rec.autos.simulators

To All,

I bought the Off Road- Test Drive program for Acolade today and tried it
out with very Unhappy Results. When I buy a road racing game the first
thing I look at is the drivability of the Vehicle. In this game it falls
way short. This game works in DOS and WIN95, although I did not try in
WIN95 yet.

Driving the truck:
I have a TSW wheel controller, and with this controller it is way to
sensitive to steer the various trucks along the bumpy tracks. The trucks
oversteer way too much and there is no way to turn down the sensitivity.
Most the time I am oscilating down the road left and right trying to
straighten out the truck.

There seems to be only one view in the game which is behind the truck
view and the graphics in SVGA mode are not bad. The menus are very
straight forward and there are three modes of play practice, and two
types of championship. alot of different options for graphics, sound,
truck drivablility.  There are  no adjustments to truck in this game.

The controllers supported are thrusmaster, Joystick, Gravis controller,
and keyboard. I used Joystick for my TSW wheel. None of the other would
work correctly and I do not want to use the keyboard.

There are 12 tracks where only 5-6 of them are available at the start.
You must have to win races in order to gain access to the remaining
tracks. You dont have to stay on the beaten path to race the courses,
but you have to hit all the check points. There is easy, medium, hard
difficulties, but since I couldnt control my truck, it didnt mean much.
Your truck always seems to start at the pole and are racing 3 other
trucks. The tracks seem to have some neat bumps and rocky terrain to go
through. The truck can flip over from time to time. There are 4-5
different trucks to chose from.

All in all, if Acolade could fix the driving characteristics to work
with a wheel controller, it might be a fun little arcade game. My
suggestion is Stick with Monster Truck Maddness for drivability.

If I cannot tone down the sensitivity this weekend, I will be returning
this game to the store Monday and wait for XCAR and F1 from Psgnosis.

Dave Thayer

This game is now off of my computer and going back to the store. Very
disapointing. The graphics are great, if it was just drivable.

Dave Thayer

Thanks for confirming the fears I got from looking at the box.  The minute
I saw the steering wheel in one of the***pit screenshots, I had a
horrible flashback to Test Drives 1-3, with that awful C-64 grade steering
they had.I almost had to be carried from the store.  I'd like to send
whoever designed that setup up Pikes Peak in a real car that steered like
that.

Sticking with Papyrus Sims;

MW

Does any body know how to get into reverse with a Thrustmaster T2 in
Test Drive: Off Road?

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Or better yet, does anybody know how to get proper proportional
steering with a T2 and TD:OR?

I set up for thrustmaster steering, and all I get is a crappy
'gamepad' type steering.   With a wheel you expect consistent steering
where you can HOLD the wheel at a certain position.  TDOR doesn't work
this way.  It KEEPS STEERING even more in the direction you are
holding the wheel.  It controls like a gamepad instead of a wheel.

Total shit