Stunts Forum

Hi folks,

there may by now be more car editors than cars for Stunts, but what the heck:
I want to share this tiny tool with a community that provided me with some much-desired, missing information on RES file parameters.
Please find attached a DOS-based car manager/editor that took me back 20 years.
See the included README file for details.

Kind regards
dm_s1e6

Admin edit: the original topic title was "And yet another (DOS-based) Car Editor".

Thanks!

And wooooo for Pascal code! ;D  If I find a moment I can add a couple of lines to link the graphic driver inside the main exe, so you don't need the external BGI.

Oh, that (including the BGI driver) is a good point! If you could point me to a howto, I'll gladly do the job.

(The online help states that one has to link the driver and register it, but the RegisterBGIDriver source code snippet seemingly only explains how to register a driver that is present in the file system...)

Sorry, I'm a bit busy in these days, but you can start reading here (http://borlpasc.narod.ru/english/faqs/link.htm).

If it's still confusing, I'll dig out the relevant code next week ;)

Thanks for the link, much appreciated. I'll be on the road most of next week, so there's no hurry at all, and then I'll look into it next weekend.

Ah, of course I couldn't stop myself from looking into it, and see - it was easier than expected. :)

Release Notes for this update:
- BGI driver now linked into the EXE
- Maximum amount of cars in garage increased to 32 (from 30)
- new hint regarding accuracy added to the engine screen
- more helpful RPM lines added to the RPM/velocity graph

Hi

In a past few days I contacted dm_s1e6 in order to get his approval (a big thank you) to make some improvements on this simple but great tool.
I wanted that CarEdit3 could be able to modificate of some missing parameters (like CarBlaster can but in a rawness way) and at the same time add precious "shape and dashboard" related informations to help in RES car file creation and modification.

Here are the release notes included on this release of CarEdit3 (version 3.1) (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3079.0;attach=7610):

"Add several information and handling of parameters over RES file:
       - Garage:
      Handling of unpacked car files now possible;
       - Engine:
      Visible torque raw value at corresponding RPM;
       - Gears:
      Number of gears affects shown rows in velocities table.
      Added RPM value on reference column values (RPMbounds);
       - Misc:
      Edit car dimensions and colision parameters showing summary
         of it's actual size referenced to shape "car1".
      Edit wheels coordinates parameters showing summary of
         conversion to shape "car1" coordinate values;
       - GFX:
      Edit number of positions and their coordinates on steering
         wheel dot, rev and speed instruments.
      Steering shows right "read only" symetric dot positions.
      Rev/Speedometer change number of positions and their
         correspondent cordinates with RPM values.
      Speedometer digital to analog convertion and vice-versa
         (first 3 positions are shared between both types)."



In a next release I plan to add "car swapping" capabilities in Garage screen.

Looks very cool. It would be very cool if it could work with carworks as well. As in one compleate set.

Quote from: Daniel3D on May 25, 2021, 07:31:02 PM
Looks very cool. It would be very cool if it could work with carworks as well. As in one compleate set.

Hi Daniel, thank you!

CarWorks project seems to me a more elaborate tool since it also works with 3d model and image resources, in which I have very little knowledge, but true to be told, I haven't investigate it's source deep enough to encourage me on suggest concrete implementations.  With this CarEdit3 I could learn a bit on this type of RES files and surely be more secure for helping in other solutions like CarWorks.  ;)

Hi, guys!

I'll be more than welcome to guide you through CarWorks source if you need some help and with installing FreeBasic and compiling the source. I've been making some important updates to the project, but haven't yet uploaded it. I think I will do it this evening. I could also add CarWorks to my notabug.org repository, although I don't really use version control. It's just a place that is nice for putting source code to me. The good thing is that, if you do use version control, you can create a branch easily. I normally prefer to handle the files myself.

CarWorks can already edit the unknown parameters in the RES files easily. The parameters that have to do with the 3D and the dashboard are controlled in the corresponding sections, but currently there is no way to manually enter them. I would like to make a video tutorial for CarWorks and Bliss, but I don't know where to upload that. I don't have a YouTube account and I really don't trust Google products at all, but if you guys would be willing to upload something to YouTube, I could create a video, send it and then you can upload it.

Quote from: Cas on May 27, 2021, 12:06:22 AM
I don't have a YouTube account and I really don't trust Google products at all, but if you guys would be willing to upload something to YouTube, I could create a video, send it and then you can upload it.

I have a (unused) youtube account that can be used for this purpose.
(it contains one vid I uploaded for a presentation years ago that can be removed without breaking the internet)

Is there a size limit or a special requirement on the characteristics of videos to upload to YouTube?

I believe that the video length of normal accounts is limited to 1 hour or so. But i have to check. Anyting else i can deal with with my own software if neccecery

Oh, that's plenty enough!

Quote from: Zapper on May 25, 2021, 04:26:28 PM
In a next release I plan to add "car swapping" capabilities in Garage screen.

As announced before, here is an update to CarEdit3 (version 3.2) (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3079.0;attach=7641).

Here are the release notes:

New Spare Cars "library" (on ".\SpareCar\" directory) with 44 slot car capacity:
            - Allow the backup(copy) of default cars list to spare cars list;
            - Allow get(copy) a spare car into default car list.
            Fix copy/rename/delete operation on car with unpacked files.


Enjoy.

Good work, mate!

Thanks !!!

As @ZdnBurns noticed last year, CarEdit 3.2 can't open RES files that are not in the "standard" order of resources (simd, edes, gsna, gnam (https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Car_files#Car_behaviour_.28car.2A.res.29)). Thankfully, the sources of CarEdit are available, so I had a go at working around that issue. A zip with updated executable and source code is attached below. Some notes on the changes:

• Saving converts RES files to the "standard" order. I'm not sure if that's actually a desirable feature. In any case, for the moment you can use it to, for instance, make RES files compatible with CarBlaster.
• I have tried to change as little as possible to make things work. Partly because of that, I couldn't avoid keeping a few superfluous restrictions on the RES file layout so that my changes work predictably. I don't expect those restrictions to be a problem in practice; in any case, please tell me if this version fails to load any specific car.
• To prepare the binary, I grabbed a compiler from here (https://archive.org/details/tpuve), some missing units from here (https://github.com/keskival/turbo-pascal-experiments/tree/master/UNITS), and built it in DOSBox. (I'm not really familiar with the DOS Pascal ecosystem, so please let me know if there are better sources  :))

Though I have changed the version strings to 3.3, I feel Zapper might want to check if I haven't done anything silly before we bless it as a new release.

CarWorks saves RES files with a correction relative to what Stunts does, but this does not affect compatibility with CarBlaster, so I expect it neither would with CarEdit. More specifically, the default Stunts RES files sort the chunks in one order, but the pointers in another. CarWorks sorts both in the order in which Stunts stores the chunks, so the absolute locations of the parameters remains the same.

Hello, I'me here just to announce that there is a new release of CarEdit3 3.3.1 for download.

The reason for this update was because there was some bug in the Gfx Rev meter screen that caused the Y coordinates to not be edited.

Enjoy.

PS: I think that I forgot to mention here a BIG thank you for Duplode and his contributions on this software.

The executable in my Stunts folder has now been updated, thanks @Zapper  :)

Thanks!  I've downloaded it and will be placing it with Stunts :)

Hello,

After some spare time in last couple of weeks, I took the liberty to make some improvements on CarEdit3 and release a new version 3.4 (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=12551).

Here are the changes:

- New CONFIGURATION screen for changing program settings:
    Video driver (same 640x480 resolution in "SVGA 256 color" or previous "VGA 16 color").
    Car directory path (game's car files relative to Caredit3 execution path).
    Spare cars path (spare car root path relative to Caredit3);

- GARAGE screen improvements:
    Car list navigation, identification of game's 32 cars limit and validations on management operations.
    Spare car list with folders and subfolders navigation (<42 per level), subfolder creation only on spare car root path and spare cars listing up to 512 entries (FAT16 file per folder limit) with paging support showing subfolders always on top.

- GEARS screen reorganization and added real data approximation in order to help adjusting gear ratio values.

- MISC screen with added information and editable car data for:
    Real data approximation on car dimensions.
    Validation on wheel coordinates values.
    Edit of custom mod parameters for color needle values (SVGA 256 color video mode is required to see all game's 256 color palette), to use pared with "Stunts 1.1 Mod 1.0" (Download "SKIDMCGA.EXE" file from forum post here (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3810.msg82375#msg82375))

thanks @Zapper, maybe this is the push I need to finish my car

You're welcome! Now it's capable to navigate on the recent Stunts Megapack (All cars included) (https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=4312.msg94557) that you release.  8)  (Also thanks for that one ;) )

Hi,

After suffering from lack of precision while trying to edit wheel coordinates with CAR1 related values, there is a minor improved version of CarEdit3.

In Misc screen, the wheel coordinates can now be edited with absolute values (maintaining negative conversion) with Enter key, or alternatively with CAR1 related values (as on version 3.4) using Insert key.
The release of this new version 3.4.1. can be found below.

These are some really nice features in the 3.4 series!

Here is another "small" improvement/bug fix release that avoids the change of wheel coordinates even if user choose to cancel in "Edit CAR1 value" dialog.

Thank you @Duplode.

New CarEdit3 version 3.4.2 attached.

CarEdit3 is now available from the Southern Cross downloads page (https://scr.stunts.hu/mods.html) as  well! Thanks to @dm_s1e6 for sharing this excellent tool with us, and to @Zapper for continuing its development :)

It's great!  It makes me want to do more pure DOS code sometime :)