LaPaWop
By Rocketalces, July 2003

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Design Criteria
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1) Popup-free in cockpit, chase near and chase far view 
2) Raceable in LAN with 8 trucks
3) Driveable in chase view without adjusting the viewing angle
4) Expo-Theme

1) Popup-free 
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Great care has been taken to avoid popups. When using cockpit- or chase view 
you should not see terrain and objects building up in the distance while driving near 
the normal racing line. 
Compared to my first attempt in the same direction (LaPaMa) I tried
- to give it a more open feel
- to achieve this goal also in the chase far view
  Before the poll in the MTMG forum I was unaware that most racers out there use this view.  
Because the view point is further behind and the viewing angle wider, it is the most critical. 

2) 8 Truck LAN-race
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For me, this does not imply that the track has to be especially wide. You will notice that it's not. But it means that the game should be fluid even with 7 other stock trucks around. The most critical section in this regard is the arena. It has two hi-poly bridges,and in addition offers various opportunities to see the opponents. The minimal configuration to ensure acceptable fluidity is something like 600MHz/Geforce1. Without opponents, the track is driveable on a 400Mhz/Voodoo2 machine.   

3) No in-race view adjustments
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The only place with poor visibility will be the bottom of the toboggan, before the jump upward. But this is really harmless: it lasts only for a second, the jump is straight and the visibility is good before as well as immediately after the jump.  

4) Expo Theme 
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In the final release version, the "elk and moose" theme became relatively discreet. During testing and fine-tuning of the track, the omni-presence of moose stuff became irritating. The "mooseum" I first thought to be funny just felt more and more silly. Eventually I draw the conclusion that less is more and focused on a natural looking environment with only few moose. 
 

A note on AI trucks
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The AI performance is machine related. The higher the frame-rate, the wider is the curve followed by the trucks between the defined track segments. This makes it a nightmare to program the line in narrow winding segments. 
In tests With frame rates between 40 and 50 fps, AI-trucks achieved on a regular basis crash-free laps around 2:42. With higher frame rates they crashed more often than not.  
  
