dwl10@amdahl.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) (12/01/87)
< The following review is being posted for a friend. His site's newsfeeds are less than reliable, so he has been unable to post this himself. His site's mail feeds DO work, so send any comments or f questions to him.> --------------------------------------------------------------------------ug Name: Revs+ Type: Auto Racing Simulation - 3D Graphics System: Commodore 64 disk. Joystick and/or Paddle optional. Publisher: Firebird Software (British Telecomm) Price: $23 at B. Dalton's Software Etc., maybe less elsewhere Overall Grade: A Summary: a simulation of open wheel auto racing on European road courses. A must-have for any driving/racing enthusiast. Serious fans of European open wheel racing might buy a C-64 just to run this one program. Let's make this clear right from the start. This isn't another arcade game like Pole Position or Turbo. Revs+ is a driving simulator -- a race driving simulator based on Formula 3 racing. It's not nearly as hard to master as SubLogic's Flight Simulator II, but you'll still be spending many hours doing practice laps before you're really ready to enter a race. Learning to steer the car (a 140 mph Ralt RT3) is not easy. The steering is very quick, making it hard to track a straight line. Trying to go straight isn't made any easier by how low you sit; it takes some experience to figure out which direction "straight down the track" *is*. In the meantime you're careering wildly from one side of the track to the other, and frequently ending up off the track into the grass. Getting used to the throttle, brake, and 5-speed gearbox is another problem, but that's mostly because the controls aren't foot-pedals. After about 6 hours of practice, I *still* can't find the brake with my fingers, so I just drive without it. :-) But the most enjoyable part is learning the track. There are six tracks to race on, each an amazingly faithful simulation of the real thing. Five are British tracks: Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Donnington Park, Snetterton, and Oulton Park. The sixth track is the old circuit (I'm pretty sure) at Nuerburgring. The shapes of the tracks are fully recreated, everything to scale, complete with curbs, apexes, wide and narrow spots, and (the most impressive part) uphill and downhill. Taking a tour around Brands Hatch is absolutely incredible. Getting to know the track is quite a challenge -- finding the racing line through each corner, determining the optimum braking point, finding the best entry speed, and learning where to jump back on the throttle. The documentation does include some suggestions for the five British tracks (you're on your own at Nuerburgring). But don't think that you can just follow their directions and get by. It's nowhere near that easy... Once you get to where you can usually get around the track without crashing, you can start "sorting out" the car. You've got settings for both the front and rear wings; use a lot of wing and the car will stick better in the fast corners, but at the cost of aerodynamic drag on the high speed straights. The balance between front and rear is important too; too light in front and you'll plow through the corners, too heavy in front and it'll try to spin. When you're tired of practice sessions, go racing. The qualification session is a fixed amount of time (5, 10, or 20 minutes), and your fastest lap in that time determines your position on the starting grid. The lower time limits are mainly useful in the multi-player mode (see below) because then the qualification times are critical. If you're playing alone, just select 20 minutes and you can always terminate qualification early when you get a good lap. There are other cars on the track during qualifying; be careful. Multi-player mode: as many as 20 different players can qualify, although that many would take most of the day. After qualification, players race one at a time, with the computer simulating the other players' performance based on their qualifying times. After all races are over, the composite results are posted on a "scoreboard". Championship points are awarded 50% on the player's actual race and 50% on his simulated results in the other races. There are three classes you can race in: Novice, Amateur, and Professional. If you fail to qualify for your chosen class, you will still be allowed to race in Novice class, from the very back of the field (20th position). In Novice class, your competitors are driving cars which are significantly slower than yours. Passing is quite easy. The only trick to winning is to not mess up and end up in the weeds. Easily said, much harder to accomplish. If you do slide off course, it really helps if you can keep enough control that you don't crash and don't kill the engine; you might lose only a few places before you get back onto the track. If you do crash while racing in Novice class, your car will be put back onto the track, but not very quickly; you'll lose many positions, often ending up in last place. In Amateur and Professional classes, recovering from slides and spins without crashing is doubly important because a crash will put you out of the race for good. You can choose to race either 5, 10, or 20 laps. A good lap time at Silverstone (the easiest course to learn because it's on an old RAF airfield and is relatively flat) is 1:35, so five laps takes 8 minutes even if you don't crash or go off course. Championship points are awarded (9/6/4/3/2/1 for 1st through 6th positions plus 1 point for the fastest lap). Points are accumulated over a series of races, but unfortunately can't be saved on disk for another day. Enough about the concept, now on to the implementation. The simulation seems to be fairly complex and accurate (I've never been in a real race car, so what do I know?) The more experience I get "driving" it, the more I notice. I must've still been expecting an arcade game when I was taken by surprise that by applying opposite lock I really could recover when I started into a spin. Another time, I thought I was seriously mishandling the steering, when it dawned on me that I was fish-tailing all over the place and working like a wild-man trying to keep it pointed down the track; I let off on the throttle for an instant and it straightened right up. I've noticed that the cornering is affected by the weight transfer caused by acceleration and deceleration. I think it's also affected by crests and dips in the track. And I *know* the aerodynamics are simulated; it's strange to be able to take a particular corner at 125 mph but not at 80. Car-to-car contact is simulated, but no damage occurs (you can't lose a front wing, for instance). The result can be anything from a mere "thump" to being sent spinning off the course, depending on the particular contact. Sometimes the other car involved is disabled, and will remain on the track as an obstacle for the duration of the race; this is probably the least realistic aspect of the program. In the interests of playability, the engine has been made indestructible. Neither lugging nor over-revving will harm the engine (although of course it won't give much acceleration). In fact, the recommended method of returning to the track from a spin into the grass is to start out in 3rd or 4th gear. The graphics are accurate but not very detailed (although the title screen is pretty fancy). The basic view is a black track, green grass, and blue sky. There are black-and-white striped borders on the track, and the curbs (or kerbs as the British authors insist) are red-and-white striped. Each curve is marked with a sign showing the direction of the curve, white markers at 300 meters and 200 meters, and a red marker at 100 meters, all on the outside of the curve, plus a red marker on the inside of the curve right at the apex. There is a simple flag-marker beside the track at the start/finish point. The other cars on the track are basically black and white, again not very detailed. If seen from the side, the body of the car has color; but you don't see 'em from the side very much unless you've spun off course. Your car has a tachometer (moving needle, not digital) as the only working instrument; there are two dummy instruments that half appear in the picture. There is also a gear selector indicator, with oversize letters. A mark on the steering wheel moves to provide feedback on the wheel's position. I'd rather have had the dummy front wheels turn back and forth but they don't move. Rear-view mirrors on both sides show any cars close behind you. A big plus is that everything moves smoothly. There's no feeling of a lag between the time you move a control and the time the control takes effect. There's no jerkiness to the graphics. Everything's nice and continuous. The top of the screen contains a couple lines of text which substitute for your pit board. During practice and qualifying these lines give you your current lap time and fastest lap time. During the race they give the number of laps to go, your position in the race, who's immediately ahead and who's immediately behind you on the track (track position, not race position). I have to confess a guilty pleasure. Even though I have a chronic allergy to silly made-up names, I actually *like* most of the names of the computer generated competitors. Max Throttle is one of the top drivers. So is Gloria Slap. On the other hand, Slim Chance and Roland Slide usually end up at the back of the field. Some of the names you have to say out loud to figure out. The sound effects are pretty standard. Race car engine, squealing tires. There are a lot of options for what to use for controls. You can use a joystick or the keyboard as in most games, or you can use an analog joystick if you have one. Or my personal favorite, a game paddle for the steering wheel with either the keyboard or a regular joystick for the throttle, brake, and gearshift. I use an Atari 2600 (video game) paddle; it's a lot more twitchy than if I had a real C-64 paddle but it gets the job done. If you use an analog joystick or a game paddle for steering, you can choose to have variable-ratio steering which makes the steering a bit less touchy. When using keyboard steering, you have the option of turning on the "Computer Assisted Steering" which the regular switch-type joystick always uses. When you load the game you have to select 2 of the 6 tracks; if you later want to race on any of the other 4 you'll have to reload the program. This isn't a big deal because you'll probably concentrate on just one track anyway. I wish this had the fast-loader that Firebird used for Elite -- Revs+ takes a very long time to load. There is a "Pause Game" feature, but things happen so fast that I always end up crashing when I try to use it. Especially after un-pausing, when I'm not in the rhythm of the course any more. The documentation is complete, but is in dire need of "proffredding". In some places the typographical errors are so bad that the only way to figure out what is meant is to try it and see. Fortunately they've included a keyboard summary which has only one typo: it shows the "sensistivity switch" [sic] as the "C=" key when it really is the SHIFT LOCK key. The documentation includes a small poster showing the layout of all 6 tracks. This is both interesting and very useful. By the way, there apparently was an earlier version called simply "Revs". I don't know if it was sold in the U.S., but it doesn't have joystick control and it only has two tracks -- Silverstone and Brands Hatch. Be sure you get the "+" version (the typeface used on the package is abominable, the "+" looks more like an "I" with a hyphen crossing through it). -- Doug Pardee -- Edge Computer Corp., Scottsdale, AZ -- ihnp4!oliveb!edge!doug -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Familiarity breeds attempt" Dave Lowrey Amdahl Corp. Houston, Texas (713)-850-8828 ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs,oliveb}!amdahl!dwl10 [ The opinions expressed <may> be those of the author and not necessarily those of his most eminent employer. ]