IndyCar Racing II: The Rendition Experience

RSC

RSC

Master of Web
Staff member
Rendition video cards were something I was vaguely aware of around the …

racesimcentral.net

IndyCar Racing II: The Rendition Experience | Race Sim Central

Rendition video cards were something I was vaguely aware of around the time it was active, but I never had one myself. Until this past year I had only ever seen IndyCar Racing II in software rendering, usually upscaled in DOSBOX; DOSBOX being the recommended way to run the software today because...
racesimcentral.net racesimcentral.net
 
RSC said:
Rendition video cards were something I was vaguely aware of around the …

racesimcentral.net

IndyCar Racing II: The Rendition Experience | Race Sim Central

Rendition video cards were something I was vaguely aware of around the time it was active, but I never had one myself. Until this past year I had only ever seen IndyCar Racing II in software rendering, usually upscaled in DOSBOX; DOSBOX being the recommended way to run the software today because...
racesimcentral.net racesimcentral.net
Click to expand...
Is there anywhere I can get hold of a copy of Indy Car Racing II : The Rendition Experience?

Nothing on ebay, short of prying a copying out of someone's cold dead hands.

I'm working on a Rendition Verité wrapper (already supports all 13 Windows games). I'd like to add support for Speedy 3D/DOS, but find ICR2 is impossibly difficult.

My wrapper can be seen in action here:

,
here:
and here:
 
@sharangad Very cool!! You probably want to look for CART Racing, which will usually have a DOS folder and within that, a REND folder. That is the re-release of IndyCar Racing II when IndyCar and CART split... So they had to rebrand it.

The ICR2/CART rend version will only work without issues on the v1, but you can switch out files as the article described for a v2 Rendition card. This does cause other issues though, so a wrapper would be amazing. The DOS+Rend version won't run in Windows (even in a DOS window on Win95) at all. So I hope you can figure something out :)
 
Cheers for your kind word guys and the link and instructions!

The official RReady wrapper thread is here:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=95721

There's a watermarked but fully functional and time unlimited version on that thread.

There's also a watermark free paid version for $9.99 on the WIndows Store (RReady Renditon Verité), if anyone's interested. If there're taker please try the free version first (called an alpha) to see if it works on your system. The two versions are identical except for the launcher which doesn't have an auto-downloader for demos and stuff because of store rules on bundleware. Download links to Rendition specific game binaries and demos are supplied with the paid version (again identical to the free version) but you have to download and unzip them yourself. Steam and the Epic store refused to carry it so I'm stuck with Microsoft.

DOS support is already under investigation. vQuake 1 doesn't appear to be a dynamic overlay based app so the actual API calls are visible. vHexen II has rendering issues with a few things and that's the priority at the moment.

Rest assured, I'm definitely going to add DOS support to RReady. For DOS based apps RReady's going to report itself as a V1000. For WIndows currently it's a V2000. DOSBox Staging will be used at first. The existing launcher will get a new tab for DOS apps and updated with a custom build of DOS Box staging .

Once again, cheers guys!
 
@sharangad Thank you so much for this project. The small but passionate community of ICR2 players have been wishing for a Rendition wrapper for many years.

I have an old PC that has a Rendition V2100 4 MB card which isn't fully compatible with the game and requires some tinkering to run. It would be great that your wrapper could work like a V1000.

One thing I have noticed when I played ICR2 using my Rendition card is that the game will crash with an out-of-memory error if I am trying to load a particularly large track (e.g. that ones that are converted from a newer Papyrus game or scratch built with a higher level of complexity and file sizes compared to the default tracks). I wonder if your wrapper can simulate the Rendition card having higher amount of memory.

I am also curious if you think the game could potentially be played at high resolution than 640x480. I know the UI and some textures like the cockpit are hard coded to fit 640x480 so I wonder if those would get stretched to fit the screen.

But honestly, I would just love to see it running in a wrapper with the original specs. That would be incredible already. Thank you so much for your efforts.
 
RReady emulates a V2200 with 128 MB of RAM and yes it can upscale already (for Windows apps). The RAM limit can be pushed out further but a few of the Windows apps don't run right with too much VRAM. Most of my videos are at 4k/UDH (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCucgSfuk0etI9t9-mKAA05g)

You can try out the a watermarked and free version of the wrapper here:
RReady Fully Tested Releae( November 6 2023)
https://1drv.ms/u/s!As-dKk-N73dSlmIfZk1e2zquKYDk?e=FdXAcS
MD5: 6e75dda5f5dde0d5577383b7bc90480f
- Fixes VH2 texture corruption issues.
- Adds MSAA as the default vQuake 2/vHexen II AA mode. This is a stopgap measure until a full implementation of Rendition's proprietary Quake specific AA is fully implemented.

(This release is live on the Windows store as well without a watermark)

It doesn't support Speedy3d/DOS apps (yet). That's what I'm furiously trying to fix.
 
sharangad said:
RReady emulates a V2200 with 128 MB of RAM and yes it can upscale already (for Windows apps). The RAM limit can be pushed out further but a few of the Windows apps don't run right with too much VRAM. Most of my videos are at 4k/UDH (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCucgSfuk0etI9t9-mKAA05g)

You can try out the a watermarked and free version of the wrapper here:
RReady Fully Tested Releae( November 6 2023)
https://1drv.ms/u/s!As-dKk-N73dSlmIfZk1e2zquKYDk?e=FdXAcS
MD5: 6e75dda5f5dde0d5577383b7bc90480f
- Fixes VH2 texture corruption issues.
- Adds MSAA as the default vQuake 2/vHexen II AA mode. This is a stopgap measure until a full implementation of Rendition's proprietary Quake specific AA is fully implemented.

(This release is live on the Windows store as well without a watermark)

It doesn't support Speedy3d/DOS apps (yet). That's what I'm furiously trying to fix.
Click to expand...
Are you planning to release it as a non-Windows store version? I don't mind paying.
 
Can't Steam and Epic won't list it. I went through all the steps and they pretty much said they don't carry non-game apps and refused to approve the app. Steam used to, but not anymore. On a discussion forum someone at Epic actually told me it would be allowed. After paying the entry fee and creating the store page they failed the review.

I know a lot of people don't like the Windows store. After things like "Game for Windows Live" you can't really blame them. I was one of the people who got burned. I still have games discs like Street Fighter 4 and Arkham City which have been useless for quite a while.

I have no other means of selling this other than through the Windows store. Well nothing short of running my own site, which at the moment would be a bit of a hassle.
 
This isn't live on the store and won't be rolled out just yet.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!As-dKk-N73dSlnoMo-Zu9Ad0nTvO
MD5: 46c91c66a1052eb13b3cc0c5f4933d40

- Alpha release auto-downloader has textual error messages on failure. (Windows 7 SP1 users may need the Win7 TLS 1.2 patch/reg keys for the download to work)
- RRosetta toggling renderers between RRedline, OpenGL and Direct3D now work.
For F3 Direct3D switch to work you'll needs dgvoodo's:
DDraw.dll,
D3DImm.dll,
D3D8.dll and possibly
D3D9.dll
- Formula 1 Credits textures should appear. These textures were rendererd with an z-coordinate of -65535.9xx. RReady capped z at [0,65535.0]. The far limit has now been corrected to 65536.0.
 
Hexen II Bronze Golem Fix:

Caused by having too much VRAM. The build below lets you set MaxVRAM=<nn> in Rendition.cfg (megabytes/floating point value). For any type of golem to change colour during beam/projectile attacks MaxVRAM=14 or below must be set. VRAM must be capped at 14 MB or below. The framerate does drop quite a bit in some sections and there may be HUD rendering issues. These can be fixed, possibly including the constant texture loading (no promises).

The colour change delays or doesn't happen at all beyond 14 MB and trails off until 15 MB where it completely stops.

OneDrive

1drv.ms 1drv.ms
MD5: 79f3fefbf6b58f06a25782a0cfcd9cf4

It would be nice it this worked with full 128 MB of VRAM.

There's a whole lot of memory safety changes, which may break things.
 
Partially tested (all games should run. )

https://1drv.ms/u/s!As-dKk-N73dSlwMMo-Zu9Ad0nTvO
MD5: 06430b0e6c37761875430acc86f9f04b

- VH2 bronze and Egyptian golems will change colour during particle attack when MaxVRAM=14 is set in Rendition.cfg (or any value beween [4,14] is set). Do not use this option with any other applications. It is untested against all those. Game performance will be poor when VRAM is restricted. This doesn't affect gaming resolution, only texture storage capacity. Running at the default VRAM capacity (128MB) will prevent the golems from changing colour. This appears to be an issue with the application.
- RRosetta can toggle between renderers by using F1-F3 (for F3 to work dgvoodoo's directdraw/3d files (4 files) must be placed in the same folder as RRosetta)
- UseMSAA=3 enables the experimental (and incomplete) vh2 and vq2 AA. RReady defaults to MSAA (UseMSAA=0).
- Memory safety measure are in place, so performance may dip by 1-2 fps.
 
November 22, 2023 (Fully tested watermarked store builld):

OneDrive

1drv.ms 1drv.ms
MD5: 787425d7a2838f199783f74303be1780

20 November 2023

- Ability to restrict VRAM by setting MaxVRAM=<nn>(Megabytes). The Golems in VH2.exe correctly change colour when VRAM is restricted to between 4-14 MB. Restricting VRAM will severely affect performance and is not recommended. It is also unsupported in other apps.
- RRosetta's renderer switching (using F1-F3) work correctly but for F3 (Direct3D) to work dgVoodo's directdraw/direct3d files need to be copied to the same folder as RRosetta.exe. OpenGL to RRedline switch to work.
- Screenshot capability in games such as WinDie.exe (save game image) or games which have a console command 'screenshot' should work (except VH2.exe. This application appear to do a copy to clipboard and does not currently work.). Screenshot is correctly downsampled now.
- End credits background textures in F1red.exe should work.
- Bilinear filtering (using shaders) is enforced for paletted textures.
- Memory safety checks removed. Should be as fast as before.
 
RReady 26 November 2023

OneDrive

1drv.ms 1drv.ms
MD5:

- Auto-downloader now downloads modified ref_v1k which support native fullscreen on modern Windows. Existing users will need to delete the existing ref_v1k, remove Quake 2 from the apps list and add it back in. Alternatively directly downloading the file from the link and manually patching it will be required. Force fullscreen will no longer be required in rendition.cfg along with 'set vid_fullscreen "0" 'in baseq2/config.cfg. The change in ref_v1k is only 1 byte.
 
Sorry for the spam. This should be the last update for a while (barring showstoppers).

OneDrive

1drv.ms 1drv.ms
MD5: 3f280c6df107d21dbbec54891bbfe0d4

RLauncher fixes:
- All vQuake 2 and vHexen II binary hacks in their own section along with warning about not being thoroughly tested each release).
- Corrects vQuake 2 unlocked resolutions (1280x1024 is selectable for underwater resolutions. 1152x864 is the highest full screen resolution.) For vQuake 2 unlocked resolutions, the underwater resolution should be higher than the game's internal full screen resolution. For vHexen II it should be at or below the game resolution. Rendering issues may otherwise arise.
- Adds vHexen II 72/144 max fps limit and 11/22 kHz audio selection
- Existing Redline.dll and verite.dll rebuilt with latest compiler update. Hopefully nothing should break.
 
Sharanga Dayananda

Sharanga Dayananda - 2024-01-12
RReady test build January 10 2024
Preliminary support for vQuake 2/vHexen II in-memory patching. This should leave the original binaries unpatched. For Quake 2 you will still need a copy of ref_v1k
that supports native fullscreen modes. The fullscreen toggle happens before RReady loads and it has no control over the parent EXE at that point.
The only change in this binary is the patching, but that doesn't mean that nothing's broken.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!As-dKk-N73dSlxgMo-Zu9Ad0nTvO
MD5: 51d976481231f74edc3cd29dbf699fbf
 
A quick update icr2 running and no it's not playable yet. Audio sync/frame rate problem persist and kb input doesn't work yet. Running at 60 fps crashes the intro very very quickly.

But you can see it in pristine (apart from blur as) 4k at 21fps.

 
Can confirm the game appears to be running in slow motion. The audio is running at proper speed. This is awesome progress!
 
sharangad said:
A quick update icr2 running and no it's not playable yet. Audio sync/frame rate problem persist and kb input doesn't work yet. Running at 60 fps crashes the intro very very quickly.

But you can see it in pristine (apart from blur as) 4k at 21fps.

Click to expand...
How will this work for DOS games? Will your wrapped work with DOSBOX, or some other method?
 
Great stuff. It looks to be going about the right speed now from what I can see, though the music seems to be starting and finishing a little ahead of where it does on the DOS version if I recall correctly. When you get the controls working if you go in the cockpit of the race car, test if the revs change in coordination with changing gear.

Other than that, can you set it to run at a 4:3 resolution only? This title doesn't have 16:9, so 2880x2160 would be beautiful. :)
 
RReady has a full set of aspect controls. You've got an app aspect (4:3 for Rendition, but adjustable with RReady) and a display aspect (which is the monitor's aspect) and you can tweak each one individually. When I get around to the next video I'll run it at 4:3.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top