8. Almost done!

NFS: Carbon

In the end you have produced a .fce file and a .tga texture for it. A car for NFS is a car.viv file, which is nothing more than an archive that stores the car's geometry files, its textures, physical parameters, statistical parameters in different languages, sounds, etc.

These archives can be handled by the program NFS Wizard. Its interface is fairly clear, so there shouldn't be any problems here. The program cannot create a new file, so you'll have to take some ready-made car and replace its files in its archive with your own, and then save it under a new name.

The minimum set of files for a car is as follows –
car.fce – geometry;
car00.tga – texture;
carp.txt – physical parameters;
fedata.eng – parameters.

If your car is supposed to be "upgraded", you'll have to create the files car1.fce, car2.fce, car3.fce, car100.tga, car200.tga, car300.tga, carp1.txt, carp2.txt, carp3.txt as well - one for each upgrade.
The fedata parameters file can be in different languages (since the game can also switch to other languages). The language is determined by its extension – bri, eng, fre, ger, ita, spa, swe.
You can also put dashboard files into car.viv - dash.fce, dash00.tga, and dash.fsh. I don't know how to edit them, but you can shamelessly steal the dashboard from another car. ;-)
And finally, you can add special sounds for your car (otherwise it will use the standard ones) – this is the careng.bnk file (but I don't know what to edit it with or how...)

You can also make a so-called "video wall" – this is what flickers in the background when you customize your car in the game. ;-) Usually it's the manufacturer's logo (your name... ;-) or a nice photo of the car. The DATAFEDATAVIDWALL directory contains .qfs files – take one of them and make a copy of it with the name of the directory where your car is located. That is, if your new car is in the DATACARSABCD directory, then the file must be named abcd.qfs. After opening it in NFS Wizard, you can insert your own two images video1.tga and video2.tga, sized 381x178 pixels, into it.

In general, NFS Wizard understands all the formats used by NFS and provides modest capabilities for editing them (the Objectmenu). For example, after opening a car's geometry file and loading its texture, you can immediately see how the car will look with different assignable colors, and via the command Object/Color Editor – adjust the assignable colors (however, you can't create a new one there...)

So, compile your car and try it in the game... Most likely something will go wrong, but don't worry too much. ;-) It's usually easy to figure out what happened. If your wheels spin not around their own axis but around the center of the car, then their local coordinate system is shifted; if you see nothing but the headlights, then either the alpha channel in the texture is all black, or parts of your car are named incorrectly; if you can't move from the spot – something is messed up in carp.txt, etc...