NASCAR Racing by Papyrus Design Group, Inc. Copyright (c) 1994 Papyrus Design Group, Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Damage/Damage Repair 2. Audio CD Tracks 3. F4 - Tire Temperature 4. Tire Temperatures, Part 2 5. F5 - Tire Change 6. Championship Season 7. Sound Card Setup 8. Genovation/Colorado Spectrum Game Ports 9. Save Race Changes 10. Qualifying Setup 11. Gravis Ultrasound and GUS Max Music 12. Black Flag Addition 13. Pentium Performance 14. Race End 15. Garage/Replay Issue 16. Multiplayer Race - Initialization Strings - Baud Rates - Troubleshooting 17. Creating a Boot Diskette 1. Damage/Damage Repair If you have damage set to on, and you get into an accident, your car will be affected by the damage. The primary areas which will be affected are the aerodynamic drag and the downforce. The severity of the effect depends on how much damage the car has sustained. If you look at the F9-Pit Status view you will notice "repairs" as one of the things your crew is going to fix next time into the pit. Once in the pit, your crew will remove damaged pieces and try and fix other crumpled areas of the car. This could take some time depending on how damaged the car is. Once they are done, the timer in the upper right corner will change colors and you can re-join the race. The car will not be perfect like it was when you started the race but at least you'll be able to finish and get some all-important championship points. Sometimes you may not want the crew to fix the car damage. For example, at a short track like Martinsville the effect is not as serious as it would be if you were at Talladega. On the F9-Pit Status menu just press "enter" to toggle between "repairs" and "do not repair". Now the crew won't bother to repair the crumpled sheet metal. However, if you do have damage to your wheels the crew will fix that no matter what. After all, you need the wheels in order to drive! 2. Audio CD Tracks In addition to the game on the CD-ROM we have shipped a couple of original songs which can be played on any audio CD player. All you have to do is put the CD-ROM in an audio CD player and select either track 2 or 3. - WARNING do not play track 1 in your audio player, it contains the game - Track 2, called "Race Riff," is a piece which was written and performed by Rachel Bolan and Dave "Snake" Sabo of the band Skid Row. (C) 1994 Rachel Bolan and Dave Sabo of Skid Row Track 3, called "The Fastest Sport," is a piece which was written and performed by the Fat Man and Team Fat. (C) 1994 Fat Manor Publishing (BMI) 3. F4 - Tire Temperature In the F4 view, the temperature numbers will change color depending on how hot the tire is. White is normal or ok. Yellow means the tire is getting a little hot. Red means the tire is overheating. If your tires are constantly red it means there is a problem with your setup or it is time to change the tires. Hotter tires wear faster, so, if you have a bad setup in which the tires run too hot you will most likely have to pit earlier and more often than your opponents. One way to affect tire temperatures in the garage is too change the tire pressures. Higher pressures will yield lower temps and lower pressure will yield higher temps. 4. Tire Temperatures, Part 2 It is important to remember that when you start a session (practice, race, etc) your tires are cold. If you jam on the gas your car is likely to spin out. When the tires are cold the car has a tendency to "oversteer". Take it easy on the first few laps around the track. Let the tires warm up before putting the gas to the floor. Once they are you'll find the car will lose that "oversteer" tendency. 5. F5 - Tire Change In the F5 view, the bars under the tire boxes indicate the amount of wear that tire is undergoing. The bar will change color depending on the current wear of the tire. Green indicates a new or hardly worn tire. Yellow means the tire is getting a little worn. Red means the tire is very worn and it could blow. Once the tire wear is red you should definitely come into the pit to get fresh rubber. Generally, a car will be able to go about 80 to 100 miles before needing to come in for tires and fuel. However, some tracks are rougher on tires than others. Worn tires are not as fast as fresh tires, sometimes by as much as 3 or 4 mph. The car's handling will change when the tires get too worn. Most likely the car will develop a "push" or "understeer" in the corners. 6. Championship Season Upon entering a championship season for the first time you will see the season schedule. This screen shows the races in the order they appear in the 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup schedule. Selecting "enter" will take you to the first race in the season at Atlanta. After the race is over, selecting "exit" will take you to the season race results screen. This screen displays the results of the race just completed. At the bottom of the screen are three options "print", "save", and "done". Print and save work as if you were in the race weekend/standings menu. Selecting "done" or hitting "enter" will take you to the season standings screen. This displays the standings of the race for the championship. You will also be able to "print" and "save" from this screen. "Enter" or selecting "done" will ask if you wish to go to the next race. A yes will take you again to the season schedule. If you press "enter" with the cursor on Atlanta (or later, any race already completed), you can view the standings from that race. Selecting "enter" will take you to the season standings screen and then to the next race. The game will automatically save the season for you. Anytime you leave the championship season you will be able to pick up where you left off. 7. Sound Card Setup Most sound cards should be set up at a port of 220 for digital sound and 388 for music. For General MIDI/MPU-401 ports, the number for music is generally 330. For Gravis Ultrasound/GUS Max cards, the IRQ is usually 11. The music port for the AWE32 should be set at 620. If you have a Sound Blaster Pro, you should choose Sound Blaster 8 Stereo for digital sound. If you have a Sound Blaster AWE32, you should choose Sound Blaster 16 Mono or Stereo for digital sound. If you are not getting stereo music on a stereo sound card, you probably have the wrong port entered. If you are having problems with your digital sound, chances are that you have the wrong settings. Please test your sound card with a test program supplied with your sound card. There are several sound cards not listed in the setup program for which choosing another sound card should work, though we have been unable to verify their correctness. For the Sierra Semiconductor Aria and Aztec cards, choose Sound Blaster 8 Mono. For the Reveal FX/30, choose Ensoniq SoundScape. For the Toptek, Media Trix, and Media Magic ISP-16 cards, choose Microsoft Sound System. 8. Genovation/Colorado Spectrum Game Ports If you have one of these cards and wish to run NASCAR you must start the game with the -j option, (ex. nascar -j). Using these products may cause problems with 2 player modem mode. 9. Save Race Changes When leaving a race you WILL BE prompted to save the race if you have qualified and the race is not yet over. If you have not qualified for the race and do not complete more than two laps during the race you WILL NOT BE prompted to save the race. Also, if the race is almost over (within the last few laps) you will not be able to save the race. 10. Qualifying Setup Each track has a settings file called "qual". This setup will allow you to get faster times in qualifying. Only experienced drivers should try this setup because it can be tough to drive. Also, don't try and use this setup during a race or you'll find yourself back in the garage to get a new motor. 11. Gravis Ultrasound and GUS Max Music In order for music to work with the GUS card, you must first run the program "loadpats.exe". 12. Black Flag Addition During the first lap after a yellow flag comes out the pit will be closed. If you pit when the pit is closed you will be put at the back of the field. You can tell this has happened because the "stay behind car#" message will keep changing as the field goes by you. If you do not get at the end of the field you will get a black flag. 13. Pentium Performence It should be known that even with a Pentium 90Mhz machine with a fast video card it is unlikely that you will be able to have all the graphic textures on in SVGA mode. But, with only a few things like the grass and asphalt turned off, it should be acceptable. The big difference with a Pentium and SVGA mode is how crisp and clear everything appears. You can see much further down the track making it easier to plan you next move. 14. Race End The race does not necessarily end once you have crossed the finish line. The other cars on that lap must also cross the finish line for the race to officially end. You can either drive around for one more lap to make sure of this or press "a" for accelerated time and the race will finish. You will not get a DNF once you have finished the race. 15. Garage/Replay Issue It is important to note that once you enter the garage your replay is lost. So, make sure you view the replay before going to the garage. This isn't a problem during a race as you can't go into the garage while a race is running. 16. Multiplayer Race - Initialization Strings It is very important to use the correct initialization strings for your modem when using the Multiplayer Race feature of NASCAR Racing. Under Multiplayer Race/Setup/Specify Modem, we have included the correct setups for many popular modems. However, if your modem brand is not listed, you will need to manually enter the correct initialization information for your modem. Your initialization string must do the following (and typically, ONLY the following): 1) Reset the modem to the factory default settings. 2) Turn off all error correction. 3) Turn of all data compression. 4) Force the modem to the desired baud rate. The first step is almost universally accomplished by starting your init string with "AT&F^M~~~". From there, the commands to satisfy steps 2 through 4 must start with "AT" and end with "^M". For example, if the command to turn off all error correction on your modem is "&Q6", the command to turn off data compression is "%C0" and the command to force your modem to 9600 baud is "&N6", your init string would read "AT&F^M~~~AT&Q6%C0&N6^M". A good rule of thumb to follow when determining your init string is KEEP IT SIMPLE. Include only the commands that are necessary to satisfy steps 1 through 4 above. We have found that including extraneous commands that happen to work with other modem games (e.g. Doom) can adversely effect communications in NASCAR. If all else fails, contact your modem's manufacturer and ask them for the specific commands necessary. Baud Rates NASCAR Racing supports communication speeds of 9600 through 38,400 bps. However, as with all high-speed communications, speeds over 9600 bps are unreliable on systems that do not have 16550 UARTs on the COM port to which the modem is connected. If you don't have a 16550 UART, you aren't sure, or you don't have a clue of what a UART is, you should not attempt to communicate at over 9600 baud. Performance differences in NASCAR between different baud rates is negligible. (To determine whether you have a 16550 UART for your modem's COM port, you should be able to run the Microsoft Diagnostic program, which should be included with Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS 6.) Troubleshooting If you are still having trouble with Multiplayer Race communications and/or performance after reviewing the previous 2 sections, you should try the following: 1) Make sure that the baud rates match on both the dialing & answering systems in the init strings AND on the multiplayer setup menu. 2) Make sure that the "answering" system is the more powerful of the two systems. For example, if one user has a 386 processor and the other has a 486, the user with the 486 should be the answering system. Most of the "work" in Multiplayer Race is done by the answering system. 3) Try selecting a "mono" audio driver or "none" in the NASCAR setup program for the answering system's sound board. Or, start NASCAR with the "FM Sound" option (NASCAR -F). Again, the answering system does most of the work in Multiplayer. 17. Creating a Boot Diskette The purpose of creating a boot diskette will be to limit the number of device drivers that are loaded in order to maximize memory, while at the same time providing you the minimum device drivers necessary to run NASCAR Racing with your unique system configuration (i.e. CD-ROM drive, sound board, etc.). The SETUP program included with NASCAR Racing provides an option to create a bootable floppy disk. In most cases, the diskette that is created with this process will contain everything that you will need to run NASCAR Racing. However, if you are using the CD-ROM version of NASCAR and you chose "CD-ROM INSTALL" during installation, you will need to manually alter the CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT files on your boot diskette after it is created in order to load your CD-ROM device drivers. The easiest way to do this is to copy the appropriate lines from the CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT files on your hard drive to their respective files on the boot diskette. If you are not sure of which driver(s) to load, refer to the documentation for your CD-ROM drive. If you use a memory manager on your system and you will not be using that memory manager on the boot diskette (which is what we recommend), make sure to remove any memory manager specific instructions when you copy the device driver lines to the boot diskette (for example, if you use EMM386 change DEVICEHIGH to DEVICE in CONFIG.SYS, remove LOADHIGH & LH in AUTOEXEC.BAT, etc.).