in late 2008 by Xavier Bertaux and Jean-Philippe Meuret in order to deliver
a better end-user experience through new and visually improved tracks,
new cars sets with more realistic handling and improved liveries,
more challenging AI opponents, and many other exciting new features to come soon (network, force feedback, career mode ...).
</p>
<p>
Some long time TORCS-addicted developers and artists immediately joined them in the core developers team :
Andrew Sumner, Brian Gavin, Eckhard Jager, Mart Kelder and Wolf-Dieter Beelitz,
quickly followed by Gabor Kmetyko and Haruna Say.
Christos Dimitrakakis, Sebastian Heni and Kristof Kaly-Kullai also contribute a lot.
Visit the official <ahref="http://speed-dreams.sourceforge.net"target="_parent">Speed Dreams site</a>, the under-construction <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed-dreams">SF.net Wiki</a> and the in-game credits pages for more information, .
</p>
<p>
In the development team, <b>democracy</b> is the rule : we try and take time
to discuss about everything and decide together what and how we work for the project.
But we also believe in freeness and responsability : once things are clear,
one or multiple members often get the mission to achieve what's been decided,
based on their will, skills, interest on the mission, and trust from the team.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_3">1.3 Is documentation available ?</a></h3>
<p>
Yes, there is some documentation available. Look at the official
<ahref="http://speed-dreams.sourceforge.net"target="_parent">Speed Dreams site</a> and on
the under-construction <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed-dreams">SF.net Wiki</a>.
You can find installation instructions <ahref="http://speed-dreams.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/speed-dreams/trunk/INSTALL?view=markup">here</a>,
the TORCS robot tutorial <ahref="http://www.torcs.org">here</a>,
instructions about how to use Speed Dreams <ahref="http://???/how_to_driver.html">here</a>.
there is as well a <ahref="http://katergo.rege.org/projects/trackeditor"target="_parent">track editor</a> available,
and Andrew Sumner is currently creating a <ahref="http://???">car building tutorial</a>.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_4">1.4 Which features has Speed Dreams ?</a></h3>
<p>
There are 4 different car sets featuring a total of 28 cars, AI opponents for nearly all of these (except for the LS-GT1 car set : WIP) and 38 tracks to race on.
You can steer with a joystick, a gamepad or a steering wheel with pedals, if it's supported by your platform.
It is also possible to drive with the mouse or the keyboard, but it's not easy. Graphic features
lighting, smoke, exhaust flames, skidmarks and glowing brake disks. The simulation features a simple damage
The gameplay allows different types of races from the simple practice session up to the championship (and soon a full racer life-time career mode).
Enjoy racing against your friends in the split screen mode with up to four human players.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_5">1.5 What are the future plans ?</a></h3>
<p>
Besides maintenance and bugfixing, the develoment team is currently working
on network gaming, racer life-time career mode, full weather simulation, improved engine sound, new tracks ;
force feedback, new car sets with AI opponents will also be there for the next release (2.0) ;
improved physics, better inside view, replay, improved graphic rendering, improved performances are also domains in which we'll be working in the mid-term.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_6">1.6 Why don't you ... ?</a></h3>
<p>
Don't ever forget that we develop Speed Dreams in our spare time and you get it for free. Your wishes,
speed-dreams-users</a> mailing list or <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed-dreams">tracker</a>. If nobody picks up your idea feel free to contact the development team :
we'll be happy to help you implement it yourself ;-)
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_7">1.7 What do you mean with robot ?</a></h3>
<p>
In Speed Dreams a "robot" is a piece of program code that automatically drives a car,
so all the opponents you choose are robots. Aka "AI" opponents (Artificial Intelligence).
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_8">1.8 Why don't you replace GLUT with SDL ?</a></h3>
<p>
We actually are doing so : next release will no more use GLUT.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_9">1.9 Why don't you replace PLib with OGRE 3D / OSG ?</a></h3>
<p>
We are currently thinking about starting to move that way ;
but we have to rewrite the whole 3D graphics module from scratch ...
so it will probably take some time. Fortunately, the modular architecture of the code
we inherited from TORCS enables us to achieve it smoothly : expect some preview soon.
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_10">1.10 Are there official championships ?</a></h3>
<p>
Yes, you can find offline robot championships in the
<ahref="http://www.berniw.org/trb"target="_parent">TORCS Racing Board</a>.
</p>
<p>
This championship is actually dedicated to TORCS-compatible robots
but Speed Dreams offers backward compatibility with TORCS as for this :
your TORCS robot will work as is in Speed Dreams, and your Speed Dreams robot
will work in TORCS if you follow some very simple rules (contact the dev. team for more details).
</p>
<h3><aname="c1_11">1.11 Should I start my own racing sim project ?</a></h3>
<p>
Definitively not, no! Why ? Do a search on sf.net and Google,
you will find between 15 and 40 open source car/driving/racing sim
projects, and most of them have been "promising" and
died. Instead of starting another dead project contribute to the
few existing successful ones.
</p>
<p>
Believe it or not, but your project will very likely be a dead
one as well. The reason is quite simple, people underestimate the
required effort and the change of their lives during the project lifespan, think
about it. Just that you get an idea, TORCS turns now 12 ...
</p>
<p>
Of course, you will say : "this is a strange advice, from you guys, who recently forked
from TORCS ...". Yes, true ... and false. Because if TORCS had been that open
to our ideas and working will, certainly we had joined its dev. team ...
but most of us have been proposing so much valuable work for such a long time
without seeing it actually integrated ... that we finally come to that extreme conclusion.
</p>
<p>
And believe it or not, we promise here we won't do this TORCS error twice :
from the beginning, we stated that everything in the project would be
decided on a <b>democratic</b> basis inside the development team.
And that we'd be happy to welcome good candidates in the team provided
they accept this democracy statement and the main purpose of the project :
deliver a game for the sim driving and racing addicts.
</p>
<br/><h2>2. Platforms and Requirements.</h2>
<h3><aname="c2_1">2.1 On which operating systems does Speed Dreams run?</a></h3>
<ul>
<li>Linux (x86 and x86_64) on several distros (Mandriva 2008, 9, 10 ; Ubuntu 9.x), with GCC 4.x compiler</li>
<li>Windows XP, Vista, 7, with MS Visual C++ 2005/2008 compiler</li>
</ul>
The Mac OS X port is 95% finished, with the CMake build system : Volonteers are welcome for the last 5%, and make it available for the next release ;-).
</p>
<p>
And TORCS was known to work also on PPC Linux, FreeBSD and Windows 98/2000, so it should not be complicated to port Speed Dreams to these platforms if needed. Please report of any try !
</p>
<h3><aname="c2_2">2.2 What are the hardware requirements ?</a></h3>
Under Windows, make sure you compile all the 3rd party libraries using
the <b>"Multi-threaded DLL"</b> run-time C library.
</p>
<br/><h2>3. Installation.</h2>
<h3><aname="c3_1">3.1 How do I install Speed Dreams ?</a></h3>
<p>
You can find installation instructions <ahref="http://speed-dreams.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/speed-dreams/trunk/INSTALL?view=markup">here</a>.
</p>
<br/><h2>4. Problems and Solutions.</h2>
<h3><aname="c4_1">4.1 General problem solving approach.</a></h3>
<p>
You may encounter this kind of problems: System configuration
problems, build problems and runtime problems. If you face a
problem follow these steps:
<ul>
<li>Have a look into this FAQ, perhaps your problem is already known.</li>
<li>Clean up your old Speed Dreams installation (Windows : C:\Program files\speed-dreams ; Linux : /usr/local/share/games/speed-dreams, /usr/local/libs/speed-dreams, /usr/local/bin/speed-dreams).</li>
<li>Clean up your old environment settings (Windows : <Mydocuments>/speed-dreams.settings ; Linux : ~/.speed-dreams).</li>
<li>Read the installation instructions carefully, double check your steps (don't forget the "make datainstall" step under Linux ;-).</li>
<li>Make sure that you have not installed multiple GLU libraries.</li>
<li>Make sure that you have installed the latest OpenGL/DRI and sound drivers.</li>
<li>Try to start up Speed Dreams with the "-s" switch to disable multitexturing.</li>
<li>Make sure that the version number of your ALSA drivers, libraries and utilities match.</li>
<li>Test your OpenGL setup with tuxracer and bzflag (under Linux).</li>
<li>Search into the mailing list archives <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=speed-dreams-users">here</a> or <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=speed-dreams-devel">here</a>, perhaps there is already a solution.</li>
<li>If you get stuck learn how to <ahref="#c5_1">report a problem</a>.</li>
<li>Now Speed Dreams should pick up your robot.</li>
</ul>
<h4><aname="c4_4_3">4.4.3 Is my joystick / steering wheel / gamepad supported ?</a></h4>
<p>
If your operating system supports your device, it will also work within Speed Dreams. To learn how
to setup your input device visit the Speed Dreams site and read the "How to drive" section
or read out the how_to_drive.html document shipped with the game.
</p>
<h4><aname="c4_4_4">4.4.4 How do I set up a multiplayer game ?</a></h4>
<p>
Speed Dreams supports split screen multiplayer games with up to four players. Setup:
<ul>
<li>Set up the players in the "Configure Players" screen.</li>
<li>If more than one player uses the keyboard, read <ahref="http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/omniv/keyboards_are_evil.html"target="_parent">this</a>.</li>
<li>Now choose a race, select the players in the configuration screen.</li>
<li>Start the race, stop it with "p" to pause.</li>
<li>Now create the split screens with "]", or remove them with "[".</li>
<li>If you want to change the view of a "mini screen" point with the mouse on it and set it up as usual (F1-F11, ">", "<", ...).</li>
<li>When you have set up all views press "p" to end the pause and start the race.</li>
<li>Have fun;-)</li>
</ul>
</p>
<h4><aname="c4_4_5">4.4.5 I can't adjust the joystick / wheel / gamepad axis centering.</a></h4>
<p>
Before you start Speed Dreams, make sure that the joystick / wheel / gamepad
is correctly setup/calibrated for your system. You can use the "jscal" and "jstest"
utilities for that ; you should find them in your Linux distribution
or from the Linux Console project on the internet.
If this works fine, center your axis (e.g. if you have noncentering axis like sliders),
then startup Speed Dreams and setup your players and controls configuration.
It is important to center the axis before you go to the calibration (Question: is it still relevant ?).
</p>
<br/><h2>5. Problem reporting.</h2>
<h3><aname="c5_1">5.1 When do I report a problem ?</a></h3>
<p>
You should report a problem only after you have carefully read the available documentation
and did not find a solution for the problem.
</p>
<h3><aname="c5_2">5.2 How and where do I report a problem ?</a></h3>
<p>
You can report a problem in 2 ways :
<ul>
<li>send a message to the <ahref="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/speed-dreams-users"target="_parent">speed-dreams-users</a> mailing list :
first subscribe to it, otherwise your messages need to be approved,
so it can take long till they become distributed</li>
<li>create a ticket in the <ahref="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed-dreams">bug / feature tracker</a> : you need to be logged in to SF.net do do that</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
In any case, send us as much information about the problem as you know.
At least provide the following :
<ul>
<li>A good description of the problem.</li>
<li>The Speed Dreams version</li>
<li>Whether you installed Speed Dreams from a binary package (which one),
or you compiled it from sources</li>
<li>The console output of Speed Dreams.</li>
<li>Your operating system (uname -a).</li>
<li>The output of "glxinfo -l" (Linux, FreeBSD).</li>
<li>TORCS review at linuxgames.com <ahref="http://www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=/reviews/torcs/"target="_parent">www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=/reviews/torcs/</a>.</li>
<li>TORCS review of Mousehole <ahref="http://www.freegamesweb.co.uk/game.php?ID=75">www.freegamesweb.co.uk/game.php?ID=75</a>.</li>
<li>TORCS review at Unixreview <ahref="http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508d/ur0508d.html">www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508d/ur0508d.html</a>.</li>
<li>TORCS at the university <ahref="http://www1.coe.neu.edu/~mourant/cse270/"target="_parent">www1.coe.neu.edu/~mourant/cse270</a>.</li>
