Torcs Creations

WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?

This site contains my most recent contributions to the excellent free & open source racing game, TORCS. The game runs on linux and Windows (there was a MacOSX port a while back, but it wasn't maintained) and is a lot of fun. Its also still under active development and improving all the time, so if racing sims interest you I recommend trying it out.

BREAKING NEWS

9th April 2008 - New Host

Nathan of grubbn.com has very kindly provided a fast host for my TORCS downloads. Some of my tracks are already there & I'll gradually move the remainder of my files there over the coming days/weeks - which means no more need for Filefront! Thanks Nathan :)

31st March 2008 - New Track alpine-2

Well, actually its a heavily reworked version of Danny Schellhammer's track. Sweeping curves, steep climbs and thrilling descents ... and a tunnel! Be sure to bring warm gloves and a scarf. Get it here.

10th December 2007 - tutorial robot driver 'locus'

If you want to get into making a robot driver for TORCS, BT has generally been a starting point. 'locus' aims to fulfill the same role however it is more advanced, with raceline code, pit sharing and other features.

9th November 2007 - Reworked e-track-6

The standard TORCS track, one of my favourites to drive on, has been given a makeover. Check it out here.

6th November 2007 - Improved 'Human' Driver

The 'Human' driver library is what TORCS uses to allow you to drive a car in the game. It works very well for people with the full steering wheel, pedals and gear lever setup. If, however, you only have mouse and keyboard (as I do) then you might find it difficult in some respects. Over time I've made various changes to enhance the experience for mouse and keyboard users, the results of which are now available for download here.

11th October 2007 - New Track, "Forza"

"Forza" is now ready for download. I've been working on and off on this one for many months, quitting several times but always coming back to it eventually ... and now its done. Its a very fast and smooth track - a contrast to the bendy and bumpy Brondehach I released back in April.

23rd July 2007 - Status update

The Touring Cars are complete, just needing a few tweaks to some skins and the latest hymie robot copied across. I have seven GT3 cars completed, and another seven GT2 cars. I'm also well underway on models for the GT1, LMP2 and LMP1 cars, and I have two tracks in a partial state of completion. In addition, Mart Kelder has developed a Career patch for TORCS that meshes perfectly with the championship setups I was creating.

At the moment though I've lost momentum and enthusiasm. I'll see how things go - if I get some inspiration again I could get the next carset done.

24th May 2007 - Revisions, Revisions

Updated versions of both Brondehach and the Supercars are now available. With Brondehach, several textures that were blurry on many systems are now sharp and crisp, the shadow mapping is better and some of the camera angles have been improved. I didn't intend an update to Supercars except that the Computer Driver had a habit of stopping mid-track for no apparent reason under linux. The update fixes this problem and makes other improvements to the robot and car handling.

Thanks to Mart Kelder and Bernhard Wymann for pointing out these issues and helping me solve them :) Btw if you hit any major problems using either the cars or the track please let me know! Now to finish the Touring cars...

30th April 2007 - Looking for Testers

The Touring Cars set is well underway, with the cars all modelled and work progressing on the computer drivers. I really need help in test-driving the cars. If you're an experienced TORCS player and are willing to spend some time pushing a car to its limits on a variety of tracks, then sending me details of your quickest times, how easy or hard the car was to drive and any "demons" in its setup that need tweaking - then I'd love to hear from you :)

26th April 2007 - New Track

"Brondehach" is now ready for download. That took quite some time to complete - almost as much as making a new track from scratch. Hope you all like it :) UPDATE: it seems I omitted an XML file that TORCS needs to use the gprix track category. I've re-uploaded the zip with this file, and also took the opportunity to improve the shadow textures and fix a minor bug in the pit area. Sooner or later I'll get something right the first time.

You might notice I've switched to using filefront.com to host the downloads, as the server I was using was becoming unreliable. Please let me know if you have any problems downloading a file...

26th March 2007 - Change to Supercars set

Wolf-Dieter let me know that an empty "Supercars" directory in the categories folder was making Torcs crash for him. I've removed it from the zip - if this has been affecting you, either re-download or remove the directory.

23rd March 2007 - Supercars set released The first in my series of balanced car sets is now available: check out the Car Sets page for more info. I've moved the fordgt download to this page as well.




Comments? Suggestions? Feel free to contact me - andrewsumner (at) yahoo.com.