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One of the fantastic things about this highly addictive game is that the development team has made it fairly easy to create custom cars. Even though it is not 'officially sanctioned' by the publisher, it still can be done and without too much hassle as well. It requires a standard paint program, some trial and error and a healthy dose of patience.
If you feel you are up to the task, read on.
You need a paint program to create your texture map. MSPaint can work fine in a pinch. First, decide on what body style you would like to create your masterpiece.
Once you have decided a likely candidate, it is now time to figure out which folder contains that car. In your Re-Volt directory, you will find a folder called CARS. In this folder are located all the cars for Re-Volt, each located in their own folder. Look through each one and load the .BMP file with MS Paint to identify the correct texture map.
Once you have the correct texture map, it means this is the folder you want. Create a new folder for the car you wish to create within the CARS directory. Call it whatever you desire. It's usually a good idea to name the folder what you are going to name the car.
Now copy all the files from the folder you found the car in, and place the copied items in your new folder.
Let's open the PARAMETERS.TXT file. First, change the name of the car at the top to the new name that you have thought of. Second, go through the several locations near the top that call out a path for loading files your car needs. An example is "cars\Adeon\wheelfl.prm". You'll need to change the folder name to your new name. In this case, the folder “Adeon” would be renamed with the new folder name where you are creating your car. Now save the text file to the same name.
Now open the .BMP file with your paint program. Make the changes you desire. Your first moves are going to be just identifying the different parts on the texture map and checking your work repeatedly. Once you finish, save out the .BMP file.
Now open the .BMP file and scale it down by 50% to 128x128. This time, save it out as a .BMQ file! No, this is not a standard paint file extension. You may need to use MSPaint for this process, as many paint programs will not allow you to create your own three-letter file extension.
Now, go into Re-Volt. When you get to choose your car, keep pressing the cursor key until you find the box with the question marks and with the name you chose.
When you load up the car, you'll probably first say "Cool" then "Uh-oh" as you notice a texture map out of place or some other funky result. You will probably be doing this texture map process several times as you keep modifying and tweaking the texture map to get it right.
Good luck! This is a very cool and time consuming part to Re-Volt and it's easy to lose hours creating and tweaking texture maps but it sure is fun to see your own creations whipping around the track!
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