How to mod RoR: the Wiki

I have opened some Wiki pages documenting the file format used by RoR. This is a bit crude but may interest those that want to fiddle with the game. It is a little complex to create a truck, but it is quite interesting. I will add later sections about the loads and the terrains.
Thanks to his specific physics, RoR has a big potential as a construction game, since you really build piece by piece the structural chassis.
It is in my long-term plan to develop a user-friendly truck editor, but for the moment this Wiki is all you have...

RoR is one of the featured Ogre3D project

Today Rigs of Rods has the honor to be presented in the Featured Projects of the Ogre3D graphics engine, with lots of good screenshots. We appreciate this, and we owe a lot to the great work of the Ogre team, so thanks Ogre!

Finally RoR 0.20

Here comes the long awaited 0.20 version. This one is a major technical step toward a scenarized game.

• Now you can have several trucks simultaneously in the scenery. The loads have been "detached" from their truck, and can be manipulated by any truck. Trucks and loads are declared in the terrain file, and the user chooses one extra truck at startup.
• To go from truck to truck, an animated character has been added (as in Grand Theft Auto). A typical trucker character is under construction, but is not yet ready, so I had to resolve to use a scary robot that is given with Ogre3D as an interim character.
• Major 3D optimizations has been made. Framerate should be up! (but if several trucks are interacting, the physics simulation is slower)
  
• Hyper realist water, with reflection, refraction and fresnel effect. The same technique as in Half Life 2! Requires a recent video card. The water physics is also implemented, see the trucks sinking or floating, and watch out for engine stalling.
  
• Easyest and more reliable locking.

Note that this version has still some problems with truck-truck collision, and does not adds new trucks that could uses these new features (like truck carriers and rescue trucks) : this will come later. You can try to tow most trucks with the chains of the multibennes truck.
Beware: this version requires DirectX 9c so if it does not start, update your DirectX.

Enjoy!

RoR secrets...

Since I am not yet finished with the 0.20 (that will feature beautiful water (the same as in HL2!) and a multi-truck environment) I will tell you a little secret...

How to build a road in RoR (works with any version):

1. Place your truck at the begining of what will be a road
2. Press the key 'B' to enter the road building mode
3. You will see a temporary road segment. Press 'T' to change the road type, "Ins" and "Home" to rotate and "Suppr" and "End" to pitch.
4. Once you are happy with the road segment, put your truck out of it and press "Space".
5. The road segment becomes solid (you can drive on it) and it is followed by a new temporary road segment. Proceed to step 3 with this one and so on...

The roads you build will not be saved to disk, and will disappear the next time you start RoR.

To make you roads permanent you need to :

• Launch RoR, build road, exit RoR.
• Open the file "ogre.log" with a good text editor
• Locate in this file a zone where you have lines like:

21:00:06: 1217.52, 35.2712, 943.524, 0, 6, -2, road
21:00:11: 1227.22, 34.9222, 942.511, 0, 9, -0.5, roadborderleft
21:00:14: 1236.52, 34.8349, 941.076, 0, 16.5, -0.5, roadborderleft
21:00:17: 1246.11, 34.7477, 938.236, 0, 16.5, -3, roadborderright
21:00:21: 1255.69, 34.2243, 935.4, 0, 16.5, 0, roadborderboth

• Take this part and use a text editor with a column mode to suppress the column of this block containing the hours (like 21:00:06:)
• You will have:

1217.52, 35.2712, 943.524, 0, 6, -2, road
1227.22, 34.9222, 942.511, 0, 9, -0.5, roadborderleft
1236.52, 34.8349, 941.076, 0, 16.5, -0.5, roadborderleft
1246.11, 34.7477, 938.236, 0, 16.5, -3, roadborderright
1255.69, 34.2243, 935.4, 0, 16.5, 0, roadborderboth

• Paste this text at the end of the corresponding ".terrn" file in the data/terrain directory (these are text files), just before the "end" line.

Happy building!