How to make a real-world-track in GeneRally

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XYY
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Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:37 pm
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How to make a real-world-track in GeneRally

Post by XYY »

How to make a real-world-track in GeneRally

There are many trackmaking tutorials, here is another one specially dedicated to real-world tracks! Although I'm maybe neither the most experienced nor the best-known rwl-trackmaker in the GeneRally community, I want to share several tips with you how you can best create a real-world-location circuit. I especially want to describe how to get material for these tracks. ;)

1. Getting an overview
If you plan to do a track, see which resources are available. Do you have a recent aerial photo? Do you have onboard videos? Can you get many pictures? If you have to answer all questions with "NO", you rather shouldn't make the track :D
It's best to save pictures/videos whatever while you stumble across them. Later they're very helpful and you may be a bit annoyed that you didn't save the pictures directly as you saw them if you don't find them again. :doh:
Here some tips how to find stuff: First off, you should try to decide for an approximate year of your recreation. Some circuits have changed not only their layout, but also the general appearance a lot. You can't use 2000s Nordschleife pictures very well for an authentic 1967 track ;) But in certain cases you also have to use those pictures if there are no pictures available from the desired timespan . If you want to make a track which still exists nowadays, you shouldn't have problems to find image archives from recent events, info on the track's homepage etc. Just enter the stuff at your search engine and there you go. Sometimes it's silly if the track shares the name with a city (mainly all street courses, and some generic names such as "Baypark" or something), because thousands of other unrelated pictures pop up.
Anyways, if you attempt to do a disused track, it's going to get a bit harder. When searching for the track, it usually helps to reduce the name of the track as much as possible, because entering "Autódromo José Carlos Pace Interlagos" gives you only a small percentage of those pictures you would find when entering simply "Interlagos". Sometimes tracks are characterised also by the name of a nearby city/region, e.g. Montreal circuit will give you other results than Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. In cases where material is rare (especially for old tracks), you can also try to type in different years when the track was in use (e.g. Nivelles 1972). And in general different search engines give different results so don't be afraid of using something different than usually :mrgreen: .
No matter if you're doing a historic track or not, it's usually helpful to browse a bit through the pages where you can access a single photo, because often there is more than one photo and sometimes also information or links to other photos. This can be a great advantage.
All these suggestions will bring you hopefully many good pictures which are essential for the next steps.

2. Doing the layout
Probably one of the most important parts in making an rwl. Making the layout is not always an easy thing to do. Of course there are lots of similarities from track to track, but if you're going to fit the Nordschleife or Pescara into a 512*512 px landmap, you'll have a harder job than if you're doing the same with a 1 km road course. For the layout, it shouldn't be of the highest priority to keep the track's exact shape. Of course everyone who knows a track should be able to make it out when glancing at it, but if you're attempting to do the track in an original scale, you won't usually get very far.
It's also very important to know about the boundaries of the track early: Will I have kerbs with sunktyres behind them? Is it a street course which is limited by the temporary walls? Or is it all open landscape, like in a rally track? It's very important, because if the track has got chicanes, you'll have to see that they also drive a bit like a chicane and can't be taken flat out, especially with the kerbs. But keep in mind that the hmap also affects the driving behavior. At Bathurst (Mount Panorama), you wouldn't have to make the Esses and the Dipper so tight... :shhh:
Sometimes you'll have serious problems with the available space, e.g. if a backstraight is very close to the start-finish straight, it's likely that you'll have a problem to place the pits. A great tool is the Snakeditor by curveo. With this simple tool, you can add corners and straights to create a nice layout (if you once understood how it works :rofl: ). Then you can easily see where you can stretch or compress parts of the track to guarantee a good playability. I usually do the layout in Snakeditor to see how I can best fit in the track, rotate it, scale it etc., but then follow Snakeditors sketch again with Gimp or Paint. I think the final result is better afterwards, but it's your decision how to do it.
Then you mustn't also forget to leave some free space directly around the layout. If you have the tarmac road next to the boundary of the track, it's not so bad if there would be a wall anyways, but it's quite silly if you either have to rework a section of the track later on or if there has to be a runoff and then you'll directly damage your car in that concrete wall ;) . You should also take care of the world size: Of course tracks with WS255 are usually closest to the real thing as most of the tracks have to be made in a different scale in GeneRally. But if it's absolutely easy and no problem to fit the track in, it should be also no problem to build it at a smaller Worldsize because you'll see more of the cars and the experience is the same (or in some cases even better, e.g. because you then have to break for a chicane and don't drive it as two unrelated corners). Also, it gives a better length relation (not perfect though, the Nordschleife will be always too short in GR compared to other tracks ;) ).

3. Building the track
Here all the rules of normal trackmaking as well. I only suggest you to first place the important buildings and stuff directly around the track rather than starting with filling the parking lot in the bottom left edge and making all lmap cars very detailed, because you can get mad if you made some mistakes in size there :cool: . It usually works well if you sketch all main elements of the track (e.g. draw in the lmap where a little lake has to be, how the access roads should run) and then fix on details.
While you're doing the hmap, Google earth or topographic maps of the track (if you have them) will help you. But it's even more important to watch onboard videos, because they better provide the track's feeling than some numbers in GE. ;)

4. Fine-tuning
Also similar to what you would do at a fictional track. Test, test, test. See if there are any irregularities in Landmap or hmap, little gaps in walls etc. and fix them. For making the AI line, I suggest to optimize it for cars which raced the circuit a lot (e.g. many old australian tracks can be well optimized for the GT Legends carpack, or you could optimize a Formula 1's track for the currently released F1 cars). But it's not strictly neccessary of course, and most AI lines are optimized for the original cars.

5. Releasing
If you've made it until here, I hope these hints helped you to create a good-looking real-life track for GeneRally!

Some feedback please? :yummy:
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reynaldo123
Posts: 83
Joined: Thu May 22, 2014 8:31 pm
Location: Argentina

Re: How to make a real-world-track in GeneRally

Post by reynaldo123 »

Thanks XYY, if i make a real world circuit, i will use this guide :bg:
"A lie is a lie. Just because they write it down and call it history doesn't make it the truth. We live in a world where seeing is not believing, where only a few know what really happened. We live in a world where everything you know is wrong."

-Alex Mason, CoD Black Ops
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