Cockpit graphics and background pics in menus

[Carlos Sanchez]

Hello! 

I grew up on Amiga F1GP  in early and mid 90s and later I spent tons of hours with playing and editing GP2 for PC. Around 2000 I quit with gaming completely and after more than two decades of not playing any GP game I started again thanks to x86GP2 (its awesome!). I have also tried all other GP games (GP3 and GP4 are awesome too :-D) in last couple of weeks, including the very first one, which is still extremely playable and addictive, and I am hooked like in the good old days. In 2025 its the PC version that made me hooked and not the Amiga one. :-) Because I did a lot of editing with Amiga version in the past, I have been curious about editors for PC version so I found F1GPWC archive and was amazed there are so many great editors and utilities and such a great community. :-) 

I got couple of questions regarding editing and changing few things in the game. 

1. Background menu pictures

There are files like helmets.dat, trackpix.dat (pretty big size and I guess there are all 16 track maps), champ.dat, crash1.dat, crash2.dat and so on in the GP1 folder and I assume some of these are files with menu background pictures coz they are named similarly or the same like they are named in the Amiga version and the names indicate they are the background pictures. It is possible to edit helmet images (helmets.dat?) in the ArgEditor so I guess those background pics can be altered as well. Am I right? If so, how to do it please?

2. Cockpit graphics

I got couple of different cockpits in ilbm/iff format from Amiga days (they  are preloaded  in F1GPEd from Oliver Roberts and the editor is still available on Oliver's website) and some of them are pretty cool, especially the McLaren one with gloved wheel. Because ilbm/iff format is usable for PC or convertable to more ordinary formats and cockpits are the same or almost the same in both versions of GP1, I would like to experiment with it little and export those cockpit grahpics into GP1 PC version. Or create some on my own or use those available for GP2 after making some changes. Does anyone know where the cockpit picture is located and how to export/import it?

3. Engine sound

Again, from the Amiga days I have engine sounds in raw format and Renault 94 is extremely cool plus there are plenty of engine sounds for GP2. Is there any possibility for editing original engine sound in the GP1 game? 

4. When I was checking existing threads in this group I saw hatcher, whos is responsible for GP2x86 and widescreen for GP3, do you think/hope he is working on x86F1GP? :-) 

Cheers and thanks for keeping this awesome game alive! 

[F1GP Archive]

Hello, I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge. 

1. There are editors that can edit the driver menu pictures (helmet pictures) which are stored in the helmets.dat file. These can be edited using ArgEditor or the older Helmet Editor. 

It is also possible to edit the track horizon backgrounds located in the track files, using ArgTrack or the older Backgrnd. 

As far as I'm aware, there are no tools to change the track menu pictures. 

There was some discussion regarding those, and they are likely located in the trackpix.dat file (look into the Helmet-Trackpix Information-Source material).

2. There are no tools available to edit the cockpit. I found this excerpt from an old interview: 

Q: Do you think it would be possible to edit the cockpits? 
A: No. The GP1 screen cockpit is built on-the-fly (unlike GP2) and would be difficult to modify. 

3. I'm not aware of any way to do it. 

4. That would be really great and we can only hope. But I suspect there is less knowledge of the inner-working of F1GP, compared to the later sequels. 

What's missing in F1GP the most compared to GP2, is the lack of a straightforward way to make custom tracks.

Cheers,

Hrvoje

[Carlos Sanchez]

Thanks again! :-)

1. Background pictures 

Do you know what way ArgEditor does this? How it transforms data from the original file to the editor and back? Should be possible to change menu pictures as well in the same way I think. The reason why I got this opinion is following.

I tried this with trackpix.dat in hex editor: Around one fourth of the file I rewrote part of the data, saved it and then started the game. What happened? Check the pic "screwedmonaco" please. Then I went lower in the hexeditor and deleted all the data in fifth big block which was Canada I assumed. Then I started the game again and here is the result, check the pic "deletedcanada" please. In the trakcpix.dat file there are 16 or 17 bunches of question marks and it is approximately the beginning/the end of each data block for each map. It means there are all 16 pictures with maps.

The same I did with file backdrop.dat. I rewrote plenty of data on several places and  what happened? Check the backdropX.png pictures please. They are screwed because datas are missing as I rewrote/deleted them in the hex editor. 

From this I am sure all menu pictures are stored in the backdrop.dat file and maps are in trackpix.dat, which is already known thing according infofile for  "Information about track backgroung images": Track Backgrounds are encoded as the first 4096 bytes of the file.  It is a simple 512x8 image with no kind of compression.

I am sure it is the same for menu pictures in backdrop.dat. 

I tried to open these two files in Tile Layer Pro, which is graphics editor for 8bit and 16bit consoles,  but there were no pics, it seems like the files are compressed. But maybe they are not and Tile Layer Pro is not able to work with much sophisticated graphics properly. But if the creator of ArgEditor knows how to swap or edit pics in helmets.dat file, he probably knows the way for doing it with maps and menu pictures and imo it should be possible to do in the same way. 

2. Cockpit image

But the game takes that cockpit pic somewhere, doesnt it? That GPprefs utility changes something on the cockpit, dont you know how the creator did it? He had to know the place where data for cockpit pic are stored when he did changes. I will take it as theoretically impossible but will definitely try to play with hexeditor and gp.exe to at least find area where cockpit info is stored. Just imagine driving with this: sennashands *drooling* :-) 

3. Engine sound

I just discovered something and I hope I am on the right track. 

[Carlos Sanchez]

Sorry for double posting, didnt find how to edit messages.

Both backdrop.dat and trackpix.dat files are crunched/compressed I think. Tile Layer should show pictures if there are some in the files, even with less colors or different palette but it doesnt show anything, same for helmets.dat. The principle of exporting/extracting pics from the files and importing/inserting to them should be the same as it is with helmets.dat I think. 

[F1GP Archive]

No problem, it's nice to see someone so enthusiastic about the game :)

I can give you a couple of useful links.

Information about the F1GP media files:

ArgDocs: F1GP Media Container Files

ArgData API documentation and source code that can be used to edit the helmets.dat file (this is used by ArgEditor).

ArgData

GitHub - codemeyer/ArgData: .NET library for editing MicroProse F1GP

In this discussion you can find a tool called TGP, that can be used to open some of the media files. 

Scroll through the discussion from this post onwards to find the executable, source code and some sample files (either as attachments or links).

ArgEditor

You can find the GPPerf source code here, to see how the cockpit lights are modified:
f1gp-utils/GpPerf at master · f1gp/f1gp-utils · GitHub

Hope this helps.

Be sure to share you progress.

Cheers

[Carlos Sanchez]

From reading about media files (ArgDocs: F1GP Media Container Files) now I can see that what I discovered couple of hours ago had been known for ages. :-D Would be cool if the guy behind ArgEverything would be so kind and implemented function to change maps and background pictures. 

That TG.exe utility doesnt work for me on Linux (Ivy Bridge Vulkan support is incomplete), will try it soon as possible on Windows.

I dont know anything about coding but will check that anyway. I am more trial and error hexeditor guy. :-D 

I thought I found the way to change engine sounds. There are few raw files in adlib.cat file and from Amiga version I remember raw files were used for engine sounds as well. Unfortunately those raw files in adlib.cat are not engine sounds. 

Cheers