Weird things happen to my tracks - please help

First I looked in the FAQs, but it's mute about the question if you can or cannot assign any already installed track with CSM into any mod Season xxxxx.
In my case I have the 1993 mod, but no trackpack to go with it, so I first consult the track order for that season, then I launch TSM and assign the tracks for that mod manually, doing a fictional track order by keeping the real order as good as I can, some tracks comming from the 1991 mod, some from 2005 mod, and the default 2001 A1-Ring (Austria) track.

Now some weird things happen:

1) My track nr.1, Istanbul from 2005 loads into 3D world but my car has the wrong orientation in the pit by 180°, other cars are fine, they will start and race correctly.
2) My default 2001 A1-Ring (Austria) track will crash the game while loading in the 3D world. The location of .wad and .dat is correct, the files are in place set by TSM after 'Creating a new track'.

3)
In order to correct 2), In TSM I change the settings to point to the main game dir for a1ring2001.wad and to ...Circuits\S1CT01.DAT. I leave the other TSM fields emtpy and input 'Standard Game' as the Author, that's it. Now what happens is: the game will not crash, the 3D world for the track will load but all cars are in the wrong postion, not in the pits but somewhere off-road in the nature, and what's more: they will start racing, sorry I will not follow them, I don't have my flying license

What the hell goes wrong here? Can I use any track with any mod or are there limitations? How do you correctly set the tracks manually for a mod? Again, the FAQ tells a lot about building tracks and putting them in the right order, but nothing about BASIC things

Thanks a lot for your answers,
XenonS

in 3) it was the wrong dat file after my new location assigment, but if I assign the right .dat, the game crashes

XS

...That's why I don't use TSM - it's so easy to get it wrong and crash the whole thing.

This doesn't help you in any way though, so sorry. :/

---

My workthread - [www.grandprixgames.org]
Full of classic F1/non-F1 track layouts

My blog about F1 performance analysis - [thef1formbook.wordpress.com]

@Atticus,
I can confirm I have a lot of trouble using the ZaZ tools and CSM mods in general (in some mods when chosing 'Full Season' the game will crash at championship 2 or 3, or x. Basically such mods are unplayble).
What are you using instead? GP4Builder?


For 3) to work I have now again changed the *.wad and *.dat locations for my A1-Ring-track. Now the wad points to the PLUS directory (from the Plus-trackpack) where there is another A1-Ring track. This time it works. Why? What's the difference between this track and standard A1-Ring track in the main folder? There must be differences because the file sizes slightly different.

Again my question: can I load any track in any mod?

Thanks,
XenonS



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2016 07:32PM by XenonS.

I don't really use mods at all nowadays - I'm just building tracks.

I don't find as much joy in racing different seasons anymore (I did when I was 17-20 though) and having no such interest has the added bonus of using just one install - an unmodified vanilla install to test my tracks. I do use GPxPatch (standalone, not in CSM environment) to adjust certain variables sometimes and I can safely recommend it because it's easy to use and easy to understand.

(I, of course, use GP4 Builder too, but that's not a launch tool, that's a modding tool, so it's different.)

---

My workthread - [www.grandprixgames.org]
Full of classic F1/non-F1 track layouts

My blog about F1 performance analysis - [thef1formbook.wordpress.com]

Track building is for sure interesting, if this is your thing, then I guess that building tracks in Trackmania United (or Trackmania Turbo) is also familiar to you. In TTurbo there is a random track generator that I use and then try to perfect the track, the tool is eye-candy but not very practical. I played these games recently then I remembered GP2,3,4 and wondered how custom tracks could be possible to do when AI cars are involved, how do they know when to turn, what is the setup for accidents etc, . Actually when looking at the decoded GP4 files it's actually far less complex that I've imagined. However I image that decoding all these files (and making them accessible for public) was far more difficult than coding them in the first place

XenonS



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2016 10:57PM by XenonS.

Any track can be loaded into any mod in Grand Prix 4. Use the GpxTrack tab to create your trackset. You need to create 17 sub folders and name them (eg: 1991-rd01 united states). Inside this folder you copy and paste the track, wad, loading screen, magic data, configuration files. My folder contains the following files: indianapolis2001.wad, Phoenix.dat, rd01_united states.md, track1.bmp and settings.config. Example of settings.configuration below.

[Settings]
Year =1991
Laps =81
Name =Phoenix
Country =United States
Adjective =United States
Event =XXVIII United States Grand Prix
Author =cleberpister&plodekk
Wad =indianapolis2001.wad
Dat =Phoenix.dat
Loadingscreen =track1
Gpi =
Bik =

[ProgressBar]
Color =#1F6002

Then you need to use gpxtrack tab to edit your track order. Fairly simple. Read the documentation that was installed with gpxpatch. It covers adding tracks/tracksets in detail.

Genn (Cdn)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2016 11:21PM by gap177.

Hi gap177, thx very much for detailed example, I really need this I've read the help section of GPxPatch mainly to know what the different windows do, I thought I got it clear for the Track, but it ain't so apparently, your solution will come very handy to me.
But basically you are saying that all the Track folder that CSM creates is just futile...because not always working.

Salutations,
XenonS



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2016 12:13AM by XenonS.

Sorry, I couldn't tell you. I don't use CSM or TSM. It's easier to create Non-csm mods using gpxpatch.

Glenn (Cdn)

Yes I know, I've even published my 'system' that doesn't work...yet.

XS

@XenonS, check your PM's. Ignore the first one I sent.

Glenn (Cdn)

@Gap177,
have read PM, again thanks very much.

I have done your system above, except the .md files (the magic data can also be done afterwards if need be, it's already in the .dat), but still I get the same crashes. In my system CSM > non-CSM (see other post), by ALT-TAB to desktop once CSM has started the mod and copying everything will already get GPxPatch to point all track files correctly, with one important exception: CSM writes new track wad files together with a new cars.wad and anims.wad n the main GP4 dir, but GPxPatch can read these files directly anyway according to its help files, you just have to edit the gpxtrack.ini file and set

EnableTrackSpecificCarsWad=1
EnableTrackSpecificanimWad=1

You have to because you can not do this in GPxPatch directly.

So there is (theoretically) no need to transfer the wad files, you can keep them in the main dir. But for completness I did as you told above (I had only to move the folders from GPSAVES....\... to new created folders and transfer the track wads from the main dir to these folders. I have checked all links within the GPxPatch sections (set, sat, track, etc....), they are all correct.

My cars.wad has changed from 25.000 kb to 280.000 kb containing all the carsets from the mod.

[EDIT]

After changing to GP4.exe decrypted 1.02, the track loads but the cars, cockpits and helmet positions are all wrong, so I must find another method to get all the carsets in the game. The Data\Cars folder of my mod is full of files, but these are meant to be read by CSM !

All this is very complicated and I wonder if it's worth it. I know about a 'Generic Mod Enabler' (don't know the exact name anymore), it is purely file based and not procedure based as here. It can handle very complex games with all sort of files and structures. Knowing a procedure is the luxury of few people, many others will fail; knowing the files: everyone can do and then let the mod manager do the swapping. Here most procedures inject code in files, this is crying for trouble...

XenonS



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2016 09:38AM by XenonS.

what i don't get is, that you haven't a season 1993 trackpack, because Ploddek and Cleberpister released already different trackpacks from 1988 onward to 1999 and there's the season 1993 included. The trackpacks are very easy to install with csm. You only have to unpack the trackpacks and double click on the tup file to install the trackpack. Here's the season 1993 trackpack [www17.zippyshare.com]

and it's not so difficult to add trackpacks with tsm for your seasons. I've done it for the season 1996. You only have to open tsm and click on manage profiles. After this, click on the button create a new profile and a new window will open. Now you'll see two windows, an empty window at the above half and the secoand window with all installed tracks on the lower side of tsm. If you now click on one of the tracks in the lower window it will appear in your new empty profile. Tsm creates even a track ini automatically. I've used the method to create a season 1996 trackpack with nearly all 1997 tracks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2016 10:59AM by quickslick.

@quickslick,
thank you to respond here, I highly appreciate your link and will take advantage, but what you say is another problem, of course it's more convenient to have the trackpacks, but let's say I'm doing a mod myself, then it's important to know if my track can be loaded from my GP4 install or within any mod.

Do you know this: what happens if I install your linked trackpack and then chose Full Season in the dropdown of the Mod Configurables in CSM? With all my installed mods at some point GP4 will crash, essentially making the mods unplayable (you can only do non-championship races). This is why I want to transform into a non-CSM mod if possible to see if the problem disappears. So, as you see, it's not about having the trackpacks or not.

XenonS



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2016 04:09PM by XenonS.

All the mods from 1988 to 199x have a special requirement: the PLUS trackpack must be installed (whatever this one does, the readme is far from clear about it). I noticed that the PLUS changes the default tracks and CSM will crash the game if you don't use these modified tracks. But this is just an additional problem. The question remains why my changed cars.wad, anims.wad and my pointed track .wad files do not load correctly and cause GP4 to crash, or they load but the mods of the cars etc. are not included and cause grafic distorsions etc.

If I don't want to use CSM, I have to package my car files into a wad with GPMaster tool and put the wad in the main folder. Will this work and start the game correctly, also load all cars, cockipits, helmets when changing tracks inside the game ? Thanks to confirm

XS



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2016 06:38PM by XenonS.

I have now reinstalled the mod, all tracks starting with the PLUS tools etc. It works now
There was something amess with wrong GP4Tweaker.bin that caused helmet positions, cockpit instruments etc. being displaced. By re-installing the mod CSM got it right again.

@Quickslick,
Thank you again for the trackpack, it's wonderful that these tracks missing years ago are now available !

XenonS