NASCAR® Racing 3
Version 1.0
Readme File
09/01/99
[ To read this file, select Edit/Word Wrap from the menu above ]
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About This Document:
Thank you for purchasing NASCAR® Racing 3.
This document contains last-minute information about NASCAR® Racing 3 and other information about the program not found in the Help Files. This README file includes information that pertains to general problems and questions you may have concerning the game or your computer. Should you experience any problems with NASCAR® Racing 3, please refer to this file for addition help on answering questions about the game and solving technical difficulties.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
II. GENERAL TECHNICAL ISSUES
Minimum Install Issues
Performance Issues
Environmental Variables
Force Feedback Variables
User Interface Issues
3dfx Issues
Direct3D Issues
Controller Issues
Multiplayer through a Linux Firewall
III. GENERAL GAME ISSUES
Loading Your Picture in to Driver Info
Importing Paintjobs
Advanced Paint Shop Information
Chassis Selection
Towing Rules
Turning Off Spotter Speech
Viewing a Replay
Quick Qualifying
Fuel Limit
Green Flag Issues
IV. CONTACTING SIERRA
I. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
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Windows 95/98
Minimum: Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, 2X CD-ROM, SVGA 800x600 w/64k colors
Preferred: Pentium II, 64MB RAM, Glide or Direct3D supported 3D Hardware, Joystick or Steering Wheel & Pedals, A3D 2.0 Sound
II. GENERAL TECHNICAL ISSUES
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MIMINUM INSTALL ISSUES
The Minimum install of NASCAR® Racing 3 requires that the CD-ROM be present when the game is launched. If the CD-ROM is not present, the Windows versions will display a dialog box prompting you to insert the CD-ROM. After the CD-ROM has been inserted the dialog box may be cleared by pressing ENTER, at which point you will be able to reload the game.
PERFORMANCE ISSUES
It is recommended that you reduce the number of additional applications running in the background while playing NASCAR® Racing 3 to a bare minimum.
If you experience any video or sound problems while running the game, it is recommended that you obtain and install the latest drivers and firmware for all of your hardware devices.
ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES
Certain features of the game can be controlled by altering or adding variables in the N3.INI configuration file which you should find in your NASCAR® Racing 3 installation directory.
To turn on lap time reporting by default add the following line:
SPOTTER_LAPTIMES
You can set custom default Left Center and Right mirror values for all tracks. The following values are just an example, and can be adjusted to suit your preferences:
MIRRL 0 0 8000 -850000000 65536 90000 50090
MIRRC 0 0 8000 0 150000 250000 45888
MIRRR 0 0 8000 850000000 65536 90000 50090
If you wish to reduce the size of saved replays, you may choose to disable smoke, graphic and sound effects in the saved replay bay adding the following line to your N3.INI:
SMALL_REPLAY
This may be useful for saving multiplayer replays, because the resulting saved files can be significantly smaller.
Some users with an add-on 3D card (such as a Voodoo1 or Voodoo2) may prefer to use their primary display adapter for Direct3D. By adding a raster_device variable to the N3.INI, you may select between primary (0) and secondary (1) D3D devices:
RASTER_DEVICE n
If you have a video monitor that takes a long time to change display resolutions, and this is resulting in the game starting before you are able to see the display when you enter the driving screen, you can set a delay value in N3.INI file in order to force the game to wait for the monitor to settle:
DISPLAY_DELAY n
Where N is a number of milliseconds from 0 to 2000. If you used 2000, you will get a two second delay. The default delay when changing resolutions is 300 milliseconds, or about one-third of a second.
To turn on in-game diagnostic warning messages about multiplayer connection quality add the following line to your N3.INI:
SHOW_LATENCY
If you would like to keep a diagnostic record of multiplayer races, you can request that log files be created. Add the following line to your N3.INI, where n is the number of log files you would like to
allow to be created on your system:
MULTI_LOG n
One log file will be created for each race session. By default, no log files are saved.
By default, NASCAR® Racing 3 will allow you to use Windows control keys to return to your desktop while you are running the game. If you prefer to have these keys disabled, you can add the following line to N3.INI:
NO_WIN_KEYS
Note, this keyword does not work under Windows 95.
If you prefer a bitmap flag in the cockpit instead of the animated flagman to keep you informed about race flags, you can enable bitmap flags using the following keyword:
SHOW_BITMAP_FLAGS
FORCE FEEDBACK VARIABLES
Users with force feedback devices can tune the forces by adding the following two variables to their N3.INI:
FORCE_SCALE_PERCENT n
FORCE_DAMPING_PERCENT n
Both can be set to the range of 0-200 and will scale the existing parameters accordingly. Force Scale is used to determine how strong a force is, and can be used to try to adjust the amount of force the game provides. Force Damping is a factor in determining how much resistance the wheel provides to turning. It would primarily be used to decrease the tendency of a wheel to oscillate under certain conditions.
NASCAR® Racing 3 offers special support for VRF's tactile feedback seat in its intelliVIBE mode. The following parameters affect the settings and performance of the device.
The following line must be included in the N3.INI file to activate the intelliVIBE support:
VIBE_ON
This next parameter is optional and can be used to scale the amount of vibration generated by the speed of the car. The number can be set to anything between 0 and 200, with 100 being the default setting.
VIBE_MPH_SCALE n
This next parameter again is optional and can be used to scale the amount of vibration generated by the engine rpm of the car. The number can be set to anything between 0 and 200, with 100 being the default setting.
VIBE_RPM_SCALE n
By default a parallel port address of 378 will be used. That is the address which almost all parallel ports use. To check your parallel port address, look at the Properties of your LPT1 port in the Device Manager tab of the System control panel. The parallel port base address is the left number of the Setting column of the Resource table for Input/Output Address. Consult the following chart to determine which number to use for your parallel port configuration if it differs from the default:
Port Address: Use this number for 'n':
278 1
2bc 2
378 3
3bc 4
VIBE_PORT_ADDRESS_NUM n
For more info please see www.tactilefeedback.com.
USER INTERFACE ISSUES
NASCAR® Racing 3 requires at least an 800x600 16-bit Windows desktop. If you experience any problems with a clipped mouse cursor or other issues with the user interface screens, verify that you desktop is set to 800x600 16-bit before launching the game.
3DFX ISSUES
If you are using the a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 card and the 3dfx Glide rasterizer, you cannot use the "Control-F9" autochat key because Glide intercepts this keystroke and disables the Voodoo display. If you accidentally press CTRL-F9 while you are racing you should be able to press CTRL-F9 again to restore the screen and allow you to resume game play. Additionally 3dfx users should not enable 'Force Triple-Color Buffering for Glide Apps' in their display properties as this can result in flickering of the user interface screens. Voodoo Rush cards are not supported by NASCAR® Racing 3's Glide rasterizer.
DIRECT3D ISSUES
NASCAR® Racing 3's Direct3D rasterizer should work on a large number of video cards and chipsets, but there are some that currently have driver or hardware limitations that will inhibit its performance and/or functionality. Due to memory constraints Rendition V1000 cards may work in Direct3D if many of the games textures are turned off, but it is recommended that you use the software rasterizer instead. Rendition V2200 cards currently have driver issues which cause texture filtering to not work properly. The ATI Rage Pro and Riva128 also have various texture anomalies and again are not recommended to be used with the Direct3D rasterizer. As always it is recommended that you install the latest video drivers for you card, as it's possible that some of these problems may be resolved in upcoming driver revisions.
CONTROLLER ISSUES
NASCAR® Racing 3 uses 2 different joystick drivers, DirectInput and Papyrus. Under Win95 the Papyrus driver will only work on true Intel CPUs and may cause problems if selected on non-Intel machines. When switching between joystick drivers, it is recommended that you recalibrate and reassign your controls.
MULTIPLAYER THROUGH A LINUX FIREWALL
If you would like to host races on a PC that is behind a firewall, you will probably need to configure your firewall in order to allow remote systems to connect to your PC.
For a Linux firewall, you may want to use the following configuration with ipautofw:
# Papyrus NASCAR® Racing 3
echo N3
/usr/local/sbin/ipautofw -A -r udp 17761 17761 -h 192.168.1.2 -v -u
NASCAR® Racing 3 also allows you to configure your game so that it will use a different UDP port than the default port of 17761. This option is specified by adding a special command to your N3.INI file:
MULTI_PORT nnnn
You may need to specify MULTI_PORT if you have a firewall set up that uses masquerading on server-initiated connections, in order for remote systems to be able to locate your port. If you do not specify a MULTI_PORT, the remote systems may try to connect to an invalid masqueraded port number, but if you specify MULTI_PORT for your game server, remote clients will try to connect to that explicit port number instead of the masqueraded port.
III. GENERAL GAME ISSUES
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LOADING YOUR PICTURE INTO DRIVER INFO
In the driver info screen there is a button labeled Load TGA. This button will allow you to load a picture of yourself, or whatever you want, into the driver info screen. To do so, follow the instructions below.
There is a file in the CARS directory called "drivpict.tga". This file is a 16-bit TGA image that has been sized (181x167 pixels) to fit in the photo region of the driver info screen. You will have to use a commercial paint program (Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, etc.) to edit the picture you want to use in the game. Save the file using the name of the car file you want to match the picture with (e.g. t_player.tga for using the photo with t_player.car). Place that new file in the CARS directory.
Start NASCAR® Racing 3 and go to the Entry List screen under Driver Info. Select the driver you wish to change/add the photo to and click on Driver Info. Once at the driver info screen, press the Load TGA button at the bottom of the screen. If you have done the above steps correctly, the picture should appear in the correct area of the screen.
Please note that if you're using paint Shop Pro to save your new driver picture you need to first select Options on the Save dialogue. When the Save Options appear, select 16 bit and Uncompressed. Then hit OK and Save.
IMPORTING PAINTJOBS
Some users may want to work with car paintjobs outside of NASCAR® Racing 3's Detail Shop. To aid in this, one blank and three shaded car templates have been included in the NASCAR® Racing 3 installation directory, "template.pcx" "template1.pcx" "template2.pcx" and "template3.pcx". Note that after being painted these templates will need to be pasted into the included "import.pcx" to ensure the required palette is maintained. Take care when pasting the image that it is aligned in the upper left-hand corner of the "import.pcx".
When saving this file, the filename used should be an 8 character name based on the first 7 characters of the car name with a leading X, so for "t_player.car" the filename would be "Xt_playe.pcx". Note that the name has a limit of 8 characters, so the 9th character (an r in this case) is removed. This file should be saved to the NASCAR® Racing 3 installation directory.
Start NASCAR® Racing 3 and go to the Entry List screen under Driver Info. Select the driver whose paintjob you wish to import and click on Driver Info. Once at the driver info screen, press the Paint Shop button at the bottom of the screen. Once in the Detail Shop, press the Import button at the bottom of the screen. If you have done the above steps correctly, the new paintjob should then appear on the car.
ADVANACED PAINT SHOP INFORMATION
In addition to the supplied NASCAR® Racing 3 Paint Shop, almost any third-party art program can be used to paint the car of your dreams. Using a third-party art program provides certain advantages to car design, such as the capability of scanning logos. We'll use Paint Shop Pro for the instructions here, but remember- most any other art program will work as well. Paint Shop Pro is a full-featured art program, and it's inexpensive compared to programs like Adobe Photo Shop. You can download a fully working evaluation version at:
http://www.jasc.com
In order to successfully export your car file from NASCAR® Racing 3, you must follow these instructions explicitly.
1. Open NASCAR® Racing 3 and choose Driver Info. Click on a driver and select Paint Shop. Click on the Export button at the bottom of the screen to create a .pcx file of your car. Close NASCAR® Racing 3. Additionally, 3 templates have been provided to give the user a quick start option. These can be found in the NASCAR® Racing 3 installation directory. You can quickly cut and paste these templates over any exported car texture.
2. Using Paint Shop Pro (or your favorite art program), open the .pcx file that you want to edit, located in the NASCAR® Racing 3 folder.
3. Notice the strip of colored blocks at the bottom of the picture. THIS STRIP CANNOT BE MODIFIED IN ANY WAY. Should you accidentally alter the line of colored blocks, you will get an error message that tells you the file has a corrupted palette when you attempt to import it back into NASCAR® Racing 3.
4. Choose the selection tool from the toolbar. The selection tool is an icon that looks like a dotted rectangle. Click on the selection tool, (make sure it's set to rectangle if it's not already), and select the dark, army green background that the car texture sits on. DO NOT INCLUDE THE COLORED STRIP OF BLOCKS IN YOUR SELECTION. The editable area that is described is exactly 363 pixels wide and 234 pixels tall. Double-click on the rectangle marquee and you can type in these coordinates. In the Select Area dialog boxes, make sure Left is 0, Top is 0, Right is 363, and Bottom is 234. Select OK. This will automatically draw the tool around the usable area.
5. Using the EDIT/COPY/PASTE features, click on EDIT and select COPY (CTRL-C). Next, go back to EDIT and select PASTE AS NEW IMAGE (CTRL-V). A copy of the area you selected should appear on the screen. Now, increase the color depth of your image. To do so using Paint Shop Pro, choose COLORS and then INCREASE COLOR DEPTH. Select 16 million colors. This will give you many more colors at your disposal while you paint your car, and it will make it much easier to import logos and text.
6. Now use the Paint Shop Pro tools to copy and paste the image you want to place on the car (such as a logo you've scanned, or a graphic you've acquired from the Internet), or the text you wish to place on the vehicle. Paste it where you want it, and double check the positioning. There are many other ways to create the look you want on your car, and with a little tinkering using whatever art tools are available in your program, you should be able to achieve the effect you want. You may even want to create a completely custom and original paint design for your car. Your only limit at this point is your imagination. Paint Shop Pro offers powerful painting tools that both the novice and experienced car designer can investigate. However, you must first create a mask around the paintable car area so you can clean up your file later. Select the Magic Wand tool and click on the neutral green background color. This automatically creates a mask around the paintable car texture. On the menu bar, go to Selections and select Save to Disk from the drop down menu. This will prompt you to save this mask to a destination folder. After this, select CTRL-D. This shuts the mask off. In order to turn it on again, go to Selections on the menu bar and select Load from disk from the drop down menu. You can paint your car texture with or without the mask on. If you paint with the mask off and your painting techniques or paint strokes continue off the car texture and onto the background, simply load the car mask selection from disk and hit your Delete key. This will automatically erase all color information from the mask itself but will not affect the car texture. The Delete function erases to the current background color selected. Make sure this color is the same color as the background in the original file or when you first started. If it is not, then select the background color with the eyedropper tool and click on the small black arrows in the foreground/background color display box. This will automatically make your selected color the background color. Once you become familiar with using masks, the process of painting cars becomes a very rewarding experience.
7. When you have everything looking the way you want, and you're ready to Import the car .pcx back into the game, go back to the COLORS menu, and select LOAD PALETTE. You'll need to load the special palette file that's included with NASCAR® Racing 3. Go to your NASCAR® Racing 3 installation directory and click on the file "car colors.pal". The image will probably change slightly as the colors adjust themselves to the palette that NASCAR® Racing 3 uses. Your image may appear slightly distorted, or certain colors may blend together. That's because NASCAR® Racing 3 uses fewer colors than the 16 million you were working with before. You may have to do some hand editing now with your art program, or later in the NASCAR® Racing 3 Paint Shop, in order to make the car look just the way you want. For the most part though, you should now have the car pretty close to the way you want. More detailed information concerning palettes is included below.
In order to properly reduce the bit depth of your new car texture down from 16-bit to 8-bit, you need to index your texture to the correct palette. When you are ready to reduce the color depth of your new art, go to Colors/Load Palette. The palette for the game is called car colors.pal and is located in the root directory of the game. Load the palette. It automatically reduces the color depth of the texture and maps it to the game palette. You will notice that your background color has suddenly turned gray. That is OK. But, you need to perform a few more easy steps in order to save your car in the correct format. Go to Selections/Load from Disk. Select car mask.sel. This is a mask that selects only the paintable regions of the texture and is stored in the game's root directory. You need to cut and paste this selection onto your original exported .pcx file or onto import.pcx. If you paste the selection onto import.pcx you need to save the file in a readable format that the game will recognize. This is the file name of the .car with an x before the characters as previously mentioned. Background mask.sel is also stored on disk for you to use. It is the mask that allows your to erase unnecessary marks from the background which may have occurred during the painting process. You need to clean your background before you index and paste the new work onto an existing file.
8. Now it's time to actually prepare the image for Importing. Still in your art program, choose SELECTIONS, then click on SELECT ALL (some programs have this command on the EDIT menu). A dashed border will appear around the edge of the picture. Now choose EDIT, and select COPY.
9. Maximize the original .pcx file you created in NASCAR® Racing 3. Once again, choose EDIT, select Paste, and your newly painted car should appear in place. You may have to move the selection slightly to get it back to its proper location.
10. Save the .pcx file, close your art program and launch NASCAR® Racing 3. Select the car you've been painting from the Driver's List, and return to the Paint Shop. Click on IMPORT, and Voila! You now have a car that any self-respecting sponsor would love to see in victory lane!
CHASSIS SELECTION
NASCAR® Racing 3 allows you to choose from three different chassis types:
Car Chassis 1: Balanced for slightly less rear downforce
Car Chassis 2: Neutral
Car Chassis 3: Balanced for slightly more rear downforce
TOWING RULES
Once you call for a tow, it will take a little time for the towing to actually start. The spotter will let you know the tow truck is coming. This was done to simulate the time it might take to actually recover a car from an incident. If you move the car at all, then the tow truck is waved off. You'll have to hit ALT-I again if you want a tow.
TURNING OFF SPOTTER SPEECH
If you turn off the spotter speech, make sure you turn on the spotter text. It will give you much needed info about yellow flag and pace lap procedures. These settings may be made in the Options menu.
VIEWING A REPLAY
When viewing a saved replay, the Replay Buffer must be set to at least as large as the selected replay for the entire clip to load (i.e. to view an 8MB replay the Replay Buffer must be set to 8MB or greater). Note that any changes to the replay buffer will take effect the next time a track is loaded. They will not take effect for the current session.
QUICK QUALIFYING
There is a Quick Qualify checkbox on the qualifying screen. Checking this will instantly fill in the qualify times for all the computer opponents. When it reaches your position in the list, Qualify will appear on the menu at the bottom. Click that to begin your qualifying run. Once you come back from qualifying, the remaining qualify times will be automatically filled in.
FUEL LIMIT
Unless you select "Testing" as the Weekend Type on the Quick Race screen, you will be unable to change the amount of fuel in the car. It will always be at 22 gallons. In real NASCAR racing, the fuel is part of the total car weight calculation.
If you select "Testing", you will be able to change the fuel level so you can test the car setup under different fuel loads.
GREEN FLAG ISSUES
The green flag comes out a little early at some tracks. This was done to solve the problem of the AI cars bunching up in the first turn and creating a dangerous and unfair racing condition. We felt that this trade-off improves the raceability and playability of the tracks.
IV.CONTACTING SIERRA
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A) Customer Service, Support, and Sales
B) Technical Support
C) Legal Information
A) Customer Service, Support, and Sales
----------------------------------
United States
U.S.A. Sales Phone: (800) 757-7707
International Sales: (425) 746-5771
Hours: Monday-Saturday 7AM to 11 PM CST,
Sundays 8 AM to 9PM CST
FAX: (402) 393-3224
Sierra Direct
7100 W. Center Rd
STE 301
Omaha, NE 68106
United Kingdom
Havas Interactive
Main: (0118) 920-9111
Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Fax: (0118) 987-5603
Disk/CD replacements in the U.K. are £6.00,
or £7.00 outside the UK. Add "ATTN.: Returns."
2 Beacontree Plaza,
Gillette Way,
Reading, Berkshire
RG2 0BS United Kingdom
France
Havas Interactive
Téléphone: 01-46-01-46-50
Lundi au Jeudi de 10h à 19h
Vendredi de 10h à 18h
Fax: 01-46-30-00-65
Parc Tertiaire de Meudon
Immeuble "Le Newton"
25 rue Jeanne Braconnier
92366 Meudon La Forêt Cedex
France
Germany
Havas Interactive
Tel: (0) 6103-99-40-40
Montag bis Freitag von 9h - 19Uhr
Fax: (0) 6103-99-40-35
Robert-Bosh-Str. 32
D-63303 Dreieich
Germany
On-Line Sales
CompuServe United Kingdom:GO UKSIERRA
CompuServe France: GO FRSIERRA
CompuServe Germany: GO DESIERRA
Internet USA: http://www.sierra.com
Internet United Kingdom: http://www.sierra-online.co.uk
Internet France: http://www.sierra.fr
Internet Germany: http://www.sierra.de
Disk and or Manual Replacement:
Product Returns:
Sierra On-Line Returns
4100 West 190th Street
Torrance, CA 90504
Sierra On-Line Fulfillment
4100 West 190th Street
Torrance, CA 90504
NOTE: To replace your disk(s) please send only Disk #1 (or the CD) and copy of your dated Receipt, if less then 90 days. After 90 days please include a $10 handling fee along with Disk / CD #1. For Documentation, please include a $ 5.00 handling fee and a photocopy ONLY of disk #1. Payment should be made at the time of your request. Sorry, no credit cards.
* Returns to this address valid in North America only.
B) TECHNICAL SUPPORT
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North America
Sierra On-Line offers a 24-hour automated technical support line with recorded answers to the most frequently asked technical questions. To access this service, call (425) 644-4343, and follow the recorded instructions to find your specific topic and resolve the issue. If this fails to solve your problem, you may still write, or fax us with your questions, or contact us via our Web site.
Sierra On-Line
Technical Support
P.O. Box 85006
Bellevue, WA 98015-8506
Main: (425) 644-4343
Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m.- 4:45 p.m. PST
Fax: (425) 644-7697
http://www.sierra.com
[email protected]
United Kingdom
Havas Interactive offers a 24-hour Automated Technical Support line with recorded answers to the most frequently asked technical questions. To access this service, call (0118) 920-9111, and follow the recorded instructions to find your specific topic and resolve the issue. If this fails to solve your problem, you may still write, or fax us with your questions, or contact us via our Internet or CompuServe sites.
Havas Interactive
2 Beacontree Plaza,
Gillette Way,
Reading, Berkshire
RG2 0BS United Kingdom
Main: (0118) 920-9111
Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Fax: (0118) 987-5603
http://www.sierra-online.co.uk
France
Havas Interactive
Parc Tertiaire de Meudon
Immeuble "Le Newton"
25 rue Jeanne Braconnier
92366 Meudon La Forêt Cedex
France
Téléphone: 01-46-01-46-50
Lundi au Jeudi de 10h à 19h
Vendredi de 10h à 18h
Fax: 01-46-30-00-65
http://www.sierra.fr
Germany
Havas Interactive
Robert-Bosh-Str. 32
D-63303 Dreieich
Deutschland
Tel: (0) 6103-99-40-40
Montag bis Freitag von 9 - 19Uhr
Fax: (0) 6103-99-40-35
Mailbox: (0) 6103-99-40-35
http://www.sierra.de
Spain
Havas Interactive
Avenida de Burgos 9
1º-OF2
28036 Madrid
Spain
Teléfono: (01) 383-2623
Lunes a Viernes de 9h30 a 14h y de 15h a 18h30
Fax: (01) 381-2437
Italy
Contattare il vostro distribotore.
C) Sierra Warranty & Legal Information
-----------------------------------
Sierra's end user license agreement, limited warranty and return policy is set forth in the EULA.txt, found on the CD, and is also available during the install of the product.
Copyright (1999 Sierra On-Line, Inc.)