dotCar Editor Beta development (v0.35 released)

[Brook]

With two of the five intended pages complete (see ASW board), I will now focus on a preliminary beta release that has those two pages working.
I will post betas here, to avoid the Trevor Samuels' of this world.

I do have a fair bit of coding to do, but I should have something not too crippled within a week.

Permalink to the latest version:
dotCar Editor

[Kenners]

With two of the five intended pages complete (see ASW board), I will now focus on a preliminary beta release that has those two pages working.
I will post betas here, to avoid the Trevor Samuels' of this world.

I do have a fair bit of coding to do, but I should have something not too crippled within a week.

You mean Leo hasn't invited Trevor here?

-K

[Aleksi]

With two of the five intended pages complete (see ASW board), I will now focus on a preliminary beta release that has those two pages working.
I will post betas here, to avoid the Trevor Samuels' of this world.

I do have a fair bit of coding to do, but I should have something not too crippled within a week.

You mean Leo hasn't invited Trevor here?

-K

Shall I do that?

[Kenners]

With two of the five intended pages complete (see ASW board), I will now focus on a preliminary beta release that has those two pages working.
I will post betas here, to avoid the Trevor Samuels' of this world.

I do have a fair bit of coding to do, but I should have something not too crippled within a week.

You mean Leo hasn't invited Trevor here?

-K

Shall I do that?

If you do, you'd deserve the ban you incur..

-K

[Brook]

Please download an early 0.20 alpha release here:
dotCar Editor 0.2
(Thank you leo, for your infinite hospitality...)

I think the interface should be self explanatory (I could be dead wrong, of course).
Here are some "features" of this release:
- Only the pages I posted on ASW are available.
- The features that can be accessed should be functional (or at least not cause a crash).
- You can open multiple windows (File - New window).
- Every change you make (except in the Playground) will instantly be transferred to the field that displays the .car file. The .car file itself won't be touched until you select Save as... and decide to overwrite it with the same name.
- There is NO undo (and I'm not sure in what form it will be present if I implement it in a future release).
- When a .car file is opened, I reformat things a bit. This only concerns adding or deleting spaces to make things more predictable for my code (possibly making things more readable for you).
- After opening (or clicking the dotCar radio button), a "healthcheck" is performed on the file. You are advised to check the yellow, orange and red lines (if there are any).
- The field that displays the .car file uses colour coding to distinguish between comments (light blue), settings and empty lines (white), notes (yellow), warnings (orange) and errors (red). There's also purple for settings I'm not planning to support in dotCar Editor.
- Click on a coloured line and a message will appear above the .car file telling you what's wrong.
- If an opened .car file has any errors (red) they must be solved first before you can use the features of dotCar Editor (this is explained when that happens).
- Now the obvious errors are syntax type errors. For dotCar Editor I had to set some special requirements that have to be met, before I can use that .car file:
- 4 or 6 wheels only.
- Wheels come in pairs that must be on the same axle (y and z equal).
- The middle of every axle must have the same x value.
- All settings for left-right pairs must be equal (not sure about .mdl's here).

If you decide to try it out, please let me know the good, the bad and the ugly.
Since this is a first release, even hearing from you that you can actually start it up (or not) on your configuration, is useful feedback.

[Tomte]

The dotcar editor works very well on my intel Mac Mini, 10.5.7. No glitches or crashes yet.

I see that the dotcar editor will be at the beginning a very helpful application for error checking. I already found some mistakes I made on the collision box on some of the cars I'm working on.
I like the simulation of the collision box a lot, especially cause I ignored the fact that the suspension travel is amplified at the outer edge of the collision box.
I know this is just the first release, so I don't know if you want to have any feature requests, but let me start anyway:
- default button (50% suspension movement) at the collision box check, same for rocking the car left to right;
- 'Open' button even if there is already a .car file open (which would replace the currently open .car file). When I want to check a second car file, I need to open another window first;
- ability to open a .car from finder (rightclick -> open with).

Great work, Brook!

[Tomte]

I just noticed that the dotcar editor seems to do something to the encoding of the .car
Before I edited a .car with the editor, it was listed as a 'Redline Car Document'.
After saving, it was a Simple Text Document, which could not be read by Redline.
It looks like some sort of encodng issue, as all '-----' were replaced by '———'

here some examples:
dotcar edits

[Brook]

I know this is just the first release, so I don't know if you want to have any feature requests, but let me start anyway:
- default button (50% suspension movement) at the collision box check, same for rocking the car left to right;
- 'Open' button even if there is already a .car file open (which would replace the currently open .car file). When I want to check a second car file, I need to open another window first;
- ability to open a .car from finder (rightclick -> open with).

Great work, Brook!

Thanks! Requests are welcome and will be put on a wishlist (now that sounds promising...). What you describe above concerning openening files, will be solved when I address the official Apple gui standards later in this project.

I just noticed that the dotcar editor seems to do something to the encoding of the .car
Before I edited a .car with the editor, it was listed as a 'Redline Car Document'.
After saving, it was a Simple Text Document, which could not be read by Redline.
It looks like some sort of encodng issue, as all '-----' were replaced by '———'

here some examples:
dotcar edits

That *is* an encoding issue. Because this affects reliability, I'll try to upload a fix tonight.

[C14ru5]

Oh, the joy of text encoding. I learned about the phenomenon at the age of 12, downloading text files from Windows-BBSes onto my Mac, and wondering why they all had a square at the end of each line. 15 years later, I still meet childhood friends who have done web programming professionally, and yet they don't know what text encoding is. WTF?

Minor bugs:
1) Imported .car files with different left and right wheel models must be corrected manually so they're the same, before you can import the file and then have to re-adjust them to their proper left and right values afterwards.
2) Canceling the first "Open" dialog makes the button become a "Save" button instead.

Here's a tip for the "Lights/Sounds" page, in order to make it easier to get the engine sound values correct:

Instead of just using text fields for the sound pitch variables that people keep misinterpreting, calculate what you can based on the other values in the .car file. Example: Add a text field where the user can provide the RPM that the sound file is sampled at. Then you can automatically calculate the following for the user:

zeroRPMSoundPitch = jerkRPM/sampleRPM
fullRPMSoundPitch = maxRPM/sampleRPM

With those values established, you can provide a similar method to automatically calculate the throttle pitch drop/blip measured in semitones:

zeroThrottleSoundPitch = 2^(numSemitones/12) <-- this is based on the formula for calculating intervals in the Equal Temperament Scale.
fullThrottleSoundPitch = 1.0 <-- There should normally be no reason to touch this, when the RPM pitch values have already been normalized in the calculations above.

[Brook]

1) Imported .car files with different left and right wheel models must be corrected manually so they're the same, before you can import the file and then have to re-adjust them to their proper left and right values afterwards.

I already had my doubts about this, although I didn't come across a .car file which actually uses separate left and right models. I'll split the existing fields in separate left and rights, along with the custombrakemodel.
I think all the numerical values *should* be equal for left and right (unless I'm missing something).

2) Canceling the first "Open" dialog makes the button become a "Save" button instead.

Doh...

...sound stuff...

I currently have no ideas on how I'm gonna do this. Your suggestions are probably triggered by seeing the fields I parked there. But what you say is very useful, for my knowledge on how Redline handles sound is practically nil.
Might have some questions, once I get to that page.

[Tomte]

As far as I know have some of Andreu's cars different wheel models left and right (for proper tyre profile direction).

[djpimley]

I just noticed that the dotcar editor seems to do something to the encoding of the .car
Before I edited a .car with the editor, it was listed as a 'Redline Car Document'.
After saving, it was a Simple Text Document

The character encoding is something different, I think. But here's how OS X decides what application "owns" a file and what will happen when you double-click, in hierarchical order:

File creator: each OS X application has a unique 4-character identifier. Files saved by an application will be tagged with it's creator code and the creating app will usually be the first choice to re-open the file later. For example "Toro".

File/OS type: file types can optionally have a similar unique 4 character code, for example "TEXT".

File extensions: a file ending in ".txt" could reasonably be expected to be a text file, and a suitable application will be chosen on that basis.

As far as I know, OS X launch control does not use a file's internal metadata to decide the contents of a file.

So, Brook's application needs to sever it's "creator" role from the file. That will make Redline the default owner of the file, because it ends in the ".car" extension. Here's some info on how to do it with a Terminal call, but it requires an Apple Dev tool. I think deleting the file's corresponding "._" hidden metadata file would also do it.

[Brook]

Quickfix for the encoding and filetype problem:
dotCar Editor 0.21

Encoding was solved by converting to MacRoman before saving. This was a very weird one, because only the BMW Z4 GT4 showed that behaviour. Other car files didn't need that conversion.
Filetype was simply solved by saving the file as a binary without specifying type and creator.

[Brook]

Alpha 0.35 available.

Major change: Powertrain page is available (will get some future tweaking)

Many new things, I comment on only three of them, for they are not immediately obvious:
- In the Data menu, you'll find 'Increase' and 'Decrease', command - and =. When your text cursor is in a numerical context, these commands will increase or decrease the value left of the cursor. For example, in an rpm field that says 6900, click between the 9 and the 0 and and press command - or =. Only the 69 part will change, the zero's remain untouched. This works for any number, anywhere.
- With the "Sound check", I'm pushing the limits of the tools I have available in REALBasic. This means it doesn't have the smooth quality you get in Redline and you'll probably hear clicks, dropouts and strange effects.
There is, however, enough "good" sound information that it provides a method for tuning the sound and getting the timing on inertia and friction right without going back and forth to Redline. When the engine runs, you can change related parameters (like pitch), it responds to that.
- Mass and inertia have moved to the (currently very empty) Dynamics page. Check out how the automatic inertia calculation works.

[DonaemouS]

just two words:

OH GOD!!!

[theSnail .@y]

I like that !

[Brook]

just two words:

OH GOD!!!

Not quite, but thanks anyway!

I like that !

Cheers!


Question
Yesterday, I pm-ed thomm a link to the current download (since he is not aware of this forum).
Apparently, he likes it so much, he now suggests on the ASW board to make it publicly available.

Any thoughts on why I should or shouldn't?

[Tomte]

I think the editor has already enough functionallity that it can be released. It will be a great help for us, otherwise we need to puzzle together all pieces of information manually or on cumbersome spreadsheets.

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