[Steephill]

Hi

Saw some people grumble over the graphics in the Redline Demo and at first i also was a bit disapointed. But after playing around with the settings - read turning up resolution, setting full Anti-Aliasing, adding Anisotropic filtering and bang suddenly the game looks good for being a shareware cargame.

my 2 cents

/Steephill

[Ari]

As good as Racer, free driving simulator?

Some Racer screens:
http://img384.images...c6200603gj6.jpg
http://img98.imagesh...040/sky4kd2.jpg
http://img148.images...6/s42004zd1.jpg

[Drinniol]

Racer has butt-ugly environments, so yeah *grins*

[Janichsan]

Drinniol, on September 26th 2006, 01:04 PM, said:

Racer has butt-ugly environments, so yeah *grins*

Obviously, you never tried any but the tracks that come with the game itself...

[Drinniol]

Heh. He said as good as Racer, not as good as the third-party releases for Racer, which are incomparible until someone releases some Redline mods.

[WSTE_M]

Ari, on September 26th 2006, 11:42 AM, said:

As good as Racer, free driving simulator?

Some Racer screens:
http://img384.images...c6200603gj6.jpg
http://img98.imagesh...040/sky4kd2.jpg
http://img148.images...6/s42004zd1.jpg

Have you actually managed to play Racer ??
I can launch the game allright, but then its stuck at the main menu screen, and I have to force quit it.

W

[teflon]

Racer also runs like a toy dog with 3 legs and battery power on a system that can run Redline fine...

[Ari]

WSTE_M, on September 26th 2006, 09:49 PM, said:

Have you actually managed to play Racer ??
I can launch the game allright, but then its stuck at the main menu screen, and I have to force quit it.

W

Yes, it runs smoothly. Well, on extremely complex tracks with very detailed car my frames drop to about 20, but generally it's at 40-60 fps. This is at resolution 1280x960, anti-aliasing on (about halfway - can't remember exactly - I'm not at home at the moment), texture quality highest.

But I had serious problems running it at default settings - it was very choppy, so I needed to tweak racer.ini to get it at current level of joy.

Tip posted by FL!P at RSC forums:

Quote

Re low fps: One setting that affects greatly fps on my Mac is racer.ini's timing.integration_time. I found that changing it from 1 to 2 nearly doubles my fps with no (obvious) adverse effects.

Try that for starters!

I have dual 2GHz G5, 2GB, Ati X800 XT 256MB, OSX 10.4.7, Logitech Momo Racing Wheel

[WSTE_M]

HI!

Racer works now. Dont know why, maybe its like an old car, has to have start a few times before finally coming round.

Aki, where did you find the cars in the screenshots ?
And are there other cars and tracks that you can recommend ?

And also; do you know if its possible to change the escape key from command+esc to just esc ?
That command+esc interfears with frontrow...

[edit: I made Racer support my widescreen monitor.. weee...!!!!]

W

[Ari]

WSTE_M, on September 27th 2006, 11:22 PM, said:

HI!

Racer works now. Dont know why, maybe its like an old car, has to have start a few times before finally coming round.

Aki, where did you find the cars in the screenshots ?
And are there other cars and tracks that you can recommend ?

And also; do you know if its possible to change the escape key from command+esc to just esc ?
That command+esc interfears with frontrow...

[edit: I made Racer support my widescreen monitor.. weee...!!!!]

W

Good to hear that you got it working!

When I had 10.3.x Racer worked with esc button. After I upgraded to 10.4.x it's been command+esc. So, I think that it's the system that makes it work like that, because I didn't touch Racer inis anyway after the system upgrade. I don't think that you can change it - I believe it's hard coded into Racer as I haven't found a place where you could edit this function.

Place to go for up to date cars and tracks: Racer forums at RSC. Word of warning, though... People are constantly updating and tweaking cars and tracks and quite often it takes a bit of time and effort to find all the little bits of updaters that are scattered around the forum threads. Makes one wish they had a forum download manager like X-Plane.org where everything is neatly uploaded, and separate from all the yadda yadda of normal discussion.

Part of those cars in screenshot links are still WIP (work in progression) and not released yet. I merely chose those shots, because they happened to be easy to find, were properly anti-aliased, not submitted as attachments to RSC (because it's painstakingly slow very often), etc.

Other places for cars and tracks:
Racer Extreme, big download site that once was a great place to get cars and tracks, but some links are dead and it appears that the site does not get any updates anymore.
Iroker's site, Racer links and cars
Some1's site, excellent cars and some tracks.
Endo's site
Drifting cars
Miran's database for cars and tracks

Hope this helps,
Ari

[Lemon Lime]

i know i m going to get a ton of backlash from people on these forums, but for ambrosia to spend so long on making their game and then release something that looks and plays (judging by the demo) like the just puled it out of their ass is really aggravating for me.

[Maestro]

Ari, on September 27th 2006, 02:59 AM, said:

Yes, it runs smoothly. Well, on extremely complex tracks with very detailed car my frames drop to about 20,

Are you talking about Racer? Redline has better enviroments, than Racer.

Trackmania is better then bolth imho

[kingarthur_kom]

WSTE_M, on September 26th 2006, 01:49 PM, said:

Have you actually managed to play Racer ??
I can launch the game allright, but then its stuck at the main menu screen, and I have to force quit it.

W

Hmm last time I tried it I could only get the cars to drive in reverse. I gave up soon afterwards.

[Ari]

Maestro, on September 28th 2006, 07:26 PM, said:

Are you talking about Racer? Redline has better enviroments, than Racer.

Last time I tried Redline (not the latest version, though) it looked really mediocre - both the cars and scenery and judging by the screenshots it hasn't really got much better.

Racer is not perfect either. What I miss for it is weather effects and headlights that actually light the road ahead; now some cars have headlights that just shine nicely, but don't do anything for the road.

What interests me about Racer is that it simulates the car behaviour quite realistically. Arcade racing games feel like waste of time and money to me, but that's just my opinion.

kingarthur_kom, on September 29th 2006, 03:05 AM, said:

Hmm last time I tried it I could only get the cars to drive in reverse. I gave up soon afterwards.

kingarthur,

What did you use for driving? Keyboard and mouse or a racing wheel? Racer's big problem is that it requires some interest in tweaking the settings... But then again, it's free and the best there is.

I don't know if IMG forums allow attachments - probably not... So, in my quote below there's one set of working controls. Copy that text, paste it in a text editor, save it as default.ini and drop that in your Racer/data/controls folder and replace the old one. Now you should be able to drive Racer v0.5.3 beta with mouse and control gear shifting with up and down arrows from your keyboard.
Starter is set to s button. You'll need it, if you drive a car that is set to start stalled.

You can actually set gear shifting or any other function to any key or mouse button if you so wish by just editing the text file. If you just read through the text it all should start to look pretty intuitive. No programming skills required.

Quote

;
; Controller definition - new system since Racer v0.5.3 beta1.0
; 14-06-05: Created (RvG)
;
global
{
; Direct shifting to gears?
free_shifting=0
name=Racer controls - defined ingame by menu
}
controllers
{
;
; Controller types are recognized by their name (don't use double names)
; Types are: mouse, keyboard, joystick
; Proprietary types: motion_fcs, chair, pmd
; MotionFCS protocols; 0=Delft/Ecol, 1=Delft/Ecue, 2=Lobo/Ecol, 3=Lobo/Ecue, 4=Dubai/Ecol+Ecue
; Axes for MotionFCS: X=steer, Y=throttle, Z=brake, RX=clutch
;
mouse
{
; Fallback to mouse control
enable=1
; Time per update (ms)
time_per_update_in=10
time_per_update_out=10
; Controls
starter
{
button=0
}
clutch
{
button=1
}
throttle
{
axis=y
min=-1000
max=0
negate=1
linearity=1.000000
}
brakes
{
axis=y
min=0
max=1000
negate=0
linearity=1.000000
}
steerleft
{
axis=x
min=-1000
max=0
linearity=0.400000
button=-1
pov=-1
negate=1
make_analog=0
sensitivity_rise=5.000000
sensitivity_fall=50.000000
}
steerright
{
axis=x
min=0
max=1000
linearity=0.400000
button=-1
pov=-1
negate=0
make_analog=0
sensitivity_rise=5.000000
sensitivity_fall=50.000000
}
}
keyboard
{
horn
{
key=h
}
shiftup
{
key=up
}
shiftdown
{
key=down
}
lights
{
key=l
}
starter
{
key=s
}
enable=1
}
}

Hope this helps!

[WSTE_M]

Ari:
I was kinda hoping that you could recomend some cars and tracks
You see I dont feel like either 5000 posts, or download ing 1000s of files just to find out that 90% of it is either unfinished, not working, or pure junk.
That is just my regular experience with community made content.
So if you could say, "download this: this is a great car/track"
I would be happy.

So far I have downloaded a BMW M3 (from http://forum.rscnet....hp?t=191287)and a BMW 325i ( http://forum.rscnet....ad.php?t=196297 ) and Polish roads track ( http://forum.rscnet....ad.php?t=259720 ).

Going further on your idea witha download manager, I think that thing should have a rating system, so you can see what others think of it, before wasting bandwidth and effort on junk

And finally:

How do you setup a steering wheel for racer ?
I have the JOystick and gamepads tester, and the racer.ini file, but how do go from there ?

W

[Ari]

WSTE,

Sorry, I was already late from work when I wrote that message and didn't have time to go into details.

I really love the M3 and there's a great twin-turbo modification of it too with excellent sounds. Polish Roads is great too.

I have 143 cars and 64 tracks in my Racer folder. I have are tweaked quite many of the cars from the original release - can't really remember anymore which ones specifically and to what extent. Steering, tyre values and camera views are the parts that I've mostly tweaked. So, if I recommend something and that seems strange it may have something to do with that I've fixed the odd behaviour for myself.

Some1's cars are definately great and don't require tweaking:
Toyota Supra, Honda NSXs, Viper (beta) and Corvette C6 (beta).
He used to have Corvette Z06 Lingenfelter too, but for some reason he has taken the link away. It is great fun to drive because it's such an absolute power beast and the sounds are great.
Porsche 911 GT3 Cup and small update.

Other Racer cars that I like:
Audi TT Coupe, Alfa Romeo Montreal, BMW M5 E39, BMW V12 LMR, Mercedes CLK DTM, Ferrari Enzo, Ford Focus RS WRC, Ford Mustang GT, Jaguar XKE 3.8 TR, Lambo Murchielago, Mazda 787B, Mazda RX-8, Opel Ascona B 400, VW Golf IV R32,... Finding the links would be just as hard for me as it is for you and I'm too lazy to do it. Most of them are accessible via the links that I already posted.

Favourite tracks in Racer:
Brands Hatch, Donington Park, Early Morning in Monaco, Forest Club, Gyral Trophy, Imola, Knockhill, Laguna Seca, Long Beach, Middelhavet, Bathurst, Nurburgring, Pau, Ruudskogen, Swiss-Stroll, Sugo, Swiss Mountain, Weekend Drive, MRoadway,...

Setting up joystick can be read here. It may require some effort to configure and get it working perfectly. If you have no stamina for that kind of things, I can recommend mouse driving, which is quite easy - I used to do that before buying my wheel. Of course, with proper force feedback wheel you get all the responses from the bumps and feel the point where you lose grip.

[WSTE_M]

Thanks Ari, I will look for them!

W