Turbo Sliders Track Editor Manual

suomeksi

Sections in this manual:

General
Editing a Track
Making a Good Track
Command Line Parameters

General

Starting

To edit a track, either load an existing track or create a new one (by default, they are put in the "tracks/new" directory). Navigate in the menu using the arrow keys and enter. Advanced users might prefer using command line. When editing a track, exiting is done by pressing Esc and confirming with 'y'.

A normal track consists of two files: a trk file and a pat.png file. If you copy a track to another location, remember to copy both these files. To rename a track, rename the trk file, load it with the editor and save again.

Before you distribute your tracks...

It is fairly easy to make tracks with the editor but it may be harder to make a track that is actually good. When you master basics, be sure to understand everything in the Making a Good Track section before you distribute your tracks to anyone. Making changes after the track has already gone to other players causes problems as people may have different versions of the track.

Two most important things are making sure the track works in different screen modes and that the control lines are correct.

Editing a Track

The editor has four edit modes which are selected with function keys: tile mode (F1), control point mode (F2), object mode (F3) and lightmap mode (F4). The track is saved with F6. Editor is exited by pressing Esc and confirming with 'y'.

Tile Mode (F1)

In the tile mode, tiles can be selected, rotated and added with the arrow keys or s/d/f/e (with or without shift+ctrl) and mouse. Last addition can be deleted with backspace. Space performs "add tile before the last tile". That can be used in special cases, for example when you want to add a straight track tile below a previously added curve tile. Holding Alt when moving mouse keeps x or y coordinate fixed. Many tiles have precalculated lighting which does not allow them to be rotated.

You can fast-select certain tiles with number keys 0-9 (with or without Shift).

Control Point Mode (F2)

In the control point mode, new control points can be added by clicking two points in the track. The control points are either vertical or horizontal line segments which the cars must pass in the correct order to complete a lap. The first control point is also the starting line.

Make sure that:

There is enough space for the starting grid (do not place any obstacles in it).
There are not any shortcuts.
You cannot accidentially miss a control line by going off-road or driving curves too tightly. Remember this especially with the starting line. Make it much wider than the road unless there are obstacles near the road.

Object Mode (F3)

Object mode is like tile mode. Objects are bridges and such special tiles which are drawn on top of other tiles. Objects have some overhead during the game so do not overuse them.

Lightmap Mode (F4)

Lightmap mode can be used to modify the appearance of the track by editing lightmap on the track. There are four parameters that can be changed with keys s, f, d, e and arrows. Just experient with the different settings to see what can be achieved or turn lightmap off with 'o'.

Making a Good Track

Use time and energy to finish your tracks before giving them to anyone. It is easy to make an otherwise good track bad if you forget some basic rules. So make sure you understand everything in this chapter.

Test different screen modes

Because of the nature of the track file format, tracks may look a bit different on different screen sizes and zoom levels. To remedy this, you must finish your track by looking it at different modes and trying to fix things that look bad. After having made a track in the default 1.0 zoom level, try zoom 2.0 (command line option -scale 2.0). Fix things that look bad, then do the same with 0.6, 0.8, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6 and 1.8. If you aim for perfection, you can also check the track with different screen modes (for example, -x 1024 -y 768 or -x 480 -y 300) and with fit-in-screen. This may be tedious but after all, it should not take that much time compared to what making a good track has already taken. Also check the pattern file (pat.png). Especially, see that there are not any small areas of grass where there should be tarmac.

Make good control points

Place your control points so that there are not any shortcuts. Shortcutters are clever, think hard to see all possibilities.

Try to make to control points such that it is not easy to accidentially miss a control point. For example, put a solid obstacle in the inner curve and make the line long enough so that it is not possible to go around it. Make sure that it is only not allowed to go around a U turn driving the wrong direction. Also make sure that it is not possible to miss the finish line which is the first control line you insert. Make it wider than the road.

Do not make your track too far out

It is possible to make very odd tracks. This may seem funny but no one probably wants to actually play such a track for a long time. Creativity is of course good, but try not to make the rules of your track too different from the other tracks.

Tips

Normally, a track is made in four phases. First, make background with different terrains. Then, build the track itself. After that, add obstacles and finally, set lightmap. It is good to check the track in different screen modes after each phase to detect problems early.
When you tile background terrains or the track tiles, make them overlap slightly. This way, different screen modes do not cause so much problems.
If the track maker is not correct, you can edit it with any text editor in the trk file. By default, the maker is made to be the first player name you have entered in the game.
To correct errors, it may be necessary to remove or change tiles using a text editor. Each tile addition is on its own line in the trk file.
If you rename a track, you must open and save it with the editor at least once. Otherwise, the pattern file is not used, since the trk file has reference to the old name. This makes track profile unavailable and may cause track record problems.
To get curves look better, first add a curve tile, then add straight track tiles below the curve tile by using spacebar.
Use Alt key frequently to be able to put tiles on the same line.

Command Line Parameters

Usage:

editor [-x <size>] [-y <size>] 
       [-maker <name>]
       [-fullscreen 0|1] [-tx <track x size>] [-ty <track y size>]
       [-zoom <val>] [-fit <0|1>] [-save 1] <track name>

-x, -y: the window size.
-maker: specify maker when creating a new track.
-fullScreen: whether to be in full screen mode (also with -f).
-tx, -ty: the track size when creating a new track.
-zoom: zoom level (also with -z)
-save: if set, the loaded track is immediately saved and editor exists. This way, third party editors can generate hash and pattern information easily.

If the track name is an existing track, the editor opens it using its size. Otherwise, a new track is created with the given name and track size. If -tx and -ty options are not provided, default size is 640 x 400. If you open an existing tracks, the tx and ty options have no effect. If you want to change the track size afterwards, you will have to edit the track file manually with a text editor.