Mod Tool Usage

This page covers...

This covers the Mod Master tool thoroughly, it may be more detail than you need, but everything you would need to know is here.

Be sure you've already completed the general setup steps fully before continuing on.

General things to note

Most options in the tool (that are not specific to packs, as in options that are available before you load a core pack) are saved when you close the tool out.

For full/part time, fantasy, and disabled options... the way the game works, it uses full time drivers to fill the field first, part time second, fantasy last. Disabled drivers will not be on track no matter what.

General Tab

1. 60 FPS Patch

This patch is only recommended if you have a decent system. Double check when playing the game that you have 60 fps (bottom right of PCSX2 when not in full screen will show your frame rate) and that the gameplay is smooth. If it seems laggy/slow uncheck this.

Note: this can also make the mirror jittery, especially on road courses during elevation changes

2. Paint options

• Manually Selected Paints: This requires you to manually select each driver's paint in the tool. It's a slow tedious process honestly, there isn't a quick way to do this (yet). This needs to be done via the "Paints & Data" tab.

• Randomize Paints: (Recommended option) This will randomize from the available paints for each drivers. If the pack was set up in version 1.5 or newer, the randomization might be weighted based on how many races a driver drove a particular paint.

• Force Default Paints: This will lock every driver into their 'Primary' paint scheme.

3. Career Year Stat Adjustment

This setting is meant to keep the difficulty a little more balanced through career mode, and more difficult later in the career than it used to be. Note: There may be an update to this in the future if I can figure out the 'other' element of making AI faster/better. There is a way, but I've not fine tuned it yet.

The selection options are just recommendations for what year in career mode you should use them. That said, if you feel the game is too easy, go to a higher year #, if it's too hard, go to a lower year #.

Notes:

• Race Now and Year 3 options are equal. They are also more difficult than the base game, as race now seemed too easy.

• Year 5 & Year 6 settings are nearing, or reaching the stat cap for the top rated driver. The field will likely have less gap top to bottom, and running >100% track adjustment (see section 9) will likely result in multiple drivers of similar pace. Individual driver performance may skew more than usual.

4. Pack selection

• New Core Pack: This is for advanced users only. If you want to make your own pack (whether it be new drivers, or with existing ones you have downloaded) this is where you click to 'start fresh'.

• Load Core Pack...: Select from the dropdown existing packs you've downloaded (or created). This loads in majority of settings for the selected pack, including drivers, schedule, rivals/allys, sponsor options etc.

• Load Sub Pack...: Optional item, some packs may utilize this to have race specific settings or changes. Whether it's to match the roster and/or the stats for an individual race, rather than a whole season. Note: You don't need a sub-pack to match a specific race, it's just there to save time if they're already created.

5. Year & Series

These are used mostly when creating a new pack. If you're not making a new pack, you do not need to change these.

• Year: This is selecting the target year for the pack (though it does not lock you into that year only)

• Series: This is selecting the target series from the target year (though it does not lock you into the series or year)

6. Rookie year to apply

For season or career mode, this is the rookie year class you want applied. Any driver whose rookie year is equal to, or later than, this selection, should be set as a rookie in the game.

7. Race Stats to apply

You can apply up to two specific races of stats to apply to the driver stats at any one time. You can change this between races if you want to run race specific stats each event.

Simply select an event for one or both (or neither) of the dropdowns to apply. Set the % to the right of each event that you want that particular result to apply. Keep in mind, if a driver had an early accident or blown motor, they may end up just driving slowly/near the back in the race. I currently cannot set it up that they are going to crash or dnf based on this.

The dropdown list for these is based on the year and series that are selected above with this pack.

8. Track Stat Adj

This setting is simply for applying track specific 'adjustments' to difficulty. We all know some tracks in the vanilla game are more or less difficult than others. You should set this to the race you're about to run next. The dropdown options are similar, but this is a very different selection.

The % modifier applied is based on the table in section 9 (which you can change).

9. Track specific stat adjustment table

This is a list of all tracks in the game, and a % stat adjustment to apply to all AI. This will adjust the speed of the entire field.

You can change the % for any track you like, this will save when you exit the tool.

The preset settings are a somewhat tested setting based on a quick test in the default setup at all real tracks. Fantasy tracks were extrapolated guesses and will likely need fine tuning for each player. Feel free to adjust after each race you run, the goal of this setting was to have the player race around 35th in a 50 rating car in career mode at every track.

Notes:

• It's recommended to not set this higher than 200%, or lower than 50%... but you can if you really want to.

• With year 5 and 6 settings from section 3, you may end up with less expected performances from drivers when the % exceeds 100%. As the driver stats will be at or near the maximum cap within the game.

10. Override birth & rookie years

This setting is most important before ending a season in the game. To prevent in game retirement and replacements (which can cause issues when switching packs between seasons) , you should keep the birth year within 10-20 of the current season in career, and rookie year within 5-10.

When you start a new season, you shouldn't see any retirements or replacements, however this does not mean that none took place. The game has a weird side effect where changes will happen without notifying the player. I am looking into what data changes when drivers retire/replace etc, so that I can force the game to now allow them as an option instead of having to set these years and hope.

11. Career year override

Important: You should only have this checked at the start of a career year. If you run a race and then change this, you are likely to end up with incorrect points/results etc.

If you want to start a career in a different year than the game's default 2003, you check this box, and select the year you want the career mode to start.

After you've run the mod tool completely through, and started or loaded a career you should do the following:

1. Save your career to the memory card with the changed year.

2. Reload the mod tool and uncheck the Career Year Override option

3. Reload the game after generating the pnach/cheats again

4. Load your career back up from the memory card, the year should've stayed to what it was saved as.

Notes:

• Career ends at the end of 2023 no matter what!

• Supposedly (I have not confirmed) the career mode ends after 20 seasons no matter what.

12. Race Length

The top dropdown option is what you need to select in the game to play with your custom race length.

The "Output Race Length %" field is what you want the ACTUAL race length to end up as.

Example: You can essentially run 15% races with no pitstops by setting the in game race length to 100%, and the output length to the 15% you want.

Notes:

• Fuel and tire wear is based on the top dropdown.

• The in game EA bio achievements are based on the in game race length dropdown. If you select 100%, but shorten the races, you can get achievements for completing 100% races in a lot less gameplay time.

13. Custom AI Settings

If you'd like to use custom AI settings, be sure this box is checked then...

Set the following from 1 of 3 settings, low to high:

• Defensiveness: How aggressively the AI drivers will block you

• Wreck frequency: How likely AI drivers are to spin out (as if they got a sudden flat rear tire)

• Aggressiveness: How aggressively the AI drivers are to make a move/attempt a pass

• Mistakes: How likely AI drivers are to 'get out of shape'. They tend to bobble left to right for a moment, this has a slight chance of leading to other accidents.

• Pit Strategy: I recommend keeping this at high, I believe the AI may make bad pit decisions with a low pit strategy. That said, even on high, they do not seem very bright about when to pit under a caution.

Note: Wreck frequency and mistakes set to high does NOT mean you'll get a caution every race. I've seen 4 races in a row not have a caution, and I've seen 4 races in a row each have at least one caution from AI spinning out. It's still fairly random.

14. Finalize Pack & Save Core Pack As

Finalize Pack: I'm listing this option here, despite there being other tabs you can access right now. This is the button to accept your General Tab settings and move on to other more detailed options before applying them to the game.

Save Core Pack As: If you've made changes to the core pack, or created a new one. Once you're happy with the roster you can save this as a new core pack. I don't recommend using it at this point if going top down in this guide. You'll want to check the Roster and Paints & Data section first if you're creating a new pack.

Qual Times Tab

In order to apply different qualifying times in the game than the original defaults, make sure the box on the right is checked.

The qualifying times in the game have two main values. "Pole Target" and "Gap per position". Both of these values have some wiggle room in the game and are not an exact science.

The defaults for these are not perfect by any means, I ran 1 Q attempt with a 50 rating car, and 1 Q attempt with a 100 rating car. I made the 100 rating car the pole target, and the 50 rating car targeted about 35th and calculated the individual position gap from that. I ONLY did the one attempt with each, in the default setups, and went track to track to track. This was a long process which is why I only did one attempt. Feel free to adjust these after doing a qualifying attempt at any track if you feel it's too easy or difficult.

Be sure to click the Save button here after making any changes. This is saved separately from packs and the tool general items.

Note: Later career it seems as though this value gets modified somewhere in the game I've not found, I have not had a chance to do much testing with it, but this may be a feature you'll want to disable later on in career as it may make the qualifying goals nearly impossible to complete.

Player Tab

1. Applying Player Items

• Apply Player Items for Season Mode: This option uses all the information on this Player tab to create a new driver added into the roster of whatever pack you are using. You will be selectable in race now and season mode. In career mode this car will be on track as just another driver.

• Apply Player Items for Career Mode: This option uses most of the information on this Player tab to change career mode settings and textures to match as best as possible. Some textures may need to be manually renamed (such as the car, and pitwall_sign, and car # menu) after generating textures. Because it's impossible to set the tool up to match all paint scheme and sponsor options the game has to offer. Renaming these files is covered in another section near the bottom of this page. TODO link it

• Don't Apply Player Items: The mod tool will ignore all information on this Player tab.

2. Paint selection

•  Main Folder: This dropdown lets you select between your different main player folders

• Active Paint: This lets you swap between the different paint schemes (sub-folders)

• Paint Name: This just shows the current selected Active Paint name

3. Car/Driver general details

*Visual element is slightly outdated for this section

• Full Time/Part Time etc selection has been moved to the Season Only settings, section 6

• Paint Year: This is just for the year option for the paint. Will show up in the game if you are using season/race now application for this tab

• Car Model Dropdown: This is what car type you want the car body to be in the game (not necessarily what is on the paint)

• (Not shown in this screenshot) Manufacturer: This is where you set the car manufacturer that the car paint/template is representing (regardless of what model it's on). This is used mostly to correct MRN callouts, otherwise is not very important.

4. Car # and Name

Displayed car # and driver name, for career or race now/season mode

5. Career Only Settings

RGB Override. By checking this box this allows the tool to rename more elements (including pit crew suits, pitbox, and basic suit) correctly without you having to manually dump and replace the textures. (Dumping and replacing explained near the bottom of this page in the customizing car textures section)

6. Season/Race Now Only Settings

• All of this information is just the visual text for your driver info

• The "Full Time" dropdown is used to select the driver's 'slot' in the game.

  • Full Time means they will start every race (unless you have more than 42 AI set to full time).

  • Part Time means they will have a chance to start a race if there are spaces left after full time fills in.

  • Fantasy means they will have a chance to start a race if there are spaces left after part time fills in.

  • Disabled means they will not show up in the game roster or in a race.

7. Season/Race Now Only Ranks/Stat calculations

All of these ranks are meant as 1-43 settings for how good/bad you want your driver's AI to be.

Variance % will modify all of these stats within the % range you specify. The randomization happens every time you generate PNACH/Textures

Note: Most AI from packs uses real life stat averages, meaning even the best drivers may have an average value around 8-12th, so be careful setting these values too low numerically (meaning higher/better ranked)

Player Paint scheme folder setup

See the templates page if you want the paint templates for many of these items.

All the files pertaining to that paint scheme should be placed here. They must be named like the sample files included with the tool download. Also explained below (Technically all of this is optional, but ones that are recommended are starred *):

• *Car.png is the car texture

• CarMed.png is the car texture resized to 50% (for medium distances in game). The tool will auto-create this.

• CarSm.png is the car texture resized to 25% (for long distances in game). The tool will auto-create this.

• BasicSuit.png is the suit shown from any out of car views in game

• *CareerMenu.png is your car number in career mode standings/stat menus (it needs to be offset like the example because of how EA mapped it)

• CarInterior.png is the in car view if you want a custom one for this paint specifically

• *CarNumberMenu.png is for the pause/standings menu in game, and also in the tool's scoring pylon

• Hauler.png if you want a random hauler in the game to have your colors/design. Note this texture is warped/mirrored and used in weird ways by EA. May take some playing around to get a nice one.

• InCarSuit.png is for the in car view, it's your driver's arms and steering wheel components.

• PitBox.png is your pitbox. This MIGHT not replace all the time in the game automatically due to how pitboxes are created by the game.

• PitCrewArms.png are the arms of your pit crew

• PitCrewHelmet.png is the helmet of your pit crew

• PitCrewLegs.png are the legs of your pit crew

• PitCrewTorso.png is, you guessed it, the torso of your pit crew

• Not included yet is PitCrewHat.png which is the hat your crew wears in victory lane

• *PitSign_Wall.png is both the banner that gets placed on the pit wall and pitbox, and your pit sign. It's split the way the sample file is (might be off by 1 or 2 pixels in the sample file as far as the split location)

• Portrait.png is for your driver portrait, does not work in career.

• RivalAlly.png is for the rival/ally change screen. You only really need this if you are using the Player tab to fill a slot in season/race now and you are NOT going to play as this driver. (It's a good way to sneak in 1 custom driver without modifying a pack)

• RGB.txt contains 6 values (Red, Green, Blue x2) of your primary and secondary colors. This should only be used if you aren't doing a lot of custom images, as the custom images override the features of the RGB settings.

RGB settings include car # bubbles, crew and pitbox colors, driver suit colors, and maybe some other elements.

• Sponsor folder (must stay named Sponsor). In this folder you want to place your sponsor's png file. Name the png file what you want the sponsor to show up as text wise in the game. This is only used for career mode sponsor offers, IF you apply this as race now/season mode so that this is an AI car. It's a roundabout way of getting an additional custom AI car if you aren't doing a custom paint for career. Though you technically CAN still do a custom AI car, but all manually with no help from the tool in replacing the correct textures.

Note: There are additional steps for applying ALL of these items in the game which is covered in the Customizing Career Textures section of this page.

Roster Tab

This tab should only be used when creating a new pack. It can be used to alter an existing pack, however there may be some issues when doing anything except adding more drivers.

It is recommended to just create a new/fresh pack if you want to remove drivers from an existing pack. Even if you are just adding new drivers, it is still recommended to make a fresh pack, as any driver added after the fact will have a high variance stat (hidden stat in the game that we cannot modify) which will result in a wider range of speeds from that driver than expected.

1. Year & Series Filter

Year and Series filter are used to narrow down the entire driver list

2. Search area and driver list

Type anything in the search bar to narrow down the results, does not need to be a full name.

The list of names is just for selecting to add them one at a time.

3. Load/Activate drivers

Load Selected Driver will load them into section 4.

Activate All in List will take every driver in the driver list above and add them to the pack which is the list shown in section 5.

4. Driver series & stat year

Here you can select the series and year you want their stats used to generate their final stats for the game. I've not tested using a different series or year's stats yet, but it should work. The stats must exist in the appropriate csv files to be able to select it here.

5. Final driver list

This list are the drivers you've already added. You can select one and remove them if they were added by mistake, or if you added all and want to just remove a few select drivers. That said it is recommended to just disable them on the finalize tab later on than to remove them entirely. Also as mentioned previously, removing drivers from an existing saved pack is not recommended. You're best off creating a new pack.

Paints & Data Tab

The features in this section are mostly meant for initial pack setup and/or customization that is recommended only one time. It is tedious to change all of these things more than once. The only other use for this for a more casual user, is if you want a specific paint scheme active for each driver by utilizing the "Manually Selected Paints" option on the General Tab.

1. Load Selected Driver

Click a driver in the list above, and then click Load Selected Driver to customize their entry in this pack.

2. Stat Source and Active Paint

The stat year dropdown has options for the current driver of the available stat files (currently there are only stats available for each pack's target year).

Paint year, is the year/pack to limit a driver's paint scheme options to.

Active Paint left/right is used to either preview, or set (for manually selected paints option) the paint scheme for the driver shown.

3. Stat overriding

This section is a preview of the auto-generated stat rankings. With the checkbox you can override any of these by setting the appropriate numeric field.

4. Random stat variance

% of stat variance to apply to this driver within the tool. Note: The game will still have it's own variance that we cannot control.

Apply to All button is used to apply the random stat variance % to every driver in the pack with one click.

5. Driver full/part time etc

Set the driver to full time, part time, fantasy, or disabled entirely. See near the top of this page to find how this works.

6. Apply/Cancels Changes

If you want to keep the changes you've made in this screen for this particular driver, click the Apply Changes button.

If you do not want to keep the changes you've made in this screen for this particular driver, click the Cancel Changes button.

Points Adjustment Tab

*This section will be redone as a live tool eventually

The left side of this section is for updating points standings in the game's save file. This will be updated in future to be a live tool rather than using a memory card. Currently the steps for this are a bit complicated.

*IMPORTANT* Back up your memory card file before doing this process, just in case something goes wrong.

Note: I have not tested this with season mode, it should still work, however the load data dropdown option for your save file (section 3) may not be as expected.

1. Target in-game year

Stat year to target amongst the game's data. What year you are trying to change stats for.

2. Load Memory Card

Clicking this button will bring up a file explorer window. You should navigate to your memory card file on your hard drive and select it to make your changes.

3. File index

In the game you have 10 save slots on each memory card for career mode.

Once you select the save slot you think your file is in, click Load Data. The points data will load, note the roster may appear incorrect if you have a different pack active in the mod tool vs that save file.

This section might not function as expected with any Season mode saves on your memory card. I recommend iterating through the slots in the dropdown manually until you find your save.

4. Update points in pnach file

This must be checked if you are aiming to apply your changes here the next time you generate pnach file.

5. Preset points systems

You can auto-apply points systems via this dropdown and button.

Keep in mind, the automatic part of this only has visibility of the stats shown. Therefore it may not work exactly as expected, and definitely will not consider race wins in the later rounds of playoffs, if that is the format you're using.

6. Points Table

In this table you can manually enter points override values to make adjustments to the existing stats. Everything else in the table is just for your quick reference only from the game's data.

Schedule Tab

*Note: I've not tested this feature outside of career mode, as season mode already has a custom schedule creator built in to the game.

1. Custom schedule & overwrite length

The checkbox to use/apply a custom schedule must be checked to apply a new schedule.

The dropdown labeled "Overwrite Season" is the in game season length you are overwriting. It is NOT what you are limited to. You could put a 15 race schedule overwriting a 36 race schedule.

2. Save/Load Schedule

If you want to use a previously saved schedule, each pack should come with a saved schedule to begin with, select it from the dropdown and click Load Schedule to bring it in.

If you make any changes to any schedule, or create your own, you can name and save it via the text box (for the file name) and Save Schedule button

3. Add/Insert/Remove race

• Use the dropdown to select the race you'd like to add or insert

• Add Race button will add the race selected in the dropdown to the end of the schedule (if the season length is not at maximum)

• Insert Race Above Selected button will add the race selected in the dropdown above the highlighted race in the table in section 4

• Remove Selected Races button will remove one, or multiple, selected races from the table in section 4

4. Schedule table

There are 2 values you can change in this table, otherwise it is only used to select items to insert above or remove.

• 100% Lap Override: In addition to the General Tab race length adjustment, you can adjust individual races 100% length to then get the desired custom race length shown in the "Output % Laps" column. An example might be to make Dover a 500 mile race like it used to be.

• Purse Override: The race payout can be customized here. This is a good way to make career mode more, or less, difficult. Also can be useful if you want to make a particular event more or less important financially than reality.

Note: If you have a repeat event, the race length and payout will have to be equal in both fields, or blank for one of the events, to properly apply. We cannot set them individually unfortunately.

Sponsors Tab

Note: The sponsors and their assigned locations save with the core pack.

Make a new sponsor set

In the mod master folder navigate to NT04Data/Sponsors/ and create a new folder there. Name the folder whatever you'd like to name the sponsor set pack.

Inside of your folder you should save png files for each sponsor. It is recommended to save them as 256x256, but any 1:1 ratio is acceptable.

Be sure to name each sponsor png exactly what you want the name to appear as in game.

1. Load Sponsor Set

The dropdown here is populated by the folders in ModMaster/NT04Data/Sponsors/ location.

Select a folder and click Load Sponsor Set to add the options to the list box in section 2. Note: there may be a bug with loading a new set when sponsors are already applied on the left in section 3. It is recommended to remove all first.

2. Sponsor options available to add

• Randomize: This button will auto-apply any of the sponsors listed in the list box on the right, to the original in game sponsors on the left completely at random.

• Add: This button will manually add the selected item in the list box on the right, to the selected item in the table on the left (section 3)

• Remove: This button will manually remove the selected sponsor from the table on the left (section 3)

• Remove All: This button acts as a bit of a reset of assigned sponsors. It will remove every assigned sponsor from the table on the left (section 3)

• Move UP: The selected sponsor in the table in section 3 will move up (or swap upward, if a sponsor exists above) the list.

• Move DOWN: Same as move up, just downward.

3. Applied sponsors table

This list is just for your reference and selecting to use the buttons from section 2.

The first column is the sponsor in the vanilla game.

The second column is what you're replacing the vanilla sponsor with from your sponsor set.

The third column (informational only) is to let you know which sponsors are limited to specific in game manufacturers. If you want to make sure a sponsor you like isn't locked behind a different manufacturer than you use, this column is your reference to ensure that.

Rival Ally Tab

Note: There is a limit on how many entries can be applied.

These rival/ally ratings only apply to playing as a driver listed in race now or season mode.

Also the drivers will have a -# after their name, this is nothing to worry about, it's used for reference in the code.

1. Driver & Rating selection

Select a driver for A and B (it doesn't matter which is which, the rating gets applied in both directions).

Select Rival or Ally from the 3rd dropdown.

Set the Rating to your desired setting (it will get forced to an even value, game limitation).

Click the Add button, and it will either add the combination you've set, or update it if it already exists in the table in section 4.

2. Auto Add Teammates

This button will add (or update) all teammates (drivers with identical team names on their default paint option in the loaded pack) with the currently set rating.

3. Remove & Clear

Remove Selected will completely remove the entire row of any selection in the table.

Clear entire list will reset the table to be empty if you want to start over.

4. Current Ratings List

This table shows your currently active ally/rival drivers and ratings.

Finalize Tab

1. Race Rank % Applications

All of the following options apply IF and only IF the stat exists in the behind the scenes data. Any left over % from an unused stat will go solely off of finishing position. These stat %s only affect the single race 1 and race 2 rank calculations.

• Start Pos % - % that you want their starting position stat to affect their final ranking

• Laps Led - % that you want their laps led count vs other drivers to affect their final ranking

• Stage 1 & 2 Fin - % that you want their stage finishes to affect their final rating (likely to only affect the top 10 of that stage)

• DrivAvg Rating - % that you want the driveraverages.com rating to affect their final rating. I personally think this one is the best representation to how a driver performed during a race, regardless of their final result as it factors a driver's average running position, average speed, fastest lap vs others. This means if they DNF, some parts of their rating, like average running position, are only based on the laps they completed. 

Note: The DrivAvg rating only exists since they developed it sometime in 2005.

2. Recalc and Recount

• Recalculate Race Stats: If you change any selection or override things like individual race rank or Time, you should click Recalculate Race Stats when you are finished and the driver's Calculated Rank (first column in section 3) will update to their final ranking.

• Recount: This will update the count of full time, part time, and fantasy drivers.

3. Finalize Table

There are many columns here and I will not be covering them all specifically. I do not recommend using this table as the place to change driver ratings unless you only want to do so for one race quickly.

• SRank or CalcRank: represents the season ranking, or the calculated combination of race and season ranks. This is the core component to creating the driver's stats to place in the game.

• SRank Ovr: This is a manual value override for the SRank/CalcRank. If you want a driver to perform better or worse than their calculated rank for one race, this is the place to do so.

• Car # & Driver Name: Just for your reference, yes I know the car # field sometimes bugs out. If you're a programmer, don't use DataGridViews like I did, they're a pain.

• Image Priority: The game has a limited number of driver portraits and rival/ally images in the game (and it's a different number). Checking this box will give the driver priority to using those slots. By default pretty much everyone will be checked. The order the program uses the slots up is the SRank/CalcRank that are checked in this column.

• Stat Year: This is a final location where you can change what year's race and season stats to use. I've not messed with this so I can't promise it works lol

• Time: Full Time, Part Time, Fantasy, or Disabled. These options are explained near the top of this page since it's used in multiple places.

• The rest of the table, I'm not going to go into full detail on. Most of the fields are stat calculations or manual overrides for those items. Just keep in mind anything that says rank, low is better. Anything that says stat, higher is better.

Live Tools Tab

Career Rival/Ally Edit

Similar controls to the rival/ally edit tab which changes drivers for Race Now/Season mode, only this is for live editing of the career mode ratings.

The main purpose of this feature is so you can carry the correct rival/allies between seasons when changing packs. As drivers will get remapped to other 'drivers' in game.

Note: You cannot edit these before a season has started.

Note: If names are missing from the list, then you do not have the same exact pack loaded up

To use this simply:

• Open the game and load into your career mode file

• Click Refresh from Game

• Select the driver you'd like to edit your Rival/Ally ranking with

• Select Ally or Rival, enter a Rating and click Update

Pit Crew Rename

With a career mode file loaded up click Refresh from Game to load all the names in.

Simply change the names of your crew members as you'd like and click Apply Names when you're done.

Live Pylon!

You must first load into a race session (does not have to be the race itself, just into the screen where you have the options for practice, qualify, etc) before using the pylon. Set your colors, highlighted drivers, and player driver option before clicking the checkbox to show the pylon window. If you launch it by accident, simply uncheck to exit it, and recheck once you're happy with your settings.

The list box of driver names on the right allows you to select drivers to highlight in the pylon. Simply check the box next to their name.

You can change the text and background color of your highlight, and the selected driver highlights separately via the buttons for each.

You must select the car you are racing as (or Career if you're in career mode) via the Player Driver dropdown menu. This is not sorted alphabetically, the best way to find a driver is to press the first letter of their name until it highlights them.

The rest of the options on the left here can be toggled on/off while the pylon is active and each have a shortcut key associated with them.

• Names (Ctrl + 1): Toggleable driver names being shown

• No Stat (Ctrl + 2): Turns off any previously shown stats (the rest of the items below)

• Lap # (Ctrl + 3): Shows the current lap # that each driver is on

• Rival/Ally (Ctrl + 4): This is for career mode only, it shows the rival/ally rating PRIOR TO the race, this is not live updated unfortunately.

• Best Lap (Ctrl + 5 for Time, Ctrl + 6 for Speed): This shows the best lap each driver has run at this point of the race.

The Pylon has a pink background as making it a clear background can be troublesome with Windows. It's not impossible, but this pylon can be moved partially off screen to hide the excess, and any content creators/streamers can chroma key the purple/pink color which uses the RGB value of 139,0,139

What the pylon looks like with my settings above:

Changing Career Textures

This cannot be fully automated as every combination of custom car template, colors, number, manufacturer, and sponsors make a unique texture name for the car, pit sign, etc.

Prerequisites to this section of the guide:

• Place correctly named paint files in the Player folder

• Double check the data loads up correctly in the Player tab in the tool itself

• You have the bullet checked to Apply Items for Career Mode on the Player tab

After generating textures the tool will place the texture files into a subfolder it creates, inside of your "Output Texture File" path you specified on the General tab of the tool, titled "Player"

In this folder you'll notice various textures with "ToRename" in the file name. These are the files you'll need to manually rename.

I recommend moving these files to the replacements folder (2 levels up) to avoid needing to redo these steps every time you regenerate textures.

Once you've moved them, now it is time to find out what they are named. Navigate to the dumps folder (it might not exist yet if you haven't dumped textures before). This should be with the replacements folder inside of SLUS-20824. If there are any existing files in the dumps folder, it'll be easier to delete them now.

First navigate to your own stats in the game (if it's the first race of your career, you can do this after race 1).

Once you're on this screen and see your number, navigate to the PCSX2 menu, Settings->Game Properties->Graphics->Texture Replacement tab (as shown below) and check Dump Textures for a second, then uncheck it (it should take 3 clicks to cycle through the option entirely).

Open the dumps folder you navigated to previously, and look for the dumped car # texture.

Once you've found the correct texture do the following to apply your new one:

• Click on the dumped texture once to select it

• Press F2 on your keyboard to open the rename option

• Press Ctrl + C to copy the text

• Navigate to your replacements folder

• Click on the "CareerMenuToRename" image file

• Press F2 on your keyboard to open the rename option

• Press Ctrl + V to paste the previously copied filename

• Press  Enter to accept it

• Now in the PCSX2 Graphics options, cycle Load Textures to uncheck, then recheck

• Your car # should be updated now

Note: You may need to navigate away from and back to an option to ensure the texture reloads in game. You also may see some car textures flickering on/off when you first get on track after cycling load textures off and on at any point.

To replace your car and pit sign you have to load into a career event. I recommend loading into qualifying to do this, then reloading your game or using a save state to restore prior to qualifying. If you do this in practice you'll end up with a lot more textures dumped to look through.

Go on track and get somewhere on track that you can see your pit stall, switch to an outside of car view (like shown below). Repeat the steps to dump textures as explained above.

Repeat the bulleted steps again for the pit sign (PitSignToRename), your car # from the pause menu's results/stats screen (CarNumStatsToRename), and finally your car texture as well (CarToRename...).

Your car texture has an extra step however, you'll need to replace the last 4 characters of the filename with the 4 characters specified in the "CarToRename_..." files

Note: I find it helpful in the dumps folder to right click and sort by Date if you've got multiple files present already.

In my case (the file names will be different for you), I had to rename the following (From : To)

• CareerMenuToRename : c3a0f3a9bee54a4b-364f4a03287446c5-00001a13

• CarNumStatsToRename : 7d15a65fe5c33a3e-364f4a03287446c5-00001553

• PitSignToRename : 2599e8305e65333f-799f2c7834740eb4-000015d3

• CarToRename_Large_2653 : -1d443c4f77d9f6a8-00002653

• CarToRename_Med_2213 : -1d443c4f77d9f6a8-00002213

• CarToRename_Small_1dd3 : -1d443c4f77d9f6a8-00001dd3