Simple Tutorial for Automation Track Editor + Suzuka Circuit

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1

I don’t really do video tutorials, but I can put together a simple tutorial to get others started.

EDIT: Here is a simple tutorial to get folks started. This tool works pretty well, once you understand a couple of things about it. Good job OP!

[size=150]Automation Track Editor - a visual track editor[/size]
Discussion/Introduction page by ElSaico: Automation Track Builder - a visual track editor

Direct link to Track Editor (opens in your browser as it is a client side browser application): elsaico.github.io/automation-track-builder/

The Automation Track Editor is a visual track editor for those of us who have no patience for making each curve by hand and testing it in the game (I did a few that way and it takes a very long time, trust me!) so we can build tracks also. One of the best things about this editor is the author has created it as an open source project. The link to the source code for the app (written in javascript) is in the OP on the discussion/intro page listed above. Yes, that is correct, the owner has given the project to the Automation community for free! How awesome is that? :slight_smile:

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Above are the buttons with some explanation of what they do. Remember this is creating a LUA file to go with your image file. Both should be named “track” and should be in a folder. In this photo I have already loaded a 1280x720 track image. I will be using the Example Track, since it is simple and most of us should be pretty familiar with how the original looked and responded. I will be attempting to recreate the track.lua file included. It won’t be exact, but I can get pretty close with this tool. I could just use the numbers from it’s original file, but this really is a simple track so it should not be too hard. The only buttons which are not really self-explanatory are Import and Export.

Import will take an existing track file from your computer and load it into the tool so you can edit it. Export will take the file you have created with the tool and allow you to save it to your computer for use in the game.

NOTE: Naming your track in the tool does not seem to work (yet?), at least not for me, so maybe it will be fixed later. The splits don’t seem to work either, but we can fix that in an editor at the end before we present our final work.

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In this image, I have created my first segment. You can see the red line at the center of my track image. It starts from the left end and goes on until the end. In the box at the bottom are the controls for the active segment. You can edit any segment once it has been added, but you can only add a segment to the end, and you can onlly remove the last segment added. It gets a bit buggy when removing segments, especially if you remove multiple segments.

With this first segment we will adjust our starting point and attempt to scale it to the image with the first straight.

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In the highlighted box, you can see 3 buttons on the left and the characteristics of the segment. I will not explain sportiness, slope, and camber here. They are explained in the custom track tutorial which already exists. For this track, they will all be 0. The starting point has been adjusted to (530,530) (I fixed it in subsequent images) and I have set the scale to 2px/1m. The three buttons mentioned determine in which direction the segment will continue, left/right/straight. With a straight you will only have length to adjust. Left/Right have different adjustments, but we will get to that in a moment.

Our first segment is lined up at the starting point and scale has been set, but the 100m just isn’t long enough. Let’s adjust it to 200m.

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200m looks just about right! When we add another segment, lets see what happens…

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Whoops! We’ve just trimmed the hedges and given the fans a real show. We don’t want to go off the corner of the track, so we’ll add a left turn here.

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We’ve missed the hedges (whew!), but that pond doesn’t look very fun either. The highlighted box shows the unique characteristics for a curve. We have an angle at the bottom, and just above it where length used to be we have a corner radius. Angle is the degree of the turn from your starting direction. 90 is the default, and on this course it is perfect. Now about that corner radius…to avoid the pond and what-not. It is just like the original length of 100m currently. We can try to cut this in half, but it won’t QUITE be enough. 40m works just about perfectly. The end of the line is just where we want to be positioned for our straight acceleration at 90* from our starting direction.

We can add another segment and see which way we will be going from here on another 100m straight. This will be a test of our corner angle adjustment, which we did not actually adjust for this corner.

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Perfect! We are now barreling down another straight, and it looks like our default 100m works as well! We’re now lined up with the next corner. This corner resembles the previous corner quite a lot. Let’s cut it to 40m again and make an identical 90* turn. We can then add another straight to test our angle and radius.

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With the backstretch added, I have adjusted it from the 100m default to 300m, and it seems to work pretty well. This corner coming up looks different than the previous two curves, even though it still seems to be a 90* turn.

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Cutting the radius to 20m looks pretty close. Let’s finish off this last leg and see what happens.

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I’ve added another straight and adjusted it’s length. It looks pretty close, but only the game will really let us know. A final corner which mimicks the 3rd corner and another straight to bring us back to the start/finish should complete the lap.

We are now ready to export our file. It will give it some crazy name which will land it in a temp directory on your computer, so it’s best to open it up with an editor. Besides, we still have to fix that track name and those splits, so we’re going to want to edit it anyway.

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Here is what the file will look like once it is completed. Make a folder and include your image file and you’re all set to test. Just add the folder to your ~\user\Documents\Automation\Tracks directory and start up your game. The track name you chose should appear in your Custom Tracks list. Mine is named Example Track Tutorial, and I have included what I created here so you can see how it works!

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Good luck and enjoy! This is a very simple track, and my guesses were not spot on, but they are very close. A bit of tweaking and it will look and perform just like the original Example Track file. Mine is actually about 1 second faster around, which means I probably don’t have exactly 1029m.

Example Track Tutorial.zip (123 KB)

EDIT: I have a suggestion for this tool. I really like it, and it is pretty simple to use, however it would be really nice if it calculated the distance of the line for you. I’m sure I could do it mathematically, and of course I can run the track and determine it with sector length, but it would be much easier if the tool could calculate it for me.

OK, this track was made with the Automation Track Editor (and tweaked a bit in game with Notepad++). This isn’t a perfect track replica, but it demonstrates a (somewhat) complex track in the Editor written by ElSaico. The final turn needs a bit more tweaking, but this is good enough for a single lap time.

For reference, here is the track in real life:

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Here is what it looked like in the Editor:

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And here is a track time (2:24.95) with a semi-decent production sports car:

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For those who are not really familiar with times, here is a site showing laptimes on this track in the real world.
fastestlaps.com/tracks/suzuka.html
Suzy Track v2.zip (256 KB)

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That’s really excellent. You and ElSaico’s efforts are much appreciated :slight_smile:

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Very good tutorial! Is there any way to make smoother curves with the editor?

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“Queen of Track Building” has a nice sound to it. I need one of those cool titles :smiley:. Also, three Chevy Cobalt related bookmarks?! That’s impressive.

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The curves are smooth now, for the most part. You can’t go by the line the application draws in the editor. They appear very misleading. The red line is just a connection of two end-points. The “arc” of the curve follows the track pretty close in my image, even though the red line looks quite jagged. The end of the curve segment should start on the track at the corner entry and end on the track at the corner end. The car will follow the track. Took me a lot of testing to finally understand the red line wasn’t the car line, but just two end-points. ElSaico (the programs author) made the comment about the curves in the thread, so I tested the bejesus out of it to try to understand what the heck he meant by it. Now I understand! :slight_smile:

As for the Cobalt links, CSS.net and YC.com are the two largest Cobalt websites, and I am an administrator on CU.net. And, yes, I own a Cobalt and absolutely LOVE it. :wink:

6

Thanks for the tutorial.
The part explaining its the two endpoint of the curve literally brightened my day. Because I tried this trackbuilder and I was confused and actually quite annoyed I had to do the turns in 0.2 meter segments haha!
I’ll give it another try soon.

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Now that’s amazing. Thank you very much for making the editor easier to use for everyone. :smiley:

The corner shapes got fixed in the next update, so they shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

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Same here, it would be cool if everyone was given their own unique title by the devs/mods (not a suggestion btw since there are over 25,000 members on the forums) :stuck_out_tongue:

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Here are some:

Wizzy- Mr. Knowledge

Strop- Dr. Downforce OR Dr. NinjaHorse DaVinci

Pleb- The Kid

But that kinda defeats the purpose of having the “Super/Turbocharged” rank. You should only get a title if you do something really impressive for the community. Or do a really lot of little things.

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Thanks 07CobaltGirl! This gives me some motivation to try my hand at some tracks sometime! Maybe we could put together a collection of all the major GP venues, starting with Albert Park all the way up to Spa Francorchamps? :smiley: I see you’ve already got a replica of Suzuka up here.

In fact maybe I’ll start with Albert Park this week…

@Jakgoe: haha I think Stryfe should be called Dr Downforce. I’m not sure what I’d call myself…

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[quote=“strop”]Thanks 07CobaltGirl! This gives me some motivation to try my hand at some tracks sometime! Maybe we could put together a collection of all the major GP venues, starting with Albert Park all the way up to Spa Francorchamps? :smiley: I see you’ve already got a replica of Suzuka up here.

In fact maybe I’ll start with Albert Park this week…

@Jakgoe: haha I think Stryfe should be called Dr Downforce. I’m not sure what I’d call myself…[/quote]

I’ve got a replica of Silverstone finished.

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Working on Road Atlanta right now. Probably because I live here. haha

I am planning to make all of the US GP tracks, and some of the smaller unknown US road tracks too.

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Have you ever driven there?

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Naw. I’ve never owned a car worthy of a real track. I did Tail of the Dragon though! :wink:

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Mr. knowledge? Really? Way too much honour haha! There is people here that know much more than I do, especially about cars and engines.

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The Kid? I’m not THAT young…

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Fine, I should leave that to Cooper Jr.

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Great right up
Side question
Cobalt SS TC OR SS SC?

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[quote=“Jakgoe”]

Fine, I should leave that to Cooper Jr.[/quote]

Heya! That’s me, Kid Kooper! In terms of car stuff, all I’m master of is MSD Ignition tuning I did for the Mustang :laughing:
Perhaps oil changes too; being the kid, I do them for all of my extended Irish family.

In reality my nickname is actually Mini Cooper, with my father being Cooper :smiley:

In terms of the track editor, I would give this a shot, but you guys make such amazing tracks that I don’t see a reason to! Thanks to the maker, though, for this will make it much more enjoyable in game to have some tracks to throw my cars around. I wonder if there is a way to make this work with a generator?

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[quote=“USDMFTW”]Great right up
Side question
Cobalt SS TC OR SS SC?[/quote]

Neither. 2.2L N/A

[size=50]But there is a supercharger kit sitting in my living room right now[/size]