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NFS 2Torcs beta 1.05 by Raul Bini
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NFS1 2Torcs beta 1.05 by Raul Bini
e-mail: 2torcs@gmail.com
Homepage: sites.google.com/site/2torcs/
"The Need for Speed 1" and "The Need for Speed Special Edition 1" Track Converter
for TORCS
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Disclaimer
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This free program comes with no warranty. Author is not responsible of any
damage that the use of this software may, probably not, cause. The software has
been tested on three different hardware and it has worked properly.
NFS1 and NFS1SE still under copyright of Electronics Arts, You may not
distribute the results of the conversion process unless EA give permission. You
are only allowed to convert, and play, the NFS1 and NFS1SE tracks with TORCS if
You own a regular copy of one of those games.
I've used the files that comes with "Need for speed 1 Special Edition" to
test the programs. I do not assure that the conversion utility works with every
version of the games. Do not use it with custom made track, probably the program
will give a warning and it will stop the conversion. If you are interested, those
tracks generally are the same with huge slopes (sometimes a vertical wall instead
of a road) that made the cars fly or stop.
I'm not a c++ programmer and I made this for my own fun. I hope You will
enjoy it.
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Definition
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GPLv2 General Public License Version 2
NFS Need for Speed
NFS1 Need for Speed 1
NFS1SE Need for Speed 1 Special Edition
TORCS The Open Racing Car Simulator
EA Electronics Arts
OS Operating System
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Purpose
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The aim of this utility is to convert the tracks used in NFS1 and NFS1SE
to the TORCS format. The conversion is not perfect because NFS use a waypoint
system instead a segment system like happens in TORCS, and the road have a
variable width that change on every vertex.
At the end of the process You will gain 5 new tracks from NFS1 and 7 new
tracks from NFS1SE (up to 20 for NFS1 and up to 28 for NFS1SE setting
NFS1_Mirror = yes, NFS1_Backward = yes and NFS1_Mirror_Backward = yes in the
config INI files). The first 5 track of NFS1SE are similar to the 5 of NFS1, but
they are not the same. The main difference is that NFS1SE use, for some purpose,
a different base unit for distances that is 512 times greater that the one used
in NFS1. Beside this the 5 tracks looks the same.
Playing with the ini files, You can enable the creation of mirror, backward
and mirror-backward version of each track and obtain up to 20 tracks for NFS1
and up to 28 tracks for NFS1SE.
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Status
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The program it's almost completed but some things have to be enhanced. At THIS
moment only closed tracks are supported.
Here a list of the most important thing that have been done.
1) Converted all the original closed tracks (Scenery, 2D signs, 3D signs,
Horizon and Road Barriers).
2) Added a shadow image (shadow2 in PNG file format) with fake shadow for Road
barriers and a non homogeneous background.
3) Added a Championship setup for TORCS
4) Enhanced a lot of 2D signs to improve visual performance.
5) Added a some texture to improve visual performance.
6) Added mirror, backward and mirror-backward version for each track.
7) Added CAD enhancement to track 1 (Rusty Springs).
Here a small list of the most important thing that have to be done.
1) No camera have be placed in the XML files.
2) Add CAD enhancement to all the tracks
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Future Plans
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There are a lot of things that can be done. Here comes a small list.
1) Enhanced Graphics (partially done);
2) Create Rally version of the Tracks as happen in the original games;
3) Convert NFS1 and NFS1SE cars;
4) Convert, in some way, open tracks (9 unconverted tracks) to closed tracks;
5) Add a pit lane;
6) Create a XML file for adding NFS1 and NFS1SE Tournaments;
7) Add complete shadow image.
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Unsupported feature
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Seems strange, but NFS1 and NFS1SE have features that TORCS does not support,
at least to my knowledge of TORCS. Here is a small list of the unsupported feature:
1) Open Tracks;
2) Animated texture (such as waterfall, neon signs, ...);
3) Variable road width.
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Requirements
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Windows XP (32bit) or Windows 7 (64bit) (not tested with Vista, Windows 8).
Please report your test with unsupported OS to me.
Linux. I've done in the past some test with the firts version of this tool
and Wine. It should work. Please report to me if you test it.
On a 3.0Ghz PC NFS1 2TORCS needs 2-3 minutes to complete the conversion.
On a 3.0Ghz PC NFS1SE 2TORCS needs 3-4 minutes to complete the conversion.
The programs need around 480 MBytes of free space to complete the conversion
(85MBytes for tmp files, 7 MBytes in tools folder, 27MBytes for NFS1 original
files, 21MBytes for NFS1SE original files and 386MBytes for the 48 converted
tracks (12*4variants converted tracks --- 12 = 7 NFS1SE + 5 NFS1 tracks).
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Installation
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In order to use this tool you need unzip this archive in a temporary folder
and then copy the proper files inside the "NFS1" and "NFS1SE" folder. Furthermore
you will need to copy files from TORCS in the "_Tools_" folder.
In the "NFS1" folder you have to copy the following files
TR1.TRI
TR1_001.FAM
TR2.TRI
TR2_001.FAM
TR3.TRI
TR3_001.FAM
TR4.TRI
TR4_001.FAM
TR5.TRI
TR5_001.FAM
In the "NFS1SE" folder you have to copy the following files
TR1.TRI
TR1_001.FAM
TR2.TRI
TR2_001.FAM
TR3.TRI
TR3_001.FAM
TR4.TRI
TR4_001.FAM
TR5.TRI
TR5_001.FAM
TR6.TRI
TR6_001.FAM
TR7.TRI
TR7_001.FAM
Put the following files from your TORCS Installation folder in the "_Tools_\trackgen"
folder.
client.dll
glut32.dll
OpenAL32.dll
robottools.dll
tgf.dll
trackgen.exe
txml.dll
libogg.dll
libvorbis.dll
libvorbisfile.dll
accc.exe
stripe.exe
Put the following files in the "_Tools_\trackgen\data\tracks" folder from your TORCS
Installation folder.
surfaces.xml
Put the following files in the "_Tools_\trackgen\modules\tracks" folder from your
TORCS Installation folder.
track.dll
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Usage
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After placing all the necessary files in the correct folders, You may have to
configure the INI file in order to choose the game to be converted. Default is
NFS1SE. If You are not familiar with INI files, You can run one of the 2 BAT files
included to switch from one game to the other. Once You have done the configuration,
double click on the executable. On the screen you will see a log of the conversion.
When the conversion has done, you'll find a tmp folder and a torcs folder.
In the tmp folder you'll find find several files plus all the texture extracted
from the tracks and some temporally files (set "debug flag" in ini file). In the
torcs folder you'll find the track sub-folder which contains all the converted
tracks, the config sub-folder which contains the Championship file and the results
sub-folder which contains the specific savegames folder.
To install the new tracks and championship, copy the track, the config and
the results folders (inside the torcs folder) to the installation folder of
TORCS (eg. c:\program files\torcs, for me g:\programmi (x86)\torcs).
After these steps you can play the new tracks with TORCS.
You can change some parameters in the "NFS1_2TORCS.ini" file. This will allow
You choose some customization, such as a single track conversion (changing
NFS1_Fisrt_Track and NFS1_Last_Track parameters). At the end there is a debug flag
that should allow You to reduce both conversion time and log file creations.
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Troubleshooting
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If during the conversion the program stops to run and give some alerts, this
probably means that You are using different track files form mine. I strongly
suggest You to kill the application and to not use the converted tracks. Bad
converted tracks can make TORCS crash.
Please report errors to my email: 2torcs@gmail.com
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Credits
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1) Electronics Art for NFS1 and NFS1SE:
2) Denis Auroux for his detailed guide of the NFS1 specs;
3) Denis Auroux and Ian Brown for their detailed guide of the NFS1SE specs;
4) TORCS developers team;
5) TORCS Trackeditor developers team;
6) TORCS Trackgen developers team;
7) TORCS build_your_trocs_track_in_20_minutes Guide;
8) TORCS "track HOWTO.htm" Guide;
9) FreeImage.DLL developers team;
10) Brodie Thiesfield for SimpleIni Library;
11) CodeBlock developers team;
12) Andrea Mazzoleni for Scale2x, Scale3x and Scale4x Algorithms;
13) Mingw Compiler developers team.
14) All the others I've forgot to mention;
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Source Code
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The source code is distributed under GPLv2. However, let me say that I'm not a
coder, so a lot of custom, sometimes strange, solution are used. I started this
program to increase my low knowledge of programming.
The project started with C (LCC) and soon switched to c++ with DevCpp and than
to CodeBlocks (MinGW). After that I rewrote the code from the scratch to give it a
better structure and to translate all the stuff from Italian to English.
The final result is that the code is not really readable and usable for everyone.
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Author
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My name is Raul Bini and I wrote this program for my own fun.
e-mail: 2torcs@gmail.com
Homepage: sites.google.com/site/2torcs/
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License and copyright
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This program is completely free and is distributed under GPLv2 (General Public
License), but You cannot share the result of the conversion process since NFS games
are copyrighted by Electronics Arts.
This programs is free and could not be sold.
You can distribute and share this program only in the original archive. You are
not allowed to distribute this software with files from NFS1 and NFS1SE.
You can modify the source code under GPLv2 statements.