Custom cars

A custom car is any car besides the eleven ones that come with the game. Players can create custom cars by editing CAR*.RES files and, optionally, swapping or modifying the car graphics files. (See Car files for a summary of how those files make up a car.) Modifications are usually done through editing tools, which can be general purpose or geared towards a specific task.

History

In the early days of car customisation, during the Kalpen era and the early 00s, custom cars were usually referred to as cheat cars. That reflected how most of them were exercises in pushing against the limits of the game's possibilities, by creating extremely powerful cars capable of implausibly fast high scores. Two of the best known among those are Lada Niva Comeback and the Skoda Felicia Kompressor.

Still in the early 00s, two projects were early, trend-setting efforts to create more believable custom cars: Zapper's Tuned For Real series, whose main goal was creating more accurate versions of the original cars, and Alan Rotoi's Melange XGT-88, which despite being a fantasy car has performance in line with the IMSA cars from the original set. The paradigm shift, though, would only happen in its earnest from 2008 with the release of stressed, which made custom graphics a reality. Car creation, which at the time was feared to have become a lost art, experienced a revival, as designers were motivated by the new possibilities to start or resume projects. These projects were mostly focused on realistic modelling of cars, as custom graphics made that a much more attractive proposition, and also because ZakStunts, which opened slots for custom cars from 2009 on, encourage cars with believable performance for use in competition. Given the prevalence of more realistic creations in the modern era, "custom car" has mostly replaced "cheat car" in common parlance, with the latter term now usually referring specifically to the ultra-fast, stricto sensu cheat cars from the early days.

Tools

• Car Blaster, the pioneering CAR*.RES editor, and the main car customisation tool in the early days of modding.
• CarEdit3, a newer CAR*.RES editor for DOS which incorporates more recent advances in the understanding of car behaviour.
• CarWorks, an integrated tool for whole-car edition with a focus on simplifying workflows.
• stressed, the jack-of-all-trades, which in particular offers import and export of graphic files, as well as a simple 3D shape editor.

Rumoured cars

Some additional cars, mentioned as "hidden cars", used to be described in the Stunts page in English Wikipedia as follows:

In addition to the cars listed above there were 4-6 cars in the PC Version which were not in the game proper, but which could be accessed through a sub directory in the game. Some of the cars in this directory included the following;

• Antique Roadster
• K-Car Type
• Economy Hatchback

No link or proof was offered by the person who added these remarks to the Wikipedia page, and so they were eventually removed for being unsourced. The origin of the rumour (or, most likely, hoax) remains unknown.

See also

• List of cars, which includes many custom cars.
• Category:Modding and Category:Tools for information on how to create custom cars.

External links

• The Southern Cross downloads page, which includes a selection of custom cars.
• The Car Creation board on the Stunts Forum, where the development of new custom cars may be followed.