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(03-26-2020, 09:52 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-26-2020, 09:42 PM)samsepi0l Wrote: [ -> ]I only see it reversed on the right side of the car in your picture.... not the left?

Yes, that is the problem. Textures are reversed by default on the right side.

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To clarify, they are textured to appear correct when viewed from one side. It is like a flag where on the other side there would be a mirror image. So, one has to be careful not to have walls that can be seen from both sides, unless it's a plain texture (like concrete) where it doesn't matter.

I'm getting older- I miss things when I read them.

I still get the N2 to ICR2 converter telling me sometimes that there is an error. This is frustrating because you have no idea why, especially if the track had compiled correctly up to this point and you can open it in OPE.

I had a suspicion that it has to do with the walls and fences. So I did some experiments to see if I could reproduce the error:

1) Made all the walls with NO fence - did not convert
2) Made all the walls WITH fence - converted OK
3) Made all the walls with no fence EXCEPT one fence - converted OK
4) Same as above, but turn off horizontal fence in TRK23D - converted OK

By the way, I attempted in between other trials, to make all the walls with NO FENCE and I got the error on all of those tries.

I will pay more attention next time the converter crashes. I suspect there is more to this, because I had it crash earlier when attempting to convert a complex build that I had made in SFE which I had to scrap because I was unable to get it to convert again.

Here is the .mrk file (linked to .sg file) content how to from Pavel :



(If there is some overlap the texture near the bottom of the .mrk will be the one in use.)

Thank you Eddie! This is helpful.

Nice work, it looks really helpful for all, who want to start track editing.

(03-25-2020, 10:17 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]I would appreciate any feedback or corrections from the masters!

I don't see me as a master, but I try my best.

(03-25-2020, 10:17 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]What does this mean for scratch built tracks? As far as I know, OPE for some reason does not allow you to save the locations of TSOs, so if for some reason you have to rebuild the SG, TRK and 3D files again, you lose all the TSO information unless you go through the above process to save the list inserts in 3DOEd etc.

You can do it also like this.
Save your old .3D file and put it in a different folder.
Make your changes in your track, build the files and open the track in OPE.
Place an object in OPE and save the track. This will create the object list in the .3D file.
Replace the object list in the new .3D file with the object list of the old .3D file, and make a new .3DO file. The object list is located at the beginning of the .3D file. The first part is the list of the objects with their positions (__TSO0: DYNAMIC 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, EXTERN "hill1", the second part the list of the track sections, with the visible objects from each section (ObjectList_R22_0: LIST {__TSO0, __TSO1}).
If you don't change the layout in SGE, you can replace both parts. If you change the layout, then you may have a different count of track sections, so you can only replace the first part, and you need to put in the object visibility manually.

(03-26-2020, 09:39 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]The textures are defined in the .3D text file, but there are lines of code for possibly hundreds of walls, where it is not obvious which wall is where on the track, except that the walls are defined in sequence by track section, possibly from left to right.

I imagine one way to deal with this is to open the track.3DO file in 3DOEd, use that to discover which section I need a texture changed, and then go into the correct spot in the .3D file to make the edit before recompiling the .3DO.

It appears that each track section may be identified in the .3D file as a main track section and then a sub track section. For example, the sections right after the start/finish line may be "sec0_s0" and "sec0_s1", and then followed by "sec1_s0", "sec1_s1" and so on. It looks possible to figure out both of the section/sub-section numbers in 3DOEd if you click on any object or polygon associated with that track section.

There are 3 different datas, which show you the location.
Papy units ([< -4626288, 7467217, 24000 >],) are the same coordinates, which you can see in 3DOEd.
Section numbers and dlong values (% Outputing section from dlong = 0 to dlong = 344256.) you can see in SGE, when you select a track section. The track sections in the .3D file are the same, as the track sections made in SGE. The number of subsections depends on the length of the track section. Short sections have only one subsection, long sections have more.

(03-26-2020, 09:39 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]The other complication is that textures are reversed for the walls on the right side of the track, as seen in my screenshot. I wonder if it is easier to fix in the .3D file, or create texture files that are mirror images. The more elegant solution seems to be to fix it in .3D (to avoid duplication of texture files) but that would take additional coding. (Edit: As proof of concept, I manually flipped the textures on two of those wall textures, as you can see in the 2nd attachment. This process is not scaleable as I can't imagine having to do this hundreds of times.)

Perhaps I can write another Python script to parse and rewrite the .3D file to perform some basic functions like making all the walls the same texture, or flipping the texture coordinates for the walls on the right. However this would probably be a much bigger effort than my previous coding projects for ICR2.

I think, it makes much less effort, to make a mirrored image too.
To make all textures the same, you can make a text search in the .3D file for the the different texture names and replace all to the same.

(03-24-2020, 05:38 AM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]- I have noticed that N3 Sandbox includes some default wall textures and ground textures (specifically sand) which are the wrong textures. So if you create a new track via N3 Sandbox it will look particularly bad until you manually fix those textures, including bringing in a horizon from another track.

You can also make your own textures and your unique horizon, just making new .MIP files of the same size like the originals. So you don't need to use the color palette of the source track, you can use your own.

Dennis thank you for all your responses. Really great tips in there.

One comment you made about 3DOEd using Papy units had me looking into this, as I had previously encountered the problem of 3DOEd being in feet instead of Papy units. It turns out that v2.0d is in feet, but v1.0i (which is the version that is linked from the Tutorial) is in Papy units. I have since gone back to v1.0i because I also have the problem that v2.0d did not allow me to save a 3DO file for some reason.

Over on the other thread, I posted the new version of Caesar's Palace. Let me go through some of my observations up to this point:

- Today's breakthrough was figuring out how to emulate a joystick using the keyboard, in DOSBox. To do this, you just push Ctrl-F1 to bring up the key mapper, and then map the joystick X and Y axes to the arrow keys, as well as the trigger keys to whatever you like. You do have to play with the joystick settings in the DOSBox .conf file to prevent the "joystick" from being out of control.

Having a "joystick" control makes it MUCH easier to place, move and rotate objects. One should not attempt to manually code object locations like I described previously when I said I had no joystick.

- Objects were from the stock ICR2 Laguna and Australia tracks. Both were up-converted to N2 using the ICR2 to N2 converter. Then, I extracted sunny.pcx from my "N2" Laguna as well as the asphalt and sand textures. As I believe is mentioned in the Tutorial, it is smart to choose your palette to go with your asphalt texture, otherwise you may end up with a ground that loses a lot of color depending on palette.

- Bringing objects from the Australia track required me to do a little color correction on the textures, because of the difference in the sunny.pcx that went with those objects. To do this, I used GIMP. First, open sunny.pcx in GIMP, then duplicate and save the colormap for future use. Then, I would 1) use WinMIP to convert a .mip file to .bmp, 2) open the .bmp in GIMP, 3) convert the image to RGB, 4) convert it to indexed color, selecting the colormap that I saved earlier, 5) save it to .bmp, taking care to save it with the compatibility setting "Do not write color space information." Then it should be able to open in WinMIP again and converted back to a .mip.

Added a bridge to Caesars Palace. Here were my steps:

1) I found a bridge of suitable type and length at Toronto. So I up-converted Toronto and opened the TORONTO.3DO file in 3DOEd to identify which 3DO file the bridge is. It turns out the bridge is comprised of the unfriendly names _060.3DO, _049.3DO and _044.3DO with the associated texture being TBRIDGE.MIP. Copy all these files to my working folder.

2) Using WinMIP I opened the .MIP file, converted it to .BMP. Did my texture work in GIMP and converted it to the sunny palette that I had chosen for this track. Convert it back .MIP in WinMIP. I noticed that WinMIP cuts off the bottom few pixels for some reason, and the 3DO file does too. So you may need make adjustments to your image if the proper alignment is important to you.

3) Upon examination of the 3DO files in 3DOEd, I noted that all 3 parts fit together to form a bridge - the left support, center bridge, and right support. These files are in the correct coordinates relative to each other - i.e. the left structure is off center axis to the left, the center bridge is centered, and the right structure is off center axis to the right.

4) Because of the above, I import all 3 3DOs in the exact same place on the track, and they will fit together. Also, if I need to rotate the bridge, I only rotate the center piece, and then go into the .3D file to manually type in the amount of rotation for the other pieces.

A lot of steps just to bring a simple bridge into the game!

(03-29-2020, 03:16 PM)checkpoint10 Wrote: [ -> ]A lot of steps just to bring a simple bridge into the game!

But you do realize how many steps you (we as a community) are growing by leaps and bounds here....

Just curious- why did you chose this ceasars palace track to learn on?

do you think that the defunct version of rio is savable?

I am so jealous as you are where I wanted to be.

(03-29-2020, 06:31 PM)samsepi0l Wrote: [ -> ]But you do realize how many steps you (we as a community) are growing by leaps and bounds here....

Just curious- why did you chose this ceasars palace track to learn on?

do you think that the defunct version of rio is savable?

I am so jealous as you are where I wanted to be.

Caesars is the perfect beginner's track - flat, small, few objects. I needed a project where I can move quickly from one stage to the next. Also, thestig88 already made the outline of the track so I thought let's not waste that effort.

Still not sure what the problem was with Rio, but I feel more equipped to look into it again compared to a week ago!

I think you can do track editing too! If you can do a full Reynard carset, you already have a lot of basic knowledge needed to make the jump. Maybe you can look into Tamiami Park - that would be another good beginner's project.

I used to think there was no way I could do any track editing but I have since learned that it is within reach of anyone sufficiently determined. Of course not at Pavel's level at the beginning but Tjerk's Tutorial will take you pretty far and the forum does a good job clarifying any gaps.

I've been trying to utilize all the tools that the community made over the years. The only shortcut I personally made is a script that automates the packing and copying of some files, but that can also be done with a batch file for folks who don't want to program anything.