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[The Fifth Horseman]

DOSBox is the only solution.
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=22241
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=14406

I would like to model a new track but I don't know if it would be possible , as far as I know it's not mod-able and the file formats are proprietary ! Do you have any info on that ?

[gregor]

will this version work in wine? do i need to run setup or what? i can't get it to work in dosbox. i mean it starts and is loading (ladding) but nothing else happens.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by gregor

will this version work in wine?

Yes.

Originally Posted by gregor

do i need to run setup or what?

Yes, same as in windows.

Originally Posted by gregor

i can't get it to work in dosbox. i mean it starts and is loading (ladding) but nothing else happens.

Means you screw up somewhere, it works fine in dosbox.

Originally Posted by dosraider

Test 1...2...3... and:

AB's game works fine in dosbox 0.73, default install.

Simply mount your CD drive as D:\ in dosbox with whatever CD in it and run the game with
maindos
from the game directory.
No probs here......

It apparently won't run if you don't mount a CD .....

[Edit]
Forgot to mention:
The dosversion (didn't test the Win version) is indeed ready to run in dosbox, no install needed. Sound and all are fine.

http://imgur.com/mUzRrHY.

It keeps appearing blue borders around GUI and I don't know what to do.

I'm using the 3Dfx version, with dgVooDoo 1.40+.

Can someone help me?

[jigebren]

Originally Posted by alexdory

I would like to model a new track but I don't know if it would be possible , as far as I know it's not mod-able and the file formats are proprietary ! Do you have any info on that ?

As far as I'm concerned I tried some years ago to understand several of the formats used in this game, partly from curiosity and partly just for fun. I even started writing an import plugin for Blender (the 3D software), but then moved to other projects... I recently started to play with it again to make it work with the latest Blender version, and I took the opportunity to try to improve the format support as well.

So far I'm able to import enough formats to load the world and cars meshes into Blender, and properly textured, as you can see on the screenshots below. There's no export for now, but writing the export counterpart of an existing import code would only be a matter of devoting time to do it.

The JAPAN track:


All the cars:


Well, for now I have no definite plan to go really further, but I thought the info could be worth being shared here anyway.


Oh and BTW, on the Ignition page of Wikipedia we can read:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

After Ignition was released many computer enthusiasts started to create additional tracks and types of vehicles to broad the content of the game.

This seems to be just plain wrong. I have never heard about custom content, nor about a way to create it... Anybody can confirm whether it's true or false?

Originally Posted by jigebren

So far I'm able to import enough formats to load the world and cars meshes into Blender, and properly textured, as you can see on the screenshots below. There's no export for now, but writing the export counterpart of an existing import code would only be a matter of devoting time to do it.

The JAPAN track:


All the cars:


Well, for now I have no definite plan to go really further, but I thought the info could be worth being shared here anyway.

Theres an extra car in the cars photo. That one, with the blue stripe ontop of it, and with other two colors, red in the base, then yellow for the top.

I already played the game and unlocked all of it cars and levels. But that one, never got it.

[Zapeth]

Originally Posted by lucas200206

Theres an extra car in the cars photo. That one, with the blue stripe ontop of it, and with other two colors, red in the base, then yellow for the top.

I already played the game and unlocked all of it cars and levels. But that one, never got it.

That car is called "Ignition", it has the best stats in the game and is unlockable as well.
I'm not really sure anymore what exactly you have to do to unlock it, I think you just have to beat the championships in all difficulties?

@jigebren: Thats incredible work you did there, I'd love to get some more insight of the game's file structures (and of course the plugin itself) :P

[jigebren]

Yep, that car is actually called Ignition and it's available to you after completing Mirror Championship, as you can see on this page.

Originally Posted by Zapeth

@jigebren: Thats incredible work you did there, I'd love to get some more insight of the game's file structures (and of course the plugin itself) :P

Thanks. Well, I have gone a bit further since my last post though but most of my time has been taken but another project in the last two weeks.
It would be too long to explain the files structure right now, but here's a summary of what I currently know:

COL:
The colors palette. Format known.
MSH:
The world meshes (including moving objects). Format known, except Flags still unknown.
PAN:
Format unknown.
PIC:
An image. Format known.
PLC:
The position (and probably flags) of the MSH meshes. Format known, except Flags still unknown.
POS:
Data for the moving objects. Format unknown.
SHD:
Unknown.
SRF:
Unknown.
TAB:
Unknown.
TEX:
The textures. Format known.
TRI:
Likely the racing line. Format unknown.

Well, as I said I have not real plan for the plugin for now, but if there's some interest for it, and if I have time (and motivation) to polish it I'll think about sharing it. For now all the format marked as known above can be imported in Blender, and can also be dumped to a text file. The unknown flags can be displayed as well, which may help to understand their purpose.

Anyway as you can see, though the main formats are known there's still a lot to discover... And as long as some formats are still unknown there's no hope to replace an existing track by a user creation, making the plugin almost useless. But if anyone is able to understand some of the remaining formats structure (I use to use a simple hexadecimal editor for that) I'd be curious to hear about it

[Zapeth]

Thats very interesting, I'll try to look into some formats myself though I'm currently pretty busy so it might take a while for me to do.
Also after a quick look it seems like there are a _lot_ more file formats in the overall game (like LFT, BTZ (config files for the game?), PSQ, CDP, etc) but I guess we should focus on the levels first?

There's also one level file format that you didn't mention, TFX. I guess thats some additional file to TEX?

Anyway, some things that come to my mind which are missing for the level would be Sound information and AI related things (though I don't know if thats included in the racing line information).