Redline Racer (Windows)

Redline Racer
Also known as: Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing (alternate title) Developer: Criterion Games Publisher: Ubi Soft Platform: Windows Released internationally: March 1998 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article

Redline Racer is an arcade motorbike racing game. Not connected to the 1986 arcade game by Cinematronics or Redline: F1 Racer for the SNES.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Development Button

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Is there really no way to enable this button?

The executable file contains a reference to DEVELOPMENTBUTTON, alongside the buttons seen in the menus. strings.txt also has a 'DEVELOPMENT' string, below the main menu buttons (although this seems to be for an earlier build). In menudata.ini, there is a setting called ShowDevelopmentOptions, but enabling it does nothing. One possibility is that the button opened a menu that allowed you to change the settings described below.

Debug Settings

As mentioned above, menudata.ini has several settings that cannot be set in-game. These were likely meant for debugging purposes.

• ShowDevelopmentOptions - Presumably meant to toggle the Development button, but in actuality does nothing (or at least, nothing obvious).
• ForceCDTrack - Forces the specified music track to play throughout the game (this includes the data track, so music track 1 would be 2, and so on). 0 is default behavior.
• RetailVersion - When disabled, the title screen displays the OEM text instead of the retail text.
• UseGraphicsScreen - Toggles the Graphics button in the options menu.
• UseTitleScreen - Toggles the title screen.
• RunMode - Known values are 'Menus' (default), 'Arcade' (jumps straight into a race), and 'Marketing' (see below).
• MaxNumCompBikes - Self-explanatory, though having more than 99 racers causes problems with the position display.
• ForceOnTrack - When disabled, disables both the off-track countdown and the invisible barrier around the track, allowing you to go out-of-bounds.
• OffTrackCountDown - Despite the name, this doesn't actually toggle the countdown, but it does toggle the forcing back on track when it finishes.
• RenderMap - Self-explanatory.
• RenderFPS - Self-explanatory. On the menus, the framerate is displayed on the top-left of the screen. In races, it's displayed at the bottom-centre, and another value whose meaning is not immediately apparent is also displayed.

Marketing Mode

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

Setting the RunMode field in menudata.ini to 'Marketing' (without the quotes) causes the game to fail to recognise the CD. Evidently, it's looking for a different set of files. The game seems to default to 'Menus' (the normal setting) if it doesn't recognise the value.

Unused Audio

Alternate Voice

To do: Perhaps put the used ones here for comparison?

There are voices in the sounds folder whose lines are the same as the used ones, but in a different voice (the voices for each language in the languages folder are used instead of these):

Sample

Unused Menu Voices

Voice	Notes
	Evidently, there was once a feature to configure your bike.
	It seems the game once had riders as characters.

Language Differences

Foreign-language versions seem to play a different sound effect when the cursor goes over a button in the menus.

English	Foreign

Unused Graphics

To do: There seems to be more, both in the overlays directory and in the languages' ui images directory.

Overlays

Overlay	Notes
	A countdown overlay is used instead.
	A menu is displayed instead.
	Medals are used instead.
	The announcer says 'Time Out' instead, and a menu is displayed when a race is over, regardless of its outcome.

F1 Racing Simulation' Demo Leftovers

On the CD is a folder called "F1", which has leftover files from the demo version of F1 Racing Simulation.