International Rally Championship - first impressions.

>Hi All, >Last week I bought International Rally Championship by Europress. I've asked questions about this game before, but couldn't seem to get any answers. 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

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>>Hi All, >>Last week I bought International Rally Championship by Europress. >I've asked questions about this game before, but couldn't seem to get >any answers. >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

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

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>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

Those are very good news indeed. But is it true that it has no ***pit view? That would be very awful... Can you confirm that? 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. *** >On Tue, 11 Nov 1997 09:13:52 -0000, "Pete Latham" >>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

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>>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 >Those are very good news indeed. But is it true that it has no >cockpit view? That would be very awful... Can you confirm that? >A. Renault

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