Bill wrote
Here's what I wrote on the gpl.gamestats.com board...
========
Actually.. the graphic side is pretty easy. Since the early days of IndyCar
Racing 1 back in the start of the 90's, the graphic structure is similar in
every Papyrus title (except SODA). There's *.dat files, and into those files
you find *.mip file. Those are the graphics you can find in GPL. Tracks.dat
have track related graphics. Layout.dat has the whole menu and interface
graphics. Finally. the cars sections has cars.dat files where you have the
whole graphic structure of the cars. You can paint everything in them..
every part that has graphics on the screen can be modified..***pit,
wheels, shifter, motor, suspension, car body, etc..
There is a couple of programs for that. One of them (the most used) is
called WinMIP. You can find it on this website in the files section. It's an
incredible utility for Icr2 and N2/N1 also, not just GPL. You can unpack
those *.dat files, and extract *.mip files into *.bmp pictures so you can
edit them with an external editor. It's very easy...
To change the Murusama to Honda and CoventryCC to Cooper, you could easily
change all the graphics to the actual realistic way. There isn't any problem
with that. On the other side, you could even paint Bruce McLaren's car to
the normal orange (I think it was like that in 1967) paintscheme since in
those cars.dat (the BRM.dat has the McLaren's car) you have individual car
to paint (like the Lotus is different from the 2 drivers somehow...).
The other problem is the whole name structure. If you check out any replay
or you check out standings the teams will be named as COV and MUR instead of
COO/COP and HON. From what I searched in the *.ini files each team has a
designated car type (Lotus is 5, Brabham is 1, etc...). Those are I would
think hard coded in the *.exe file, I really searched and couldn't find the
info. This is where you could help us ;-D .
Finally, the last thing to edit I think is the driver info/player info
pages. As you may not see.. those sections are pictures. You can find them
in the layout.dat file. By taking those and editing to the real car type,
etc... it can be as easy to switch than car paintings. WinMIP is made for
that ;-)
=========
- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- Sponsored by http://www.racesimcentral.net/
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--