Track editing progress notes

[samsepi0l]

Wrong 3DOed version??

I have always used version 1.0i by Dave Noonan

For some reason every now and then this happens. I tried it again today and it worked fine.

[samsepi0l]

I want to say that it feels good to do a track, and be wiser about how I do things. It feels good being more experienced at this. I do not any longer think I am a beginner. For example, fixing drawing order problems used to be very frustrating. I would get upset. Now I get them resolved so easily. I feel like I understand what is going on now and I'm becoming wiser. What used to take me hours takes me only minutes now. I am so happy to be at this point- and you all helped me get here!

[checkpoint10]

So I'm trying to complete tamiami based on the stig's current work.

In current status the track has no objects and turn 1 is not right. First I have to fix the geometry and I'm already having problems.

Bare with me, because I'm a complete n00b and I'm sure there will be a painful frustrating learning curve.

"Complete n00b" to track master in just 2 years!

[samsepi0l]

Has anyone come up with an efficient way of drawing little hills and such? I figure I will use a few polygons and just map them with the regular grass texture.

[Pavel 69]

I usually copy track outside points where hill should 'connect' with track. This is bottom set of points. Then take this set of points and make additional set but with some offset. It will be points for the top of the hill. I arrange everything into polygons and make 3do file. Then 3doEdit I finetune points placement to make hill looks good. All changes I transfer to 3d file to make new 3do after.

This is way of editing for simple small hills. If tack is surrounded by hill all around (like some ovals) it's maybe better to extract hill part from track 3d file. I make copy of track sge file. In SGE program I add altitudes outside main track where hills should be. In SFE program I add grass surface to the hill part and then create 3d file. In this track 3d file I find track sections where I made hills parts and I copy only this grass parts to the new 3d file. Because track has LOW, MED and HIGH drawing sections I copy hill parts from one of them depending on how good looking hills I want to have in game. Now copied grass polygons need to be gathered with LIST function into objects.

[checkpoint10]

yes- I couldn't get the AIEdit (the program) to work with denver.. I need your help here...

Moving discussion to the track editing thread. The way I got AIEdit to work (I used it to adjust my previous AI that had a lot of issues after I converted it from replay):

1) I have a separate detroi91 folder where I have detroi91.dat + the standard track files such as LPs and TXTs + the TRK file (which normally is in the DAT file but I have extracted this file and put into the folder).
2) I run AIEdit and open the .TRK file that I mentioned above
3) It should automatically open the RACE.LP as well and there is a separate window for it that shows DLAT, DLONG, longitudinal speed and lateral speed. So I would just manually change the DLAT where I need to.

Remind me where you are stuck and maybe we can get you going on AIEdit which might help you on Denver and Detroit.

[samsepi0l]

Remind me where you are stuck and maybe we can get you going on AIEdit which might help you on Denver and Detroit.

Thank you- I got it to work.... is there a way to bring up any of the other LP files other than race?

[Pavel 69]

Yes, go to file - open and choose lp file you want to load.

[samsepi0l]

So- I am excited about something that I learned last night but at the same time I would like to see what you all think...

First - thank you all for your help getting me going with AIEDIT. I definitely see the advantages of having this program.

It appears the distances are in metric- is that right? I also see it seems like the "scale" option shows little lines when it is turned on which seem to me to show one hash mark every 3 LP records.

Anyways- I loaded up my AI that I made for Detroit, and it's weird how they seem to dart inward before the apexes. (Checkpoint10, I'm sure you saw this as well) I corrected this with trial and error manually in AIEDIT so they look more smooth in it- but I don't like the trial and error process. It's too manual and cumbersome.

I wanted a way to do it mathematically. AIEDIT allows us to cut and paste large sections of the LPs which is nice. I took a troublesome corner in Detroit and I cut and paste this into excel. Next- I used the scatter plot to join some of the good points with a POLYNOMIAL function- and I got an amazing shaped smooth curve! I want to figure out a way I can precisely get values back into the LPs. I am entering this message from home (I did this at work last night) or I would attach a picture. I think the prospects are good, I just need to learn how to make it work.

You know what would be the ultimate LP fantasy? What if we built a tool similar to AIEDIT, but it allows us to manipulate the values with the mouse- almost playing with "spline" curves where we can make part of the curve tangent and we can manipulate the points it moves through. The idea just gives me goosebumps!

[checkpoint10]

I'm not exactly sure, but I guess it is in metric since the documentation and the height option is in metric. I would have preferred it to be in feet or even 500ths to better align to the game.

That is cool that you can get Excel to make a smooth curve.

Yeah it would be great to have a tool. After I am done with Detroit, I am planning to change focus to making better tools. Not that I'm retiring from track editing but life just keeps getting busier so I would like to refine my workflow and make tools to help create tracks in a really short period of time.