Midnight Club 2 Race Editor Parser

A PowerShell parser and technical documentation for the .red file format used by Midnight Club 2's in-game Race Editor. Each .red file is a fixed-size 222-byte binary file describing one custom race - including city, time of day, weather, race mode, CPU opponents, checkpoints, time bonuses, and lap count.

Usage

1. Make a backup of your /userdata folder, just in case.
2. Place the parser scripts in the root of your Midnight Club 2 directory.
3. Execute ParseRedToJson.ps1 to parse your /userdata/*.red files to /userjson/*.json files.
4. Inspect the .json files and make edits where wanted. Be sure to follow the specs for valid values.
5. Execute ParseJsonToRed.ps1 to parse the /userjson/*.json files back to /userdata/*.red files.

Development

The scripts in src/ are the source of truth. They reference src/race.schema.json at runtime for all enum data and validation. Do not edit the files in dist/ directly — they are generated.

Workflow:

1. Edit the source scripts in src/ or the schema in src/race.schema.json.
2. Run the build to produce standalone distributable scripts:

   pwsh .\dev\Build.ps1

   Tip: The Run selected PowerShell script VS Code extension lets you right-click any .ps1 file in the Explorer and run it directly, without needing a terminal.
3. The built scripts are written to dist/. These have the schema inlined and are minified — share these with end users.

The build step inlines the schema as a here-string and strips all comments and blank lines from the output.

Contents

File	Description
src/ParseRedToJson.ps1	Reads all .red files from /userdata and writes one .json per file to /userjson.
src/ParseJsonToRed.ps1	Validates and reads all .json files from /userjson and writes one .red per file to /userdata.
src/race.schema.json	JSON Schema (Draft 2020-12) for the race JSON format. Single source of truth for all enum data; the parser reads its lookup tables directly from this file.
dev/Build.ps1	Inlines the schema into each source script and writes standalone output scripts to dist/.
docs/RedFileFormat.md	Full technical documentation of the .red binary format: byte map, enumerations, checkpoint layout, parsing rules, serialization rules, and padding sentinels.
docs/PowershellNotes.md	Notes and constraints for letting Github Copilot run PowerShell scripts in VS Code.