Reckless Drivin' is a new action game for the Mac. It's gameplay is similar to it's predecessor, Burning Rubber, a Mac shareware game I released in 1996. In Burning Rubber one had to drive a car through 2-dimensional levels as fast as possible, leaving as much destruction as possible on the way.
Reckless Drivin' follows the same basic principle, however, it has been completely rewritten from scratch, and it employs a new graphics engine featuring smooth, dynamically zoomed, scrolling 16-bit graphics. The physics simulation has been redesigned to realistically resemble skidding and tire tracks on different road surfaces.
To learn how to play the game, click on the 'Help' button in the Reckless Drivin' main menu, or just start a new game, and see for yourself.
2. Version History
New in version 1.2a (1/18/2001)
-Fixed the -30561 error many people had with v1.2.
New in version 1.2 (1/16/2001)
-Carbonized the game, enabling you to run the game natively under MacOS X (see MacOS X readme below). CarbonLib is now required to run the game.
-The game will now remember the last name entered into the high score list.
-Fixed those misspellings in the game (this time for real).
-Added an FAQ section to the Readme.
New in version 1.1 (10/8/2000)
-Created a workaround for a bug in older versions of Sound Manager which would cause the game to crash when the player car crashes. However, this workaround may result in stuttering engine sounds and worse performance, so upgrading to a newer version of Sound Manager is *highly* recommended.
-Fixed a memory leak bug which would cause the game to crash when playing through all levels several times.
-Added the ability to load add-on level files created by RDEdit (registered users only).
-Fixed a few misspellings in the game and documentation (and probably introduced new ones).
-Pressing the esc key on the game finished screen will no longer abort the game, just close the screen.
3. Requirements
-A Power Macintosh or compatible. 100Mhz or more is recommended for smooth gameplay. To play the game at it's optimal settings, you should have an iMac or better.
-CarbonLib is now required to run the game. It comes pre-installed into newer systems. If you have an older system, you can download it from the Reckless Drivin' Homepage: http://reckless.x2.nu.
-DrawSprocket and InputSprocket are highly recommended (though no longer required for MacOS X compatibility). These are parts of the Apple GameSprockets. If you do not have them installed on your computer, you can download them from the Reckless Drivin' Homepage: http://reckless.x2.nu.
-MacOS 8.1 is required for the game to run.
-Sound Manager 3.6 or higher is recommended for best sound quality and performance.
-12 MB of free memory. If you play with the 'Use Thousands of Colors' setting disabled, you may try lowering the applications memory partition size to something around 8 MB.
4. Game Preferences
The program's interface should be mostly self-explanatory, but there are some settings which may not be so obvious:
-Line Skipping: Draws only every other line, resulting in better performance but worse image quality. May not be compatible with newer hardware. On the other hand, with newer hardware you'll never need this setting, since the game will run fast enough anyways.
-Motion Blur: Makes fast moving items look blurry, resulting in nicer graphics, but slightly lower performance.
-Use Thousands of Colors: Lets the game use 16-bit color instead of 8-bit color, giving you much more beautiful graphics, but worse performance.
-High Quality Sound: If this is checked, sound effects will have a much better quality, but performance will suffer. This setting effects the maximal number of simultaneously playing sounds, the sound sampling rate and it enables the simulation of the doppler effect (which changes the pitch of sounds according to the velocity of the sound source).
if you don't have a reasonably fast Mac (as of Summer 2000), you may have to disable some of the quality settings to achieve smooth gameplay.
5. Switching to the Finder
When you are in the main menu or in paused mode, you can switch to other applications using Cmd-Tab if you run MacOS 8.5 or newer.
6. Registering Reckless Drivin'
Reckless Drivin’ is shareware. This means that you can try out the game for free, but you are limited to playing only the first three levels until you register. Registration costs only US $12. When you register, you will get a code which lets you play all levels of the game.
If you have a credit card and an internet connection, you can comfortably register online using the World Wide Web with the Kagi payment processing service. Go To http://order.kagi.com/?F6, and follow the instructions on screen. I will mail you a registration code within one week (usually less then 48 hours).
If you prefer to register by mail using checks or cash money, launch the Register application, which will generate a form for you to send to the Kagi payment processing service. Just follow the instructions on screen. You can print out the form for check or cash orders and mail it to kagi, or email/fax it for credit card orders. If you provide an email address I will mail you a registration code within one week (usually less then 48 hours) after your payment form gets processed by Kagi. If you do not provide an email address, you may expect longer delays due to oversees postal mail delivery times (I live in Germany).
Registered users of the original Burning Rubber game will not receive a free registration code for Reckless' Drivin, since this game has been completely rewritten from scratch in an entirely different programming language. It does not share any code or data with the old game.
Your registrations will encourage me to continue developing mac games, and hopefully I'll be able to afford buying myself a nice 'real life' car ;-)
7. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Are there any cheats?
A: If there were any, do you think I would tell you?
Q: In the cheat dialog what vehicle id#s can I enter? What are the numbers of the cop cars?
A: Get RDEdit from http://reckless.x2.nu for a complete listing. However, note that you cannot drive the cop cars. Trying to do so will crash the machine.
Q: Where can I download add-on levels for Reckless Drivin' - why don't you put up any onto the game's website?
A: Because I have not yet received any user-submissions. If you manage to create something fun with RDEdit, feel free to mail me.
Q: Where can I get a PC/Windows version of the game?
A: You can't. There is no PC version, and there won't be one, because a) I have no PC, b) I have no programming experience with PC's, and c) I don't want to work on PC's.
Q: When will there be a networked version of Reckless Drivin'?
A: There won't. A networked Reckless Drivin' would require a different basic structure of the game, meaning the need to completely rewrite most of the game. Also, I don't think that RD is suited to be a good network game, it's gameplay is too short-natured.
Q: When I drive off the road I immediately die. That's unrealistic!
A: Who said that arcade games were realistic in the first place? The game wouldn't really make any sense if you could just drive around off the road and never die.
Q: What programming language did you use to create Reckless Drivin'?
A: Plain C (No C++).
Q: What sprite library did you use for Reckless Drivin'?
A: The sprite code is all written by myself. I'm not aware of a currently available sprite library which could do all the dynamic rotation of sprites and other things RD does.
8. Mac OS X - For Thrillseekers only
As of version 1.2 you can run Reckless Drivin' natively under Mac OS X Public Beta. However, there are a few things to take into account, when playing under OS X:
-The game will only run in a window, since DrawSprocket is not yet supported as of Mac OS X Public Beta.
-Performance is rather bad compared to Classic MacOS. I will try to improve this in future builds.
-Since InputSprocket is not supported, you can only use the keyboard for controling. In the key configuration dialog box when you try to assign the arrow keys, the dialog box will give you wrong feedback. This is a bug in Mac OS X Public Beta, it should work better in the final version of OS X.
-The game is not thoroughly tested under Mac OS X, so don't expect it to work as expected ;-)
9. 'Legal Stuff'
-Reckless Drivin' may be freely distributed, as long as all the files that came with the original package are included.
-CD-ROM magazines may put Reckless Drivin' on their discs without my former permission. However, I insist on getting a message from anybody distributing Galactic Revolt on a CD to keep track of the game's distribution. Also, if you intend to publish any reviews or articles on the game, please send me a copy of the magazine!
-Modified versions of Reckless Drivin' or any of it's files may not be distributed without my permission.
-Reckless Drivin' serial numbers may not be redistributed under any circumstances! Should I ever find a Reckless Drivin' serial number anywhere on the net, I can easily find out whom it belongs to!
-Using serial numbers databases or cracks is unfair.
If you manage to crack Reckless Drivin' by yourself I can accept that. Please mail me how you did it, so i can improve protection in future versions ;-)
-I am not responsible for any damage (including loss of data, burned out computers, car accidents or brain damage) caused by Reckless Drivin'.
