Turbo Sliders Manual

suomeksi

Sections in this manual:

General
Settings
Statistics
Network Games
Command Line Parameters

If you have problems with the game, see the Troubleshooting document.

Additional resources:

General

Turbo Sliders is a racing game with the classic top-down perspective. It allows up to 20 players to compete against each other in network cups. There is an extensive track record support and unlimited extensibility with new tracks and cars.

Quick launch

When starting the game for the first time, pick your language, enter your name and select your color. All selections are made with the arrow keys and Enter. The next thing you can do is to train, which means playing a short cup alone using the default tracks and the default car. By default, the car is controlled by using the arrow keys. There are four controls: acceleration (up), brake (down), turn left (left) and turn right (right). Race can be ended by pressing Esc. If you want to change key bindings or enable joystick, go to menu Settings/Keys.

Selecting players

In the main menu, go to "Players". There are four slots for local players. You can create a new player by selecting a slot and then selecting "New Player". You can clear a slot by pressing Backspace or by selecting a slot and then choosing "none". You can change the color of a player by using Left/Right with or without left Shift/Ctrl/Alt.

You can also change the number of computer driven cars that will be included in your local games here. AI Fill means the total number of cars that will be in the race. For example, if you have one local human player and set AI Fill to four, there will be three computer cars included. You can also adjust AI player skill. Note that AI players will only appear in the races if there are AI driving lines for the track and car. So, if you download tracks or cars made by other people, you also need to get driving lines in order to play against AI in those tracks.

Selecting cars

In the main menu, go to "Cars". Car selection can be in three modes. In fixed, non-fixed or random. If the car is fixed, the same car is always used. In non-fixed mode, players can change their car before each race. In random mode, each player gets the same random car. You can still control which cars are available.

Selecting tracks

In the main menu, go to "Tracks". There you can select which tracks are to be raced in your cups and the number of laps in races. You can also control whether you allow downloading tracks from a server in a network game. You can also allow or disallow uploading tracks to clients when you are running a server. Note that downloaded tracks come to directory "Download". You can also create your own subdirectories under the tracks directory if you have lots of tracks and want to reorganize them.

Pressing 'R' when on top of a track shows the track profile and records.

Train / Local cup

When you select "Train" or "Local Game" in the main menu, you run a cup between your local players using the selected tracks and cars.

Network game

Go to "Network game" in the main menu. If you know the IP of the server you want to join, type or paste it in the "Server" item. Otherwise, you can select "Server List", which lists the current active servers which are advertizing themselves. The servers are ordered by ping. The lower the ping to a server is, the better the network game is expected to work. Under 100 ms is probably very good and over 200 ms can be very laggy.

Note that what tracks and cars you have selected does not have any effect on what tracks and cars are allowed by the server. If the server is not using fixed cars, you can change your car before each race.

Starting your own server

Select "Start Server" in the network menu. There are a number of settings you can change:

Master Server: Whether to advertize your server in the master server. If this is enabled, other players will be able to see your server in the server list.
Master Server Location: URL to the master server. Normally no need to change this. Clear this to get the default address.
Info: Information text other players will see about your server in the server list.
Max Players: Maximum number of players allowed to join. The more players you allow in, the more is required from your network connection. You can see expected requirement beside the number.
AI Fill: AI Fill for the game. Computer drivers are added until total number of players reaches this number (if there are AI driving lines for the track and car).
Continuous Reg: Whether you allow new player to join after the registration phase of the cup is over. If you disable this and have master server on, your advertizement is also removed after the registration phase.
Ghost Race: If ghost race is on, players cannot collide with each other.
Pro Mode: If pro mode is on, players get disabled (their cars lose acceleration) if they hit other players that are much ahead. If, for example, a player is being lapped and hits the lapper, the car gets disabled. Also, players cannot accelerate after having finished.

When you are ready to start your server, select "Start". See the network section for more information on how to run a server.

It is also possible to run an automatic server which does not have the overhead for graphics. Read README-autoserver.txt for more information.

Recordings

You can record your races either by having automatic recording on or by pressing the recording key (F4 by default) during a race. You can view your recordings by selecting Recordings in the main menu. You can browse the directory structure under the video directory, possibly deleting recordings by pressing Delete or Backspace. To see a video, you must have the cars and track the recording was made in. If you have associated TSR files with sliders.exe, you can also view recordings by double-clicking them in Windows Explorer. You can change the car you are following by pressing Up and Down arrow (or whatever you use for acceleration and brake for player 1). You can change the playback speed by using player 1 Left and Right buttons. Shift+Left starts the recording from the beginning, Shift+Right warps a few seconds forward.

Settings

There are lots of settings that can be changed in the different submenus under the "Settings" menu.

Game

Lap Number: Number of laps in your races.
Start Order: How starting order is determined.
Ghost Race: Whether cars collide or not.
Pro Mode: Whether pro mode is on (See Start Server section for more info).
Points for stopped race: Whether race points are given if the server stops a race before the first player has finished.
Points for best lap: How many points is given to the player who has made the fastest lap in a race.
Points for positions: How many points different positions in a race gives.

Keys

Here you can change the in-game key bindings. Each of the four possible local players has keys for acceleration, turning right, turning left and braking. Diagnostics key shows information on FPS and network during the game. Stats key displays different statistics. Recording key starts and stops recording. Predictive camera key switches camera mode. Full screen key toggles whether statistics panel is visible in the lower part of the screen or if all the space is used for the track. Prediction change keys can be used in a network game depending on the network connection quality. See the network section for more information.

To use joystick or joypad, you must first enable joystick support. Joystick buttons are automatically assigned to different controls but you can change them by pressing the buttons in respective places in the menu.

Statistics

Top List Size: How many entries there are in the main track record top lists (each car has its own).
Local Player List Size: How many entries there are for each local player.
Remote Player List Size: How many entires there are for each remote player. WARNING: if this is something else that 0, your lists may become very big if you play lots of network games. Big lists can slow down operations.
Generate HTML on exit: If this is enabled, when you exit the game, HTML pages about your records are automatically generated. Open records/html/index.html to see them. Disable this if you don't need this and exiting the game takes lots of time.
Exporting: If enabled, you can send your records to other players.
Importing: If enabled, you can receive records from other players.
Permanent Logs: Each time you run the game, file log.txt is generated in the game directory. It contains results of all the cups you were racing. Normally, the old log file is destroyed each time you start the game. If you enable this option, the game will put logs in the log subdirectory and never delete the logs.

Recordings

Automatic Recording: How many last races are automatically saved in the video/autosave directory.
Recording Interval: How often the full state of the race is saved in recordings (in addition to control information). The shorter the interval is, the better the recording is expected to work (with less warping) but this also makes the recording bigger.
Client Recording Interval: This is the corresponsing interval when playing a network game as a client. This interval should be much shorter than the interval above.

Network

Server port: Port for your server. Change if you can't use the default for some reason.
Client port: Default port for your client. Change only if you can't use the default for some reason.
Min/Max Prediction: Prediction controls how much the client predicts in a network game. This is needed to make the game look smooth despite the fact that messages between the client and server take time. These number should be such that the ping between the client and the server always stays between these numbers. You can also change the values when in game using PageUp/PageDown (or whathever you have changed them to)
Autoprediction: If this is on, the game tries to automatically adjust prediction during game to prevent lag. Turn this off if you want to do that manually.
Event send times: How many times each control message is sent to the server. If your network connection has lots of packet loss, increasing this number may help.
Send interval: This controls how often server sends updates to the clients. The more often updates are sent, more bandwidth is required. However, the game can become smoother.
Event Send Fut.: This controls how much future events are sent to the clients. This is probably best left as it is.
Autokick: If enabled, disconnected players are automatically kicked before each reace.
Continuous Reg: Whether you allow new player to join after the registration phase of the cup is over.

Video

Video settings can affect performance drastically. If you add resolution or zoom level, the game may start lagging in network games if there are lots of cars. See the Troubleshooting document for details.

Resolution: Default game resolution. Change takes effect when the game is restarted. Increasing resolution may cause lag if there are lots of players.
Full Screen: Whether to run the game in full-screen mode. Change takes effect when the game is restarted.
Double Buffering: Whether to use double-buffering. This settings should be on if possible, but it may cause problems on some systems. Change takes effect when the game is restarted.
Shrink to Fit: Sets whether every track is shrunk so that all of it is always visible. If there are more than one local player, this is automatically on.
Enlarge to Fit: Whether to enlarge track to fit screen if it is smaller than the screen.
Zoom Factor: How much to zoom by default. Increasing zoom level may cause lag if there are lots of players.
Predictive cam: Whether to use predictive camera in games. If this is on, visibility area is updated according to the speed and direction of your car. This may help but may also be nauseating.
Smoke: Whether to show smoke. If your machine is slow, disabling this can help a lot.
Shadows: Whether to show shadows of the cars.
Skidmarks: How to draw skidmarks.
Alpha Blending: Whether to alpha-blend smoke, shadows and cars. If you have lag with lots of players, disabling this can help a lot, but graphics do not look as good.
Lightmapping: Whether to use lightmap on top of tracks. Disabling this speeds up loading a track slightly but does not make the game run faster.
Menu Effects: Whether to see background image in main menus and starfield effect in network games.

Audio

Audio On: Whether to have sounds on.
Engine Sounds: How many different car sounds to play in the game. How many can be selected depends on your sound card driver.
Effect Channels: How many effect sounds to be able to play simultaneously. How many can be selected depends on your sound card driver.
Remote Car Volume: At which level to play engine volumes for non-local cars in network games.
Position Effect: The game uses 3D sounds which enable you to hear where different cars are. Changing this value tells how big the effect is.
Menu Volume: How loudly to play menu navigation samples.
Effects Volume: How loudly to play effect samples.
Car Volume: How loudly to play car sounds.
Music On: Whether to play music.
Music Volume: How loudly to play the music.

Language

This menu allows you to change your in-game language. To add more languages in the game, put language files in the "lang" folder.

License

If you have purchased the full game, you can see your license information here. If you are using an illegal license or want for some other reason to remove your license, you can do it here.

Statistics

The game has an advanced track record system and every cup and race results can be logged.

Track records

The game generates a track record file for each track you have. The statistics settings control how many entries there are but normally, there are lists for each car and each local player. Laps in which there have been collisions with other cars are reported as "collision times". Non-collision lists are considered more official, since it is possible to get super good lap times by getting pushed by others. The letter 'c' beside a lap time means that the lap time was a collision time.

You can see your track records either by pressing 'R' in the tracks menu on top of a track or by checking records.htm in your game directory. It is regenerated each time you exit the game, if you have the HTML generation enabled in the Statistics settings.

If both parties allow it, it is possible to send and receive track records between clients and servers when in the Registering mode during a network game session.

Log

The game generates file log.txt for each game session. The file contains statistics for each race that was driven. Normally, this file is truncated when a new game is started, but you can make the logging permanent with the "Permanent Logs" setting. Log.txt also contains data that can be easily pasted into a spreadsheet program to generate graphs about how different races went.

Network Games

These are the different phases in a network cup:

Registering: Server waits for players to join. Tracks can still be changed and track records can be transfered to and from the server. If "Continuous Reg" is not selected, this is the only phase where new players can join.
Cup: Waiting for the next race. If the client does not have the track or cars, they are downloaded.
Car Selection: If car is not fixed, players can select their car for the next race.
Race: This is the actual race phase. After this phase, the game goes back to the cup phase if there are more tracks left. If you happen to join when a race is on, you will have to wait until the next race starts before you can actually drive your car.
Cup Over: Waiting for the server to quit or restart.

Server controls moving from phase to phase. It is also possible to make an automatic server which does not have the overhead for graphics. See README-autoserver.txt for instructions on how to do that.

Lag prevention

Lag and jerky car movements can be caused either by bad network connection or if there are lots of cars, slow graphics. For more information, see the Troubleshooting document.

Prefer servers whose ping times are low. Pings of less than 100 ms are good, pings of more than 200 ms are very bad. The ping is especially bad if the ping times vary a lot. The game uses an advanced prediction system to try to cope with high pings. As long as the server ping remains between the min prediction and max prediction times, manouvering your own car should be smooth. If prediction is high, there may be warping, though, especially when colliding with other cars.

If you have problems, you can debug the situation by pressing the diagnostics key (F10 by default). If FPS is less than 50, the problem is probably in graphics (change graphics settings). You can also see your ping time and "serv diff" which tells if the server is getting your event messages in time. If "Serv diff" is red, prediction times are incorrect for the network connection. If it is negative, the server is receiving your events too late, which causes controlling your car to be very hard. If the number is too big, you are making unnecessarily lots of prediction which can cause extra warping. If automatic prediction adjustment is on, the game tries to adjust prediction but if you want to do that manually, you can use the prediction change keys (PageUp and PageDown by default). You can see the red "Serv diff" information when necessary even without pressing F10.

Line editing

In network games, you can write messages and commands in the Write Message box. There are several line editing key key commands available. For example, Shift+Backspace clears text, Left and Right arrows (or Ctrl+f/b) move cursor, Up arrow (or Ctrl+p) displays the previous command, Ctrl+a goes to the beginninf of the line, Ctrl+k cuts text from the cursor and Ctrl+v pastes it.

Server commands

There are lots of commands that can be used in a network game to change server settigs or do other things. Some features are only available to the server administrators whilst other things can be done by anyone.

Basic commands

(<1|0> means 1 or 0, [x] means optional x)
-/who (lists players)
-/laps [<val>] (shows or sets lap number)
-/car [[<player>] <car>] (shows or sets car)
-/cars [/add|/remove <car>] (selects possible cars if non-fixed)
-/tracks [[/add[2]|/remove] ] (shows/adds/removes tracks, add2 can add the same track several times)
-/tracks /clear (deselects all tracks)
-/kick <player>|<ip> (kicks player or IP from this cup)
-/ban [<player>|<ip>] (bans player/IP or shows bans)
-/clearbans (clears all bans)
-/order [<0|1|2>] (shows or sets starting order)
-/points [<fastest> <1.> <2.> [...]] (shows or sets points)
-/say (says a message)
-/helpmore (shows more advanced commands)
-/helpauto (shows autoserver related commands)
-/version (shows server version)

More advanced commands:

-/fixedcar [<0|1|2>] (controls having a fixed car)
-/ghostrace [<0|1>] (controls having a ghost race)
-/promode [<val>] (controls having pro mode on)
-/maxplayers [<n>] (shows or sets max player number)
-/tracks /addrnd [<n>] (adds n random tracks from the current track dir)
-/transfers [/stop] (displays or stops current file transfers)
-/autokick [<0|1>] (controls kicking disconnected players before race)
-/continuousreg [<0|1>] (controls accepting new players during cup)
-/master [<0|1>] (controls using a master server, 1 also forces an update)
-/info [<server info text>] (shows or sets server info text)
-/helpball (shows PunaBall and team related commands)
-/helpai (shows AI related commands)
-/aifill [<val>] (shows or sets AI Fill)
-/aiskill [<val>] (shows or sets AI Skill)

Automatic server related commands:

-/autoserver [<0|1>] (controls having an automatic server)
-/run <macro> (runs a server macro)
-/adminmsg [<msg>] (sets or shows admin message)
-/autotime /reg [<time>] (controls reg time)
-/autotime /cup [<time>] (controls cup waiting time)
-/autotime /car [<time>] (controls car selection time)
-/autotime /raceinit [<time>] (controls race init max time)
-/autotime /raceend [<time>] (controls race end time)
-/autotime /raceidle [<time>] (controls max race idle time)
-/autotime /cupend [<time>] (controls cup end time)
-/generatestats (generates HTML record stats)
-/addadmin <ip> <password> (adds admin rights to the IP, 'ALL' for all IPs)
-/removeadmin <ip> (removes admin rights from the IP)
-/admin <password> <cmd> (performs an admin command if correct IP and password)
-/admin <password> (enters or exists admin mode)
-/admin (shows IPs having admin rights)
-/quit (quits the server)

In addition to this, there are ball game related commands in README-punaball.txt.

Command Line Parameters

There are several command line parameters you can use to launch the game in different modes or settings:

(<1|0> means 1 or 0)
-f <1|0> full screen on or off
-x <size> x size of the window/screen
-y <size> y size of the window/screen
-connect <ip> immediately connects to the given IP
-name <name> select (only) the given player
-sound <1|0> sound on or off
-priority <0|2|4> sets process priority, 0-2 normal, 4 high (default: 2)
-debug <0|1|2|3> sets debug level for output.txt (default: 0)
-usestore <1|0> whether to use surface store, use 0 to save memory but Alt+Tabbing may not work in Windows (default: 1)
-fontcache <1|0> whether cache fonts, use 0 to save video memory
-forcesw <1|0> whether to try to save video card memory instead of loading everything in the card (default: 0)
-macros <file> sets the macros file (default: macros.ini)
-menueffects <1|0> enables or disables menu effects (default: 1)
-music <1|0> enables or disables music (default: 1)

It is also possible to put the command line parameters into a file with extension .tss and open the file with sliders.exe. Each line is considered a different command line parameter. This way, it is possible for example to join a certain server by double-clicking its icon (if .tss is associated to sliders.exe). Remember that things like if for example you want the game to start in full screen mode, "-f" must be on its own line and then "1" in the next line.