The same can be said for modded trucks... Most of them are overpowered and its not fun to play with them. Even the ones that are very well made graphically.

Most of the maps (and trucks) will likely not be up to the first-party standard, but it seems a bit shortsighted to dismiss the idea of workshop maps altogether. There will be some truly amazing maps, and the ratings system on the Steam workshop will make it easier to find them than wading through the piles of maps on spintires.nl that only have one or two comments each.

I dont dismiss the map workshop and I dont deny either that there will be some good ones but I completely disagree that the ratings will help.. The only way to know if a truck is good is pretty much, first look at the model, and if its a good model, check if its overpowered and rebalance it (99% sure it will be OP).

With the maps will happen something similar, you have to try one by one until find a good one...

People dont rate trucks and maps because they are "just the right difficulty", but if they look cool, have tons of roads/highways, etc. A lot of mods have like 900000 L tanks and 999999 points of damage... Even the very well made ones.

Whats the point of taking out the difficulty of a difficult game? Thats why I dont have hope in mods, at least in my case, they wont help at all. Unless I go tweaking the trucks xmls

Maybe we should have mod CLASSES like the truck classes. If the truck is type A max dmg =xx max fuel =zz if class B a bit higher. any mod that doesn't fit the regs goes to class X - xtra tons of unnecessary stuff.

@mistahk76 I like this idea, not really needed, but it would be useful so users can know which map is a mess and which isn't lol.

@skull0fd3ath

I was talking about making easier to get car mods not being overpowered in their class. So that the user choosing to download a mod would now that this is serious deal or just piece of junk for "girls who wanna have fun".

@mistahk76 @SKULL0FD3ATH I think both of these ideas are decent. When workshop support happens for maps, theres going to be so many shitty ones to sort through, because it isn't hard to make maps, its more difficult to make well thought out, and decently detailed ones.

@roughrider
Sadly, that's true.
Creating a map take a few hours, creating a nice one takes several tens of hours. And I am not speaking about big one...
Luckily, a lot of bad maps is possible to identify just based on few screenshots...

@justcallmeow

People modding the old maps in on PC won't help the console players at all.

Well, my suggestion for having high quality mods is to have some community moderators to check them and then move the good ones to a category like "semicertified", trucks that Pavel could check himself and then certify them if he wants.

A couple of times I have seen one of these good mods but very OP and asked the modder if he could make them no OP and he didnt want, but it was a hard "I really dont want and I dont see the point". If there is some moderation, maybe we could get the modders to release 2 version of their mods, one they like and one not OP, or even leave the tunning to the moderators, after all its just a couple of numbers (mass and torque) in the xml file.

With the maps it could happens something similar, community moderators would check them and put the good ones in a separate category.

As an unrelated note, after all the OP mods I have seen I once found one, it was an big ural 8x8, very well made (made by muzden, has very good looking trucks), but it was so underpowered it couldnt almost move it own ass.

last edited by Araxp

@araxp Moderation could solve that, but you don't have manpower for that.
Check up all vehicles will take a half of eternity and maps will take the rest and borrow some from paralel universe. If it should be done properly, based on some pattern, so it could be comparable.
I think a few checkbox with keywords is best we can hope for. Filled by modder and/or users of mod.

Well, there are trucks that arent worth checking... You see a 469 with giant tires, just go for the next. How many moderators would take? 20? 30?

An alternative, or at least a way of making it easier, is that the spintires editor published automatically the torque and mass of the trucks, and did some calculation (torque/mass) to put them in category "not overpowered".

For example, in my spreadsheet, all trucks are around 10-17 torque/mass. If you see a vehicle that is over 20 then is clearly overpowered (for example, a jeep that weights like the 469 but has the torque of a big truck would have a rate of around 50). The good part is that this would be automated and you could combine this with moderation to need less moderators.

last edited by Araxp

I have been thinking about this last thing I said about automatically classify a mod based on the torque/mass and the more I think about it the more I like it.

There could be 3 categories. One for automatically classified. Moderators would check these and pass them to the semicertified category. Then Pavel or any other dev could check these and certify them.

The only problem I see are the addons, since they cant be classified like this, but at least there are many less.
Another "problem" is that the modder has the control of the mod, so if his mod is ok and passes, then he could make it op... I however doubt that this will happen often or at all.