Kelly's Korner:
TPTCC99 ON A LOW-END COMPUTER
Hi!
The other day someone asked me how to install TPTCC99 on a low-end computer.
His system was a P120, 1 MB videocard, 600 MB harddisk, 16-bit Soundblaster
compatible soundcard, and 32 MB internal memory. Hey, not everyone can afford
a new computer every six months!
According to the box, NR1999 works on a P60, and a P100 is preferred.
Undepedant of what you keep, you'll need some 200 MB diskspace during
installation, maybe more for temporary files. This is what I suggested and,
believe it or not, he got it working <grin>
- TPTCC99 creates a totally new sim, therefore, you can best install
TPTCC99 on a copy of NR1999, not on the original NR1999 installation itself.
If diskspace is a problem, you may have to choose between either stockcars
or touringcars...
- Before doing anything else, run a disk check on your harddisk, and the
disk defragmentation program - both came with Windows 95. You may be
surprised to find how much diskspace is recovered! Before doing so, check
if there are any large programs or data files that you no longer need and
delete them.
- First you make a full, complete installation of NR1999. Select the
plain DOS installation, regular executable (no 3d, no rendition). Set up
sound card, game options, etc. according to documentation. Do not proceed
until you have everything working!
- If you want to run both NR1999 stockcars/trucks and TPTCC99 touringcars,
copy the all files to a new directory. Assuming you have installed NR1999
in C:\SIERRA\NR1999, the copy command looks something like this:
XCOPY C:\SIERRA\NR1999\*.*
C:\SIERRA\NR1999TC /S/E/V
As the names indicate, '\NR1999' is for stockcar/trucks racing, and
'\NR1999TC' for touringcar racing. Proceed with installation of TPTCC99
in C:\SIERRA\NR1999TC.
- Check the TPTCC99 documentation about the tracks. You can delete most
of the NR1999 tracks, and add all the N2/TPTCC tracks you have/need (PRIOR
to installation of TPTCC99). If you have ICR2 tracks you want to use,
convert them to N2 now.
- To save some diskspace, you can delete all the cars in the \CARS and
\TRUCKS directories, but keep the players cars and the drivers lists for
now.
- With the above listed configuration, we can only run the regular
executable. So delete NR19993D.* and NR1999R.* (3d and rendition
versions). Most likely, you only use one of these 3 flavours
anyway.
- Also delete SMACKPLY.EXE and NR1999.SMK. This is the introduction movie
and its player, quite nice, but it takes some 60 MB of harddisk space. You
are no longer able to run the NR1999.BAT batchfile, instead, run the
NR1999.EXE executable.
- Ready to install TPTCC99. Check out the documentation that came with
the package.
- Once the TPTCC99 install is done, you can zip tracks you don't need
and/or move them to a backup device to further save diskspace.
- Pick up the TPTCC carset(s) if you plan to join the TPTCC offline
racing league. If so, you can now delete the \TRUCKS\*.TRK cars that
came with the TPTCC99 installation, as you won't need them
anymore. Or better yet, move them to a backup medium.
My installation takes only some 100 MB of diskspace, with all the tracks
installed. Still quite a lot if you only have 600 MB, but it's ready to run
from the harddisk (does not need CD). A little more experimenting and
moving unneeded tracks to a backup medium may take disk usage down to 75 Mb
or less.
Start NR1999/TPTCC from DOS only! (not from a DOS-box in Windows). To do
this, restart Windows to boot in DOS-mode. This will give you the best
results. Once in the game, turn off as many graphics details as needed,
preferable those graphics that don't influence driving (like trees, infield
object and such). Experiment with this to get the best performance (read:
the best laptimes!)
I hope this gets you going...
Kelly
(Sim Cyberworld Motorsports mechanic)
