The one and only NoLimits 2 Topic

Any coaster that spins vertical would be 4d to me... anyway i think maybe an arrow 4d would be better since there is less coding involved, there are no realistic physics, and rotations are actively controlled. It would mean less time to develop.

Here is all things that NL2 will have because I'm bored with newton and I have no life...
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-Editor built into Simulator sharing the same display.

-Project based folder Architecture "each track is stored in a separated folder with all the resource-files required by the track (custom cartextures, scene-objects etc.) located inside." - ol

-New terrain engine, multi-texture layers, new water-reflection/refraction, and auto-plants. "The grass objects are directly tied to the local texture of the terrain, which means that there will be no grass if there is no grass layer visible. The auto-plants are optimized in a way that they will not be visible in the far distance and are generated on the fly to save memory and optimize creation time." - ol

-Dolphins and Bass in the water as fish (marine mammal).

-No more skybox (kinda), the background will be 3d... "The big advantage of this technique is the perception of depth. When you move up and down in NL2, you can actually look over that small hill in the background and see what's behind it... In NL2, there's a real horizon, not just a simulated one." - kg

He also says... "Important notice: Please note that everything I talked about is only valid for the current version of the project and that details might change during development. [kg]"

-Advanced Scene-Object features, ability to have multiple LODs, the support of LWO (LightWave) mesh-files.

Dynamic day-night cycle...

"I stopped working on the dynamic day-night cycle because of that but planned to continue on it as soon as more core roller-coaster functionality is done."

- ol

-Dynamic sky engine, high quality dynamic shadows, ability to change weather.

-New concept for handbuilding/smoothing (not said), option to build a coaster specifying the heart-line spline directly instead of the center of track.

-Tunnels through terrain feature.

-Built-in walkmode, (my favorite part...) built-in Force Vector Design Tool! Built-in Elementary.

-Switch and storage tracks that are highly customizable. Switches for dual stations, normal switches for storage tracks and transfer tracks. Different kind of modes for the switches, e.g. shifting or rotating switches. Depending on the coaster-style, even horizontally and vertically switching tracks can be chosen.

-New wind energy stations.

-Dive Machines and new rails.

-NL2: Ride for your life??? Nah.

-Option to choose multiple levels of wearing on rails, also a white stripes to reduce friction and increase life span on wheels (not that it matters).
Option to add larger boxes on high stress areas on taller hyper coasters. "rocket launch coaster", ability for each car to have individual color setup.

-4D coasters, Twisted Flying Coasters.

Don't know how long ago this was updated but according to ole, "Will there be NoLimits 2 some day?

Yes, very likely. We are around 85% done with it. NoLimits2 will be brand new version and will not be free for NoLimits1 users. We cannot say when NoLimits2 will come out. There is still much to do. It took years to finish NoLimits 1, too, so do not expect it too soon."

DIVE MACHINES!!! lol, sorry. Really the one thing I'm looking forward to the most xD

Originally posted by RideWarriorNation

(too long, didn't quote)

Skybox:

Skyboxes probably won't work very well due to the dynamic sky system. Skyboxes are still common even with 3D backgrounds, and you can do that in NL1 by making the skybox bare sky and then using 3ds to do the background terrain. (Come to think of this, I kind of regret not doing it for any of my projects.)

In any case, I hope the system's powerful enough to give a good amount of user control. Gone are the days of generating skyboxes in Terragen and then using a script to render them; there's good points and bad points to this.


3D modeling:

Not sure how .lwo support is in 3DS max and other programs, but in any case, being able to get away from the .3ds format, or at least being able to import them and adding bump/normal/specular maps would be nice. We'll have to see how this turns out and see the extent to which modelers can make use of powerful modern graphical features. True, most 3ds's will still be unoptimized, ugly junk thrown about in Object Creator or dare I say it, Sketchup, but for those who can make use of the more powerful features, it's a plus for us all.


Graphics:

I suppose DirectX 9/OpenGL2 might be as far as they're going, meaning more modern features will likely be missing. (i.e. ambient occlusion, radiosity lighting) Others have noted fairly low resolution shadows as well.

Now, this is all and good; NL2 already looks insanely good compared to any other coaster building program out there (and only nerdy PC gamers like me would notice), but by the time it releases, it'll be more behind. I think the main concern here is how scalable the graphics engine will be for future upgrades. For example, the Source engine has aged rather well as shown by Portal 2, even if it simply gets by via cranking up texture resolutions. Unreal 3 on the other hand, has been getting along excellently and has stayed up to date very well for its age. I suppose anything is upgradable depending on how much development that one is willing to put in it, but for NL it won't likely be much given that it's far more important to add new editing features. However, NL2's good start means that it'll be easier to upgrade visuals in the end, far easier than NL1 or so it seems.


Yeah, I'm bored lol. Hopefully development is progressing along behind the scenes, but it seems likely that he's quite busy on other things. Who knows.

Either way it's a step up from NL1. I'm still fairly content with NL1 graphics and they're old. So despite NL2 not being completely cutting edge, it will still be fine. LIke you said, it's the best-looking coaster software out there. Although crazy awesome lighting and such would be nice, it would probably take more time to develop/learn, and Ole isn't necessarily a game dev working for Crytek or DICE, so he doesn't have the resources (or people) either.

Still, rail wear, different spines, new trains, overhauled graphics. And folder architecture that will REALLY help, considering Track Packager still has it's errors and sometimes doesn't place and/or remove files properly. And in the end it's kind-of a mess. It will be pretty spankin' awesome to just download the zip and move the folder right where it needs to go, deleting it when you're done. No cluttered objects folder with bunches of objects, some in folders others not, that you don't know whether you really need them (aka they got packed with the game) or they're someone else's stuff.

Also, by the time this comes out I'll probably have a decent computer to run NL on so I will actually be enjoying the graphics rather than saying "crap, there goes the framerate again..."

What I was saying though, is that at this point NL2 is all well and good, and I personally consider its graphics engine to be pretty much up to date and appropriate for its purpose. (The bulk of that being users who don't have PC's that can run the very latest games.) However, I'm curious as to how NL2's engine will age over the next several years and how the team will work with that. NL1.x engine lasted a decent amount of time but eventually started looking outdated quickly after high resolution textured, shaded freaking everything became the norm. I guess none of it really matters in the end though, as I'd say I'd be spending more time in NL if all the editing tools were improved and unified. Even if NL2 looked just like NL1 instead of brand new as it is, the updated tools, multiple coasters per scene, etc. would still make it well worth it.

With that said though, immersion always helps, and as a plus, having high quality graphics seems like it would lure professionals to save money and use NL instead of hiring someone or company to do pre-rendered visualizations in Max when a ready, low-cost, real-time solution is available that looks almost as good.

I also have a few things on NL1's current engine, and that's optimization. It's a bit odd having the framerates dip below 30fps on scenes that don't even look 1/10th as good as modern games where the framerate stays above 60fps. Part of this is due to how old the engine is, as well as the general lack of LoD handling. Come to think of it, automatically generated LoD's would be a great feature for NL2 but unfortunately requires licensing/programming work that makes it impractical. (Leaving modelers stuck with the job of doing lower detail LoD's, most of which will probably neglect to and whom we can't expect to anyways; with that said, perhaps the community should create a pool of high quality objects that anyone can use, if not for NL1 then for NL2.)

He any 'more or less' up to date graphics card would do just fine.

i see people putting up a few wishlist items, we've had a wishlist page for a few years now

http://www.semeleinternational.com/Wiki ... d=wishlist

Iv actually chatted to Ole the other day, and mentioned the wishlist and he'll keep it in mind

* Due to a lot of spam, you now have to register to edit the page. I may move it to a better page title, or wiki system in the future.

I couldn't find my wish post but I'll make this easyer to understand. The ability to have realistic heavy blurry casting shadows forming on the trains while going through tunnels.(no not the ground) Heres an example of how it should look if looking at the train very closely: http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/179/shadowub.jpg

[TheArchitect]

found these today, nothing exciting but worth a mention:

http://www.coastersandmore.com/pic/eas0 ... 650_2g.jpg
http://www.coastersandmore.com/pic/eas06/gzugg.jpg

^Links... Not... Working

^^That's NL1.

REALLY cool none the less.

Sorry if this was posted before, but I hope it's real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TieIwq9wG1o

It's been a couple of years sinc e I checked up no limits.

Yeah it would be nice to have a walk mode.

[yoshifreak]

^Ole has already confirmed it in multiple posts and the video.

So I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but did anyone else notice the dialog that popped up in the video when he goes to change the weather? If I'm not mistaken, that's an Ubuntu dialog, yes?

Built-in walkmode

If my knowledge serves correct than the window that popped up looked like that because it was the 'theme' to it.

New update!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check it out for yourself!

http://nolimitscoaster.de/index.php?page=news

Cool!!! Block mode seems like it will be a good implement. Can't see the video on my phone but I think it will perform well.

The sounds sound 100% more realistic.

^ I could hear the lift. It sounds the same, but maybe he didn't get to that yet. The brakes and everything however, i agree.

Here is the video so you can see it Immediately! This is big news!

[Turbo]

Holee Sheet! this is awesome!

I didn't know that it was made through C++.

Hey, that ride in the walk-mode sample clip is Tropical Heat from the NL1.5 update... do you think we'll be able to use NL1 files with NL2? I thought I read a discussion before that this wasn't likely to happen.

^File > Save Element?