Using SFE:

Welcome to the Let's-Have-Fun-Tool-Explained :). After all the hard work in SGE you can now start placing walls and laying surfaces.

[All files and programs that you will need have already been installed during the SGE.exe tutorial]

Preparation:

No preparation needed, just launch SFE.exe with the sfe.bat file.

Just like with SGE, you can also use the sge.ini file to load SFE with some extra options. The track.pcx background image will work with SFE as well.

Getting To Know SFE:

Once you have launched the sfe.bat file you will see the following screen appear:

	1 = Top view of the whole track;
	2 = Top view of the active section, wall/surface laying screen;
	3 = Active track section from left to right. This shows the banking of the track.
	4= All the function keys.

What are all those functions in that menu... what do they do ? You will recognize some from SGE and they will do the same thing. Let's go through the whole list again:

As was the case in SGE.exe you can still use holding the SHIFT key and clicking somewhere on the view that you want to move [windows 1, 2 and 3] and just moving the mouse to move the views. Also still in effect, another way to zoom in, other than using the buttons, is by pressing the , and . keys on your keyboard.

Please take note of the fact that the bottom window [where you can lay your actual surfaces and place the walls] does not have the right scale. It is only a graphical representation of the section's height. The width however is up to scale.

Putting Walls In The Track:

I will refer to both armco and walls as walls in this tutorial.

Now, let's call walls and surfaces something else for a moment, let's call them items. Not an official track editing term but I only need it to explain some limits to SFE. The minimum amount of items in a section of track is three. You need at least two walls in a section [outside retaining and inside retaining] and at least one surface. The maximum amount of items is ten, which means the maximum number of surfaces is eight, because as I said, you still need at least two walls. There can be more walls in a section then two but for every extra wall you have to sacrifice one possible surface. You also have to keep in mind that adding more than three walls, though perfectly possible in SFE, will possibly cause problems in the game. Warping and other nasty stuff. So unless you know what you are doing or are willing to take a chance, stick with a maximum of three walls. Where the third wall is the pitwall for example.

For the moment, let's only put walls on both sides of the track, on the outermost height lines. I used fenced walls [first click FENCE then click WALL] but you can pick one you like yourself. When you have done that move your cursor to the bottom window [window 2] and click on one of the two grey lines at the top or the bottom of the window. These are the begin and end lines of this section. Make sure you click in the position where you want the wall to be placed. In my case like I said I put them on the outermost height lines [which are conveniently shown in both window 2 and 3 with the triangle you will recognize from SGE]. When you are not happy with the position of the wall, click on where its line touches the grey begin or end line of the section and drag to one side. I have circled in red the bit where I am dragging the line in this shot :

When you have added both walls to one section you can then go around the track with the COPY FWD function and copy the walls to all sections. That is an easy way to add walls to all sections.

Putting Surfaces In The Track:

This basically works the same way as adding walls. First you have to select a surface type from the list. I want the main look of my track to be grass-asphalt-grass with some kerbs in the corners here and there. At this point you have to know that your surfaces will be placed left to right. So that if you select asphalt and click in the middle of the section, only the left hand side of the line will have asphalt and the right part will have nothing defined yet. Because I am first going to put grass-asphalt-grass all along the track it does not matter which section I first edit because I am going to COPY FWD them around the track again.

So first I select a grass surface by pressing GRASS, locate the two innermost height lines and click on the left one. Then I select asphalt and click on the right one of the innermost heightlines. Finally for this section I add the second grass surface, this time by putting it really close to the right wall. Then I click and drag it out on top of the wall. At that point you will see the wall change color. All the surfaces have a unique color in window 2, when you get a different color it's easier to see that at that point you have two surfaces or a surface and a wall in the same place. When you're not completely happy with the location of the lines, this is a good time to do some final adjustments. You can click and drag surface lines the same way that you did with the walls. Now that I am done with this one section I click COPY FWD until the whole track has these surfaces defined. Now you're thinking, why did I first COPY FWD those walls and now I am doing the same thing for the surfaces... and you are absolutely right. Both walls and surfaces can be put in in one go and then COPY FWD all along the track. I just wanted both parts of SFE seperated so I could explain them better. Okay, so with these basic surfaces in place this is what a section looks like. I took this screenshot when I had put in all surfaces and had already dragged the top side of the final grass surface out to the wall and am now in the prices of doing the same with the bottom side. Notice the cursor and the color change where the grass is already on top of the wall :

One thing that might come in handy at this point about dragging lines when they are close to each other, or even on top of eachother like our final grass surface and the right wall: sometimes you have to drag one of the lines to the right a little before gaining access to the second line to drag that one to the left... or vice versa.

So now we have a pretty interesting track already and at this point it is already driveable in the sim. But before we try that let's do some other things first. First of all, let's add kerbstones in the places where we raised the track in SGE to accomodate for them. This is where window 3 comes in. Here you can see the banking of the track. Take a look at the below image [click for large version] :

Where you see A is where you can see that we raise the track slightly for a kerbstone. So now we can add that kerbstone to the track where you see B. I want to use concrete to represent kerbs in this track so I click CONCRETE and click on the line where I want my kerb to end. With this result :

To add kerbs in the other sections that you want them you can do the same thing. But when you want to put them left of the track beware, you first have to drag the grass to the left [remember, the surfaces are put in left to right] and then put the concrete on the line where the left grass end line is in the above image. So that it looks like this :

That's about it for adding kerbs. And now you know how to do that you can add any surface you want any place you want. You could make graveltraps on the outside of corners by using DIRT or you could add DRYGRASS on the outside of normal GRASS. One thing you might want to add is white lines along the outside of the track. You can do so by choosing PAINT (CURBING) as the surface and putting that in between the grass and the asphalt. Making it about 1 foot wide will do the trick. When you click on a surface line in the middle of that line you will see information about start width, end width and other useful things. You can use that to get an idea of the final dimensions of your track and your surfaces.

I will consider this enough surface laying for now and will move on to adding the pitlane.

Adding The Pit Lane:

First of all, your pitlane can be anywhere you can make enough room for it. But usually it is on the same straight where you S/F line is located. What you have to do is make the track wider here and add the surfaces that are needed. First I will widen the track by just simply dragging the left wall out until I have about twice the width that I had before. One important thing you have to know at this point is that there should not be any gaps in the walls between the sections. So where a wall in the previous section ends is where the wall of the current section begins. So you need to decide where your pit access road is going to be and drag the top wall surface line out to the desired track width. Then you can COPY FWD this change all the way to where you want the pit exit road to be [in my track I want it to continue on until just after turn 1]. Then you can let the left wall return to the normal track width so that there is no gap in the wall. Have a look at this screenshot of my widened track [click for large version] :

Here is a shot of the pit access road :

And here is a shot of the pit exit road:

Pretty crafty hey ! But, we now have only grass where the pitlane is so we need to put in something a bit more driveable. Let's click ASPHALT again and put that into the pitlane, leaving about 5 foot of grass between the old and the new asphalt surfaces :.

In the two sections where you pit access and exit roads are you have to put the asphalt in as well of course, but make sure you:

- drag the grass section into one point at the bottom of the pit access road section like so:

- drag the grass section into one point at the top for the pit exit road section like so :

Now all that is left to do is put some asphalt where the pit access and exit road sections end. Because if you take a look at the two above images you have a pit access road starting with grass in front of it of the previous section and you have a pit exit road that ends in the grass of the next section. That is not the way to go so let's put some asphalt in the section before the pit access road. This is as easy as dragging the grass surface out to the wall at the top like so :

Then let's put some asphalt in the section before the pit access road. This is as easy as dragging the grass surface out to the wall at the bottom like so :

That's it. The pit lane is done ! You can add a pit wall if you want, you know how to do that by now. I will just keep the track like this.

SFE Tip 1:

When you have banking in your track make sure that there is a different surface on every different degree of banking. Even if this means that you will have two or three asphalt surfaces next to eachother. Which at first glance [ie in SFE] does not make any sense but honestly it does. Because when you have to pieces of track, at say 5 and 15 degrees banking next to eachother but the area is covered by only 1 surface then this surface will be put on both pieces of track at probably 10 degrees banking. The math might be off a bit but you get my point I hope.

SFE Tip 2:

This track edit has not been very ambitious so far but as soon as you start adding more features you will probably run out of surfaces very soon. What if, for example, you already have an asphalt and a concrete surface in your track and you want kerbstones somewhere. Well, the solution is to just use one of the surfaces you are not already using as kerbstones for now. For example the DRYGRASS surface. That will assign the DRYGRASS texture to the kerbstones. Of course, it will also assign the car handling characteristics of DRYGRASS [slippery, kicks up dirt] but, when your track is completely built that can be changed. What you then do is go back into SFE and replace the DRYGRASS surfaces with whatever surface you want the kerbstones to handle as. Maybe CONCRETE, or if you want them to be just as fast as the asphalt, use ASPHALT. Then save the .sg and build a new .trk. That .trk can directly be copied into your track to replace the one that still had the kerbstones handle as DRYGRASS and now your kerbstones should feel like the new surafec type. DON'T USE THIS EDITED .TRK TO BUILD A NEW .3D and .3DO FROM OF COURSE !!!

Conclusion:

By now you should have enough knowledge to do some more interesting track editing than I have showed you in the last two tutorials. But the main thing is that I have been able to bring the most basic functions across to you and I hope I have wettened your apetite to discover the rest for yourself. Because like what I told you when we started the previous tutorial : you can only master these tools by experimenting. Good luck ! And let's move on to the next tutorial about how we should some of the other tools in the N3 Sandbox to build our track into a format that the game[s] can understand.