Add-on tracks in RSRBR 2009

[Andrew Evans]

The RBR track-making community is currently fizzing with new life, evidenced by the recent embrace of BTB tracks by RSRBR and the dozens of lovely creations both work-in-progress and completed in the BTB section of the forum. So, here's a quick infoes on how to get them running in your RSCenter.

There are 2 types of track out there, those that are pre-packed ready on the RallyeSim site - these have been tweaked so you can just drop them in and go - and the other type, which are ones that have just been uploaded to run in the stand alone game (with the RX plugin) - these take a little extra tweak to get running.

Click here to peruse a list of ready to go tracks. These range from the great to heinous, quite a lot of them are WIP, some have crushing fps - most of the best have already been assimilated into updates 09 & 10 (though are worth getting to play offline).

Preparation:

1. Make sure RSCenter is closed
2. Go to your root RBR folder, eg. C:\Program Files\Richard Burns Rally
3. Create a folder called RXRSRBR

You can now download ready-to-go tracks, drop the 7z in the RXRSRBR folder and the next time you start RSCenter, the track should be available on the BTB Stages (beta) tab.

The center doesn't automatically pick the correct tyres in this mode, so might find yourself having to restart your run. Also, you cannot change weather nor surface!

Once you load the stage, instead of getting the normal splash panel, you'll see the behind the scenes trace being output (white text on a grey background). You'll often see errors about missing meshes and such like but worry not. It tends to hang for a long while on the ColSplit() statement - some tracks can take a minute or two to load depending on your system etc.

If the game hangs, or there's no menu when it loads, or it automatically loads Kaihuavaara, then it's all gone wrong - task manager is your friend.

To install stand alone tracks, unfortunately, you'll need to repack the archive. But it's not as heavy as it sounds.

Preparation:

1. Make sure RSCenter is closed
2. Create a temporary working directory, eg. C:\Temp\RBRTemp
3. Create a folder in there called Plugins
4. Copy the rbr_rx.dll from your RBR root folder, eg. C:\Program Files\Richard Burns Rally, to the Plugins folder.

This is the basic structure you'll always need to re-pack these tracks, so the temporary working directory is worth leaving on your disk. (not so temporary! )

Method:

1. Unpack the track archive into the temporary working directory - the top level folder in the archive should be called RX_CONTENT
2. Now, simply, repack the track into a new 7z (it must be a 7z) including the RX_CONTENT and Plugins folders. Name of the file does not matter.
3. Drop the archive into the normal RXRSRBR folder, used for ready to go tracks, and you're done.

As far as I understand it RSRBR is only compatible with BTB built tracks - so you'll need to stick with the RallyeSim pre-packs and whatever is made available via the BTB links at the top of the post.