mcv100

>>> Downloads below <<<

Hi everyone,

I have decided to release an editor for adjusting the torque/power - RPM curves which are defined by .btrq files. I have read some forum posts about people using TDUPE to adjust the performance of cars, but noticing that they don't have full control over the engine performance of cars. Therefore, the main goal is to let everyone tinker with those .btrq files, to hopefully allow car modders to tweak engines to their likings!

My time is only limited though, so I hope that with the help of you guys, we can find out a lot more about the effect .btrq files have on car performance!

Origin of idea

Since Djey released his TDUF tool package, I have been tinkering with the BTRQ files present in the BNK files of cars. Inside the BTRQ files, the torque of the engine is given for a number of engine rotation speeds. These correspond to typical torque - RPM curves, as shown in my editor:

[ATTACH]27253[/ATTACH]

My editor

So, naturally, I started to adjust the curves to see what would happen in-game. These files do affect the performance of cars! But unfortunately, this effect is hard to test, because originally I could only edit the .btrq files directly from a Hex editor (not user friendly!). Therefore, I have decided to program an editor that allows anyone to intuitively tweak the .btrq files.

Usage and controls

Most importantly, you need to have Djey's TDUF in order for this program to work! TDUF is used to decrypt and encrypt the BTRQ files from within the editor, so you don't have to manually decrypt/encrypt them. Steps to incorporate TDUF in the editor:

1. Download Djey's TDUF 0.3.0 or higher here. IMPORTANT: You need java 8 in order for TDUF to work. See the TDUF page for instructions on how to install java 8.
   
2. Open the BTRQ Editor.exe (download below). It will ask you to point to the TDUF directory (folder). Just navigate to the location where you downloaded TDUF, and select the folder tduf-0.3.0. (Or higher version if TDUF is updated in the future). Click Ok.
   
3. You are done! TDUF is now correctly loaded and next time you start the BTRQ editor, TDUF will be loaded automatically!
   

This program used to need Djey's TDUF to work, but since the inner workings of TDUF have changed over time, it did not work with my program anymore. I therefore incorporated the original encrypter/decrypter into the BTRQ Editor, so you can just load and save encrypted BTRQ files without having to worry about anything! The decrypter/encrypter I use was made by Luigi Auriemma and its source code is included in the download.

Extract a .btrq file from the BNK of the car you want to edit. Use TDUMT for this. (See TDUMT page for instructions or ask here how it works. :)) Always make sure you backup files first! Then, load the .btrq file in the editor. A curve will pop up, which you can now adjust to your likings! If you are done, just hit save and save the .btrq file. Next, fire up TDUMT once again and replace the original .btrq file with the one you just adjusted.

Controls:

• Double click somewhere to add a new point.
  
• Right click a point to delete it.
  
• Click and drag points to adjust their location. You can also specify the exact data by editing the boxes on the right hand side when a point is selected (yellow).
  
• To change view from torque (Nm) to power (HP), just select the one you want under "viewmode". Just to make clear, the power curve is NOT independent of the torque curve. Only torque will be included in the .btrq files, since that is the only thing TDU handles. The power curve is just determined by the standard formula power=torque*rpm*2*pi/60. However, changing the power curve will automatically change the torque curve, so that the approximate power curve will get in the game!
  

My own findings

I have very limited time to play around with editing the .btrq files, so I haven't found out a lot yet. That's why I made this editor in the first place, so that everyone can try stuff out! Anyways, I did find out that the shape of the curve totally adjusts the engine performance as you would expect, BUT, the height (amplitude) of the curve does not seem to matter a lot. For instance, try adjusting the curve to a flat 10Nm curve for all RPM. The car will still run, which is physically impossible. Therefore, I suspect that the .btrq files are only used by TDU to determine the shape of the curve, and not the maximum torque/power! The height may be something you can adjust with TDU Performance Editor, but I'm not experienced in that. Another thing still unknown to me is whether the number of points in the curve matters. The number of points vary a lot between cars, but it might be the case that adding/deleting new points will have weird effects.

So, please try adjusting curves, play around with them and test the results in game! I hope you guys can find out a lot more than I can on my own!

Downloads

BTRQ editor v0.5. Just unzip the file somewhere and run the .exe file. See Usage and controls for how to use the editor.

Another thing that might interest you guys, is that I rendered the curves for ALL default TDU cars. So if you want to see the engine curve of a specific car, you can download all the plots here.

Special thanks

Special thanks to Djey, not only for providing us with TDUF, but also for his kind support and testing of some earlier versions of this editor. Thanks Djey!

Some technical details

For those of you who are interested, this program was written in Python, using PyQt and MatPlotLib. Mostly due to MatPlotLib, the editor freaking eats up ram like there’s no tomorrow (over 100MB is just insane for such a small program). :) But since my time is very limited (full time student at the moment), I don’t really want to rewrite this program in C++/C# to make it a lot faster and smaller. I’m only somewhat experienced in Python anyways. The source code is included in the download though, so feel free to tweak things/rewrite in a faster language!

Older versions

BTRQ editor v0.3

BTRQ editor v0.4

Changelog

BTRQ editor v0.4:

• Included the option to exactly edit data points! Dragging is still possible though :). It is still not possible to edit a point so that it crosses the x-coordinate of a neighboring point, since that would be quite hard to handle correctly in plotting and saving data.
  

BTRQ editor v0.5:

• Changed the decrypter/encrypter to Luigi Auriemma's standalone version instead of Djey's TDUF. This makes the BTRQ Editor easier to use and it should now work for a long time!