This is my modified version (a fork) of Double Commander (DC), a two panel file manager. I first forked it in 2017 and in 2019 I finally moved to using it daily instead of Total Commander. I will describe few aspects here.
ℹ️How to start with DC
Here is a short paragraph upfront, for those who didn’t use a commander or are new to DC and want to start using it (or give it a try). I recommend the main website (for download and support) and the documentation (help) about how to use its functions.
DC is cross platform, so it runs on Windows and GNU/Linux. It is inspired by TC. There are of course many other file managers, (some even in text mode like MC), but I think DC is perfect for me and I highly recommend it.
The best features of DC though (for me), are being Open Source (FOSS, this gives Freedom) and still developed. What it means (especially for me) is that I can learn how it works and can change it myself. Or even add new features, including those that only I will use. And I can contribute to the project.
📜My History
I started using a file manager as a kid, already on my first PC which had DOS. It was Norton Commander (NC, in text mode). I quickly got to using it daily, as my main program to do all file and directory operations. I didn’t even know how to do them using DOS commands for a while. Well I barely started learning English and wasn’t able to read any documentation too (it wasn’t needed BTW).
When I was moving to Windows 98 (around 1999), I naturally wanted a similar program. I didn’t like Windows Explorer at all or even windows in general (I was still sometimes going back to DOS). Fortunately there was a similar program, at the time simply called Windows Commander (WC ?). It was later renamed to Total Commander (TC). Using NC in Windows was possible, but not always, since DOS had short file names and Windows has longer.
WC was better than NC, my favorite feature probably being that it could color file names by extension. I think it’s when I started adding my colors for file extensions I got to work with.
Naturally, when I started using Kubuntu and later Debian, I wanted something like TC.
⏳Before I started
I actually reported a couple of bugs that affected me the most and honestly prevented me from using DC. I was also too inexperienced to even try fixing them myself. Lastly those weren’t easy things to fix.
These were:
Very slow File Filters. It took 4 seconds of delay to view 24000 files in a directory with my settings having 123 file filters. Directories over 1000 files were already entered with noticeable delay. And yes, my file extensionslist grew and became something that I enjoy since years. Surely not something that I would throw away and just not use it.
Freeze on entering unreachable network paths. It happened often at work (where I had to use DC not TC) and also for more people. Application froze for nearly a minute. So quite an inconvenience to kill the process every time someone accidentally tries an unreachable path or a tab with it.
Compare by Contents not Implemented from Search result and archives. A simpler bug for a useful feature.
After a few months the first issue was fixed. So I started making my own program to deal with my file extensionslist for both DC and TC. I had a lot of them 96 in 2017 and 239 in 2019, this is just the count of unique colors (file filters), though I split some for readability (e.g. for Stunt Rally track sceneries).
The program has its own page and is called Crystal Color Center. I’m sharing it with my list included. It allows an managing the list on an even higher level, with features like: groups, search, quicker editing (with R,G,B sliders) and of course import / export for both DC and TC. Thanks to it, moving my list from TC to DC was easy and any changes to it is fast and conveniently done in my program.
The second bug was fixed after a year (still, I can’t complain since I didn’t do it earlier). But earlier it became not that needed anymore for me.
After that it was probably the time, when I realized I should fix the rest of my issues with DC. I mean just missing things from TC that I got so used to. It also turned to a nice learning experience and woken up old memories from Pascal.
✍️How I started
Well the start is the hardest part of any software (program or game) or even any project in general. To start, the page Building from source is crucial. And I believe it’s probably the most important page for any FOSS project. Of course beside a good documentation for users. Fortunately the instruction is not long or difficult.
Sources are surely different, because DC is written in FreePascal. Lucky for me, I knew Pascal since DOS and later Delphi in Windows. So I had some start and the rest is nicely explained on internet and in language documentation and wiki. But basically I prefer to just search on internet for particular problem. It doesn’t matter where I land (doc, wiki, forum, stackoverflow, etc.) to read the solution or hints.
At first I was building just from command line. After installing packages for Lazarus IDE (a bit more trouble) I could develop in it. Naturally I created my own color theme for Lazarus IDE as a result. And I also saw that weird build “Internal error 200611031″ plenty of times (well count – 1 too many).
The DC code is quite big and it surely requires time to get a hang of it. Learning FreePascal adds even more time. But it is a very nice (almost funny) language which also reminded me of my earliest years of programming (at college I moved to C++ and later also C#).
Pascal language doesn’t use so many symbols, making other languages look more like a forest. Pascal code looks more like a book. Not a phone book, a novel. An English book where people write what should happen. Assuming that comments are written in English too, which I recommend always.
Well let’s have an example, I have cut and pasted few very readable lines here:
uses
Forms, Controls, Dialogs, Buttons, Menus, Classes;
procedure LoadSettings;
function GetOptionsForm: TfrmOptions;
function GetAName: String; virtual; abstract;
destructor Destroy; override;
const
allowed : set of char = [ '-', '.', '_', '~' ];
var
I: Char;
begin
for I := #0 to #255 do
begin
case I of
'_', 'a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', '0'..'9': Identifiers[I] := True;
else
implementation
if not Assigned(Operation) then Exit;
Operation.Execute;
with Operation as TMultiArchiveCopyInOperation do
begin
if cbEncrypt.Checked then
repeat
..
until sPassword = sPasswordTmp;
finally
Free;
⚖️Pascal vs C++, quick rants
Well I can’t say I’m finally free yet ?, but surely many things from Pascal are great and make it very nice to read. E.g. that uses statement at start, compared to #include each in own line in C++. Or the with do statement that shortens a whole block below.
C++ is a horribly unreadable at start. And just to mention, some terrible mistakes made by just one symbol, like if (i = 0), instead of ==, that compiles fine. But I did like { } brackets for blocks, instead of begin and end, how many times did I spell them wrong.
I also remember my favorite thing from Turbo Pascal: F9 key to build project, if there is an error it jumps to it in code. Far too many times in Visual Studio I pressed: F1 to show error list, Enter to go to error and Shift-Esc to close that bloody thing. I can’t even ? (and those are my own shortcuts, just Esc won’t work).
It is much better with C# where it compiles in background and underlines bad expressions in code already.
One great thing in Lazarus IDE is that it makes tabs for each search you do. Why on earth can’t VS do it??
I could go on. But the point is, it was really nice (for a change) to code in a completely different language. I think I’d put Pascal after C++ and before C#. Okay then, that’s it from off topic.
📊My version
Now we finally arrive at the main and most interesting part (at least for me).
After I was able to use Lazarus IDE and felt good with Pascal (again), I wrote new features and customized DC to my liking. I also made source patches for some features on DC BugTracker.
📂Sources
Full list of my changes (in commits) can be browsed here (or locally after cloning with Git).
Here is what I changed and why:
Undo Close Tab I simply can’t imagine having dynamic tabs anywhere without this. We’ll see if it gets into final DC release, and when.
Multi Rename tool More compact look and new functions listed here. Probably the biggest update. I use this tool a lot at home, e.g. dealing with thousands of screenshots, deleting later half or one third of them, re-enumerating them with this tool and doing it again.
Status bar New look, visible on screenshot above. I really like to have a different status bar (text and color) for when anything is selected. I once had selected files, not visible at cursor, forgot them, wanted to delete a file at cursor and deleted them all.
Size colors Next, why shouldn’t I have different colors for different sizes (K, M, G etc)? Sure for some it’d be too much color. But I’m using the same idea in my audio player (cAmp), coloring track times and I find it informative.
Gradient for cursor (blue) and selection (orange). Also visible on screenshot above. I think it’s nice, more futuristic.
Follow links to destination. With Ctrl – (Left,Right or Up), quite a useful thing. I have few dirs with just such links (.lnk files) and use them as my starting point e.g. when developing one of my projects. And BTW a quick feature to use Ctrl-Shift-S on cursor to make a link to it, without asking.
Find Files results, Color by file types. Another useful extension. Seems natural for me, to have any list of files use coloring by file type (extensions) especially when I have so many in my list.
Some smaller things. Not very important, but definitely nice to have and a cool exercise to find it in code.
Another thing of mine is file and directory rating. I use it constantly since years too. This is visible on screenshot above as symbols ` ^ ~ + after name. It makes it easy to spot more interesting files/dirs and makes them change color (usually intensity). It is also an internal feature of my player to apply the symbols to filenames.
⚙️Contributing (in general)
There are a few different change types to software, that anyone can report, contribute, or have on own fork.
Bug or issue reports. This is relatively easy to do as user. And is surely a good thing to receive as a developer. With more features in project and more systems where it can run, it is difficult to catch bugs. I didn’t like those reports as a Stunt Rally developer, but without them it would be a more buggy game. But still, there is probably nothing worse than a post “help, it doesn’t work”, without any (not to mention all) data required like version, OS, steps, etc. In that case it’s better not to post. There is a general guide for “how to report a bug” and some project have specific ones.
Bug fixes. Like those above, but better. They requires programming skills though. It’s when you fix a bug yourself and submit it (to developers). In Git that would be a pull request (from your fork, name is surely misleading). It is less trouble to merge and test, also more convenient to discuss (on website Codeberg, GitLab, Github, Bitbucket, etc.). But sometimes a patch is enough.
Ideas. Well that’s just the worst IMO. Everyone has them, just having is not much worth. Discussing them could mean wasted time on development. And developers have usually their own ideas and vision of project. Having more doesn’t help. But, I guess, it could be some help for starting projects, with not set vision yet.
New features, implemented. That is way better than just having ideas. Being able to turn them into reality. One can submit those to developers. But there is a catch. Not all will be attractive to put into project. Having too many features makes a project more difficult to test and more bugs are possible. And could make it more cluttered in GUI or Options (wasn’t an issue in my projects).
Custom own features. This is why I have so many forks. I do have plenty of ideas, I implemented them and I’m pretty sure nobody (from the developers) would care or want to add them (reasons above). Additionally, since I have a lot of preferences, it is natural to keep them in my own forks. This way I can keep up to date with upstream (main) project versions and have my stuff too. Priority for me is to keep my stuff. But merging upstream versions is needed too (once a while) even if it takes time. If not done, it would at some point accumulate too much, making upstream update too time consuming. Sometimes in that case, it could be possible to apply (merge) own changes (only if not too many) to a fresh upstream version.
⏳Conclusions
My move to DC was surely long and took many steps. But I’m glad to use FOSS, not just as an alternative to commercial, but to prove that it’s simply the only logical way for me. It was obvious already earlier, when I created my own audio player (I use it everyday).
If you’d ask me why I didn’t yet move to GNU/Linux (from that Windows crap) it is because of all those steps needed. DC was one of them. Rewriting my audio player for GNU/Linux is next. There are few other programs I customized and got used to (Video player, Image browser, etc.) but those two (DC and my cAmp) are crucial.
I think I also showed some aspects of FOSS and the great things it brings. In particular, opportunities to: learn, express creativity and adjust to own needs.
BuildConsole (BC) is the program I created and developed at work*, using C# (syntax here), in WinForms. Specifically to visualize output from build process. It surely is my biggest and most useful C# project so far. Unfortunately I can not open source it’s code because of that*. But I can share my experience from this process.
📷Gallery
Screenshots here. Starting with latest version from 2021 and its features, then with older until first from 2017.
⚙️How it works
At its core, BuildConsole replaces the Windows cmd.exe command prompt (terminal) and will run any command too.
It does so, by creating a process and redirecting its output, error and input streams. For the core part, it was quite useful to browse ConsoleControl code and many stackoverflow answers as usual.
The main needed part of creating process is located here with redirecting (all 3 RedirectStandard*). It is also using BackgroundWorker classes (e.g. outputWorker) that run on own threads and read those redirected streams, to show output immediately when it comes.
Textbox
I used the richTextbox control (included in WinForms) since the beginning. It turned out to be garbage for this purpose. It makes few easy operations really too difficult:
Centering view to a line not even possible.
Adding a text line, is slowing down the more lines it already has.
View always jumped a little (jittered) when adding lines.
Having a user selection while adding text was a PITA, got it almost working.
Had to be unfocused before browsing text above. Otherwise new added lines would jump to end (even if turned off).
Finding text needed a lot of code. Mark all was painfully slow.
So I recently found and adapted BC to use the FastColoredTextBox control instead. Which is on the other side of spectrum. It is so feature packed (almost like a real IDE) that I probably only use 10% of it. Still, it is way faster at drawing text, has all needed features and even some extras already (like bookmarks). It needs using only fixed width fonts though (I used variable before). But it is understandable that e.g. selecting text (block mode too) was much easier to implement because of that.
✍️Motivation and rants
Well everybody in company was using just cmd.exe to build (nearly all) projects, with a custom .bat file. I can’t post how it looked like exactly, but I can surely tell that at some point, it looked like a black and whiteTV noise. It happened when building with VxWorks started, using GCC (which is awesome). But here, it was outputting full build command, for each file, with all include paths too (like 8 lines of junk). In other words, it seemed like somebody was shoving a black and whitesand at my face. Well I couldn’t even ?.
About 6 months after I started working there, I was building a project very often, to test an upmerge of some stupidly outdated branch. This required to look for build errors in that white textsandbox. It is when I realized I seriously can’t look at this trash and I simply can make a program, that filters out and colors this junk (firstly errors).
So after asking and getting approval, I started implementing it. Then after about 2 weeks I had a first working release. It was pretty basic, but already way more useful. It still had a couple of bugs, which I fixed later.
Screenshot
Now I can’t provide a real work example (also because of that*), so I’m including an artificial example on the screenshot (above). Output is similar to real and more general. The good part is that it has like 1 to 3 lines of each common message. Normally there are many similar lines on one screen, but only few unique. This way screenshot shows the whole process on one screen with already most of line types included.
📊Features
Here is a list of all program features from current version. Starting from basic, first implemented and ending with additional extras, added much later (not essential, but useful). I am describing them in place.
🔨Basic
Changing font on Settings tab. Zooming already present, with Ctrl-Wheel or Ctrl-Num+
Unlimited buffer scrollback. cmd.exe has very small default value, and even doesn’t allow more than 9999 lines, in settings.
Settings in a XML file, saved in user folder. I’d say a standard thing. Holds both user set options and all line rules (find text, color, skip and more).
Combo boxes for user paths and commands. With buttons on left to add, delete, set as default.
Filtering (skipping) useless lines. There is a lot of rubbish, e.g. coming from MSBuild (also visible in Visual Studio), like: “Compiling…”, “Generating code…”, something up to date, lines with just “Microsoft Visual Studio” (a greeting commercial) and more. With a simple xml option to skip a line, the final output becomes cleaner and to the point. There is a textbox with last line present (just below console) that shows those skipped ones too.
Coloring lines By regular expression (RegEx), more info on its syntax here.
Later replaced (and extended) by simple find (String.Contains).
Advanced RegExes Use groups and replace (change) the incoming line (to make it cleaner and shorter). Still doing a simple string check first, to make the whole process faster.
⚙️Utility
Progress list. On right, it has just key build steps. Copied from output with time since start. It shows only 0:00 here because this test was fast.
Double click on a line in progress list jumps to it in console. This was pretty easy with FastColoredTextBox and it also centers (impossible and awful in richTextbox).
Find. Searching for text in console, with: find next, previous, mark all and clear marks.
Program icon turning green when idle, yellow when running, red when build has errors.
Saving current console output to a text file. Loading saved files into console, to view them later, in same colors.
Log file, optional. Auto incremented for more program instances. There are checkboxes for disabling line skip in log file or in console.
Tooltips with info text for nearly all controls.
Icons for most controls, also in menu.
Help menu with full documentation in about 10 chapters. Also Changelog and nice About dialog.
Opening VS solution and VxWorks with workspace By button (all with hotkeys), you could open the project in path quickly. There sometimes were more in one path, so new settings were added in xml.
🛠️Advanced
Auto loading settings.xml file when it changed. Open by button on Settings tab, and on save in editor, program already loads it. Useful with many instances, all will do it. Also if one saves settings, other will load it too.
Queue. Ability to run a command in a number of paths sequentially. Done in settings.xml. Main thing here is that if a build fails in path the queue will quit, leaving the failing project path in combo.
Actions. Ability to start or kill a process, at command start, end or fail (build error).
💡Observations
So first, just as a warning, this is my point of view.
There is a number of things I realized here, some I still don’t get and can only suspect.
It is certain that I made an extremely useful tool. What bothers me here, is that nobody did it, in like 10 years. Well, I guess I’m the one guy who could create it so far and that is rare.
Next, which is even more odd, some people still don’t use it. I can only suspect a few factors here, they:
Don’t know of it. It is obvious for me that even the best software (FOSS, well made and useful) will go unnoticed without promotion (or commercials) and spreading information about it. That’s why I am always announcing each new release in local emails and some also further.
Are too lazy to try. Sure all programs have a learning curve, but this one is easy and well documented. Sadly that can happen, even worse if it takes years. I guess I can’t really expect ability to change especially from people who work for too long in one place.
Are so addicted to old methods, that they can touch the future. Actually the present, for nearly 2 years. That’s for me even worse than laziness.
⏳Conclusions
Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter that much. A software engineer has to deal with users. Sometimes even those who “didn’t even try turning it off and on again”. Also, developers need to balance listening to already users (wanting something) versus shouting at not yet users (to gain new ones).
Lastly, I’m glad I could develop this tool, because otherwise I would hate building even more (now it is nice to look at, just old and inefficient). Also I’m glad if anyone found it useful (beside me).
This is my own keyboard controller software used in my keyboards CK6 and CK7 (upgraded CK3 and CK4), running on Teensy 3.2 (or 3.1) with a color LCD display (160×128, ST7735 chip). It is continued in newer version with Teensy 4 and bigger display.
My firmware sources are here. I called it K.C. (aka “Kacey”) simply from Keyboard Controller. A catchy cool name for software is a thing, isn’t it.
The readme with all key features is visible on github too. Here will be a more practical description.
✍️Motivation
My previous keyboards CK3 and CK4 were quite useful. But there were few flaws that I wanted to improve. They had a very tiny display, sure it did the job, but wasn’t convenient to look at for longer. Since I based my code on existing kiibohd controller software, there were few problems. Any change in key bindings had to be done on PC, needed to build binary and upload it to MCU. That’s a long way to e.g. check if it’d be better if I swapped some keys. Not to mention doing it at work. Lastly, there were few bugs which I couldn’t spend more time trying to fix.
So, it’d be better indeed to start writing my own code. And that’s what I did. Right now I can’t find a reason not to use my controller code. Sure, it was easier back then to get started, knowing there is an open source keyboard controller and it runs on Teensy 3.1, this is how I got into it. My code surely doesn’t have stuff present in kiibohd like NKRO support, keyboard LEDs animations and other fancy things I will likely never need. But it now does have features I wanted and it wasn’t that difficult to code them.
📊Features
So the code features are:
Display with menu, where you can edit everything possible (that I needed so far).
Key bindings (mappings), i.e. what USB codes will the physical key send to PC when pressed. There is a pick list with all common keys (and internal functions) to choose from when binding. It has group colors and group filter for easier orientation.
Keyboard layout drawn on display. Shown when editing mappings. Has a cursor to move around between keys, can also jump to key by pressing it.
Layers. If you hold a key, whole keyboard layout changes giving you other keys. Kind of like the Fn keys on laptop but much more useful and customizable. Surely a common feature in custom controllers (like tmk or kiibohd).
Sequences aka Macros. Basically any key combinations (for key shortcuts) and any sequences of key presses (for e.g. passwords). Not typing passwords myself, when my keyboard could do it, was my first reason when starting with keyboard controllers back then. Sadly even in kiibohd you couldn’t change them without rebuild and upload. This then was possible in my fork of kiibohd. To be convenient, I am showing (short) sequence preview where possible. So when editing Mapping (for a sequence key), when picking a key from list or Testing pressed keys (if a key runs a sequence). I am also showing in sequences view any mapped keys that run selected sequence.
Sequence commands are an even further extension. If you have an editor on display (basically a simpler editbox) one could put special commands (beside sequence keys), that e.g. wait for few seconds, or change how slow the sequence will run (useful for putty). Newest ones allow putting comments, useful if you have lots of sequences and want to rather see what it’s for, not what it will press. And hiding sequence from preview, useful if you don’t want to show important passwords on GUI.
Mouse keys, i.e. keys that will move mouse, press mouse buttons or scroll mouse wheel. Also featuring acceleration and even parameters for it and speed in GUI.
I now even have mouse commands with all mouse actions possible to add in sequences. Some stupid programs don’t allow everything using keyboard and specifically want you to click with mouse. But hey, now even this could be done automagically by my keyboard.
Testing and Setup pages. Those are quite useful when developing and in normal use to check if everything is working properly as intended. Scan setup is nice e.g. to check which strobe delay, scan frequency, debounce time I need. Matrix page shows the 18×8 keyboard matrix, with my anti-ghosting code working and any issues from too low strobe delay.
Demos and Game. Were already present in my fork of kiibohd. Now extended with new presets to color display. Best shown on videos, links below.
Clock with date (internal RTC, needs 3V battery) optionally also showing Temperature, read from attached DS18B20 1-wire sensor.
Internal functions, e.g. to dim brightness or toggle GUI, by keys on other layer.
⌨️Keyboards CK6 and CK7
I then upgraded my 2016 keyboards CK3 and CK4 with bigger, color display (160×128 LCD, ST7735) and K.C. They now became CK6 and CK7. Apart from the new displays and my software, the keyboards are the same.
The CK7 is the oldest one, comes from CK4, which in fact was done from CK2 (2006) and is now 12 years old… Still doing fine. Well this proves then, that cutting and gluing rubber domes is nothing that would decrease the lifespan of a keyboard. Even recently folded keyboard foil since CK4 works okay.
▶️Videos
There are a few videos of my keyboard CK7, showing most of K.C. on its display:
View – Short video of keyboard and closeup at display.
Plasma – Quick and colorful show of presets of plasma fullscreen effect. It runs at 10-30 frames per second. Note that I overclocked Teensy 3.2 here at 120 MHz, HW SPI runs at 30MHz. My other keyboard CK6 has Teensy 3.1 at 144MHz, SPI at 24MHz, it gives about 1.5 Fps more here.
Demos – Showing rest of demos: 3D Polyhedrons with diagonals, Wave, Fire (not real) and the older ones: 2D waving CK Logo, Space, Balls, Fountain, Fonts.
Game – falling blocks (Sixtis), or my version of it. It has 11 game presets, generated blocks, possibly diagonal, with many parameters for custom games.
Features – A detailed look at features, no sound or descriptions though. Editing mappings, sequences, testing etc.
Link to my channel with electronics videos here, just from my keyboards.
☑️Summary
For reference, here is a table with current status of all my keyboards, since start until present day:
Name
Assembly year
Original keyboard
Keys actuation
[gram force]
Notes
CK3 > CK6 > CK9
2016 > 2018 > 2020
A4 Tech KX-100
23 g
Cheaper, bit wobbly, but more keys
CK2 > CK4 > CK7
2005 > 2016 > 2018
Logitech Ultra X Flat
33 g
Stiff foil, old, extra keys
CK5, CK5b
2015, 2020
A4 Tech KV-300H
9-18 g
The lightest foil
CK1
2004
Logitech Ultra X Flat
25 g
First, old, had extra keys,
now only for testing, 1 row dead 💀
This is a program I wrote specifically to aid in managing my coloring patterns in file managers. For both Double Commander and Total Commander.
📜History
I was using Total Commander since about 1999, back when it was called Windows Commander. Since then I’ve gathered an already quite big list of file extensions for own coloring. The list even has colors for directories and my own rating symbols.
I’m using Double Commander more now and having my list in it is essential. It also needs a bit of order changing to have similar result in both. E.g. for directories, links, executables. I also started a fork of DC with my own tweaks.
✍️Motivation
Because both commanders are clunky at managing such big lists, I’ve decided to write my own program that will allow doing it efficiently and fast. And by the way it will be usable for both commanders. This way I can now just use it and get my list exported directly into each commander’s settings files, without editing it there at all.
🔍Implementation
The program is written in modern C++11. It was a good step forward into learning it in practice, since all my previous programs and games were tied to C++03. Since I also switched to using GCC, more recent C++ features are available.
It uses SFML library, which allows easily having windows, graphics, shaders, threads, sounds etc. So without too much code and while also being cross platform. Which is important to let me use my own programs on GNU/Linux too.
Gui
I started using SFML already a few years back. But only for drawing text. This time I went further and looked around for a GUI system for SFML. I checked out SFGui and TGui which are good, have themes, most controls, but other that that are basic and need a lot of code for simplest things, same like e.g. MyGui did.
So my interest settled with ImGui which has an abundance of possible Gui controls and demos (on first page, and even more in topics). It is famous for debug panels in games and even is used in editors for games. The main downsides are no texturing of controls (just one color) and no editor for layout. Since you just create it in code, where also events are handled. This immediate mode approach is interesting and allows quick developing. Of course not for each purpose. For use with SFML it needs a helper library ImGui-SFML.
📖Tutorials
I’ve put it all together with CMake and using Qt Creator as IDE. This will probably serve as a base for many of my programs. It is easy to compile on GNU/Linux, as it needs only SFML installed, rest is in source code. To get started using it, you can see the SFML tutorials, the tutorial(s) on connecting SFML with ImGui and my tutorials for CKeys program (earliest 3 releases here). Later checking out the ImGui demo program’s code when needed.
The program’s code quickly got bigger and rich with features. Some are still missing but there already are many features that allow fast and pleasant editing, which aren’t present in those commanders. For example:
sliders for R,G,B colors.
scaling font size
pattern search with occurrences mark, also on slider
groups, visibility, etc.
Also convenient are hiding, toggling directory and newly introduced groups. Groups allow putting lines with patterns together with a title and then e.g. hiding it. Later I added also visibility sets for groups, allowing to easily create other views for list. E.g. basic (public) and detailed (with my custom patterns e.g for Stunt Rally or OGRE files).
The program also has some settings, saved in XML and visible on Settings tab. It also features a Help screen with all shortcuts.
Projects made in it are saved as own XML format (using TinyXML2), where each pattern (or group) is one line. This allows easy comparing (with diff viewers) with earlier projects, and merging some changes.
This is the last version of my program for showing pressed keys. It now also shows keyboard layouts.
📜History
The oldest version of it was useful already in 2005, when I was first tinkering with my first keyboards, later named CK1 and CK2. Program showed a list with the Virtual Key and Scan Code values of pressed (held) keys (and their names). It was useful for adding my extra keys on regular keyboards. First by finding which matrix combinations (shorting row and column) give key presses besides the present keyboard keys. Next for finding their codes and using them for binding in e.g. my audio player.
❌Why Qt and QML failed
I previously did the same program using Qt and QML for GUI. Just to get a bit familiar with it and get my own opinion. The repository with it is here. I finally abandoned it after realizing that I would need extra 55 MB in over 100 extra files just to start the program anywhere else. That’s insane ?, surely for such a tiny program. Maybe a huge editing tool or other big application could benefit from Qt (and QML) and hide that size in its own resources. But definitely none of my own programs. Even my Track Editor, but for slightly different reason: to not add Qt as extra dependency for building, when we already have MyGui.
⌨️Layouts
Now my keyboards CK3 and CK4 have different layouts. Hence drawing keyboard layout is a nice feature and visual addition to the list of pressed keys.
There already is a website where you can edit keyboard layouts, for many other keyboards including ergonomic ones, link here. So I decided to save time and not create my own and just used the output from it. It saves layouts in JSON format. Thus I needed a library for C++ that parses .json files. I decided to go with JSMN which is small and fast(est), at just doing what I needed and not much more.
🪟Program
The program is simple and it was easy to code, right after getting familiar with SFML and ImGui. Which I already used in my previous program Color Center.
Graphics and Gui turned out to be good, even if simply one colored and rectangular. The look wasn’t important here anyway, rather to code and use it fast. I made it basically in 2 days. But of course using parsing code and basic application with Gui from the other 2 programs and pressed keys detection from my older program.
Additionally it features a very fast scaling of the layout through slider and can also fit window to it. And a combobox to change layout for other keyboards.
📂Sources
Located here. Including Windows Releases. Should also work fine on GNU/Linux, after building from sources.
📖Tutorials
The first 3 versions of the program were aimed to be educational and can serve as basic tutorials for simple applications like this one.
Namely cross-platform C++ programs using SFML, built with CMake. With possible interface using ImGui and settings saved in XML with TinyXML2.
See archives in Releases, or use Git to get tags 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5.
The newer two of my heavily modified keyboards. This time having Teensy 3.1 (or 3.2) as microcontroller with a tiny 1″ monochrome OLED display. Firmware was based on Kiibohd, it was a fork with my extensions. I added display support (with a library), menu for editing e.g. macros/sequences, few demos and a game. I did improve them further in my newer firmware, with bigger display.
🛠️Modifications
The first operation I did, was cutting off most of all rubber domes. This makes the keys much softer to press, so needs less effort or fatigue. The result is minimized pressing (actuation) force and distance. Simply more pleasant and comfortable. Also healthier, since the risk of keyboard injuries decreases. I already did that earlier on my two oldest keyboards in 2005 and 2006.
✍️Motivation
Originally most keyboards need about 50 gram force needed to press keys, and probably 4 mm distance. After cutting, the distance is about 1-2mm, the force is at 23 gram for CK3 (top), 33g for CK4 (bottom) and 9-18g for CK5. This can also be varied per key (more detail can be seen on pictures (galleries below), but ultimately the lowest value depends on keyboard’s foil thickness.
⌨️Additional keys
For CK4 there are also few small extra keys. Which were present already in my earliest keyboards CK1 and CK2. Those are glued on top and are made from lightest 0,5N switches available. The row above numpad is used for my audio player control. Rest is custom. This part is optional and I didn’t do it for CK3. The disadvantage is the difference in pressing those switches and much lighter normal keyboard keys. They are smaller so you can fit more, but are less convenient to press. Lastly, regular keys can be used to switch layers instead.
⚙️Microcontroller (MCU)
The second step was replacing the keyboard controller board, with my own. The hardware is composed of Teensy 3.1 (or 3.2) with a tiny 1 inch OLED display (SSD1306, monochrome, 128×64) and a bunch of wires to connect to the original keyboard’s matrix.
The reason for this was to take advantage of already made open source Kiibohd controller allowing any imaginable keys assigned and layers. Also possible are macros, key combinations and even mouse buttons and movement simulation. But changing any of this required rebuilding controller software and uploading to controller, through already present USB.
It was a bit simpler to start at the time, instead of writing my own later.
📊Features
After getting it to work, I implemented my own menu where you can edit sequences, stored in memory (remembered after power off). The sequences are very useful for not typing passwords or simply binding some useful macro combinations or commands dynamically. Which needed a display and menu for entering.
Once I’ve done the useful stuff, I got carried away and implemented several demos on display and even a falling blocks game. I also wrote about it in this forum post.
📂Sources
The code is in my fork here with some more detail.
📷Galleries
There are picture galleries below, also from assembly and videos.▶
All galleries up to now, from my keyboards are as follows (newest first):
Most pictures have some description text (explaining what I did there).
Here I gather my experiences with developing websites. Both this one, using WordPress and for Stunt Rally using CMS Made Simple. Both are PHP based and allow customization with CSS, HTML and PHP code. They are hosted on TuxFamily. For which I am very thankful.
It was released in May 2015. So 5 years later after my first game release in Apr 2010. Way to long probably. We had forum earlier, since Nov 2012, a bit late too.
The website was started and put together by alket and finished by me. There were like 2 attempts earlier too.
The deciding factor was finding TuxFamily (hosting without cost for CC and FOSS projects). Since I wanted to have a website, but didn’t want to pay for anything (neither hosting nor domain).
Once we had a place, it was a matter of someone with experience creating the website. I had none yet, and at the time I was still very busy (developing, improving art, tracks) and didn’t want yet another distraction from that. But once I saw alket having put it together, I decided to style it and finish everything. It was also a nice learning experience.
📊Features
We used CMS Made Simple because it allows for more customization using templates and global content blocks. I wanted to have our tracks and vehicle browsers, which I once wrote using just HTML and JS. Nice small functional code, displaying images from github and statistics from XML files. But it is not FOSS, so I can’t recommend it and I will change to something else.
We use DokuWiki for documentation. It is nice, not too big (like MediaWiki) and stores pages in text files not database. Editing pages is also good from what I remember.
We also had a gallery nanoGallery3, it’s broken now. Since I’ve put a lot of screenshots (about 120 each release) and also same amount of development screenshots (total 1.8 GB, about 4200) on Picasa (Google Photos now), I wanted just a plugin that would display it. Worked well for few years.
I also wanted a nice issue management for ToDo (sadly just my tasks at the time, I was again developing alone). It wasn’t probably that needed after all, but we installed Mantis BT (I used it before) and I customized it to my liking. Seems that it still can’t sort by priority on at start view, which I’d like.
Was released in Aug 2016 (if I remember), so more than 1 year later. After some experience with CMSMS for Stunt Rally I thought of making my own website and gathering my other projects on it.
Someone recommended WordPress for it and I like it (is also the most popular). Probably my favorites features in it are that:
it auto updates itself,
allows installing and browsing plugins and themes directly in it,
and lastly the vast number of available plugins and themes available.
⚙️WordPress plugins
Naturally it wouldn’t be that great without plugins (just like my Firefox). Here is a list of plugins I use now and what for:
Broken Link Checker Nice tool for automatic checking of website links, for wrong urls etc.
Child Theme Wizard For creating a child theme and letting me apply changes (in CSS and also PHP). When original theme gets updated, my changes will stay independently.
I am only using free versions and I prefer as always FOSS. I don’t really like that commercial aspect of WordPress where most of stuff is just free beer. Meaning free to check out, see a lot of commercials in it, but available just to make you addicted and pay for better versions.
There are of course few types of plugins (just like software):
Few big ones, very popular and existing for years.
Many abandoned, even when they were paid.
Good ones, that aren’t popular.
Few unpopular, and actually offering less, than the big ones that are open source.
And rare but my favorite type, those that are Open Source (e.g. TablePress) or turned into.
There were (of course) many moments when I found something annoying, wanted more features, or browsed those endless plugins and couldn’t find any good, free one.
But I’m glad I achieved all what I wanted. E.g. recently allowing users to switch themes. Since my default is dark, and some prefer white. I simply view every website in my dark theme, but I’m guessing most users can’t.
I also installed a style to have dark admin theme. Then customized few colors for syntax and editor. Now I can view my website in original theme and have WordPress also dark. Before editor had white background.
⌛Summary
I’d summarize it so: CMSMS is quite low level, you need to know HTML, a bit PHP and probably for more users with hierarchy. From what I saw, it has to be updated manually.
WordPress is easier to use, nice to edit, and very popular. and with plugins can even have dynamic elements or most other need features. Huge plus is updates itself.
There is also Joomla, I just quickly looked at, and it seems to me to be more for a platform of users to collaborate, very social.
Stunt Rally is the game I started in Dec 2009, having first release in Apr 2010 and last (2.6) in Sep 2015. It was my biggest project by far, I developed it for 5 years almost continuously.
Update: I started developing again after about 5 years break, and continued with new version 2.7 and moved to newer Ogre-Next in upcoming Stunt Rally 3.
The game works on GNU/Linux and Windows. It features its own Track Editor. Simulation for cars comes from VDrift and rendering using OGRE 3D engine, more info here.
I’m proud of what it became, but most importantly from the people I met, who contributed to this project, especially developers and track creators. The experiences gained and things learned with this project are significant. And it was a lot of fun.
🔍Detail
I created the 📖SR presentation book, it has 196 pages with lots of screenshots and explanations of the whole project (until version 2.6).
So, the game’s documentation will tell you everything about the game, track editor and tools. But it won’t tell you the history behind it. While the presentation book covers whole project (both the game and editor) in general, this post tells how it all started.
That’s why I made this page. It’s also my dearest project and I get very sentimental every time I play it or even look at screens or videos. So I think it deserves it, and could be informative.
📜History
Around Dec 2009 I started looking for open source racing games, from which I could use the simulation code. My previous projects from 2008 and 2007 already showed me the limits of using only physics engine’s included car demo’s code for games. So PhysX and Newton Dynamics respectively. Bullet had its own car/vehicle demo too, so I knew it could only be fit for a basic arcade game.
I was aiming at a simulation and wanted the most complicated code. After all I was playing Richard Burns Rally already for a long time (on keyboard), liked WRC (on gravel and from 2004-6 mostly) and actually despised any other car simulation games for being too simple (maybe RBR fans of that time know what I mean).
Open source racing games
There were actually just 3 games: some old code from Racer, TORCS (now SpeedDreams) and VDrift. I played them somewhat, then compiled all and tested. After that and decided that VDrift is the best, simulation code was quite sophisticated.
The projects I didn’t consider were: SuperTuxCart (too basic, and for kids) and RigsOfRods (not a racing game, just a sophisticated vehicle simulation, but also using OGRE).
VDrift was also still actively developed at the time. And I liked their move to also use bullet. That was simply needed to have any collision with environment.
I edited the .car file a lot to find if it is possible to use VDrfit for gravel rally, later posting the results. It was good and fun, I played VDrift somewhat with my setups (gravel, wet, ice) since the original game was quite unplayable for me.
Compiling VDrift and adding OGRE
The beginning part was the most difficult. I was at the time just Windows programmer (but really liked GNU/Linux thanks to this project). So compiling a Linux project on Windows in Visual Studio wasn’t easy. When I finally managed to do it (IIRC after 2-3 weeks), I started tinkering with it, removing code I don’t want, etc. Still using the OpenGL renderer.
Then on side, I started a simple OGRE app with just few models on scene. Later connected both. Getting the VDrift meshes to show right was a bit work (different x,y,z axes, 3D models). But without it, I wouldn’t see anything, so it was crucial.
Once all worked I made the first release pack in April 2010. Was Windows only and most likely it wouldn’t even start without proper MSVC framework installed and such.
It had only 1 car, VDrift tracks and no GUI. I compared the performance and started a topic on VDrift forum. It was terribly bad because of their tracks having thousands of meshes. So using OGRE for VDrift would be a bad idea. But that wasn’t my point. I knew OGRE already and in my previous attempt had a big terrain with good look and performance. I knew what I wanted in my own game and how to do it now.
What happened next was fast (given only my free time) and needed a lot of coding and testing. But it was easier than the previous part. You can check the screenshots of funny situations from versions 0.1 to 0.5 in the first development gallery.
Terrain
I quickly added tire trails and particles, since they were already in OGRE and it was easy. Trails were never in VDrift and particles weren’t great. At the time VDrift moved to using bullet and that was perfect, since it was needed for any car collisions with environment. Then I added the Terrain component and tweaked code to have proper fitted heightmap triangles in bullet world too.
Next I added PagedGeometry (I knew it already) to have some jungle vegetation, that came with Ogitor (same project we had textures from, for a very long time).
Later I also added MyGUI. The options looked quite similar to my previous project, but this GUI system was much better and there were already more tabs.
Also included 2 more cars. Then made the 0.2 release pack in Jun 2010, and started the topic on OGRE forum.
Road
Since there was no road plugin for OGRE, I started coding my own. Based on a Catmull-Rom spline, which is probably the easiest to edit and most intuitive, it just interpolates between points.
Terrain already had its own LOD (level of detail) system. Road surely needed one too, to not quickly produce extreme counts of triangles visible. I thought of just 4 LOD levels for each road segment (auto generated in code), and a simple distance to camera check to pick one accordingly, showing less triangles further. Picture here. It wasn’t the easiest code to write, but I’m glad that I did it. It became the base for road and was extended few times later. Nothing else would fit so perfectly as own written system.
📖Presentation
I focused on creating the SR presentation book, which covers not just our history but the whole project with all of its aspects and implementation. The presentation has 196 pages with lots of screenshots and explanations.
⏩Fast Forward
📜History of added features in each release in Old changelog.
What came next is summarized below in short points, in more detail than on presentation.
Key steps of project:
As described on previous pages the start was in Dec 2009 when I found VDrift and experimented with its car settings.
I created the project on Google Code in 2010 to hold releases.
My first release was in Apr 2010.
Then came first issues.
The game ran only on Windows at start. I suspected it would be rather easy to port to GNU/Linux (since both VDrift and OGRE did work).
I was doing screenshot galleries on each release and game video every few. In a year I made nearly 10 releases (“Release quickly, release often”). I didn’t have a repo.
After a year in Mar 2011 two guys (scrawl and Tapio) have joined and did quickly port game to Linux. Also added CMake build system.
Also in Mar 2011 I created repository. Initially was Mercurial, because Google Code didn’t have Git. But then we quickly moved to GitHub (in Apr 2011 or so).
At the same time we started using IRC on freenode to quickly communicate,
Translations was surely one good thing done by new guys at start.
In version 1.0 (Jan 2011) my track editor was ready and fully functional. I made a series of tutorials on how to use it. I was developing it further too (only I did that).
Game was featured on freegamer blog, first with version 1.0. It did boost game’s popularity. Every time a post appeared after too.
Since version 1.2, we started uploading the Releases to Source Forge. Google Code and its 100 then 200 MB limit were a problem. At that point it only was for homepage and issues (that view was very nice and customizable though).
At some point the game was also added on playdeb, and on lgdb. I think those were (or are) the biggest Linux gaming sites and they helped with game’s popularity too.
Scrawl did many things in the game. A lot of related to input (for controllers), post process effects, shaders, split screen, water in 1.5, etc.
In version 1.5 we finally finalized multiplayer, done by Tapio. I was doing the Gui part. It took him a year to finish it, but I was glad anyway, since I could do other things at the time. I posted on Vdrift forum. I think, VDrift project was developing more slowly then.
Scrawl did a wonderful task of creating a material generator once, and then even a second version called shiny (as a separate library for OGRE). And this thing made us reach a great look with nicely coded shaders (generated for both DirectX and OpenGL) at a higher level. I loved using it.
Scrawl and Tapio were mainly active for about a year. Then I was developing alone again.
We started a forum for the project, somewhat later in version 1.8, Nov 2012.
Forum was great on freegamer, since there were many users already. It attracted the greatest people, artists creating tracks (and even sceneries) for the game using my track editor that I was also developed with the game. The best being: rubberduck who also made many buildings and objects, and Wuzzy.
I guess I should also mention Calinou. He was always on IRC and had an opinion whenever I asked. This is already a useful skill. A couple of his many tracks went into the game.
At some point I found out the greatest Nobiax CC0 textures and replaced all tracks terrain look, also implementing own blendmap with noise (for mixing them). There were a few such revamps of all tracks (big artistic task, bit tedious), for shaders, waters, skies. Terrain was the biggest.
Project’s website was done very late in 2015, more info about it here.
⚖️Contributors
There were few other people e.g. a guy who let me use his IRC bouncer. Tapio was later doing translation syncs, until I someday finally learned that. He was also hosting multiplayer game list server on his PC for years. Scrawl did later a VM setup and was making GNU/Linux binary packages on each version release. There were also few people translating the game to other languages than English (9, 5 of them fully). Finally, I can not forget to mention all those artist sharing their CC-BY 3D models on blendswap, also textures, vegetation, objects, and even 0 A.D. buildings. I was gathering all authors and website urls in txt files in our data/ directory each time I added something (later visible in Credits page in game). Naturally all the open source libraries used (including OGRE and VDrift) have to be mentioned here too, since without them the game would be completely different.
All that was great and helpful. I want to thank all who contributed to this project.
➡️Break
I was constantly developing Stunt Rally for 4.5 years. I was thinking of finishing the development a couple of times.
I first ended developing in Nov 2014. But I returned after about 9 months for 3 more, rewriting sound system, replay files, adding pace notes and more.
I announced development end on 19 Sep 2015. It was version 2.6, the 26th since start.
Lastly, I have to add, it wasn’t just the 5 years it took to create all this. I took many years before that, of me learning from my projects, and having more experience every year doing so.
Update: It wasn’t the end, but a few years break. I resumed the project 6 years later as Stunt Rally 3 since 2022.
SR Track Editor is the program that comes with Stunt Rally and was used to create and edit all of its tracks. It first featured in version 0.6 (6th release in Nov 2010) and in version 1.0 (10th release, in Jan 2011) it was already fully functional (could edit all track features, at that time).
I will describe here its features, from the latest version. It surely evolved with the project and changed its look in time. Unlike the Stunt Rally page, which shows the whole history, here I’m describing the present (it is free and open). And I focus on features, visible on GUI.
🔍Detail
Since the program is rich in features this page will be long. But also explanatory, for unique tracks and game features. I also reference any tracks that show off a particular feature with links to our online track browser.
Editor is 100% designed and coded by me. There were many contributions to the game, but none to editor. I customized it to be a fast tool for editing, as I was also the main user of it. There were few awesome people using it too and creating tracks for the game.
There is a series of ▶video tutorials for using it (from older versions though) and a Wiki page. If using editor, keep in mind that many places (GUI controls) have hints, so mousing over them can show a tooltip, possibly with useful information. Editor itself has help pages, listing key and mouse actions for each mode. Having seen all this, it should be easy to use it.
📊Features
One main aspect of editor is that it doesn’t feature an Undo/Redo, for me this feature was never needed and too time consuming to implement. We use quick Save F4 and Reload F5. One can also make backups manually of the directory. It is recommended to save often and on mistake just reloading.
Track tab
Track tab is the first I’ll explain. It takes some time to understand all what is visible here. Knowing it will help picking your base track to edit. Or finding an interesting track to drive.
First, on left we have the list of tracks (172 total in version 2.6).
In the middle there is an image with view of the track. Usually camera is high to show most of it.
Below a short description. It is sometimes crucial to read it on difficult tracks, as it may contain useful warnings and hints. It’s writable in editor.
Right bottom image is the minimap (view from top). It has useful info too. Background shows terrain shape. Flat road is black line, bumpy or banked road gets more gray. Bridges are cyan, pipes yellow. Half pipes will be green (0.5 mix between cyan and yellow). And lastly On-Pipe driven sections are orange.
The track list (on left) has 2 extra columns: difficulty and rating (*). You can sort on them to easier find the tracks you want to drive. This is the default short view. The detailed view has many columns and can be toggled using the buttons above it [ | ] and [ ||| ]. Some useful columns are N: (track index, sorting to get oldest to newest order), Scenery (we have 34) and ver (game version when track first appeared).
Next button [ Y ] toggles an additional, complicated filter window. It has sliders for min and max values for all columns and checkboxes to toggle their visibility (possible in both views).
Since the tracks count is very high, we have a find box (bottom left, Ctrl-F), where you can type name or phrase to search.
Use track load button or press Enter to load it. Arrow keys move in list (with Ctrl by 5).
Duplicate button will make new track which is a copy of loaded one. There is no New button since it’s easier and faster to start from an existing track with similar scenery.
Track icons (extra)
Just above minimap we have a row of icons with small values indicating various things on track (they disappear when zero). Those are as follows: fluids (water or mud areas), bumps, jumps, loops, pipes, banked bridges, frenzy (curly road), obstacles and objects (dynamic). Of course hints for them will show under mouse. The higher the value of each, the more will be there on track and thus it will become difficult.
Above this row on left we have track difficulty (most important) value: 1 (green, easy) to 6 (red, extreme). Next is rating (star icon), it is my personal quality assessment of the track. The third icon (red vertical line) is general (coarse) length.
All those show in columns in detailed view and the list can be sorted by one. This allows searching for tracks with e.g. most loops or fluids etc.
They all are set manually (be me) for official tracks and stored in tracks.ini file. User tracks have none.
Track stats
The next group of road stats is above icons and those are automatically computed by the road system. They are: length (in km), area (just side length of the always square map), average width, height difference (between highest and lowest road point). Below in middle center, with icons are: bridges percentage (cyan), pipe % (yellow) and on pipe % (red) on right. Above on right are road banking angle values (average and maximum).
So that was a lot, and this is only the first tab. But it’s also present in game, and nearly the same.
Sun
Sun tab has all the options for sky, light and weather (and fog on next sub-tab). If in editor, you can read hints from tooltips for more info.
Sky can be rotated to better fit track. Sun direction has rotation too (yaw), and pitch sliders. For example small pitch will make long tree shadows.
These angles will be set when picking sky from list (if checkbox for it is set there).
Pressing sky name button will show pick list with all available skies. Tab key is the shortcut for this (on other tabs too).
Weather has 2 possible slots. Each can have one of many different particle types: rain, snow, fine, heavy, storm etc.
Their intensity (emit rate) is set with sliders.
Since it’s usually not needed to see weather emitting while editing track, it is toggleable here (or with key I).
There can only be 1 light source in game. It is directional and is called sun.
For this light, we have 3 parameters: Ambient, Diffuse and Specular. Ambient is the constant background color. Diffuse depends on surface angle (sun direction versus surface normal). And Specular is similar but has also power, it is the shininess.
All colors here have: Hue, Saturation and Value (Brightness), which are obvious. But additionally, Value can go above 1, lightening more, used e.g. on deserts (Dunes etc). And there is a new Negative value, very rarely used. It can act as a negative light, decreasing brightness, e.g. a blackening sun on BlueHell.
Fog
It is a cheap effect, already present in earliest games. But quite good and present on most tracks.
Fog itself is linear and has 2 sliders: start and end. Until start distance there is no fog at all. And above end distance, there is full opacity fog.
Fog can have 2 colors. If not needed those can be the same. Useful for example on a sunset sky where one color is orange near sun and other can be gray on the opposite side.
Height fog is an additional type (with own color) added to there regular fog. It depends on height, so gets denser when lower. Start and end parameters are here too (to allow own values for distance). Height and smooth values determine where it will be and how fast will it be dense (opaque).
Fog colors (beside the Hue, Saturation, Value and Negative) can all also have Alpha (transparency). When below 1, fog never reaches full opaque in end, allowing some visibility.
Higher than 1 for Value results in glowing fog, seen as light. Present e.g. on tracks: Pipeline, Crematoria, GreenStar and more.
Last thing for fog, it can deal damage (over time) to vehicle. Happens inside lava, acid, radioactive pool etc. E.g. on Craters, Radioactive and AcidLakes.
Road is made using a Catmull-Rom, 3D spline. It can go in any direction. The system building geometry for it (segments, with LOD) was also coded completely by me. Started in the earliest versions and developed further to support bridges, columns, pipes etc.
Let’s start with the simplest features.
Points
Road consists of points. Each point has several parameter values. Point is associated with road segment. As can be seen on picture, the blue spheres are road points. Selected point is violet. It also has a bigger red sphere beside it, which is used to show rotation for banked bridges.
Points are inserted inside the glowing segment. The simplest road point parameter is width. Road width gets smoothed between points.
Checkpoints
A point can have a checkpoint sphere radius set. For road on terrain it’s recommended to be wider than road e.g. 1.6, but this will vary in places, bridges and pipes naturally have 1.
Checkpoints are set manually for each track and used for many things: driving progress percentage, direction arrow (where to drive), also a beam (in place there), and most importantly to show Wrong Checkpoint, if driver misses it, while being too off road. They are explained in this video.
Bridges
Those were points On Terrain. Now if you toggle this snap off (Home), it will allow moving point vertically and automatically produce bridges, with side and bottom walls and columns.
Materials
Next easy topic for start is road materials. There can be only 4 (for performance) and they are set in Road tab. There is also a pick list to choose from all.
Materials are changed with keys per road point, and this will blend (transition) in and out the material from close segments.
Also on Road tab, we can change wall material, and column geometry (radius, sides). Columns are added automatically, always in half of segment. They can be toggled off. But manual placing isn’t possible. Adding more road points, evenly can fix it. There is only 1 wall and column material per whole road (also performance).
Now let’s get back to the point.
Banked
Having a point in middle air lets you rotate it. Changing roll angle will make banked road. This allows side turns and skewed loops like shown here (Refinery).
Pitch is never set, it is automatic. Yaw also, but it can be adjusted. It decreases width, but is sometimes needed, e.g. when creating loops (upside down road part).
Tracks with a lot of banked roads are e.g. Web, Spider.
Loops
Loops require 8 points or more to be good and smooth. And as we can see, having full control of each point gives freedom to create any types and original shapes of loops. Since they have walls, it’s hard to fall off of them, except when upside down and driving too slow, or for difficult, skewed ones.
At this point, it is worth saying that: (many) road segments (with points) can be selected.
Besides that one point (or none) can be picked.
The selection can be:
Moved (all at once)
Rotated (yaw, around picked or center), or Roll (used rarely)
Scaled (to center or picked)
Copied and then
Pasted (even on different track), or Pasted reversed
Mirrored (reverses order of points)
Changed, i.e. some parameter value change, for all at once
And lastly picked points parameters can be copied, so when inserting, new one(s) will get same values. Makes it easy to e.g. continue a bridge in air at some height or split segment (add an extra point inside) etc.
The system making them is (almost) fully automatic. This code was also challenging to write. But it proved my idea, we had already so many tracks and auto generated pacenotes for all turns were the way to go (saved an imaginable amount of tedious work if it had to be manual, also for any future edits). It is not perfect, as it sometimes does 2 turns where it could be just 1 but otherwise is great.
There are a few exceptions. Loop types (regular, side, barrel, 2 in 1, etc) have to be set on point manually as extra parameter. There was already one to mark a loop for game camera change. Next, jumps for their text with speed are using recorded track’s ghost, which means without it there is no info and also means that values will be exact only for ES car. All others will be scaled and may not match if aerodynamics is different. And lastly some roads have invisible parts that only tweak something and we don’t want any pacenotes there, another parameter to mark them not real was added.
Pipes
Introduced early and quite fun. Actually easy to drive in, since they direction the car in turns when driving fast. But will play tricks otherwise with beginners.
Also sometimes steering is needed in turns, or to counter act car inertia. And driving too fast will damage car bottom due to high acceleration acting too much on suspension (just like in loops).
Pipes require more triangles to be smooth and have own advanced parameters for geometry in Road tab. The most difficult part here though was making the transitions. They can start from bridge or terrain road, and both have a huge difference of width vertices compared to pipe. This value has to inc/decrease smoothly and make triangles/faces accordingly. Picture here.
A pipe itself is just a value of parameter pipe for road point set to 1. This allows many other possibilities and having around 0.5 had the name of half-pipes. And few own tracks: Snake, HalfPipes, Knotted, MagicFog.
They are also one of coolest things in the game. Are more difficult than pipes, since you can fall out of them.
Of course pipe is a factor for each point and it can have any value from 0 to 1. E.g. 0.1 will be nearly flat bridge (with no borders) and 0.9 will give a not yet fully closed pipe.
Since pipes were very easy, at some point obstacles were introduced inside them. More on that later in Objects section.
On Pipe
Introduced later in game. Pipes are difficult to drive on them (and easy inside). This happens because you can fall out easily. Being on center is crucial for straight road, but in turns finding the right place can be tricky and fun. This screen is from Industrial, a heavy and long track that has most of it driven on pipe. There is also DangerRoad which has full on-pipe drive and thus is very difficult.
On pipe loops were probably the most difficult stunt element. It’s very difficult not to fall off and tricky to stay center until end of it.
Jumps
Were also quite early. But a bit more problematic for the simulation. Car suspension has to be stiff to land well and usually the tolerance of speed is narrow (i.e. too little won’t jump across and too much will land badly and roll over).
At first they weren’t open. At some time a new hidden material (-1) was introduced and they started to look well. Shown here is one of first tracks with them. Also, notice the spheres on ground between jumps. This was the first way and isn’t the best. Having those single points higher than jumps is better since, the auto pitch (of road) will make jump ends go straight into sky, and not turn lower like here.
Fortunately it is easy to select both jump end points and move them up. Or select all jump segments and then: move, rotate, scale or copy them.
This track Platforms (left) has many jumps. Version 2.6 has introduced Pacenotes system to the game. And added an extra text showing required / minimal vehicle speed to jump across. An original idea and track using it was PipeJumps (right).
Terrain is using OGRE terrain component with additions from shiny material generator. Due to limits of shader texture units and using 1 pass, it can have maximum 4 layers.
Each layer is a set of 2 textures, 1 having diffuse+specular and 1 with normal+height data. In practice an example for 4 layers would be: grass (or sand), other grass or mud, rocks, snowy rocks. The more are used the worse performance, but 3 or 4 look best. We have 6 layer tabs and enable checkboxes just for convenience.
We have a huge number of textures (109) mainly 1k size, CC0 licensed, pack and info here. This gives a great base for the variety of our sceneries.
There is a pick list with all available. It also fills scale. It is a very important parameter. We don’t want to much texture repeat and on the other hand we can’t have them stretched too much (or just have unrealistic size).
Another important aspect is where the layer will appear. We can customize this by telling terrain angles range, and also height range. For example: sand at 0m level and below, grass otherwise, but not higher than 50m and additionally mountains if terrain angle is higher than e.g. 22 degrees. Layer painting is not implemented and not really needed. It would be sometimes useful though to have some manual feature. But otherwise this system saves artists time to decorate terrain.
Noise
Also each layer can additionally have noise, that can blend into next+1, next+2, or previous -1 layers. Each has own slider, giving 3 factors total. This allows e.g. the first (sand) layer having spots of second and third in other places, making it more unique and less repeating. Also the last (mountains) layer can have spots from previous. Example shown here on picture, from track HighPeaks.
Blendmap
Blendmap is the texture that will have information of how to finally blend layers on terrain. There is a helpful visualization for it (Test F9), shown on picture. When done well, it should show Red, Green, Blue colors, mostly separated (and White when 4 layers). Even if this track is flat and small and dense with grasses, it has 3 mixing terrain layers.
Advanced
There are some extra parameters for terrain, rarely changed. The sliders are shown in next chapter heightmap below.
Terrain can emit light i.e. have emissive layer. This has a checkbox to turn on, and a slider for scale. It will disable normal specular light though, instead using it for emissive map.
An example here is lava e.g. on Crematoria, Craters. Without it the look would be too dull and unrealistic. And others examples on Radioactive, Magic, Wild.
Next, normals scale and specular power change terrain lighting as whole.
Terrain heightmap
On terrain tab we got parameters that setup the heightmap. It will always be square grid. But larger maps need more area. Heightmap size can only be power of two. It also decreases performance when high and additionally makes track bigger on disk. So 2048 should never be used. And if track isn’t big, 512 should be good.
Once set it shouldn’t be changed. But there is a button on Tools tab, to half the value, as a last resort to make track have more Fps (better performance).
Triangle size is a real number and it can be scaled freely. But recommended is the size of 1-2 meters, since if too big it doesn’t feel real when driving. The resulting size in meters (side length) is computed and shown here too.
Terrain brushes
Having good looking terrain means putting some time to paint it. It is like a canvas for an artist. Best to paint in each place and also using different brushes. It’s also good practice to decorate terrain more, after road is final.
We have 4 types of brushes: Deform, Smooth, Filter and Height set. All brushes have common factors like radius (size) and intensity (strength).
Deform can make terrain lower or higher, by factors from brush. The simplest are of course just a solid sinus circle, most effective in center and not at all on borders. Smooth brush will tend to flatten terrain in place, it was made first, and sometimes needed. Better and new is the Filter brush. Filter brush can fix all your problems (except real life ones). It smooths terrain without loosing shape, it is a filter that reduces high frequencies (noise) on terrain. Also has a parameter for kernel radius. Height brush sets a height value in place. The value can be adjusted with mouse. It can create flat place
There are several terrain brush presets, shown here on screens. The first row is just the basic circle tools with different type, radius and intensity. The rest is various deform with noise presets. And last 2 rows have fancy regular shapes. Below each image there is a number with radius. Also hints show a name, but image is mostly sufficient.
Terrain – Generator
Terrain generator is a great start for tracks. Especially those big, scenic, nature tracks. It isn’t enough to just use it, manual painting gives unique feel and character.
It is a functionality that generates noise, the size of whole terrain. Preview of it is shown in left bottom corner. It has many parameters available on sliders. Like with every slider, clicking RMB on it will reset value. The resulting noise can be moved around with offset and scaled to real heights. Clicking buttons can either Add that to the terrain, Subtract or Multiply it with. Thus multiple uses are possible. It can also ignore road, so be used even after road was placed on terrain, but need adjusting bridge ends then.
Align Terrain to Road is a very useful tool. It is shown in a video here. It has own test track that demonstrates the result. The tool needs a road with selected segments. Road needs to be in air (bridge, otherwise nothing is needed). Upon using it will adjust terrain heights so it ends to be where bridge road was. Then road can go On Terrain instead of bridge, preserving shape. It also has 3 sliders for smoothing terrain a bit to the road on borders for small distance.
Other tools available here are from top, the ability to copy various things from other track to current. On Track tab there is a button set as copy source, so once another track is picked and button clicked, we can use buttons on Tools tab to copy stuff from it. E.g. Vegetation, Sun and weather, Terrain layers, Road parameters etc.
There are Delete buttons here too. Since there is no new track, just duplicate, you may want to delete various things like Road, Fluids, Objects for your new track.
Lastly on this tab, we have scaling ability. One can scale whole track by factor from slider (and editbox) or scale just the terrain height. This is useful, since when driven after editing, track may feel too big, stretched out and it’s an easy fix by scaling it below 1.0. Contrary if it feels to big, above 1.0 can fix it. For compensation, terrain height can also be scaled.
Game setup
Game setup tab is quite new and unique. It actually has settings for the game, on this track.
So gravity, which is different on Mars and other planets.
New in version 2.6 of the game we have reverb sound effect on track for ambience feel. There are presets here in combobox to pick from.
Wind is present on track Sandstorm also lesser on Twister and here is its strength.
Damage multiplier is less than 1.0 on very difficult and long stunt tracks. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible or too difficult to drive them until end.
Grasses
Grass is done with PagedGeometry plugin for OGRE. It also shows the same old approach and enforces things that wouldn’t be done today. Namely the page size. Which is a constant value used for optimizing view and reducing drawn batches.
Main page with properties has the slider for global grass density, it’s the first thing to adjust.
Also present here are grass sway (from wind) parameters. They were rarely changed, and added late. Smooth parameter makes the transition from road to grass more natural and less sudden. It blurs the grass density map.
Next tab has more options.
Here you can actually pick grasses, and see the texture on right, to check its look.
Then adjust its vertical and horizontal size ranges (x,y min and max).
Each grass also has its own density.
There is a color map, picked from combo to slightly adjust final color.
Grasses can be picked from another long colored list, that helps finding particular types. Picking can also auto set parameters for faster change.
After change either press V twice to disable and enable vegetation showing or press Update (F8).
Grass channels
Grass channels are optional. But useful for different grass setups, e.g. regular forest grass and other one appearing in snowy mountain parts.
In more detail you pick a channel for each grass. A channel has common parameters for terrain like its height and angle ranges. And other parameters for noise and road distance.
Vegetation
Vegetation here means: trees, rocks, ferns, mushrooms etc. Basically everything natural that repeats a lot and is automatically placed on track, basing on terrain.
It uses the PagedGeometry component (unfortunately not Instancing) and comes from an old era, when meshes were batched on CPU into larger pages, to reduce batch count of single meshes. At distance meshes are displayed as flat billboards called impostors, prerendered at few angles and cached on disk for later.
The key parameter in properties is density, which is global for whole track’s vegetation.
The same page size as for grass is also here, just with different values. Also distance which is basically the same as page and impostors distance, at which trees will be flat billboards.
Usually tweaked for each track to optimize batches draw versus triangle count. Higher size pages will create lag and make more triangles, while lower would visually switch more and create more batches.
On next tab, individual Models are picked and and their properties adjusted.
Main are density and size range.
Next useful are road distance (could be e.g. higher for trees and lower for ferns).
And the same terrain properties: height and angle ranges, where this model can appear on track.
Lastly fluid depth allows excluding models from water, mud etc. It can allow few meters submerge.
It is recommended to use 4 to 6 models. It depends on count, but generally more models will mean lower Fps, more lag, etc.
As for grasses, to see the change change either press V twice or press Update (F8).
As before for grasses, you can also see the long pick list here for finding models. They are colored with scenery color (same as tracks) and can also auto set few parameters when picked.
Provided here is the 3D view of rotating model. And the numbers above it are real size after scaling, min and max values. This way you can get an idea of size and compare it to e.g. real life size of a tree.
After the density slider is the actual count of occurrences for this model on track.
Fluids
By fluids I mean water (mostly), mud (few types) and other special ones like acid, lava, ice.
Here you can see the water, depth map, which is made by editor, making deeper water appear more dark and also transition smoothly to terrain.
Fluids are just rectangular areas moved and sized by mouse. While editing depth map is disabled.
You can also change their depth. This could allow more than one at different heights on track. I think this wasn’t used though.
Mud has 3 basic types: slippery (light), medium and hard (dense, dark), giving different friction when submerged. Next 3 types have a modulation for direction to not be so linear.
Objects were featured a bit later in game and are a quite essential part of every editor.
Static object allow placing a mesh like rock, cave, building, obstacle, statue, balloon, etc.
They can be moved, rotated and scaled freely. There is also multi select option (similarly to road points). Allowing faster manipulation for many at once.
Dynamic objects are the ones you can hit in game and will move or fly away. They cannot be scaled, but otherwise are placed and edited the same way.
They have a special simulation mode in editor. It is meant to be turned on, so they can settle on the ground. Then turned off and track can be saved. This is to save the game from doing that on each track loaded. Thus game creates them all in asleep (not moving) mode.
Shown here on screen are the lists with object types. Dynamic ones are in blue on left. Rest is static. Single ones are in white list. Rocks and caves have special, orange column. And lastly buildings in yellow. Since there are many of them, they have another short list with categories, that upon picking will fill the buildings list.
Obstacles were introduced later by contributors and are a great way to make driving in pipes more difficult and also have some surprising sections on tracks too. Possibly for decorating too. They don’t move with road so are meant to be placed rather as last. Changing road would then require moving them accordingly.
Warnings
Last feature of editor is showing some warnings for things done bad or just not optimal for performance. By default checked on track save. A video shows the various things checked. Wiki page lists all.
Those are very simple checks for performance and some tracks (that reach the graphics limits of old OGRE) can have warnings.
Also road system, checkpoints and car start warnings are here.
Settings
Editor has also a tab with settings, where you can adjust e.g. minimap, camera speed and intertia, road points size, startup options, etc. Also jumping camera to track start, or predefined views.
It also features a basic but functional material tweaker, on Settings – Tweak tab. When picked material in combobox, it will show editboxes and slider and allow adjusting its parameters in real-time. Very useful for creating new materials, fluids and tweaking colors.