Micro Machines Tile Properties Format

Tile properties for Micro Machines are stored in GAME1\ROUNDnBR.LEV files, one per round. They define how a car is placed back on the track after it has fallen off, and which meta-tiles are unsafe to respawn on.

File format

The file holds one byte per meta-tile, in the same order as the .CT file, with no header. It is 49 to 64 bytes long. (Round 2's file has 3 bytes more than the round has meta-tiles. They are never used.)

The game always reads 128 bytes into a fixed buffer, and does not check how many were actually read.

Bits	Purpose
0-1	Set on some tiles, but not used by the game
2-4	Respawn nudge (0-7), see below
5-6	Respawn heading (0-3), see below. Also selects the direction remap table of the .DIR flow field.
7	Unsafe tile: while a car is on this tile, its position is not remembered as a respawn point

Respawning

While a car drives, the game keeps remembering its position as the point to put it back to if it falls off the track, except on tiles with bit 7 set.

When a car respawns, the remembered point is snapped to the centre of its 96×96 cell and moved by the nudge vector from bits 2-4:

Value	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
x	0	36	-36	-36	36	-36	36	0
y	0	-36	36	0	36	-36	0	-36

The car then faces the heading chosen by bits 5-6:

Value	Heading
0	0x40 (right)
1	0x80 (down)
2	0x60 (down-right)
3	0xA0 (down-left)

This heading is turned around by 180° once for each .MAP attribute bit set on the cell.

Credits

This file format was reverse engineered by VorticonCmdr. If you find this information helpful in a project you're working on, please give credit where credit is due. (A link back to this wiki would be nice too!)