Tutorials

Updating the <track>.txt:

In this tutorial we are going to change some things in the <track>.txt file to set names, pit lane and some other things. The only thing that you are going to need is a simple .txt editor to open, edit and save the .txt file. I am only going to give a quick overview of the keywords in the file and what you have to change to what. If you need more elaborate information about the <track>.txt file entries then take a look at this file that the BB&B editing group wrote up and had posted at SimCyberWorld. I have included it here because it is no longer posted at SimCyberWorld.

'Initial Testing' Phase:

What I always do when I have made a new track is just to copy a .txt file from an existing track [of about the same type, if you make a short oval copy the file from another short oval] into my new track folder. Of course, renaming it to the name of my own track. And when I am still in the initital testing phase it does not need to be changed a lot. In fact, I do not want to have to bother changing it a lot in case the track will not work good enough for me and I can the project. I always change the following lines:

TNAME	Put the name of the track here that you want it to show in the race trackmenu of the game. Shorter is better.
SNAME	Put the name of the track here that you want to show up in the season trackmenu of the game, short is good. Shorter is better.
PIT	Defines the pit lane, put this in the PIT line for now: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 This will put the player's car on the S/F line and in the middle of the track. If that means you 'spawn' [... ehmmm... FPS term there but you probably know what I mean :)] in a wall, you can edit the 6th 0 in the line with increments of 20000 [which equals 1 meter or about 3 foot].

That's all the editing I do really when I have not made any .lp files yet. If I have and I know the track will be nice and will be released then I start doing some more editing in the .txt file.

'Track Almost Finished' Phase:

Now I will run through the whole <track>.txt file and tell you what to do with all of those keywords:

TNAME	We already filles this in when we were in testing phase.
SNAME	We already filles this in when we were in testing phase.
PIT	A completely new one will need to be created. See the section below called The Pit Line to learn exactly how to do that.
SPDWY	The pit window of the opponents. Value 1 is not used in ICR2 so can be left what it is. Run a 40 gallon stint and see how many laps you can do. Decrease that number by one or two to get value 2, increase it by one or two to get value 3.
LENGT	Length of your track in feet.
LAPS	Number of laps you want a single race to be at this track.
FNAME	Full name of the track, shows up in the track loading screens.
CITYN	Name of the city where the track is located.
COUNT	Name of the country where the track is located.
PACEA	If you took the <track>.txt from a similar track porbably does not need chaning. If it does, refer to the track.txt info file for needed information.
QUAL	If you copied this file from a similar type track like I said, no need to change. If not, refer to the track.txt info file for needed information.
BLIMP	Blimp camera, no need to change
GFLAG	Place on track where the green flag drops, see the section below called The Pace Alinement Lines.
TTYPE	If you copied this file from a similar type track like I said, no need to change. If not, refer to the track.txt info file for needed information.
CARS	Total number of cars that will race at the track [see number of cars in PIT line].
TEMP	No need to change.
TEMP2	No need to change.
WIND	No need to change.
WIND2	No need to change.
RAIN	No need to change.
BLAP	The pole time that opponents will attempt to achieve at 100 RELS [see below], calculated in milliseconds
RELS	If your opponents are too slow add to this number with increments of 1, decrease by 1 at a time when they are too fast.
THEAT	Tire heat, wear and/or grip modifier, if you need to change refer to the track.txt info file for needed information [when you have too little grip for example]
TCFF	Tire heat, wear and/or grip modifier, if you need to change refer to the track.txt info file for needed information [when you have too little grip for example]
TCFR	Tire heat, wear and/or grip modifier, if you need to change refer to the track.txt info file for needed information [when you have too little grip for example]
TIRES	Tire heat, wear and/or grip modifier, if you need to change refer to the track.txt info file for needed information [when you have too little grip for example]
TIRES2	Tire heat, wear and/or grip modifier, if you need to change refer to the track.txt info file for needed information [when you have too little grip for example]
SCTNS	No need to change.

Those are all the standard ICR2 <track>.txt entries.

The Pit Line:

This lines consists of 11 numbers and we use an Excell file to create the new line. Thanks to Sander for writing up that file some time ago. I have edited it a bit putting some colors in to make it more clear what to edit.

But first here is the meaning of all numbers and a nice little drawing I made some time ago where you can get an idea of what every number does. DLAT means Lateral Distance [or distance from the track center line] and DLONG means Longitude Distance [or distance from the S/F line] The DLONG and DLAT values are all given in Papy units [or '500ths' as they are referred to in SGE/SFE] where 20000 units corresponds to about 1 meter.

1 = DLAT position of the pitwall
2 = DLONG of the beginning of the pit access road
3 = DLONG of the end of pit access road
4 = DLONG of the back end of the first pit stall (player pit)
5 = DLONG of the back end of the final pit stall (15-30 feet before end of pit lane)
6 = DLAT of the middle of car when parked in pit stall
7 = DLONG where AI cars merge from PIT.LP to RACE.LP after pitting
8 = Number of pit stalls. It's the number of cars this pits can hold
9 = DLONG - Unknown - Usually same value as 10* or slightly lower
10 = DLONG of the beginning of pit wall
11 = DLONG of the end of pit wall

Now, how about that Excell file ? Well, download it first and take a look at it. Much of the same information that I put in the chart above is in the Excell file as well. As it says in the .xls file you only need to fill in the values in the green cells. So what should you fill in there ? Here we go:

1. DLAT position of the pitwall	Go into SFE and make sure your units are displaying 500ths. Click on the pitwall and take over the DLAT value to get the needed value.
6. DLAT of the middle of cars when parked in pitstall	Go into SFE and make sure your units are displaying 500ths. Click on the left pitwall and take over the DLAT value. Click on the right pitwall and take over the DLAT value. Fill in the number of lanes in the pit [usually 3] and depending on pit orientation take over the East or West value to get the needed value.
8. Number of pit stalls.	Fill in the number of pit stalls of your pits. Adding more will make length per stall shorter.
10. DLONG of the beginning of the pit wall	First, run trk23d.exe with the -info parameter on your <track>.trk like this: trk23d -info <track>.trk Then trk23d.exe will start putting out a lot of info on the screen about the .trk. When it is done, the last line will be the total length of the track [in 500ths]. Then go into SFE and take note how many sections before the S/F line have a pitwall. Then go into SGE and make sure your units are displaying 500ths. Select the sections before the S/F line with a pitwall and add up their lengths [in 500ths]. Take the total length of the track [in 500ths] and subtract this value from it to get the needed value.
11. DLONG of the end of the pit wall	Go into SFE and take note how many sections after the S/F line have a pitwall. Then go into SGE and make sure your units are displaying 500ths. Select the sections after the S/F line with a pitwall and add up their lengths [in 500ths] to get the needed value.

That's about it for the <track>.txt file.