
Hardwood -- a surreal relic from my earliest track making days (1999)

(see Hardwood.htm for the same content as this but with clickable links)


 - Technical

Reflections: Featuring water in abundance, this track should be viewed with Reflections enabled in the graphics options to see it as intended (Reflections, not Truck Reflections). In fact, for an extra special visual experience  (note the screenshot) be sure to start the track using Clear weather, then type Gold and press Ctrl-W six times in order to change the lighting levels to dusk. This unique hybrid visual mode (great with any watery track) will add to the surreal ambience, dimming the lighting, retaining the backdrop and sky and making the water as reflective as a mirror. 

See a hybrid / normal comparison here: http://mtm2.com/~trackville/tracks/HybridMode.htm

Graphics: A custom sky palette was created using Phin's Sky Monkey, as a result of this you pretty much have to enable Textured Sky in the graphics options, otherwise you're left with a rather intensely single-colored colored sky, which only uses the first color in the 16 color sky palette. 

Visibility: like all of my tracks, this one is optimized for 100% visibility in the hardware options, which is double the distance that software mode can do. Crank those graphics options up, people!


 - History

The core terrain for this course was complete in mid-1999, it was a small part of my very first track -- a huge and varied rally named Behemoth that has yet to be completed or published. In mid-2000 I extracted and rearranged several terrain sections (with Paint Shop Pro) to create the Hardwood circuit as it exists now. 

The wood and water theme and overall surreal style was set back then as well but it was only during a few periods of editing years later that I finalized the textures and models and made the off-track terrain fully explorable. Exterior terrain tweaks were added in 2006, pipes and hoops were conceived and added in 2009, ambient sounds and sky were added in 2012, many of the road textures were changed recently as well, everything else is ancient.


 - Copyright

Textures were gathered from:
 · CGTextures.com (an amazing resource)
 · N.I.C.E. 2 / Breakneck (by Synetic, an amazing racing game developer)
 · TRI & other sources unknown


 - Info

Detailed information on the unusual utilities used in making of this track:
 · http://mtm2.com/~trackville/utils/SkyMonkey.htm
 · http://mtm2.com/~trackville/utils/Metasequoia.htm


Wint (Winterkill), Mayor of Trackville
See my other tracks and more at: 
http://mtm2.com/~trackville

Many thanks to Phin and Mal.