News

Courses

Times

Forums

Articles

Links

Mail Me

Login:-
Nick:
Pass:
Remember
Signup

Creating New Courses:

Creating courses is actually quite simple once you get the hang of it. I'm going to walk you through a couple simple steps to get you started.

• The best way to start is to look in the contrib directory at other user made courses. Here you will notice 5 important files. The first one is called course.tcl, the other 4 are: elev.rgb, terrain.rgb, trees.rgb, and preview.rgb
• Tux racer courses can be created with a photo editor. No 3D modeling program is needed. I recommend gimp. It is free for linux, and was recently ported to windows also for free
• A little explanation on those 5 files mentioned earlier:
  course.tcl - a small script that tuxracer reads to find out the name, author, and dimensions of the newly made course
  elev.rbg* - A picture file which contains the different elevations of the course
  terrain.rbg* - specifies where the course will snow, ice, and/or rock
  trees.rbg* - specifies where trees, bushes, flags, herring, start signs, and finish signs will be placed
  preview.rbg* - the picture that tuxracer displays in the menu
  
  ***(RGB is a type of picture file (like .jpg) that tuxracer uses)
  
• Elev.rgb
  I always start with this file first because it shows the basic outline of your course
  
  • Create a new file, I usually do about 250 by 1000
  • To specify different elevations, you use different colors
  • White is the highest, black is the lowest
  • Of course you can use different gradients of gray to get elevations in between
  • If I wanted to create a course that had one trench down the middle the whole way, it would look like this :
    
    
    
    
  • The black line is the trench that tux will be racing in, the white area is the high walls
  • Save this file as elev.rgb
• Terrain.rgb
  
  • This file tells tux racer whether to use snow/ice/rocks
  • Create a new file the same size as elev.rgb
  • White is snow, Black is ice, and Gray is rock (any gray will be rock)
  • I want the trench of my course to be snow, and the high area to be rock
    
    
    
    
  • The trench area (the black area on elev.rgb) is going to be all white (this is snow)
  • The high area (what was white on elev.rgb) is going to be grey (this is rock)
  • Save this file as terrain.rgb
• Trees.rgb
  
  • This file tells tux racer where to put trees, herring, flags, etc.
  • Create a new file the same size as elev.rbg (250x1000)
  • You need to use this palette for colors:
    
    
    
    
  • I'm going to add a start banner at the beginning of the race, and a finish banner at the end of the racer
  • I'm going to also add herring (blue) all down the trench
  • Each herring should only be one pixel, if you make a huge glob of blue, then there will be a huge glob of herring on your course
  • The background should be black, don't use any other color b/c tuxracer will attmpt to match it to another color, and you will get trees and bushes in places you don't want them
  • This file now looks like this:
    
    
    
    
  • You can add anything on the palette. The reset (purple) is incase tux gets stuck, the user can press backspace and will be placed at the closest purple dot
• Course.tcl
  
  • This is the most important file in creating a course
  • If information is not entered correctly, your course may not work!!
  • I always take one of the course.tcl files from another course and use it as a template
  • The first item you need to enter is the course name (this is what will appear on the tuxracer menu), this should be done with:
    tux_course_name "My Course"
  • The next item is the author (this will say 'contributed by: your name' on the tuxracer menu)
    tux_course_author "Mark"
  • The next item is the course dimensions. I usually make these the same size as the picture 250x1000
    NOTE** you can use a different size than your images, but be careful, tuxracer will sometimes throw a fit and crash immediately if it doesn't like your dimensions
    tux_course_dim 250 1000
  • The next item is the starting point. This counts from the top right corner on your rgb images in pixels (this is usually a guess and check)
    tux_start_pt 125 1
  • The next item is the angle of the mountain. The higher the number the steeper the mountain
    tux_angle 27
  • The next item is the elevation scale. The higher the number, the higher the elevations. **In my example, if I wanted a super deep trench, i would choose a high number like 30, if if wanted hardly any trench, then i would choose a small number like 5
    tux_elev_scale 10.0
  • The next two items specify the names of elev.rgb and terrain.rgb, always include these
    tux_elev elev.rgb
    tux_terrain terrain.rgb
  • The last line initializes your course, always include this one to
    tux_course_init
  • Save that text file as course.tcl
• Preview.rgb
  
  • This is just a preview of your course that tuxracer will show in its menu
  • I just take a snapshot while i'm racing with the "=" button
  • The size doesn't matter, tuxracer will automatically scale it
  • Save it as preview.rgb
• Almost Done
  
  • Put all five files you just created in a new folder under the contrib directory
  • Load up tuxracer and try out your new course

Tuxracer Belly Rub © 2002-2003 Arthur J. Yarwood. www.fubaby.com