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Re-Ville
re-ville.zip
549 metres
All instance
05-18-00
Marc Schroeder
marc@spaceman.de
The Re-Volt Workbench
a lot (available at RHQ or on my site)
Description

This will be his first race in his new hometown. His parents moved to Re-Ville some months ago and it looks as if he finally found some friends now. They have a RC racing club called "The Daredevils" and today he should find out why. He was a bit suprised when his new friends told him that they didn't hold their races at normal places like parking lots or prepared courses. But when they told him that they climb on Re-Ville's rooftops to race each other, he got really scared! What if his brand new RC car would fall off? What if HE would fall off? Well, too late to think about it. He already stands on a gravel roof with smoking chimneys and rusty TV antennas, carefully adjusting his car for the race. Now it's about time to show the "daredevils" that he is very well worth to be one of them.
Track History

Anyone who has ever been able to play the Dreamcast version of Re-Volt might have noticed that it featured an additional track that hasn't been in the PC or PSX version: "Rooftops". This track was originally designed for the PC version (as you can see in the "gallery") but didn't make it for reasons we don't know. After watching a video replay of the rooftops track (thx to Wayne), the community was a bit disappointed - the DC rooftops track seemed very rushed, not even close to the quality of the original tracks. What you see now here is my idea of how the PC version of a "rooftop" track should look like.
Installation

1. Extract all files into your Re-Volt folder, they will create a new folder called "Re-Ville Installer" in your main Re-Volt directory and a folder "Re-Ville Data" in your levels directory.

2. Go into the "Re-Ville Installer" folder, doubleclick "install.bat" and the track will be installed. It'll also replace the "nhood1" skymap with a new one, but don't worry, it creates a backup.

3. If you ever get tired of the track (hopefully not!), you can remove it by running "uninstall.bat". This will also replace the "Re-Ville" skymap with the original "nhood1" skymap.

NOTE: If you only want to get back the original "nhood1" skymap instead of removing the whole track, you can run "blue_sky.bat". To install the "Re-Ville" skymap again, you can run "dark_sky.bat". These 2 bat-files will only exchange the skymap files and don't touch the track. But I highly recommend to play "Re-Ville" with its own skymap!
Tips & Hints

Cars
The track was designed for stock cars and will fit every one of them, except Phat Slug (which doesn't make the jumps). Although it is also fun to race with the highend cars like Toyeca or Humma, I think the "flow" gets best when raced with a slower car like Bertha or Dr.Grudge.

Routes
There are several "real" shortcuts and some shorter routes. The AI doesn't know them all, but you should! Fly over the track in MAKEITGOOD mode to familiarize yourself with the environment. I've also written a "racing guide" for this track which can be found here.
Technical Data

Instances
This track was made with the ingame editor of Re-Volt and consists of more than 500 instances. You can download the prm's I used for this track here.

AI
The AI has been tweaked so long until it was similar to the AI in the original tracks: tough but not unbeatable. The best AI lap time was 1:01 from Humma and it is close to my best lap (0:58, without using any hidden shortcuts).

Tools
The main tool I worked with is of course the ingame editor for Re-Volt. Tutorials and key tables for the ingame editor can be found at Gibbler's RVExtreme site. I also used several tools from Ali's "rvminis" collection which can be found on his site. To create solid prm's I used the "prm2ncp" tool from Acclaim which can be found here. The final .w-file was created with "RVGlue 3" from Ali, also available on his site. All graphics were made using Photoshop 4.0 from Adobe.
Bugs & Problems

The "hole-in-the-roof"-bug
The track is made out of instances only, glued together with Ali's RVGlue tool (version 3). Although it is a brilliant tool, it seldomly produces "holes" inside solid instances where 2 polys meet. There are a few places in the track where the car wheels can get stuck in these holes if you approach them too slow. But who told you to slow down anyway?

The "gaaah-stop-this-camera-flickering"-bug
If you happen to fall off the track (it'll happen often in the beginning :)), you'll be immediately repositioned on the track and this causes the camera to go wild every now and then. This happens because it has to move through solid instances to get over the car again and sometimes can't. Just press the gas a bit and the camera will calm down again.

The "man-what-a-slideshow"-bug
Not actually a bug, but quite annoying if you have a lowend system. I took care of the fps (frames per second) throughout the whole building process with low poly models, low farclip or visiboxes and they don't drop beneath the rate I'm getting in the original tracks. However, there are certain areas (especially at the start or when you drive into the opposite direction) where they drop down 50%. If it gets too hard on your system, you can reduce the farclip in the .inf-file even more. You can also try racing with less AI cars, this helps a lot.
Copyrights & Permissions

80% of the textures used in this track are from me. The rest is from the games "Re-Volt", "Forsaken", "Trickstyle" (all three © by Acclaim Studios), "Kingpin" (© by Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.), "Half-Life" (© by Valve Software) and "Unreal Tournament" (© by Epic Games). The instances used for this track are from Ekla, Ali, JimK and Acclaim. You are NOT allowed to commercially exploit this track, i.e. put it on a CD or any other electronic medium that is sold for money. You MAY use the texture set and the instances for your own tracks as long as you include this copyright information.
Thanks and credits go to

¤   TGA (the great Ali) for tools, playtesting and instances
¤   Ekla for some very precise instances
¤   JimK for that nice bump out of his warehouse kit
¤   Antimorph for helping out with the installation routines
¤   Gibbler for lots of inspiration

... and to those in the community who helped me out and encouraged me to finish this track. As Bubba would say: you guys rock!