Savage Elve's tips
1. When making a special effects box you can make the sky color 183 instead of -1.
This way you can see when you enter the area.
2. If you open up the race.dat file with CarEd and save it as a .obj, you can
easily add patches and small parts to the race. Just export the part in
CarEd as a component then open and export as .ASC. PT2 can read these .ASC
files, as long as it exists of only one single component, and by doing so
the patches will seamlessly fit in the race and it's easy to make parts the right proportions.
3. When you start a new track use the initials for both textures and
non-cars. (I know, I forgot, now I can't change it anymore)
4. Make use of the hierarchy in PT2. Put non-cars and powerups in the
hierarchy of the part they are in. This way you can move the part outside
and position the non-cars easily. You shouldn't have to scroll to see all
the main parts when the hierarchy is collapsed in the overview.
5. Mark all the changes you make in drone.txt, peds.txt etc. so people can
choose whether to overwrite the file (an loose settings from other tracks)
or change them manually.
6. Make a drawing on paper before you start the first lay-out. Later you
will feel sorry if you didn't.
7. Backup three files very regularly; the race.act, race.dat, race. mat and
the race.txt. I'm sure if all people had done so, there should be one or
more tracks for C2. Make a backup script and put it in your start menu.
Also, never make a backup until you have tried it in the game:
what's the use of making backup of something that doesn't work?
8. Sometimes when using calculate smoothing groups', the lightning just
looks bad. Then try without. Lighting will change anyways, with or without.
9. When putting a name in default material, there were peds on that
material, while I didn't put that in the .txt file.
10. If you want to make a mini-map; C2 seems not to be able to read the PT2
generated one. Make a nice screenshot of the track in PT2. Then make a new
material in PT2 and use the PT2 generated-pix. Make a screenshot. Then
resize the tiny rectangular to 640x480. Take the other screenshot and
resize it to 640x480. Then put this one is a layer, 50% opacity over the
other. Now you can stretch and move the screenshot so the roads will fit
with the roads on the roads (hardly visible) on the generated map. When
finished, make the top-layer 100% opacity and save it. Of course you have
to copy the coords to the race.txt file, which are given by PT2 while
preprocessing.
11. Maybe it works; I tried but it didn't work; If you want to add, say 40
trees with the name &25tree.act make a separate .sdf file to make a group of
ten trees. Give them a two digit number, eg &25tree01.act etc. Then save
this same file with another name. With the rename function of PT2 you can
change only one digit in a group of parts; So
&25tree01.act...&25tree09.act, becomes &25tree11.act...&25tree19.act. These
groups you can import in your level. As I said, it didn't work with me
because my comp became very slow. Maybe it works when you import the track
into the group of trees and save it with the trackname.