rec.autos.simulators

Last night, while running on SpyBoy....I was involved in a group discussion
regarding the driver's suits and***pits, etc. in GPL.  Several said they knew
of guys who have different colored driver's suits for each car.

How is this done?  My understanding is that the driver suit files located in the
"brabham folder" or in the "brabham.dat" file are used for every car type's
driver.  Meaning, you can only have one type of colored suit in the entire gpl
"program" at any given time....not a different one for each car type.

I "tested" this theory today.....using the "shift.mip" file (the one that is for
the shift lever).  I modified a shift lever (added color) and packed it into the
"BRM" dat file (not just placing it in the brm folder).  Yet, when driving the
brm subsequently.....my "shifter" is not displayed....but the original one is.
I then did the exact same thing....only I packed this new colored shift.mip into
the "Brabham" dat file.  Now when entering gpl.....driving the brm again....it
has the new colored shifter....and so does every other car!

It seems the "brabham" folder or dat is a "master" for some files?  But, I
unpacked and looked at each of the car's dat files.....they all have a
"shifter.mip" in them!  Why?  If the shifter displayed in your incockpit view is
only the one contained in the brabham folder (or dat)....then why waste space
having one in all the other car dats?  I don't get it....could someone explain?
Obviously, this same thing will apply to all of the "driver suit" files...which
there are 5 or 6 of them I believe!  Or maybe not!  Does gpl have a "protocol"
use for each file type individually?

Regards,

Tom Pabst

As for the why it was done this way, I suspect Papyrus exceeded their
texture budget at some point in the development process and had to
start using the same textures for different objects.  Fortunately in
this day and age of 16+ Mb video cards we no longer have such
limitations with respect to GPL.

While we are on the subject does anyone know where I can get a
light blue driver suit with a dark blue strip down the side similar to
those worn by quite a lot of the drivers prior to the 67 season?

 - George

The Brabham is not really the master dat. GPL just goes through each dat
until it finds the file it needs, and since Brabham is first
alphabetically the brabham files are always used for the shared files.

So that when we hackers hex-edit the Brabham to use a different mip, the
other cars will still work :-)

(I don't work for Papy or anything so I don't really know this I'm just
guessing ;-)

--
Arne Martin

Thanks for your detailed answer.......I don't think I want to get into
"hex-editing" 3do files just for "graphics" candy......but oh well.

On the light blue driver's suit......I have one....but the dark blue stripe is
going to be a problem.  It needs to be atop the shoulders.....and down the
outside of the arms...right?

Well, it seems Papy uses the same texture file for the arms.....and does NOT
mirror image the right and left arm.  So, if you put a stripe on the
outside....it will be on the outside of one arm and on the inside of the
other.....looks pretty stupid because I've tried it.  Had the same problem
trying to put the "Simpson" emblem on the racing gloves....

My light blue suit has "seat belts".......five point harness.....so that's not
very "67" is it?  Don't think you'd want it....but if I'm wrong...send me an
email and I'll zip up the blue suit and send it along.....it also has orange
full-length (modern day version) Simpson racing gloves.

Tom Pabst