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Adding dials to see RPM, gear, g-forces etc.

VIEWS (GROUPS OF DIALS)

Views in Racer mean the different sets of measuring instruments (or dials) that your display shows. The km/h and rpm counter that you have seen are part of a single view. 3D incar views will make you want for more views. Normally, with outcar views, you'll have some displayed in 2D, when watching the car from the outside. In incar (cockpit) views, you can use a full 3D view, with which you can place dials and such onto the incar model (the dashboard) directly. Determining the XYZ locations of instruments is still a painful process though (by trial & error).

Views can be found in <cardir>/views.ini. Default elements are 2D (is3d=0). For 3D view elements, make sure 'is3d=1'. XYZ calculations are trial & error, if you don't have the model in a 3D modeler package like 3D Studio Max. Multiple views can be defined per car (views.view0.*, views.view1.* etc). These are:

• views.view0: Default outside dials (2D).
• views.view1: in-car 3D dials (only 3D elements used; where is3d=1).
• views.view2: in-car 2D dials (only 2D elements used; where is3d=0).
• views.view3: dials shown while in trackcamera view (if not present, view0 is used).

Recommended is to start out with another car's views.ini file, and modify from there.

Many view elements will measure things, like velocity, or engine rpm. A full list of variables names follows (you can add these behind the 'var=...' lines):

View elements

View elements are described in views.view<n>.elt<x>, where <x> is the element index. The element index must increase from 0, 1, 2 etc; if any element is missing the rest will NOT be loaded! All view elements support the following variables:

Digital view elements

Creating digital views is possible since Racer v0.5.2. This means you can create readouts for speed such as '123'. You must create an image that contains the characters 0123456789, a dot (.), a colon (:), a plus (+) and a minus (-) as the last character. Make this small font image fixed-width (every character should be the same width, also knows as non-proportional). Then define:

• image; selects the font image
• src_char_wid; source character width, the width in pixels in the source image.
• src_char_hgt; the height in pixels
• src_char_x; the starting X coordinate of the first character. Probably 0.
• src_char_y; the starting Y coordinate; probably 0 as well.
• char_wid; the onscreen character width. This is based on a 800x600 view, and will be scaled accordingly if the actual resolution differs.
• char_hgt; the onscreen character height.
• char_dx; the distance between each onscreen character, in pixels, and for a 800x600 view.
• format; the text format of the value. This is a text value: 'simple' will just use a regular number (i.e. '12345') and uses the 'digits' field to decide how large the field will be. Racer v0.5.3 beta 7+ also accepts 'time' for a time (1:23.456) and a 'relative_time' value (+1.23.456). float_1 (v0.8.0+) will display a floating point value with 1 decimal, for example: "142.3" (without the quotes). Use time_of_day (v0.8.2+) to get a 12:34 layout; this is used for the time of day variable: var=time_of_day.
• digits; the number of digits to reserve. Defaulting to 1 (giving left alignment of the number), you can increase this to get right aligned texts (for example, 3 would give 2 spaces). Note that the numbers are NOT clipped to this amount of digits, it is more meant to align the text.

Example - an RPM shifting indicator

This example demonstrates a dial that will indicate to the player when he needs to shift gear. Every car (since v0.8.4) has an rpm warning range (see car.ini's min_warn_rpm and max_warn_rpm parameters). Using the rpm_warning variable, you can create a font image with for example 10 characters; the first being blank, then adding progressively higher warning colors (blue..yellow..red).

The example below defines 10 characters; the factor is set to 9 to make the maximum value '9', meaning the 10th character in the font image. Instead of using numerical characters, you'd just create rectangle filled with a specific color (and use full transparency for the first character probably).

Before copying & pasting, make sure you renumber the 'elt1' to whatever number is next in your views.ini file.

elt1
{
  var=rpm_warning
  type=digital
  x=160
  y=315
  ; Font
  image=rpmfont.tga
  src_char_wid=42
  src_char_hgt=42
  src_char_x0=0
  src_char_y0=0
  char_wid=20
  char_hgt=20
  ; Letter spacing
  char_dx=16
  format=simple
  digits=1
  factor=9
}

The above should give a nice digital rpm shift-light indicator. Often you will want to display separate LEDs that light up at a certain rpm. We still use rpm_warning, since that's normalized (0..1) so you can leave the exact rpm range to the car.ini file (engine.min_warn_rpm, engine.max_warn_rpm). The example below would use a font with an empty/unlit first character ('0') and a lit 2nd character ('1'). The factor specifies when the led lights up. Although the example uses 'factor', it's easier in this case to use 'factor_inv', since that exactly specifies the crossover point of 'rpm_warning').

elt1
{
  var=rpm_warning
  type=digital
  x=160
  y=315
  ; Font
  image=rpmfont.tga
  src_char_wid=42
  src_char_hgt=42
  src_char_x0=0
  src_char_y0=0
  char_wid=20
  char_hgt=20
  ; Letter spacing
  char_dx=16
  format=simple
  digits=1
  ; Keep end display value clamped from 0..1
  min=0
  max=1
  ; Input var (rpm_warning) should be scaled to get a '1' as the end value. Here, 10
  ; means an input value of 0.1 will give 0.1*10 = 1.0, so the 2nd character in the font is used
  ; (the font has 0123456789 etc).
  ; We could also specify factor_inv=0.1, which is the same as factor=10 (factor_inv=1/x)
  factor=10
}

The above gives a single led that turns on when rpm_warning>0.1.

Here is an example of a 'clip' type dial, which can be used from v0.8.36 on. This one shows damage as an increasing bar. You can change 'orientation=v' into 'orientation=h' for a horizontal bar.

elt0
{
   type=clip
   x=727
   y=70
   width=20
   height=78
   image=damage_fill.tga
   var=chassis_damage
   min_value=0
   max_value=1
   ; Orientation
   orientation=v
}

More tutorials

You can also visit these pages with tutorials from other people:

• How to create a linear fuel gauge (by Citronized)

(last updated November 13, 2012 )