GP2 TrackBrowser (v1.1 - 28/07/2005)

Table of Contents

Introduction
- Basic description
- Known Bugs
- Technical Information
- History
- Copyright
Installation
Main Window
1. Main-Menu
- File
- Extras
- Track
- ?
2. View Menu
3. Scan Options
- Directory to scan
- Scan Subfolders
- Clear List
4. Start Scanning
5. Clear List Button
6. Track List
7. Language Menu
8. Preview Image
9. File Info
10. "Use As" Buttons
11. File List (gp2lap.cfg)
12. View File Info Buttons

Introduction

Basic description

GP2TrackBrowser is a little tool that can be used with Microprose GrandPrix2. With this program you can scan folders for Track-Files (*.dat) and view their GP2Info (Name, Country, ...) and a track-image. You can select a preview-image view with small track-images or the detailled view, which is a (sortable) list with all information provided with this track. This program gives you the possibility to create a set of 16 tracks which can be "exported" to a gp2lap.cfg-file to use this set in the game (when using gp2lap).

Known Bugs

Track-Loading: The program has sometimes some problems loading track files. Some tracks are not read at all (eg. the Bahrain 2004 track, maybe because it was created by the "IsoHannula GP2 TrackEditor for Windows ver 0.600"???), some are read in a wrong way (eg. the original Estoril track, which has a long straight in my program after the last track sector. Looks a bit ugly, but I just didn't find the reason...). But most of the tracks I have on my PC are loaded correctly.
Speed: Although program's speed was improved in v1.1 it's still not the fastest program... Especially scanning a track for the first time will take some time. When you're scanning the tracks, be patient. If a track can not be scanned, you will get an error message, but this can take some seconds. When you finished scanning, and you click in the track list, it may also take some seconds to work, same thing can happen when you change the "view mode".
gp2lap.cfg: I had no problems, but I guarantee for nothing. Before you overwrite your only specially configurated gp2lap.cfg backup it! Or save it from GP2TrackBrowser with a different filename. You know this...
If you notice any bugs or anything else that looks strange to you, I'd be happy if you'd notice me at oli@unprofessional.info.

Technical Information

General
The program is written in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio .Net 2003. I used the GP2 Track file format specification by Maxime Labelle, avaiable at http://www.waa63.ch/racesim/TEIC/primer/GP2TrackFileFormat.htm to find out how the trackfile-encoding works, aswell as Addie Walti's GP2 Command Library, avaiable at http://www.gprix2.com/trackedit/cmdlib27/CMDLIB27.HTM. If you are interested in the source code, contact me at oli@unprofessional.info.
Note: You will need the Microsoft .Net Framework to run this program!

About the .png-Files
You may wonder about all those .png-files that will appear in your GP2TrackBrowser's folder after scanning some files. You may also wonder about the file names. So here is a little explanation about this.
When a track file is loaded this version of GP2TB will only read the GP2Info and the checksum from the file. It will calculate a SHA1-Hash from the provided data and look for a file named {sha1hash}.png in the program's directory. If such a file exists, it is probably the selected track's trackmap-image. If not, a trackmap will be created and saved as just exactly the file the program was looking for.
Why am I saying "probably"? A SHA1-Hash exists of 40 characters. Every character can be a number 0-9 or a letter A-F. In fact it's a hexadecimal number. There are 2^160 possible for this code. Of course it IS possible, that two (or more) different files will make the same SHA1-hash and so (at least) one file will get a wrong image. But this is so unprobable that I decided it's worth the risk. Just think of 2^160 possible combinations...
It won't interfere the program when you delete one or more of these files WHILE THE PROGRAM IS N O T RUNNING (!!!), it will only cost you some time the next time you scan your tracks. If you delete these files while the program is running it will probably cause problems (program crashes or something), so you'd rather not do that.
Note: If you are using a program like ACDSee or something else, you can also have a nice look at the track images browsing through it. So you don't have to run GP2TB. This is one of the reasons why I decided to put the information-text into the images.

History

GP2TrackBrowser v1.1 - 28/07/2005

• Some bug fixes:
  • In v1.0 the program had problems when the GP2Info contained letters like "Umlauts" (äöü...) and other "non-standard-chars". I noticed that when working on my "Rüsselsheimring" and fixed it. Should work now for the common used characters I guess.
  • Fixed checksum calculation. Something was wrong with it in the last version. Although this had no or hardly any effects on the program, I fixed it as I'm thinking of using the checksum in the future somehow.
  • Removed a bug that occured when you searched a track from your file list in your track list by clicking the "?"-button. The track had not been selected correctly; you noticed that when pressing the up/down keys. This is fixed now.
  • Fixed a bug in the "large track image" window. The image in it is always shown as a square (due to the image's dimensions). So width/height of the image have to be adjusted to the window's size, aswell as the image's position in the window. In some situations the image was not positioned correctly, this bug is fixed in this version.
• Completely worked the trackmap routines over. The program will now not always read the whole .dat-file if this is not necesary. It will create a .png-image-file in the program's folder when loading a track for the first time (or when the file does not exist for any other reason) and use this file instead in the future.
  Above all the internal image-handling has been worked over so that the program needs way less memory! All these improvements will (hopefully) make the program and especially scanning track files faster than before. Read more about the .png files here.
• Improved (in my opinion...) the track images by adding some text to it (Track name, country, year, length und file name).
• The program will now save the current/last used track list in a textfile (tracklist.inf in your program's folder) and will load this list on startup. This will save time (I hope) and makes usage more handy. The program will not (yet?) determine if a file in this saved track list really exists when loading it so it could lead to problems when exporting into a gp2lap.cfg-file. Maybe you could get an error message when you deleted one (or more) of the mentioned .png files or when you copied the program- directory to another location on your HD. If you like to avoid these problems, I recommend not to delete .png files or change the program's folder and if you do, delete tracklist.inf!
• Added a "Clear List" button to clear the track-list directly
• Added a startup-window. It doesn't look very nice and it's use is not great, but as loading the program can take some time when you have a big tracklist.inf (=> many files to load to your track list) I thought it would be good to see, that something's happening :-)
• The file's checksum is now shown in the track list. This information is probably not that useful, but we all want information...
  Mainly added it for debugging and decided it won't make it worse to leave it as a feature in the program.

GP2TrackBrowser v1.0 - 16/07/2005
First version published

Copyright & Disclaimer

GP2TrackBrowser © 2005 Oliver Kirsch (oli@unprofessional.info) - More information avaiable on my website: http://www.gp2.unprofessional.info
The contained files are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The author will NOT be held responsible for any losses incurred.
This is NOT a Microprose product!

Installation

No "real" installation is needed for GP2TrackBrowser. Just extract GP2TrackBrowser.exe and, if you like, the language file(s) to any directory and make sure you have installed the Microsoft .Net FrameWork v1.1, avaiable at http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/a/c/aac39226-8825-44ce-90e3-bf8203e74006/dotnetfx.exe, on your PC! You may also need a file named "mscoree.dll" which is avaiable at http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?mscoree.
When you first run GP2TrackBrowser you will be asked to locate your GP2.exe. This is neccessary to "calculate" the relative path for your selected track files which will be used in an exported gp2lap.cfg.
The program will create a registry folder \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GP2TrackBrowser and store some information in it. If you like to uninstall GP2TrackBrowser, delete the files you once extracted and delete this registry folder using regedit (or whatever).

Main Window

The program's main window looks like this:

Learn more about:
1. Main Menu, 2. View Menu, 3. Scan Options, 4. Start Scanning, 5. Clear List Button, 6. Track List, 7. Language Menu, 8. Preview Image, 9. File Info, 10. "Use As"-Buttons, 11. File List, 12. View File Info.

1. Main Menu

File

The file menu has 4 Items:
Open GP2Lap cfg-file...
This option will load a gp2lap.cfg. The file list in your main window will be updated, all other information stored in the .cfg file will be saved "in the background".
Open GP2Lap cfg-file as basis...
This option is similar as the above, but it will not overwrite your file list. Use this option when you have created a set of tracks and want to save it.
Save GP2Lap cfg-file as...
With this option you can save a .cfg file. Note that you can only save a file, when you've loaded one before, either "as basis" or "complete", because the non-trackfile-information stored in the gp2lap.cfg file must be read from an existing one. The trackfile information (f1ct01 = "bla.cfg" etc.) is taken from your main window's file list.
Exit
It's self-explaining, isn't it?

Extras

View large Track-Image
Will open a new window with a bigger-sized image of the selected track. You can also use "F2" on your keyboard to active this.
Locate GP2.exe...
Use this to find the folder your GP2.exe is saved in. The location of your GP2.exe is required to "calculate" the relative path for your selected track files which will be used in an exported gp2lap.cfg.

Track

Use as F1CTxx
This will take the selected file from your Track List and use it as file #xx (01-16) in your File List. You can also use CTRL+ (1-9) for F1CT01-F1CT09 and CTRL+SHIFT+ (0-6) for F1CT10-F1CT16.

?

Info
Do you really expect a description here? ;-)

2. View Menu

With these two radio buttons you can select between "Track Preview Icons" and "Details". Note that your last setting before exiting the program will be saved and used when you run the program for the next time. The above image shows the "Details" view, so here is a picture with the "Track Preview Icons" (taken from an earlier version, but still looking similar now):

3. Scan Options

Directory to scan

Select the directory you want to scan by clicking the "..."-button

Scan Subfolders

Select this checkbox if you want to search for files also in the selected folder's subfolders, deselect this checkbox if you only want to scan this directory

Clear List

Activate this checkbox if you want to clear the list before adding the new found files. Deselect the checkbox if you have made a scan before and want to add files you're going to find to your track list.

4. Scan Options

Click here to start scanning in the selected folder with the selected options

5. Clear List Button

Click this button to clear your track list. Just like you've got activated the Clear List-Checkbox when scanning - but without the scanning in this case. ;-)

6. Track List

In this list you find all the trackfiles the program has found and successfully scanned. You can change the view mode of the list. The selected track can be added to your file list (see here) and a larger track image can be viewed (see here). More information about the selected track will be shown in the File Info.

7. Language Menu

Select the language for "your" GP2TrackBrowser. Standard language is English, it is implemented in the program. Other languages are stored in *.lng-files. The program will look for *.lng-files in the folder where GP2TrackBrowser.exe is saved. If you want to make your own Language-File, just take an existing one, translate every item and save it as whatever.lng in your GP2TrackBrowser-Directory.
If you have made a *.lng-file you want to share, I'd be happy to put in on my website. Send it to me: oli@unprofessional.info.

8. Preview Image

In this box you will see a preview image of the selected track.

9. File Info

Here you see some more information about the file you selected in your Track List. Btw, the "Filename (DOS)" is needed for the gp2lap.cfg file, because GP2Lap does not support long filenames.

10. "Use As" Buttons

These buttons have the same effect as the items in the Track-Menu. Click one of these buttons to set the file in your file list to the selected file in the track list.

11. File List (gp2lap.cfg)

These textboxes contain the filenames for your tracks in your track set. The files are short filenames and the paths are relative to your gp2.exe's directory. In fact, it is exactly what will be put into the gp2lap.cfg you will save, so you can also type "your own" filename (or whatever else you want...) here and this text will be written in the GP2Lap config-file when you save it.

12. View File Info Buttons

Use the button next to the textbox to locate the selected file in the textbox in your Track List.

Feedback

Feedback, if positive or negative, is always welcome! This can help me to remove bugs, improve or add features, or just motivate me to go on ;-). So if you noticed anything strange, you have any idea for new features or changes, you dislike something or you maybe just want to tell me you liked the tool, please notify me at: oli@unprofessional.info. Thank you! :-)

© 2005 Oliver Kirsch (oli@unprofessional.info) - Visit my website: http://www.gp2.unprofessional.info