1. Something you should know

Although Tuxmanager ist easy to handle, you should know and notice something. I'm sure to tell you nothing of news, but I think I should remind you of some facts which are important to avoid mistakes.

1.1 The racing structure of Tuxracer

The racing structure of Tuxracer is composed of events, cups and courses. An event consists of one or more cups, and each cup consists of one or more courses.

There are two events defined in the standard configuration: "Solo Challenge" and "Race vs Opponents". In both events you can find 6 cups: "Beginner Cup", "Arctic Cup", "Forest Cup", "Mountain Cup", "Glacier Cup" und "Swiss Cup". And each cup contains 3 courses. The structure of the two events is similar - the only difference is the racing mode. If you start a course in "Solo Challenge", you will race against the time and try to catch as many herrings as possible, whereas the only goal of "Race vs Opponents" is to be faster than the opponent.

If you compose your own events or reorganize the existing events, you have to regard the hierarchic structure of events, cups and courses.

1.2 About the nomenclature

Tuxracer uses two kinds of notations for events, cups and courses: the systematic notation and the trivial names. The systematic names do not appear in the Tuxracer environment - they are internally used to enable the reciprocal accesses. They must be handled carefully and they are not allowed to be changed by the user.

Running Tuxracer you can only see the trivial names, translated into your native language. These names can be changed and specified by erveryone.

Example: Using the systematic notation, the third standard cup is called "forest" and the courses in this cup are called "forest1", "forest2" and "forest3". These names are the same as the names of the folders which contain the cup and courses. The corresponding trivial name for the cup is "Forest Cup" and for the first forest course is "Would a woodchuck?".

Tuxmanager controls the systematic names to avoid mistakes in the event structure. If you create a new cup, it will be called "my_cup_X" where X ist a current number. You have to accept this name but you can change the trivial name. The default is "My Cup X". Beside the trivial names you may change and adjust the course description. Do it in your native language since the settings do only effect your own computer.

Unfortunately, Tuxracer is inconsistant. Though it were expedient to use the systematic notation for scoring the results in the logfiles, Tuxracer does it by using the trivial names. Therfore these names must be handled carefully, too. Do not define them twice or more and bear in mind that each cup and each course must have a trivial name.

1.3 The racing modes

There are two modes: the race against the time and the count of herrings, and the race against an opponent. All courses of "Solo Challenge" use the first mode whereas all courses belonging to "Race vs Opponents" use the second mode. But there is no necessitiy to arrange the courses in this way. It is absolutely possible to mix the modes within an event or even within a cup - under the condition that the race is prepared to be runned against an opponent. All standard courses allow this mode but all known courses, built by users, lack this option.

2. The handling of Tuxmanager

2.1 Preparation. After starting Tuxmanager the first time you will see a checklist. There is something to do before you can work with Tuxmanager. These preparations must be done only once.

- Of course, Tuxmanager has to be informed about the location of Tuxracer. Please set the path.

- It's not absolutely required but strongly recommended to backup the standard installation of Tuxracer. If something fails or if you are tired of experimenting, you will be able to restore the original state of Tuxracer. By the way: The only folder concerned by Tuxmanager ist "courses" (including the subfolders).

- To make you able to install own, additional courses and to run them, some more preparation steps are necessary. Tuxmanager creates the folder "share" and equips it with the required files. All additional courses must be located in this folder. Further, Tuxmanager copies all available objects into the folder "objects". In contrast to the standard courses the self-made courses have access to the complete object set.

2.2 Setting the language. The language should be the same as set in Tuxracer.

2.3 Looking around. On the left you see the event list with the hierarchic structure of cups and courses. You can choose between 5 events (open the combo above the eventlist). The first and second event are the wellknown standard events. Additional, you have 3 events at your disposal. You can change and compose all events, the standard events, too, but it will be a good idea to start with a new, empty event. Click on the button to add a cup, and click on the courselist to add a course. Each entry will appear in the line below the actual line. You can use a course several times. You do not need to use all events, empty events will be ignored by Tuxmanager, as well as cups without courses.

2.4 Setting the event order. Perhaps you will use an event for courses which you are working on. In this case it might be helpful to change the event order. Move the "work event" to the top, and your courses will appear first when you start Tuxracer.

2.5 Changing the trivial name of an event. If you do not find a name like "My Event 1" very expressive you can change it.

2.6 Installing own courses. Before installing own courses you have to run Tuxmanager to do the preparations. You should not create the folder "share" by yourself. The reason: If this folder exists, Tuxmanager will assume that all is correctly prepared but the required files do not exist in the folder.

There are different ways of installing own courses. You can do it with Tuxmanager (file - install or button). Therefore you must open the file "course.tcl" in the course directory. Tuxmanager copies the course to "share" and scans this folder once more to present the course in the list of available courses. Note: The course has to be extracted before installing.

If the share-folder exists (created by Tuxmanager!), you will be able to install the courses manually, too. Copy the courses into the share folder and run Tuxmanager. Tuxmanager scans the folder for new courses automatically. While Tuxmanager is running you can force the scanning (menu or button).

2.7 Editing the parameters. Click on a cup or course in the eventlist and uncover the parameter-table in the right working area. At the top you see the inputfields for the trivial name and the course description. Do not leave these fields empty! Enter the name and description in your native language.

At the bottom there is a checkbox for activating the racing mode "race vs. opponent". If this option is activated, the count of herrings and time specifications will be ignored by Tuxracer.

2.8 Writing the configuration file. After composing the event and editing the parameters of the cups and courses the configuration file (course_idx.tcl) must be written. Click on the button or use the menu (events - write config). That's all. Now start Tuxracer.

2.9 Editing the environment. Each cup folder (beginner ... swiss, share) has its own environment adjustments (light colours, light position, environment images) which can be changed. Click on the environment button and try! You will be astonished about the effects.