Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Prerelease Info Log FileA file with the name of r3dlog.txt can be found in the game files.

Unused Code#

Fog#

Fo_g 600 10000 224 235 246
fo_g 177 195 244

Devil Passage contains two unused lines of code relating to fog in env.dat that can be used by removing the default fog value and renaming Fo_g to Fog. The first value actually adds a somewhat improved look to the level, while the second option just displays a thick red-colored fog that obscures most of the map (though it does seem thematically appropriate for a place called "Devil Passage").

Unused Graphics#

Title Screen#

The title screen from Stellar Stone's Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! is present and identical to the one used in that game.

Credits Screen#

The credits screen from Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! is present in this game's files as a .psd. It is dated May 5, 2003.

Vehicle Selection Screen#

There is a second variant of the vehicle selection screen present in the game files. It is very similar to the one used in-game, except it has a "Change Color" option.

Character 1#

Two unused textures relating to a character simply named "character 1". The character is wearing a TTsKO pattern uniform that has a Chechen flag on it. It might be related to the WarZ project (another game directed by Sergey Titov) in some way.

Quite eerily, this character's face might be a photoscan of Shamil Basayev, a notorious Chechnyan terrorist responsible for carrying out many attacks in ex-Soviet republics in the 1990s and 2000s.

Billboards#

Devil Passage has textures for three billboards that go unused. While the first two look innocent enough, the last one is a tad bit crude for a game rated E.

Sunrise W2#

Present on the texture sheet for the Sunrise W2 is a picture of someone apparently named "Durik" (which also means "Fool" in Russian). It is not assigned to any of the UVs on the model, and thus cannot been seen in gameplay.

Unused Audio#

A wind or plane-like sound effect that was apparently intended to be ambiance, judging by the filename.

A rocket-like sound effect that was also made for ambiance.

A louder version of the rocket-like sound effect, apparently for a waterfall.

A river sound effect, most likely for the "river" in the game.

Truck Trailers#

Both Thunder and Thunderbull have trailers fully modeled, but are unused in-game. Unlike Thunder, Thunderbull's trailer is rendered on the vehicle select icon and also can be seen on the box art.

Unused Vehicles#

Aside from the game's vast collection of four semi-trucks, four unused vehicles can be found in Data/Cars/.

Ford#

A fully-functional model and textures for a Ford Explorer. Can be loaded onto the existing cars easily. This car is perhaps one of the strangest, as its files date back to June 2002 and it looks different compared to the other models present in the folder.

Celica#

A fully-functional model and textures for a Toyota Celica. Can be loaded onto the existing cars easily.

Hummer#

The model and textures for a Hummer H1 are present, but the material file needs to be edited for textures to display properly (change texture_gouraud_bumpmap to texture_gouraud_envmap for the textures to display as intended).

Z350#

Two identical sets of a model for a Nissan 350Z, one of which has significantly lower-quality textures. Both can be loaded onto the existing cars easily. There also exists a menu preview for the Z350 (as it is called in the files), showing it with a yellow paint job instead of the grey textures present in-game. An orange version of this car is used in Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! as Tornado.

Unused Level#

The infamous Nightride level, which crashes the game when it tries to load, unsurprisingly has very few resources. The only resources it does have are:

• The level select icons.
• Minor world and environment data.
• The sky's texture (geo_sunset.bmp) and dome model. The texture is actually different to the sky as it appears in the level's menu icon.

Vehicle Switch Key#

Pressing Tab will allow you to drive the opponent's vehicle, Pressing it again after switching will crash the game.

Free Camera Mode#

The game has an easily accessible but little-known Free Camera mode. It allows full movement around the "tracks" and allows you to still control the vehicle you're linked to.

• C - Activates free-camera mode. Pressing it again leaves it and returns the camera to the vehicle you were last controlling.
• W/A/S/D - Pans the camera around forward, back, left, and right respectively, relative to the camera's facing.
• Q/E - Moves the camera up and down, respectively.
• Mouse - Looks around.
• Z - Moves your camera from anywhere in the map to directly below the vehicle you are linked to.
• Shift - Speeds up the camera's normally-slow movements a little.

Custom Resolution#

Changing the first and second parameters in scene3d.ini to horizontal resolution and vertical resolution respectively will cause the game during gameplay to stretch to fit the screen.

The stretching doesn't work well, though - running the game at resolutions above 800×600 will cause the speed counter to be in the wrong place, and running it at anything above 1024×768 will cause the view to be split with a squashed view of the truck on the left and a black bar containing the speedometer on the right.

Leftover CarZ.exe#

Download Big Rigs (leftover CarZ.exe) File: BigRigsLeftoverCarZ.zip (263KB) (info)

In the original pressing of Big Rigs, Carz.res contains a build of CarZ.exe compiled two hours before the version in the root folder. Somehow, in some way, it's even more broken than the executable that shipped with the game:

• Whenever you try to accelerate, your rig will get violently pulled back. This is especially apparent on Forgotten Road 1 and Small Town Road.
• After winning one race, you will automatically win any other race before it even starts.
• Forgotten Road 1 will not load the world assets properly if you attempt to race on it again.

Revisional Differences#

A "Version 1.0" patch was released on January 15, 2004 that "improved" the game in a few ways:

• The Nightride map can now be accessed, though it's just a mirrored version of the first map.
• The AI actually moves, albeit at a speed of 1 MPH. It also stops just before the finish line, as there is no loss condition programmed and the game crashes if the computer somehow wins.
• The infamous "YOU'RE WINNER !" graphic on the victory screen was changed to "YOU WIN !":

Original	v1.0

As a side note, both the Free Camera mode and Vehicle Switch functions are disabled in this patch, and custom resolutions are still broken.

References#