Dakar 2011 Game Homepage
Advanced
The datas of the game mostly stored in plain text, or editable textures. There is not dedicated tool for editing them.
The basic settings are in the "data/settings.txt" file. If you want to change the resolution or turn on/off the shaders, you should edit this file. (For details see the section below.)
The following things can be changed by editing data files:
- properties of the cars (weight, model, texture, wheels, suspension, sound)
- heightmap (change the terrain looks)
- roads
- objects, grass, trees (how many, and what kind of)
- stages
- sounds
One line per set, the line order is irrelevant, but case-sensitive. (The other data files are almost the same: one line per set, but the line order is predetermined.)
Let's see the settings.txt:
| Option name | default value | what for |
| driver_type: | d3d9 |
String value. What kind of API use for the rendering:
|
| full_screen: | yes | Boolean value. Run game in full screen mode or not. |
| resolution: | 800x600 | [int]x[int] value. You can change the resolution with this. In not full screen mode the resolution can be any value, but in full screen mode it can only values that are supported by the hardware. |
| auto_resolution: | yes | Boolean value. In full screen mode the program automatically detects the resolution of the desktop. |
| display_bits: | 32 | Int value. Minimum Bits per pixel of the color buffer in fullscreen mode. Ignored if windowed mode. |
| anti_aliasing: | no | Boolean value. Makes sharp/pixelated edges softer, but requires more performance. Also, 2D elements might look blurred with this switched on. The resulting rendering quality also depends on the hardware and driver you are using, your program might look different on different hardware with this. This is curently not supported in OpenGL under Windows. |
| vsync: | no | Boolean value. If is "yes", the driver will wait for the vertical retrace period, otherwise not. |
| high_precision_fpu: | no | Boolean value. This is only relevant for DirectX Devices, which switch to low FPU precision by default for performance reasons. However, this may lead to problems with the other computations of the application. In this case setting this flag to "yes" should help. |
| camera_speed: | 0.04 | Float value. It determines the camera speed in free mode (FPS mode). |
| joy_dead_zone: | 0.05 | Float value. This is an empirical value, since some joysticks have more jitter or creep around the center point than others. |
| light: | yes | Boolean value. You can switch the lights on/off in the game. |
| shadows: | yes | Boolean value. You can switch the shadows on/off in the game. Only works with the Cg shaders. |
| shaders: | yes | Boolean value. You can switch the shaders on/off in the game. Most of the video card support this (2.0 vertex and pixel shader), if it doesn't you can leave it on "yes" because the game will automatically turn it off. It has nicer look if it is on, and not have performance issue. |
| cg_shaders: | yes | Boolean value. You can switch the Cg shaders on/off in the game. If is a shader language by nVidia. Most of the video card support this, because it uses the 2.0 vertex and 2.0 pixel shader profiles. If it is turned on, you will get some extra effects (night in the game, car light, car dirt and shadow). But it can cause some performance degradation. |
| smokes: | yes | Boolean value. You can switch the smoke on/off in the game when the wheel is on the ground. |
| object_visibility_limit: | 400.0 | Float value. How far can you see the objects and grass. It is in meter. |
| far_value: | 1900.0 | Float value. In meter, how far can you see the terrain. |
| start_with_mainmenu: | yes | Boolean value. If "yes" the game will show up the main menu on execute. If it is "no" than the game will start a new game automatically on execute. |
| LOD_distance: | 9 | Int value. It will determine how far the engine change the detail of the terrain. If you have fast mashine you can change it to 17 or 33. |
| density_objects: | 30 | Int value, means percentage. How many object should be drawn. |
| density_grasses: | 50 | Int value, means percentage. How many grass should be drawn. |
| object_pool_size: | 30 | Int value. Keep it untouch till you have fast mashine and whant to draw lots of object with high object_visibility_limit, then you should increase it. |
| grass_pool_size: | 500 | Int value. Keep it untouch till you have fast mashine and whant to draw lots of grass with high object_visibility_limit, then you should increase it. |
| min_fps: | 60.0 | Float value. It is for the physical engine. I don't think you should change this. (Not used!) |
| display_extra_info: | no | Boolean value. If "yes" the game will show your position and the current number of polygons that was drawn. |
| info_bg: | no | Boolean value. If "yes" the program will draw background rectangle for the information displayed on the screen: FPS, speed, time. |
| message_bg: | yes | Boolean value. If "yes" the program will draw background rectangle for the messages. |
| joy_accel, joy_brake, joy_handbrake, joy_left, joy_right, joy_look_left, joy_look_right, joy_reset_car, joy_change_view, joy_gear_up, joy_gear_down, joy_gear1, joy_gear2, joy_gear3, joy_gear4, joy_gear5, joy_gear6, joy_change_light, joy_show_compass, joy_repair_car, joy_menu: | Int value. The number of the button on the joystick. | |
| joy_axis_accel, joy_axis_steer, joy_axis_clutch: | Int value. The numbor of the axis on the joystick. | |
| joy_steer_linear: | yes | Boolean value. Use linear or quadratic algorithm for steering. |
| gear_type: | 'a' | Character value. Can be 'a' for automatic gear shift or 'm' for manual. |
| server_name: | 127.0.0.1 | IP address of the server where you want to connect to. In the setting.txt you can find my ip address 89.147.84.199. |
| server_port: | 22010 | Port of the server where you want to connect to. |
| send_server_delay: | 20 | Int value, means mili-sec. How often send datas to the server. |
| skin_type: | 2 | Int value. How the menu look like. The 0 is the normal Windows feeling, 1 is an other, 2 is the sand skin. |
| draw_hud: | yes | Boolean value. If yes you should see speed on the hud. |
| trace_net: | yes | Boolean value. If yes, you will see the network events (connected/disconnected, join) in the message box. |
| shadow_map_size: | 2048 | Int value: 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. Higher the shadow map size finer the shadow, but slower the display. |
| stencil_shadows: | no | Boolean value. Whether to use stencil buffer for shadows. It is not recommended to turn on, because it is slow. |
| use_screen_rtt: | no | Boolean value. If yes, it use a texture to render, then display the texture. The result quite similar as the normal render, but we can pass throught some filter for special effects. But it has performance problem. It sets the depth_effect's value to the same. Only usable if Cg shader is active. |
| shit_ati: | no |
Boolean value. On some ATI cards the RTT must be a power of 2. On non ATI cars the RTT resolution is the same
as the display resolution. On ATI it is really slow. So if you experience slownes on ATI card with use_scree_rtt on, the
turn this on also. If you don't use screen rtt, the value has no effect. |
| flip_vert: | no | Boolean value. Flip the screen vertical or not. |
| depth_effect: | no | Boolean value. Only when use_screen_rtt is on. Some extra effect with slowness. |
| use_object_lods: | no | Boolean value. Use low polyygon object if they are far. Not work yet. |
| use_detailed_terrain: | yes | Boolean value. Use detailed terrain textures (nicer). |
| use_highres_textures: | yes | Boolean value. Use high resolution textures for the terrain texures. Slower is the faster (on some machine). |
| skip_densitymap: | yes | Boolean value. If yes then not use the density map. It tells where to put objects and where not. |
| use_high_poly_objects: | no | Boolean value. Use higher polygon objects. Do not use it, deprecated. |
| grass_type: | 0 |
Int value.
|
| show_compass_arrow: | yes | Boolean value. If there is active compass, show an arrow the right dirrection above the car. |
| show_reinitialize_button: | no | Boolean value. Show "Restart program" button in the options menu. Some changes take affect after restart the program. It is more convenient touse this button instead quit and start again. |
| use_mipmaps: | yes | Boolean value. Use lower detailed textures for objects that are far from the camera. |
| serialized_file_path: | data/heightmaps/serialized/ | String value. It should be a writable directory, where the program stores files which make the terrain loading faster. |
| use_serialized_files: | yes | Boolean value. You can turn off storing files, which make the terrain load faster. |
You can change most of the settings inside the game. They won't be saved automatically. If you want something change permanently you need to push the Save button to save.
The options are in categories:
- Game
- Graphics
- Graphics2 (these settings only applied after save and restart)
- Network
- Controller
If you have Logitech Extereme 3D Pro or Logitech G25 then you can use the sample settings file in the zip archive of the binary ("Dakar2011/data" directory).
For other controllers you can also use them, or reuse them. If you don't have axis for the clutch, set the "joy_axis_clutch" to "-1" or remove the line from the settings file.