CTTR Modding Antics

HEY THERE! RACE FANS! Welcome to this exciting race post,where,by the title,you can already expect that i will be posting mods,discussing,and etc,about one of my childhood games,developed by Radical Entertainment,Crash Tag Team Racing,this may not the BEST place to discuss this game,but its the closest,as it seems there is no forums,discord servers,subreddits,or anything related to this topic (or even Crash Bandicoot PS2 modding) (i plan on creating a Fanwiki modding page documenting the game,but for that,id need more people,or else the wiki gets deleted for no interactions),but i suppose this is the closest due to how the Pure3D engine works,people can help people. I modded many games already,GTA SA/5,Mario Kart DS/WII,Cars Mater National,Sonic Adventure 2,and even fking Angry Birds,the difference here is,this is a completly untouched game (the only one i know who modded this game is BetaM [www.youtube.com/@BetaM])

Krash... rhat vhere you talking about? zese edibels ain sh**...

SCREW YOU MOM! I CAN DRIVE WHATEVER I WANT!

NOW LETS GET BACK TO THE POINT!
I plan on editing this post,to add small mods showcases i make for the game,"tutorials",documentation,and overall """"daily"""" posts of me trying to figure out how this game works,trial and error.

I NEED YOUR HELP!
Now,a reason i've came to this forum,was not only to show my work,but also inspire someone who'd be down to helping in this game,give suggestions,ask questions,answer questions,try making your own mods,thankfully a handful of tools needed already exist, RCF explorer and CML (to rebuild the game),,and yeah,i do need help,so anyone who knows the insides and outs of the engine,and wanna help me learn about it,it would be great,or reverse engineering,im still learning.

SO NOW WHAT?
For now i wanna see whats possible to do in the game with the tools that already exist,but there is 2 things i have in mind,two mods.
1 - Making it so everyone can drive any car,no exclusivity (and lets throw the beta cars there bcuz why not?),it would be easy if the quantity of cars per character wasnt capped to 4 (it could be hardcoded, please God,please no or i suppose its in a file i didnt found,or i dont know how to properly add them)
2 - Reverse engineer the textures,sounds,and maybe models,i suppose it wouldnt be impossible for the people who know how the game engine works,its probably a moderate difference between CTTR and SHAR,but the p3d editor doesnt accept these files,i suppose things changed in the engine after 3 years.

EDIT 1: Gamebanana page created,with a tutorial on how mod this game on its PS2 port: gamebanana.com/games/21589

EDIT 2: After a whole lot of people modding this game,and even making DIYs,here is my first publicly relased mod for CTTR (download link in the video)

EDIT 3: And,another mod released,this time,its Crash from Twinsanity in CTTR,using the Scarface build of Lucas' P3D editor,which means,custom model and textures.
The mod can be downloaded here gamebanana.com/mods/567620

EDIT 4: Something im working on, that assists in converting Pure3D textures to console formats: Xbox,Gamecube,and PS2 (as for some reason LP3DE doesnt imports DDS images >:/,so even xbox modding is a b**ch ),so then, P3D TC makes it easier to make mods for CTTR,i will be releasing it soon,when its finished.

EDIT 5: The Gamebanana page grew up a bit,some tutorials,some mods,followers,views,and someone decided to apply as a game manager and added some additional info to the page and a banner/icons.

Hello! 👋
As a SHAR modder, I've always been interested in modding CTTR since it was my childhood game on PS2. However, my attempts have failed (broken P3D files). What's the best console version of CTTR to mod, and what are the limitations when modding? 🤔
Thanks ☺

Hey there,well,this is more a case of choose your poison:

The PS2/PSP versions,being the most complete versions,with exclusive contents,like cars.
The Xbox version,without these exclusive contents,but has an architecture more similar to the PC,and Lucas' P3D editor can work with the Xbox p3d files (to an extent)
And the GameCube version,it... exists....

i use the PS2 version,because it has exclusive content,and i cant do proper xbox emulation,also a bit of nostalgia of the PS2

For now what is possible to do is mostly mod the .god files which are similar to lua scripts,completly modifiable with any text editor (i use notepad),which control some character(skin model,size,voice) and car (model,handling) configurations,and some "commands",or missions scripting (to an extent),and the p3d files,which arent modifiable using Lucas Pure3D editor... on the PS2,tho the Xbox version seems to work,not just that,the xbox models can be inserted into the ps2 and work... partially,the textures dont,i still have to figure out a way to convert the DDS xbox textures to an texture the PS2 can read.

Side note,ive also created a gamebanana page and modding tutorial of the game,might wanna take a look and help to make this game modding scene get some attention,more tutorials on the way!

Interesting, very interesting. 😮
I'm particularly keen on the Xbox version of CTTR because it boasts the highest quality textures compared to other consoles. A few years ago, I successfully opened several P3D files with the Pure3D Editor (it worked for the Xbox version, but failed for PS2). While I'm still researching, I understand that LUA is the programming language Radical used in CTTR (in SHAR it's MFK), and GOD is used for car programming (in SHAR it's CON). 👀

Is it really possible to some extent to change the 3D models of CTTR characters to any character you can think of? For example, replacing Crash Bandicoot with Homer Simpson and having Homer perform Crash's animations, like running, walking, attacking, etc. 😮

I hope CTTR modding can attract the attention of many people. It's an unexplored world with a lot of potential for modification. 🤗

I havent tested it yet,but maybe if we replace the models of CTTR with some form SHAR (preferably PS2 port,but maybe pc works too),i think it would work just fine,except for the animations,which have different bone names (i mean,not even the characters in CTTR share a similar bone architecture,imagine SHAR sharing with CTTR),so we would probably be walking around with a a T-posing Homer.

And sadly,it doesnt seem possible to edit the Xbox models,maybe im doing something wrong when using the p3d editor,but when extracting a .p3dxml the application gives an error,but atleast it still can reimport textures,different from the PS2 p3ds which if you reimport a texture and save the file,the game crashes

The models in CTTR use a newer Skeleton chunk type. This is a somewhat known format, but it's not supported by Lucas' Pure3D Editor (and therefore not by the Blender tools). If you know C#, you could take a stab at writing your own tool using my NetP3DLib that can read those chunks.

There are a lot of changed/added chunks in CTTR (a surprising amount given it was only a couple years after SHAR), so I don't support all of them, but I can take a look into adding support for new chunks as they crop up.

Thanks,
Josh

,i think it would work just fine,except for the animations,which have different bone names (i mean,not even the characters in CTTR share a similar bone architecture,imagine SHAR sharing with CTTR),so we would probably be walking around with a a T-posing Homer.

I understand it well. It's like trying to port a 3D character model to any character in SHAR by importing it in .obj format. it’s a 3D model that doesn’t reproduce animations and remains in a T-Pose!

And sadly,it doesnt seem possible to edit the Xbox models,maybe im doing something wrong when using the p3d editor,but when extracting a .p3dxml the application gives an error,but atleast it still can reimport textures

It's a common error when trying to modify P3D files from the console versions, whether in SHAR or Crash of the Titans—you often encounter this issue on PS2. At least, that was my personal experience. 🤔
It's a miracle that CTTR allows you to change characters, replacing Crash with Cortex or Pasadena. Even though they only have the idle animation, at least you can control them. 😮

Im currently working on a mod for playable Pasadena,already replaced the main model and one outfit,the cars,but DAMN,on the animation side,as there isnt much i can do to create new anims,im having to Frankenstein animations togheter with one another,changing bone names,and importing some of Pasadena's animations (like stomp for landing and impact for death,and obviously,idle for idle)

im having to Frankenstein animations togheter with one another,changing bone names,and importing some of Pasadena's animations

Hmmm it's very complicated with the animations. So the Pasadena skeleton is not compatible with any of Crash's animations? If it is compatible, the animations would be stable, and there would be no problems. 🤨

It is compatible,in fact,the animations work,but they are NOT stable,because pasadena has bones that Crash doesnt have (tail,hair) and Crash has bones Pasadena doesnt have (like the ears,and i suppose shoulder),which makes the animations look wrong,and so i have to rename these bones in the animation file,+ import some of Pasadena's animations,so she isnt SO out of character (like her idle and death animations),plus importing some of the Tail/hair bone animations from one animation (like idle) to her walking animation,so her tail doesnt stay solid as a rock.

And for some reason Crash's spin animation rotates the head bone,so i had to rename it to make her body spin,ill send some vids later,rn im without my pc.

Actually take a look at this video by BetaM: (Go to 4:10 to see Pasadena WITHOUT animations tweaking,still,i suggest you to look at the first seconds of video to see the spin animation)