Quote: "well i can't turn the sky or sun on (i really wanted to see what they look like but they just won't turn on), my view distance is 6 and is still pretty slow, i didn't change the number of cars from default which seems to highlight 'half' and the screenres is 640x480 fullscreen."
I think the highlight has confused (indeed I think it is confusing and have changed it in the patch I'm building) but presently the selected option is the Light Blue not the Dark Blue (which is clearer to see and by inference arguably "highlighted"). Post patch these will be Dark Blue (not selected) or Purple(Selected).
With this in mind I'd recommend you select "Half Cars" as that definately can improve performance and ask if you've tried adjusting the refresh rate on your machine? I do hope you can sort it cos 33MB is alot to discover it's not playable.
Quote: "Do you make the track object a static object ? I found that on Dark GT this actually caused a performance hit."
No - I can't make any loaded 3ds or X objects a "static object" as in "MAKE STATIC OBJECT" on my PC as it causes a runtime error (nVidia graphics card problem I think). Similarly Dark GT will not run on my box either.
Quote: "I notice that you have kept the tracks flat ?"
Yeah, and even then it wasn't easy to handle the angled collisions with a nice slide effect.
I did some work in the direction of going all out 3D and ended up with the DarkCollisions.dll (mucho kudos to Matthew DeWalt www.hihorizon.com as well) but was too far gone to really change the concept of this game by then as I'd already modelled nice flat tracks - might as well use 'em. I found it's amazing how long/much effort it takes to actually put a full game around the concept so I concentrated on actually getting it finished. I mean, you have all your game loop code and think it's done but you then need 10 times that for everything else, plus more graphics work - it's a nightmare! I'm glad I did it though
I've just seen that barzoule has posted a great demo (using my dll ironically - the git! LOL) of arcade racing physics and think that would make a great basis for work on a sequal to this. Victory Road V1 at least will remain flat however as I don't think the flatness detracts from the playability (but jumps, hills & banks would be alot cooler!!)