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Rescaling a track - Without replacing decals and statues

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:51 pm
by DJ99X
Ever made a track and thought "Damn, this could really use a different scale, but I CBF replacing everything". Well guess what, there is no need to! Just follow this tutorial!

I'll use the decals file as an example in this tutorial. For statues/billboards, just forget the scale part of it, and dont scale the y value.

OK, here we go:

Tools required:

- Decent notepad (I use notepad++)

- Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet software


NOTE: This is not an excel tutorial. I have written this assuming you know the basic functions of excel. If not, the internet is a great place to look for tutorials.


Step 1: Open the file in notepad. We need to remove the square brackets in order to change the number. To do this, just go Search > Replace, and replace all [ with nothing. Do the same for ]. Save the file.

Step 2: Open excel. Go File > Open, change the tab next to "file name" from "All excel files" to "All files". Open your file. A message will come up about format, click "Yes"

Step 3: A new box will appear. Two choices will be given. Choose "Delimited", then click next. Now, down the left hand side, there are a bunch of checkboxes. Make sure "Space" is selected. You will see all of your data in the preview box align into columns.

Image

Click "Finish"

Step 4: Select the columns you want to modify (co-ordinates and scale). Cut these to a new sheet. Your 2 pages should look like this now:

Image

Image

Step 5: In your second sheet with the co-ordinates, add a new column, each with the value "=newscale/oldscale" eg. =1.45/1.6

Step 6: Make new columns with the value "=scaleratio*oldco-ordinate". Do this by entering "=", click on the co-ordinate cell, enter "*", then click on the scale cell. You should now have this:

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Step 7: Select these new cells, copy them, and "paste values" into where they should be

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Step 8: Now, we need to put the square brackets back in place. Shift the cells around so there are spare cells either side of the co-ordinates. Fill these with the square brackets. This is what you get:

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Step 9: Go File > Save As, and save the file with the type "Text (tab delimited)". Just click OK for everything. The file is saved as whatever.txt. For the game, the file needs to have no extention. So, open this file in notepad, and save it with a bizarre extention, eg "decals.brrraaaaapppp". Now, just remove the .brrraaaaapppp from the name, and you will have your file. Enjoy!

Re: Rescaling a track - Without replacing decals and statues

Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 5:03 am
by yzmxer608
Man, this is going to save people a LOT of time and headaches. Great job :).

Re: Rescaling a track - Without replacing decals and statues

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 1:44 pm
by yzmxer608
Would the process be the same for height, just ignore x and z and use y?

Re: Rescaling a track - Without replacing decals and statues

Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 1:59 pm
by Garasaki
I don't know that I'd ever use this method for rescaling, but it's really good to know it's possible to manipulate those files in xcel.

For what, I don't know, but I am sure it'll come in handy sooner or later.

Re: Rescaling a track - Without replacing decals and statues

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:50 am
by DJ99X
yzmxer608 wrote:Would the process be the same for height, just ignore x and z and use y?
Well, you probably wouldnt change y anyways. The quickest way to change that would be to search > replace and replace that height, as it uses that heigh for all the duplicated objects