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How To Create Local Maps#

Local maps are the detailed maps you see on the bottom screen, featuring a top view of the track. These are the ones that contain the most info, such as item boxes, obstacles and items. Making these is super simple, so let’s get on it!

Shoutouts to Xgone for teaching me how to make these!

For this tutorial you will need:

- Mario Kart Toolbox
- Every File Explorer (not needed if you have your ROM files as a project)
- Mario Kart DS Course Modifier
- LocalMapGen
- GIMP
- Your preferred photo editing program

Step 1: Making your image#

First off, we’ll need a big picture showing the entire track from an overhead view. You can either utilize MKTB’s 2D view or a top view of the model in Blender, but for this tutorial I will use the former. You can use Blender’s view if MKTB’s view skips anything you may want featured on the map. You can use any tool that can take a screenshot, but I suggest Windows’ included Snipping Tool, as you can take the picture however you want.
Next, open your favorite editing or image tool, and make a new image with a size of 512x512. Here, if possible, paste your image within this space, and adjust it until you feel it looks right. Alternatively, import the picture, and crop it to 512x512, making sure the track is at the center of course.


Here’s what mine looks like, all cropped.

Once you’re done, save the picture somewhere accessible

Step 2: Preparing your image#

Up next, you have to index your image to have 256 colors. Open a program that can do this, preferably GIMP. I’ll show you how to do it on there.

Open GIMP and drag your image. Once there, go to Image > Mode > Indexed.


On the indexed window, click the first option, and set the amount to 256. Then, export or overwrite your image.


Now, we need to create a copy of the image that we can use to make the actual local map. For this, you will need the program LocalMapGen, by Gericom.

Open up a command prompt window with Windows key + R. Here, you’ll drag the program mentioned above, and then drag your image 2 times. The second time you import it give it a different name. Also, be sure to keep spaces between each line like in the picture.


Hit enter, and wait for the program to do it’s thing. This may take a while, so go do something else in the meantime. After this, you are finally ready to make the map itself!

Sidenote: The download I got of LocalMapGen has a batch file by Rocoloco, so you can just drag your image there and done XD

Step 3: Making the local map and adding it to the files#

For this part you’ll need Mario Kart DS Course Modifier and Every File Explorer/Mario Kart Toolbox.

Open up MKDSCM, and click on File > New > NCLR + NCGR + NSCR > 8bpp - Single. Look for your image and select it. Name each of the 3 files however you want, and let the program do it’s thing. If it stops responding and crashes, simply try again. If all went well, you should see a .nclr, .ncgr and .nscr where you specified.


Next, open your ROM with Every File Explorer, or go to your project files if you extracted your ROM as a project in MKTB, (If you haven’t done the latter, I highly suggest doing so) and to go the _tex folder/CARC of the course you want the local map for. Inside it, go to the Map2D folder, and look for the local.nclr, local.ncgr and local2.nscr files. Replace these files with your own. If you notice a local3.nscr file, delete it, as you will not be needing it.

Step 4: Adjusting your local map#

Open MKTB, and go to the course you made the map for. Enable 2D view, and click on the Show Map icon. If you did it all correctly, you should see your local map; however, it will not be positioned correctly. Feel free to mess around the positioning until you get it right. Use the Show Transparent Map option to help you with this.


Once you’re finished, save, and test it in game! If all went well, you should see your map perfectly! I hope this tutorial was useful. Now, have fun and go make some fantastic maps!

Tutorial by AltairYoshi