IndyCar Racing II For Rendition Video Cards Version 1.0.2-RN1 Build #58 9/26/96 ***** Contents ***** Rendition Version Requirements Installation Instructions Starting the Game 4-bit vs. 8-bit Cars and Tracks Frame Rate Rendition Specific Hot Keys More Technical Information Than You Need! IndyCar Racing II DOS standard version README.TXT Contacting Sierra Technical Support Warranty Information ***** Rendition Version Requirements ***** Pentium computer or better, fully Intel compatible 8 MB RAM (for 4 bit cars and tracks) 12 MB RAM (for 8 bit cars and tracks) Rendition based video card Double speed CD ROM drive 75 MB available Hard Disk space Most major sound cards supported No PC Speaker Support Recommend Joystick or Driving Wheel / Pedals NOTES: This is not a Windows 95 game. For best results restart your computer in MS-DOS mode from the Start menu of Windows 95 before installing and running the game. EMM386 may not be used with INDYSAFE execution of game (See Starting the Game section below). The Paintkit will not function with the 4-bit car set (4BIT95.DAT). ***** Installation Instructions ***** 1. If running Windows 95, Restart Computer in MS-DOS mode from the Start menu. 2. Insert IndyCar Racing II CD into drive 3. Change to the CD drive by typing D: (or appropriate drive letter.) 4. Type CD \ICR2 5. Type INSTALL 6. Follow on-screen prompts. ***** Starting the Game ***** There are two ways to start the game, depending upon the speed of your computer. Users with a Pentium 60 or 66 MHz must start the game using the INDYSAFE instructions below. Users with a Pentium 90 MHz or greater may use either INDYFAST or INDYSAFE instructions. INDYSAFE From the C:\ICR2> directory (or whichever directory you installed to), type INDYSAFE . This will load a version of the game using FIFO mode, necessary for slower Pentium systems. NOTE: You cannot run EMM386 while using INDYSAFE. Use the Make a Bootable Floppy option in the Setup program to create a boot disk that will not load EMM386, then boot your computer with that disk in the A: drive before running INDYSAFE. INDYFAST From the C:\ICR2> directory (or whichever directory you installed to), type INDYFAST . This will load a version of the game using DMA mode. ***** 4-bit vs. 8-bit Cars and Tracks ***** Ideally the game should be run in a machine with at least 12 Mb free. The game *can* run in as little as 8 Mb, however. Users with 8 MB RAM must use the 4-bit car set (4BIT95) and the regular tracks. If 8-bit cars are selected and there is not enough memory, the game will not start. If you have this problem, re-copy the GAMEOPTS.CFG file from the IndyCar Racing II for Rendition CD into your install directory. The Paintkit will not function with the 4-bit car set (4BIT95.DAT). Users with 12 MB RAM or greater may choose to use the 8-bit car set (CARS95) or the five "New" track versions. To increase frame rates, users with 12+ MB may still wish to use the 4-bit cars and regular tracks. Five of the tracks - Elkhart, Laguna Seca, Michigan, Phoenix and Portland have been enhanced to mostly 16-bit versions and use new artwork. They show up in the track selection menu as "track name New". See below for discussions of memory and frame rate issues on systems with limited system and / or graphics board memory. For those of you using public domain utilities to manipulate DAT files, note that these file formats are different and will probably not work with them without modifying the tools. ***** Frame Rate ***** As you may have noticed, the Rendition board is capable of very high frame rates. However, there are many issues involved in obtaining and maintaining a high frame rate. Therefore, here is a short list of issues to look out for in trying to obtain the best frame rate on your machine. 1. Set "Cars Drawn Ahead / Behind" in the Options / Opponents menu to as few are you are comfortable with 2. Reduce the number of opponents you race against 3. Use the 'Alt-X' "Maximum Speed Mode" 4. Using the 4-bit cars and especially the normal, 4-bit tracks can be somewhat faster 5. Turn off graphics options in the Options / Graphics menu, especially the translucent smoke and dirt 6. Upgrade your Rendition-based board to 4 Mb if you have only 2 7. Use DMA if you can, or upgrade your motherboard to one that supports it, so that you may use INDYFAST 8. Upgrade your system to a faster Pentium ***** Rendition Specific Hot Keys ***** Alt-R: Frame rate display toggle. Alt-M: Three-state toggle for mirror: none, medium detail, high detail. Defaults to medium. Anti-aliasing takes place in hi-res mode only. Alt-W: Three-state toggle for weather: day, night, and rain. This is a 'for fun / showing off' feature and is not a realistic gameplay feature; e.g., traction does not change in 'rain' mode. Alt-K: Sky optimization toggle: This defaults to off. Can speed up frame rate at the expense of occasional graphical glitches, especially on the horizon, when viewed at an angle (like at Michigan when on a banked turn). May not be a significant speedup unless you are in Turbo mode and / or running on a track with no textured sky (clouds). Only really useful for showing off "maximum speed mode". [Technically, can causes glitches on any non-textured polygon that spans entire screen horizontally, like when going under some bridges or facing sideways] Alt-A: Anti-aliasing toggle. Anti-aliasing smooths the jagged edges of the graphics on screen. Alt-T: Timer toggle ('Turbo mode'): When the timer is 'off', the physics runs at the frame rate: it will be slower than reality at less than 30 frames/sec, and faster than reality at greater than 30 frames/sec. Advantage of 'off' is when the timer is on, the frame rate cannot exceed 30 fps. Can cause sound problems, especially in big crashes with lots of smoke and dirt where the frame rate becomes low. Should NOT be used in dual / multiplayer mode. This is a 'for fun / showing off' feature only and comes with no warranties. Alt-X: "Maximum Speed Mode": Frame rate display on, mirrors off, sky optimization on, anti-aliasing off, timer off. When toggled off, reverses all these settings, regardless of their previous values (i.e., restores default). Print Screen Dumps a 24-bit PCX screen shot to the race directory, named ICR01.PCX, ICR02.PCX...; note that it always starts at ICR01 and overwrites any existing PCX from a previous session. Default settings: Anti-Aliasing on Medium-resolution Mirrors Timer on (realistic physics) Sky optimization off Day weather mode Frame rate display off NOTE: These settings are not saved to disk between sessions. Sometimes you have to hit a key more than once for it to take. If one or more ALT keys are not responding, press 'Escape', then select "Resume"; this should restore functionality (this can happen if you use the CTRL key instead of ALT by mistake). ***** More Technical Information Than You Need! ***** The game will ship with two batch files, INDYFAST.BAT and INDYSAFE.BAT. They both set necessary environment variables, run the INDYCAR.EXE program and redirect the messages it prints to the file INDYCAR.DMP, then display the contents of this file. This will help keep a record of what went wrong if the game does not load, or if a call to customer support is required. Also the screen can clear after the game runs, erasing any messages to the user; these batch files may be necessary for the user to see any messages at all. The game prints a memory report at startup that shows the size of the texture heap (a buffer in system memory that must hold all textures) and the texture cache (a buffer in graphics card memory that holds textures temporarily) and the memory used by the rest of the game (the normal ICR2 memory hi / lo / all message, except these numbers reflect the amount free AFTER some buffers, especially the texture heap, are allocated). It also prints a "DMA Memory fragmentation report". This may be ignored unless a problem develops related to the handling of fragmented memory. We have only seen these numbers at 0% or 100%. When running with EMM386 or some other memory manager installed (or in a Win95 DOS box), memory can be fragmented (sometimes > 0%). When running with no memory manager installed, memory should never be fragmented (always 0%). The game may run very slightly slower in fragmented memory. DMA vs. FIFO DMA is "Direct Memory Access" - i.e., the board can read data from the PC's memory directly, without intervention by the processor. This is very fast, and also allows "parallelism", where the board is drawing the last set of commands from the PC at the same time the PC is constructing the next batch of commands - i.e., neither is (usually) waiting for the other, and both work at close to 100% efficiency. If they have to take turns, for example, if the PC has to wait for it's commands to finish before sending any other commands, and the board has to wait for the PC to finish building a list of commands before drawing anything, you have lost parallelism. Each part of the system works at maybe 50% efficiency. This is what happens when you run the board in so-called "FIFO" or "IO" mode. However, DMA is a relatively new feature in the PC architecture, and was not properly implemented in many chipsets and motherboards. We have heard these rough figures: CPU: % with fully functional DMA P60 0 % P66 0 % P90 50% P75 ?? probably > 50% P100+ 80-90% Thus, many users will not be able to take advantage of DMA. There is no real way to know if DMA is working except to try it. Hence the two batch files, INDYFAST (DMA) and INDYSAFE (FIFO). FIFO mode should work on almost all machines, but is not desirable if your machine is capable of DMA. Some necessary elements of the contents of the batch files: SET SPEEDY3D=C:\ICR2 This line is very important and sets the path to the file SPD3D.UC, which is the Rendition 3D 'driver' that gets loaded onto the board and executed by it's on-board microprocessor. Currently the game is made to work with the 9/10/96 version of SPD3D.UC, although newer versions should work as well. The install program will set up this batch file properly (hopefully). SET SPEEDY3D_DMA=1 This line enables DMA. It should be set to '1' for INDYFAST and nothing (i.e., "SET SPEEDY3D=") for INDYSAFE. For INDYSAFE, this is in addition to the command-line argument "-gRN1f" (see below). rem SET SPEEDY3D_MEMSIZE=4 This line overrides the number of megabytes of memory that the game thinks is on the board. This should only be necessary if you have a problem with this in your system; Rendition has reported that there are a few systems on which the memory size recognized by the board is incorrect. (INDYFAST.BAT) INDYCAR (INDYSAFE.BAT) INDYCAR -gRN1f The second line is the switch to run the game in FIFO mode (it is long because the switch to run in DMA mode is "-gRN1", but is not necessary on the first line because it is the default). Note that if you have other Rendition Ready games on your system, they use these settings as well. You may have a conflict if another game expects different settings when it starts. If you run each game from a batch file that sets these up properly, similar to the INDYFAST and INDYSAFE batch files, there should be no conflicts. Note: It is known that after running QUAKE, which may install a program called QDPMI, IndyCar may not run. You may need to reboot before running IndyCar. Board memory At this time it appears most if not all Rendition-based boards will be shipped with at least 4 Mb of RAM. This is a good amount to run the game at maximum performance. It is possible, however, that some manufacturers will ship boards with only 2 Mb. IndyCar II will run in 2 Mb, but slower. Also, using the 8-bit cars and / or the new tracks can have a significant negative impact on the game's frame rate, although they will load and work properly. If you have a 2 meg board, it is recommended that you use the 4-bit cars and the normal tracks to achieve the best performance, or buy a board memory upgrade. ********************************************************************** IndyCar Racing II Standard DOS Version Version 1.0.1 Readme.txt file This file contains important information that is not included in any other documentation for IndyCar Racing II. Contents: Version 1.0.1 Notes Windows 95 Users Mouse Support Sound Cards Game Ports Qualifying Flags Realism in Championship Season Multiplayer (modem and direct connect) Dash Display Toggle Laguna Seca Arcade Views Spin Recovery ***** Version 1.0.1 ***** IMPORTANT : If set controls automatically detects your mouse and you are unable to use keyboard or joystick controls, you must unload your mouse driver in DOS. Please contact your computer manufacturer for details. IndyCar Racing II version 1.0.1 fixes a yellow flag problem where the race order would become corrupted, sometimes resulting in cars illegally passing one another under the yellow. This version also fixes a weight transference bug that resulted in the driver's car understeering after driving it. The longer it was driven, the more it would understeer. This bug had been reported by many users as a settings bug because it appeared that the settings were being lost. ***** Windows 95 Users ***** We recommend that you use the game only after you Restart in MS-DOS mode. Running the game in MS-DOS mode is the closest you can get to running under the actual conditions in which the game was created to run. Please refer to the Windows 95 section of the Installation and Troubleshooting Guide for more details. In multiplayer, if the joystick will not calibrate properly, or if the steering becomes erratic while driving when running in Windows 95, you must Restart in MS-DOS mode before playing multiplayer. ***** Mouse Support ***** You may steer the car using the mouse. If you wish to do so, please go to the Options/Controls/Set Controls screen and specify the mouse for the driving controls. You must have a mouse driver loaded to use the mouse to steer. ***** Sound Cards ***** Sound Blaster AWE 32 sound cards - This sound card may cause the Sound Card Setup - Automatic to fail or lock. If this happens, please use the Sound Card Setup - Manual option to select the Sound Blaster 16 Stereo (or any of the other Sound Blaster options. Orchid Gamewave 32 sound cards - This Sound Card will not automatically detect as a stereo card. To get stereo sound, use the Sound Card Setup - Automatic option to find the sound card's settings. It will detect as the Sound Blaster 8 Mono. Then, use the Sound Card Setup - Manual option and select the Sound Blaster 8 Stereo. You must SKIP CONFIRMATION. ***** Game Ports ***** Speed Adjustable Game Ports - some joysticks or wheels recommend the use of a speed adjustable game port with faster computers (for example, a Pentium). If the joystick will not center properly or the you have difficulty controlling the car when driving, you may need a speed adjustable game port. This problem may occur with the Thrustmaster Formula T1 and Gravis Analog joysticks. ***** Qualifying ***** Once you start a qualifying session, you must finish it, or be automatically placed at the back of the starting grid. If you press ESC to return to the menu or Shift+R to restart, qualifying is not reset. ***** Flags ***** There is a confusing aspect to black flags for speeding in the pits, If you think you got a black flag and you didn't exceed 80 mph, you were probably speeding when you ENTERED the pit. With some tracks you can enter the pit at a high rate of speed and autobrake won't slow you down in time. ***** Realism options in Championship season ***** The manual (p.44) states that Realism options may not be changed in the middle of the Championship season. This is incorrect. You may make changes to car damage, spin recovery, yellow flags, pace lap, weather, and breakdowns during a season. ***** Multiplayer (modem and direct connect) ***** If either player or both players get damaged to the point that they cannot finish a race they will have to either wait until the race is finished or exit to the tracks menu. There is no accelerated time in multiplayer racing. When multiplayer saved replays are viewed in single race mode, the single player car set will be used. If you were the dialer in the multiplayer, you will appear in the 95 car instead of the 00 car. The number after the connect message does NOT represent the true speed of the connection. Connection speeds above 9600 do not gain any performance improvement. The standings on the dialer's machine do not get updated until the end of the race after the checkered flag waves. ***** Dash Display Toggle ***** The large digits on the dash can be switched among three different modes with the 'D' key. The default mode shows Miles Per Hour. Pressing 'D' once switches it to display Engine Revs (x10). Pressing 'D' a second time switches it to an estimate of Laps Remaining on current fuel load. A third press will cycle it back to showing MPH. ***** Laguna Seca Arcade Views ***** When driving Laguna Seca in the Arcade Views, your car will temporarily disappear when going through the corkscrew turn. This will not occur if you drive from the cockpit view. ***** Spin Recovery ***** Spin Recovery has been moved from the Options/Realism menu to the Options/Driving Aids menu. ***** Contacting Sierra Technical Support ***** Please refer to the file INDY2TS.TXT before contacting technical support. It contains common problems for the DOS and Windows (not applicable to Rendition version) versions of IndyCar Racing II. It is found on the game CD with this README.TXT file. Technical Support - United States Sierra On-Line Main: (206) 644-4343 Technical Support Fax: (206) 644-7697 P.O. Box 85006 8:15 a.m. - 4:45 p.m. PST, Bellevue, WA 98015-8506 Monday-Friday Modem Support CompuServe: GO SIERRA America Online: Keyword SIERRA Internet: support@sierra.com WWW: http://www.sierra.com International Support United Kingdom (44) 1-734-303-171 France (33) 1-46-01-46-50 Germany (+49) 0 - 6103 - 99 40 40 Spain (34)-1-764-39-69 Spain (34)-1-764-39-69 ***** Warrantee Information ***** revised 3/15/96 Sierra Technical Support provides this documentation as a reference to Sierra customers using Sierra software products. Sierra Technical Support makes reasonable efforts to ensure that the information contained in this documentation is accurate. However, Sierra makes no warranty, either express or implied, as to the accuracy, effectiveness, or completeness of the information contained in this documentation. SIERRA ON-LINE, INC. DOES NOT WARRANTY OR PROMISE THAT THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL WORK WITH ANY OR ALL COMPUTER SYSTEMS. 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