Nascar Racing 3 - Additional N2/NR99/Icr2 tracks FAQ

Nascar Racing 3 - Additional N2/NR99/Icr2 tracks FAQ Version 0.1beta first release 1999-09-15 Fran?ois Mnard This FAQ will be sent to all 3 USENET message group. Those are the public newsgroup rec.autos.simulators, the public newsgroup server 206.27.21.29 n3.discussion and finally the server localnews.ten.net TEN.games.simulations.nascar, until the last one is officially deleted from POGO. You can send this to anybody you want as it will be very important with a client/server based multiplayer that everybody is on the same track. This will give you the chance to race any Nascar Racing 2, Nascar Racing 2 : BGN Add-on pack, Nascar Racing 99, Nascar Racing 2 (50th Anniversary edition), and finally Indy Car Racing 2 /CART Racing. All those titles are by Papyrus. In no way this is done to promote illegal piracy of Papyrus-copyrighted files. I would hope that everybody that uses this also has legally the titles above. Finally, please note that if this doesn't work for you it is possible, I did this from a simple test on my PC configuration and nothing is official yet. It's normal it might not work, later FAQ's will be much more complete. ALWAYS make backup of your files, in case it goes wrong. 1.0 == What is this FAQ for ? == So you want to race Pocono in N3 ? Your ashamed at NASCAR for pulling out North Wilkesboro out of the calendar ? Well here is a step-by-step intruction on how to convert those tracks. It's actually more easy than you think! Tools that you should get : - Pack.exe and unpack.exe (included in many Papyrus utilities and websites) - David's Noonan N2/NR99 <--> Icr2 converter. Buy it, the shareware version only gives you a limited choice of track - Upcoming Old Engine <--> GPL converter 2.0 == What are those tracks ? == Here is a list of tracks you can convert to Nascar Racing 3. 2.1 Nascar Racing 2/BGN track pack: - Atlanta - Bristol - Bull Run - California - Charlotte - Darlington - Dover - Gateway - Hickory - IRP - Milwaukee - Martinsville - Myrtle Beach - Nashville - Nazareth - Bristol Night - Charlotte Night - Richmond Night - Loudon - Phoenix - Pocono - Red Rock - Richmond - Rockingham - South Boston - Sears Point - Talladega - Texas - Watkins Glen - North Wilkesboro 2.2 IndyCar Racing 1/2: - Australia - Cleveland - Detroit - Elkhart Lake - Indianapolis - Laguna Seca - Long Beach - Michigan - Midohio - Milwaukee - Nazareth - Loudon - Phoenix - Portland - Toronto - Vancouver 2.3 Nascar Racing : 1999 Edition - Atlanta - Bristol - California - Charlotte - Darlington - Dover - Evergreen - Flemington - Gateway - Heartland Topeka - Hickory - i70 - IRP - Las Vegas - Louisville - Memphis - Mesa Marin - Michigan - Milwaukee - Martinsville - Myrtle Beach - Nashville - Nazareth - Bristol Night - Charlotte Night - Richmond Night - Loudon - Phoenix - Pike's Peak - Portland - Rockingham - South Boston - Sears Point - Talladega - Texas - Watkins Glen 2.4 Grand Prix Legends: (please note that not all tracks are available yet) - Brands Hatch - Dubai - Watkins Glen - Kyalami - Mexico - Monaco - Monza - Mosport - Nurburgring - Rouen - Silverstone - Spa - Zandvoort 2.5 Please note that user-created tracks may work, but I haven't tested them unfortunately. You may try at your own risk. If there is any other original-Papyrus track I omited, I will feel free to update this FAQ. I did not include any Nascar Racing 1 track because I did not made any test with it. Maybe in a future version of this FAQ I will. And yes I ommited the Daytona International Speedway from Papyrus on purpose ;) 3.0 == So how we convert those tracks ? == 3.1 This will be a little more complicated. As you may have seen in the list above, many tracks appear in different version of Papyrus racing simulations. Somehow this FAQ was also made so that everybody can be racing with the same tracks. Mixing somebody using the NR99 Charlotte with the N2 Charlotte and N3 Charlotte could create some very odd situation, such as reboot, some players being faster than the others (because of the slight track accuracy modification from a title to another). I do not see any server checksum for the .dat file in Nascar Racing 3 like we had on the NROS, but this is another issue that I won't get into. This FAQ is in no-way pushing people to cheat or try to cheat. In fact it's the opposite, It is here to make a consortium between all N3 users. This way nobody will get mixed up. Here is a list of tracks that are duplicated in titles : 3.1a Nascar Racing 2/bgn track pack: - Atlanta - Bristol - California - Charlotte - Darlington - Dover - Gateway - Hickory - IRP - Milwaukee - Martinsville - Myrtle Beach - Nashville - Nazareth - Bristol Night - Charlotte Night - Richmond Night - Loudon - Phoenix - Richmond - Rockingham - South Boston - Sears Point - Talladega - Texas - Watkins Glen 3.1b IndyCar Racing 2 / CART Racing - Indianapolis - Michigan - Milwaukee - Nazareth - Loudon - Phoenix - Portland 3.1c Nascar Racing : 1999 Edition - Atlanta - Bristol - California - Charlotte - Darlington - Dover - Gateway - Hickory - IRP - Las Vegas - Memphis - Michigan - Milwaukee - Martinsville - Myrtle Beach - Nashville - Nazareth - Bristol Night - Charlotte Night - Richmond Night - Loudon - Phoenix - Pike's Peak - Portland - Rockingham - South Boston - Sears Point - Talladega - Texas - Watkins Glen 3.1d NOTICE : If one of your track you want to convert is in that list, please read the whole FAQ before converting, especially the 3.2.1 point. 3.2 Indy Car Racing 2 / CART Racing tracks You will need to load the Icr2 <--> N2 converter and convert the Icr2 track you want into Nascar Racing 2 or Nascar Racing 99 Edition. Another time I suggest you really go buy the converter from David Noonan, it is a great utility. After this here are the steps. Copy the now N2/NR99 converted track (found in Nascar2(99)/tracks) into your Nascar3/tracks/ directory. Please note that will only works for tracks that have a different name than a N3 track. DO NOT overwrite any file. We will discuss this issue a little later. Now you will need to edit a file called all.cal in your main Nascar3 directory. I suggest you open it with Notepad. This file is what we call in Papyrus-jargon the "Calendar file". It list all the tracks you have in your N3 folder. You need to add the tracks you want so that N3 can see them. If per example you now convert the Elkhart track in N3 ; Here is what the line should look like : 31 1 31 0 0 ELKHART Race31 Race31 200 event1.tga biglogo1.tga One-by-one those settings mean : 31 = The track list. Each time you will need to add them in numerical order. I do not know if there is a limit of tracks in N3, but there is probably one. I will modify this for a future version of this FAQ. 1 = The month of the race 31 = The date of the race 0 = Hmm I forgot that one, leave it to 0 1 = Means it's a Night tracks (Charlotte, Richmond, Bristol) ELKHART = This is the name of the track folder. Always write it in CAPS. Race31 = Another time you will have to add this in numerical order Race31 = Same as above 200 = The number of laps a 100% Race at that track should have event1.tga = Those are only if you want to add a track logo on the main track list menu. It is not nessecary to have those files in your track folder. biglogo.tga = Same as above, but this is the track race Logo (ex: Bud at the Glen) Note that at the end of your all.cal you should always have this : 32 12 99 0 0 XXXXXXXX It should always be left that way, except that you add the first number in numerical order (that would mean I have 31 Nascar3 tracks). Open the track.txt in your N3 folder now. You will have to add the new lines that N3 has. Im not sure yet of all the meaning of them. SUN 270 80 Add this after the RAIN line. I would speculate that it's the sun position on the track in degrees to set the dynamic shadows and specular hightlights. BLAPT 55000 This is probably a temporary setting. It's made to set-up the Trucks to run a specific power at that track, so it was placed there in case N3 will have a truck add-on possibily. Just add the line after the BLAP and put the same number in both lines. RELST 102 Another truck setting, after the RELS line. Another time, put the same number than the RELS line for the moment. TIRET 62985 5200 80500000 62985 3500 85000000 0 Yet another truck setting, after the TIRES line. It's made to set the grip of the trucks at that specific line. Add the one from the TIRES line, not needed but nessecary. Save and quit. That's all you need. Load Nascar 3, go in the track list menu and you should see the track at the bottom of the list. Happy now ?! 3.2.1 Now let's go into the complicated thing. We will have to face multiple tracks in multiple shape and configuration. Per example there is Michigan in every Papyrus title. So how will we make this all work ? It will be simple, and a little complicated at the same time. But don't worry, be happy :) The easy way and the most intelligent will be to create a prefix to the duplicate tracks. This way you will be able to tell (from racing offline and also in multiplayer) that the tracks is not a N3 original track, and that also what version it is from. Prefix will be kept simple, since you can't have more than 8letters for each track: N1xxxxxx will mean it's a Nascar Racing 1 track N2xxxxxx will mean it's a Nascar Racing 2/BGN add-on track N9xxxxxx will mean it's from Nascar Racing : 1999 Edition Icxxxxxx will mean it's from IndyCar Racing 2 /CART Racing (the IMS from Icr1 also) The only track in Grand Prix Legends that could cause a problem is Watkins Glen, but David Noonan has made that track for N2/NR99 and it's under "THEGLEN" track name, so we will keep it that way. The tracks that have a possible duplicate name in Icr2 are Indianapolis, Michigan, Milwaukee, Nazareth, Phoenix, Portland and Loudon. Those tracks will be renamed ... read more »

The only question I have regarding all this: why would anyone want to install a duplicate track (i.e. one found in both Nascar 3 and Nascar 99)? I understand people will want to install Pocono or Hickory, but why all the fuss about re-install the N99 version of Bristol? Doesn't the Bristol from N3 look nicer? "no clue" Philster

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> The only question I have regarding all this: why would anyone want to > install a duplicate track (i.e. one found in both Nascar 3 and Nascar > 99)? I understand people will want to install Pocono or Hickory, but why > all the fuss about re-install the N99 version of Bristol? Doesn't the > Bristol from N3 look nicer? > "no clue" Philster

The size of the tracks are just different enough to allow someone using one track to be faster then the other. (Please correct me if I have this wrong). With the NASCAR/ICR2 converted track for GPL, some people found this out.. you can have very fast laps using the track from a sim that the host doesn't have. Another word.. cheating! -- ========================================= Mike Barlow of Barlow Racing? ========================================= Racing online with the help of...... Race Communications Association http://members.xoom.com/RCA/toc.html Holodyne Engineering Mystic Music (have Your !!Name/Address!! placed here)

Some people actually love to race old configuration of tracks. Per example, the old Sears Point config, or the Old Atlanta. Some tracks like C***te in N2 are pretty different from the ones in Nascar Racing 3, so a league could actually make the drivers race at the same track but in a little tiny configuration difference. Take a peek at N3 Loudon and I know some people would love to run the old configuration. It's very different. Nashville also, etc.. The point here is to make all tracks available, even if those tracks are the same. I, in no way, delimitate the power of the user to some specific number of tracks, I give him the chance to convert them all. To him the choice of deciding which ones he would like. The bad news from all this is that like on GPL, anybody can cheat. It's very easy, and unfortunately many people will do this. Adding a couple of degrees of banking in corners is an easy task now that many people have mastered the Papyrus track editing. A fully dedicated server like TEN who had it's own checksum anti-cheat coding would help, but Im sorry to say that cheating will be apparent in N3 online racing. -- -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... "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."

Unfortunately, yes, but in no way as you may have read in my FAQ it is intended to do so. At the opposite, Im trying to reach some sort of consortium so that people could race in a cheating-free environment, where everybody has the same track. Cheating is so easy with GPL and N3, it's very unfortunate. Mr. everybody can almost do it, Sim***world has released a banking editor around a month ago. This is a reason why all the fuss about loosing the NROS, SIERRA really put us 4years backwards by allowing all this easy cheating. Maybe in the future they will give us an anti-cheat features on the servers (allow us to download and use it when your PC acts like a server). N3 should probably have a patch somewhere in the line, and I hope it include this and dedicated server option like the GPL patch. -- -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... "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."

Size didnt change... 4 feet were added to the width of the straights per real life additions.

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>> The only question I have regarding all this: why would anyone want to >> install a duplicate track (i.e. one found in both Nascar 3 and Nascar >> 99)? I understand people will want to install Pocono or Hickory, but why >> all the fuss about re-install the N99 version of Bristol? Doesn't the >> Bristol from N3 look nicer? >> "no clue" Philster >The size of the tracks are just different enough to allow someone using >one track to be faster then the other. (Please correct me if I have >this wrong). > With the NASCAR/ICR2 converted track for GPL, some people found this >out.. you can have very fast laps using the track from a sim that the >host doesn't have. Another word.. cheating! >-- >========================================= >Mike Barlow of Barlow Racing? >========================================= >Racing online with the help of...... >Race Communications Association >http://members.xoom.com/RCA/toc.html >Holodyne Engineering >Mystic Music >(have Your !!Name/Address!! placed here)

Noonan's ICR2/N99->GPL converter is allready available? The full version? Where can I buy it? I looked at The US Pits, but they didn't mention anything about this... only the demo version is available on that site. Andre

Good news to those like myself who installed the TPTCC mod for NASCAR 99 from The Pits website. I have been able to drag and drop the tracks from TPTCC99 and then by only altering the calendar as described in the FAQ (thanks Fran?ois!) I have found that they run with no problems. It is great to watch Mark Martin make a diving inside pass at the first tight turn at Australia! And in Cleveland they start three wide and pass like crazy. For those of us who love road racing, it's the best of both worlds. -- >Nascar Racing 3 - Additional N2/NR99/Icr2 tracks FAQ >Version 0.1beta first release >1999-09-15 >Fran?ois Mnard >This FAQ will be sent to all 3 USENET message group. Those are the public >snip