Our ReVolt Pub

Hi, long term Re-Volt player here. I first started playing Re-Volt so long ago I can't remember. Still one of the best looking games ever, in my view.

Anyway in a few weeks I'm going to be setting up a LAN at my kids' school fundraising carnival. I will have 12 old PC's running XP and will be charging kids to race on Re-Volt.

I'm wondering what the best way to run the races might be. Ideally I would like to be able to sit at another PC and start the races "externally" while not actually participating but as far as I know, this isn't possible. As far as I know, the only way to run the games as "host' will be to access one of the 12 PC's on which the kids are actually racing. So I'll have to actually sit at one of the kids' PC's and then start the game and hand over to the kid racing on that PC.

Is that correct, or is there some better way where I can control the races without being in them?\

Edited to add: if anyone has any other tips or tricks or pitfalls to what I'm trying to do I'd be very grateful for any help.

thanks

Princhester

You could join the race on your own computer and put yourself in spectator mode. I believe you can still remain host that way and simply observe the kids race, change track when necessary etc. I haven't tried in practice, but it should be possible for you to do that. Definitely worth testing if you get the chance.

Thanks for that. But then I would only have 11 slots left for kids to play on, right? Because even though I was a spectator I would still take up one of the 12 slots, I think. Hmm, will need to test.

Not quite, there are 16 slots to join even though the player limit is 12, so you can put yourself as a spectator and still watch 12 cars smashing a track.

Long story short: "Ideally" is possible if you upgrade the re-volts to 1.2/RVGL (it's also now fully portable!).

besides setting up the computers do ugprade the re-volts to 1.2 or RVGL (the former is the game you've always played but with patches, recommended version: a15.0420 and the latter is open source and its very polished for being alpha quality, runs on linux) it wasnt possible before.

Absolute max players is 16, and at any time there can be 12 racers max (originally it was 12 (8 on DirectPlay lobbies (bug) ) player max and no late join) this means you can have 16 players and for example have them take turns, you can even do competitions with fewer racers like "genocide" race (team racing against own team), 1v1 battle tag tournaments.
Here's what you should do (suggestion, don't feel forced): (this basically says "yes you can" to your question, and its not possible on Acclaim versions so use 1.2 or RVGL (16 players, spectator, kicking and late join are features that weren't included in original versions) put these 12 computers available to the children and have a 13th one for you where you control the game as spectator.

FYI for other members: He thinks in the original release, thats why such troughts. (just in case)

Fantastic thanks guys that's perfect.

So now I have more questions. Would you recommend 1.2 or RVGL? And what sort of connection would you use - tcp/ip or ipx/spx?

Thanks guys

Princhester @ 6 Jun 2016, 03:25 PM wrote: And what sort of connection would you use - tcp/ip or ipx/spx?

Definitely TCP, IPX/SPX have been dead for years as far as PC gaming is concerned, and you wouldn't be able to get it to work on a modern system (Windows Vista and newer dropped support for it).

Thanks. The reason I asked is that the PCs will be running XP so I could use IPX/SPX. I also had a feeling I'd read somewhere that re-volt was faster on IPX/SPX

Anyway I'm happy with TCP/IP. That's what I'm used to.

Any view on whether 1.2 or RVGL would be better? Bear in mind I'll be using older machines and older graphics cards and don't really care about any fancy features. I just want simplicity and above all reliability.

Thanks

Rv 1.2 is just a version with more functions and less bugs, but the graphics are the same (still uses original directX). Rvgl uses now Open Gl, I don't know if it does work on older pc because of this, the graphic engine is still the same though.

Been a long time but the school carnival got postponed due to delay, so it was only last weekend.

The day went OK'ish but wasn't great. I had technical issues early on due to USB hubs that kept dropping the joysticks. I eventually was able to work around that.

It wasn't as popular as I thought it might have been. Not sure why. I think I had the price a bit high early on, I had more takers later when I dropped the price. My setup was also a bit out of the way from the main crowd.

As far as setup was concerned, cabling was the thing that was a major hassle and took a lot of time. I've figured out a way to simplify that down for next time.

The game itself was fine. No problems at all. Network ran perfectly, not a single hitch.

So Phantom wanted pictures.

By the way, the setup we were using was to pick a single car, modify it so it was easier to drive for the little kids, then have a different version of the same car in different colours playing on each machine so we could tell them apart.

The problem is that this meant that every car had "Cheat" above it.

I know that the reason for this is to stop people using modified cars on internet games without it being detectible but it's a bit annoying that even the host can't turn this off.

I don't suppose there is any way around this?

Oh and by the way if you are curious, the cabinet is an old filing cabinet that's been gutted and shelves put in for 12 motherboards, two per shelf. Each shelf is powered off a single PSU (500 watt) which is enough to run two old boards and no peripherals. The boards have no hard drive but just use an 8GB USB stick as C: for the OS with room left over for the game. The top shelf has a router and a 16 port switch to connect it all together. There are cables for monitors, sound and joystick for each motherboard.

Cool thing, perhaps the game is ancient and doesnt attract many people or not everyone like racing games?
Not sure but perhaps RVGL could help with the issue unless of course it was done on rvgl.
for the hard work

EDIT: Shame, low quality usb hubs..

Note: There's a edit button in your own posts which you should have used since what you did is considered (double)multi-posting.

OK, the board I usually post on has no edit after a couple of minutes so not used to being able to edit.

My USB problem was hubs not Re-volt. The OS was dropping the joysticks, regardless of Re-volt.

I don't think it's that the game was old or that it was racing. Kids who saw it thought it was "REALLY COOL!" but I think maybe they were a bit intimidated by the setup. And the older kids probably figured they could go home and play unlimited games for free anyway.

Fabulous! You made it possible! I admire you for having the enthusiasm that you've put into this and for being able to set all this up for the school. It was a great idea and as far as I can see, it was wonderfully carried out. Everything looks awesome. I'm happy that the few that had the chance to try it out, have liked it. Despite not being many, those happy faces are worth any technical complications you've had. It's understandable that they were not many, we should understand re-volt's position nowadays against other things out there that the kids and teenagers usually play, and we should also consider that nothing has been done through the years to make the game correctly advertised or well-known. In a few words, it's always been difficult to attract people into the game but it's magical that you have come up with this and that it still catches children's attention. There were other things to do in the background I see, and the fact that you were charging them both reduce a lot the chances of having a full crowd of players in those wonderfully installed computers. If this became something permanent I believe you'd probably be having more habitual players.

Anyway, thanks a lot for doing this and for sharing this experience! This has been really inspiring.