"Free Roam" AIw

Joao Pinto · Nov 14, 2011

Hi!
I am a new member here in race department, and I came here because I have a question:
I am trying to create a track that has two paths: a 1,2 km straight for 1vs1 drag racing and a 3,9km straight for top speed.
I layed a closed track to form the drag straight and the pit area, a the layed a open track to lay de top speed area. I put the main path down on the closed track, so that i could have the pit area, aswell as split 1 and 2 on the 400m and 1000m, respectively. The problem is, in rfactor, when i enter the top speed area, since it is not marked on the aiw, it doesn't mark my position on the map, and after a while, it DQ's me.
Any help on resolving this?
Thank you very much in advance!

Kennett Ylitalo · Nov 15, 2011

If you wan't them both working, you need to create a copy of the track first. Copy all the trackname.xxx files, rename them and drop them back to the mas folder. Then you need to create a new AIW that uses the top speed part of the track, that can be done easily in rFactor AIW/CAM editor. You need also new timing gates, both layouts need to have them separately in unique folders. There is some tricks that i don't know, i don't do rFactor tracks. In Race07 it's much simpler to create multiple layouts...

If you need only one layout, you need just to edit the AIW manually, but i don't think that is the issue here...

Someone who knows more how this is done in rFactor, please give more precise info how to do this... For ex i don't know where in rFactor are the folders structures defined etc. I just know that they are there, somewhere...

Joao Pinto · Nov 15, 2011

So, from what i understood, i have to copy the .scn, .gdb.tdf, etc etc files back to the folder where the .mas file is, then creat a separate aiw for that track?
Also, if i separate the track into two folders, won't that assume it's two diferent tracks? Or is there a work around to make rFactor use both folders?

Emery · Nov 15, 2011

I think the .aiw, .scn, .gdb, and .tdf have to be separate for the two versions, but they can share a .mas. Look at Toban for an example.

You might try extending the AIW for the high speed section such that it has really wide corridors to achieve free roaming without a penalty.

Kennett Ylitalo · Nov 15, 2011

I just thought a bit more of this and since it's your first projects, it's better to do two versions of the same track. It's just much more simpler that way. There's al sorts of XGates to think of etc. so it becomes very complicated very fast.. I learned this from my first multilayout project, about 75% of the time spent in 3 months was getting 7 layouts working from a single folder, from which 5 was releaseble.. Easily 100 hours of experimenting via trial and error. You can easily combine the folders this later..

Four easy steps:
1: Complete trackbuilding
2: Save the project with a different name so you have two identical copies of the track.
3: Redo AIW for the second layout.
4: Export under different name. You have then two versions of the same track.

The drawback is that theres duplicates (all the objects and textures) but you don't have to worry about the complexity of optimizing filespace by sharing a mas. Not yet. That can easily wait for a later occasion and by the description of the project, one can assume that there's not a lot of stuff there. Optimizing filesizes becomes an issue when theres 100Mb worth of stuff inside (there's a reason for the 100mb threshold...). Mostly optimizing is done so downloading is faster and easier, secondary to save user hard-drive space.. Thirdly, it's the right thing to do, modders do have to honor some of the coders ethics, things need to be lean and efficient.