rec.autos.simulators

Has the *gameplay* been improved in any way? Specifically, are the
"invisible walls" gone? That is, if there's a flat area beside the
road (no actual barrier) can you drive on it? I found the invisible
walls to be quite irritating in the original game. Any other gameplay
improvements of note?

Joe

Hi All,

Last week I bought International Rally Championship by Europress.  One
pleasant surprise which was not immediately obvious from the packaging was
it's 3dfx support (albeit through D3D - I think).  As the follow-up from
Network Q Rally I was expecting something good and that's exactly what I
got.

Now the Network Q title has been dropped the rally has gone international.
You can drive courses all over the world.  You still have you Simulation,
Time Trial and Arcade modes and now there's even a track editor but I
haven't played with that yet.  I like the driving model in the game,
especially with the VW Golf gti.  There are a couple of extra cars included
now and they seem to have gotten rid of the annoying backfiring sound that
so many people patched to get rid of with Network Q.

The use of fog and other lighting effects in the game are excellent.  The
fog isn't consistent, you drive in and out of patches of the stuff.  The
downside to this on my machine is I get flaws in the drawing of the track
which I am going to mention to Europress to see if this could their fault or
mine.  The cars now light the scenery at night individually so it looks
quite realistic.

I have also noticed a bug with the rear-view mirror.  It's the wrong way
round!!!  Ho-hum, can't have everything I guess.

Frame rates are good, as you would expect through 3dfx and I am enjoying the
game so far.  If I notice anything else I will post more details soon.  The
track editor looks like a good idea.  Hopefully we can get the same kind of
support for it as there was for NFS1 and having a built in editor should
make this even easier!

Cheers for now ....... Pete

*** Opinions expressed are those of the author and
not those of Intel Corporation (UK) Limited ***

Hi Pete,

Thanks for the notes on IRC...Can you tell us about the damage
model (any?), and how the CC's are?  Any news on a US release?

Cheers!

Marc

Marc J. Nelson
Sim Racing Online / Sim Racing News / The Sim Project
http://members.aol.com/simracing

* No animals were harmed in the making of this e-mail.

The invisable walls were terrible....  I want to know if they are gone too..

Good news, the invisible walls have gone (or at least moved out a little bit
right to the edge of the scenery).  You can now drive around the flat areas
on the sides of the road but it pays to stick to the middle - it really
sucks the speed out of the car.  That's all I can think of for the time
being - I haven't played it too intensely yet.  I can't make any comments
about the damage model right now either.  Sorry!!

Pete

On Tue, 11 Nov 1997 09:13:52 -0000, "Pete Latham"

A. Renault

Yep, just like NFS2SE the***pit view has been removed.  I can't seem to
get the track-side camera during replays like Network Q Rally either.

I know some of you will find that a bit of a downer but personally I quite
like the bumper cam so it doesn't bother me too much and it doesn't 'twitch'
the screen like it does in the demo for NFS2SE so it's reasonably easy to
concentrate on where you're going.

Up until last night most of the driving I had been doing was in Arcade mode.
The car had a horrible habit of turning a complete 360 whenever you hit
something like another car from behind and you would overtake them while
spinning.  Imagine my relief when I found out that this doesn't happen in
simulation mode.  Instead you get a quite realistic slide that you have to
correct before making any more progress.

I tried the changing the ral.cfg file last night to force D3D to see if it
sorted out my graphics problems but it made no difference at all.  It makes
me now think that there is no native support for 3dfx but I am waiting for
clarification from Europress about what cards are supported directly and
what cards rely on D3D.  No news about the rear-view mirror bug either!

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Pete

***  Opinions expressed are those of the author and
not those of Intel Corporation (UK) Limited. ***

No there is no***pit view. Just above/behind outside view and a full
screen low down view they call the bumper view.
--
Sean Black