Hey, I don't know shit about NiGHTS, or I would have done it already :<
...summons Fawfulfan...
I
do know plenty about NiGHTS, if that's why you summoned me. As I'm sure you've guessed, it adds an additional element of complexity to level design. You can easily get the hang of it if you're competent at level design in general, but it makes a lot of the process quite different.
The track itself is all about calculating radii, distances, and position in the mare, recorded in the flags value of the Axes and Axis Transfers/Transfer Lines. For things like Bumpers and Loops, you have to adjust not only height but Pitch and Yaw, and it's typically done by combining flag values.
The beauty of using SRB2 Doom Builder for NiGHTS is that if you set the program to outline Things, it outlines the entire NiGHTS track for you as circles and lines. Actually, NiGHTS is slightly harder to do in 2.0.X than in 1.09.4, because none of the most recent SRB2DB configs are programmed to outline Axis Transfer Lines (
hint hint, Neo Chaotikal!). But it still outlines Axes, so it's only a minor irritation.
Anyone who wants to know more about NiGHTS can either go to the Wiki or open up an existing track to see how it was done. I recommend both, as it's hard to visualize the whole process with either one individually.
...Anyway, here's what I've been working on recently:
*Tortured Planet 6.0.
*Fan Fiction
*Math practice for college next fall. (Actually, I just came back from Student Orientation yesterday, and I had a blast.)