My cart keeps getting stuck!

[Pianodan]

Specifically, it's getting stuck on changes of gradient. When a hill goes from flat to steep, or steep to flat, or even a shallow gradient to a steeper one.

Are there any guidelines for either a ) how much a change of gradient the cart can take without getting hung up or b ) how to adjust these areas so the cart isn't getting stuck. Is there something I should be doing differently with my path_tracks?

 

[eerieone]

cart gets stuck on anything that also the player can collide with
displacements, objects, nodraw....
play with the height of the path_tracktrain at the beginning or end of the slope
you could also give the collisionbox of the cart more space to the floor

as always, look at decomiled maps to see how it was managed, e.g. badwater (slope up to cp3)

 

[Pianodan]

I guess I'm confused about how these three elements interact:

The size of the collision box around the train
The height of the path_track above the terrain
The "height above track" parameter of the func_tracktrain

If the path_track is well above the ground, will the train fly?
If the "height above track" is high, but the path track is too low, can it get stuck while appearing to be in midair?
If the collision box is too small, will the train get stuck or just appear to be swimming in dirt?

 

[eerieone]

The size of the collision box around the train
The Cart-Prop itself has a collisionmodel, and it also includes the wheels in a rough way. See for yourself in the modelbrowser so you know how the actual collisionbox looks like.

The height of the path_track above the terrain
The "height above track" parameter of the func_tracktrain
not certain about those two

what i did was
*tweak until cart moves at perfect height on the tracks on a plane surface
*make a help-brush for the optimal height, apply this height on every path_track
*tweak the height of the path_track on the start/end of a slope up to give it wiggle-room

when checking if the cart doesn´t get stuck, ride the cart... sounds stupid, but often my cart got stuck when i was on top and went along fine when i was just standing besides it