Welcome to Torcs-NG, the Torcs laboratory!

TORCS-NG is a fork of the famous racing car simulator TORCS, aiming to implement exciting new features, cars, tracks and AI opponents to make a more enjoyable game for you, the player :)

In other words, Torcs-NG is the place:

• Where developers can try their ideas and have every chance to get them released to the end-users (democracy is the main principle ruling the dev team),
• where end-users can enjoy the completion of these ideas and give their opinion about it, and/or make new suggestions.

So, if you find your or some people's Torcs patch proposals don't integrate the official release as quickly as you would have loved, you have reached the right place !

How to contribute

You can contribute to Torcs-NG as an "end-user" or/and as a "developer":

• As an end-user (check the Download page in SF.net for how to get source/ binary releases):
  • Help the dev team to test pre-releases
  • Suggest improvements, express your support or disgust about changes
  • Ask questions about compilation / build from source problems
  • ...
  all through the user mailing list: torcs-ng-users@lists.sourceforge.net
• as a developer (see the Code menu in SF.net for how to get the source tree from the Subversion repository):
  • as guest contributor, you may propose your adds/improvements as patches (patch files built via diff -Naur or equivalent) against the latest source tree, and send them to us as attached files through the devel mailing list (torcs-ng-devel@lists.sourceforge.net) or the tracker; you don't have write access yet to the SVN repository, but it's up to you to prove us your skills and innovation ability as a programmer, a software architect, an artist, ...as well as your self-discipline in testing ;-) ... and that way, you may enter step by step in the dev. team...
  • as a registered developer, you now have write access to the SVN repository; but the preferred way for submitting adds/improvements is still the patch, as it can be easily tested and reviewed by anyone whatever the status of its working copy of the source tree; once the dev. team, through discussions, peer reviews and tests, has democratically decided to integrate the patch, you can at last commit your changes to the repository!

Your contribution to Torcs-NG may take place in many domains:

• The core code itself, and its numerous subjects : user interface, physics engine, 3D graphics engine, race managment, input device related code, file formats, ...to enhance, optimize, make more up-to-date, fix bugs, port to another platform...
• The robot(s) code (AI racing)
• The cars design or tuning
• The tracks design
• The documentation
• Feel free to suggest...

Torcs-NG release process

Torcs-NG won't follow Torcs release stream : we plan to adopt a pace of at least 1 or 2 releases a year, and to simply integrate all interesting changes / fixes that Torcs would have released meanwhile.

As already said, the content of each release will be democratically decided inside the dev team. Stability and bug freeness is not our first purpose, but it's just the second one: modifications that are not really completed, well tested or that may degrade the simulation realism, some other essential feature or performance, or the end-user gaming experience won't be released (unless they are of great interest and can be completely switched off through some run-time user action).

For the moment, the supported platforms are Linux (x86, x86_64) and 32 bit Windows XP and Vista, but any volunteer is welcome for any other... as Torcs is known to work on Linux PPC, FreeBSD and MacOS X.

Next release (may be by the end of 2008) will include at least :

• 3 exciting new tracks and 3 visually improved ones,
• improved textures for many cars,
• 2 amazing new car sets by Andrew Sumner : SuperCars and 36 GP,
• a new TRB first-class robot for these cars, and many others (at last a real AI opponent !),
• animated driver by Andrew Sumner on some cars, 3D wheels for many cars by Eric Espie,
• and more ...

And with the following release (next year) :

• you will enjoy network racing : race against your friends over the internet,
• you will feel the cars in your hands with force feedback,
• and more ...

Links & Lists

• Torcs: The Open Racing Car Simulator and its project page at SF.net
• Torcs-NG developers mailing list and its archives
• Torcs-NG users mailing list and its archives
• Torcs-NG SVN repository HOW-TO and on-line browser
• Build and install Torcs-NG (look at INSTALL files)