You are reading the manual of Top Speed 3, the third version of Playing in the Dark's racing game Top Speed. Top Speed 3 is the final release of the popular, accessible freeware racing game that uses only audio and an optional force-feedback joystick to communicate with the player. As with the prior version of Top Speed, this new version includes a multi-player mode, up to seven computer opponents to race against, and the ability to create your own tracks and vehicles. However, there are also some exciting new features, and numerous bug fixes and improvements which will be discussed in section 1.1 of this manual.
First, we will give you a short overview of the development of this game and we describe the installation process. Section 1.2 contains the system requirements. Section 1.3 describes the installation and 1.4 the removal process.
This section discusses the most significant new features added since Top Speed version 2.0.
Note 1: This version of Top Speed contains some changes to the way in which vehicle files are read which means that vehicle files written for earlier versions of the game are incompatible with this release. Please see section 1.1.4.1 below for more information. This does not apply to custom tracks written for older versions of the game, these will continue to be compatible with this release.
Note 2: Be sure to also read Section 1.1.10.1, as it describes a number of minor yet interesting new features and hotkeys.
Top Speed version 3.0 contains the following new tracks:
This section summarizes the new vehicles introduced with Top Speed versions 2.1 and 3.0.
Last year Playing In The Dark asked the accessible gaming community to submit their custom vehicles, promising to include the best in the final release of the game as a built-in vehicle which could be used in all playing modes. The winning car from this contest, the Corola, is now available for everybody to play! Congratulations, Lukáš Hosnedl!
Additionally, the following new cars and motorcycles can be used:
Several existing vehicles have also been updated, for example to have a different brake sound.
If you are a custom track designer, then read this section carefully to learn about the various new and changed features related to track building.
Note: As opposed to older custom vehicles, custom tracks made for Top Speed version 2.0 will still work with this new release.
To make the process of creating a custom track more flexible, Top Speed version 3.0 allows writing a track's parameters in four columns as opposed to the old three-column system. A column is defined the same as in other types of tables. For example, the following row contains three values (i.e. three parts of columns):
0 0 15000
This line defines a straight part of the road, with asphalt as the surface, for a length of 15000 units. Using the new system, you would write:
0 0 0 15000
This will have exactly the same effect. For many tracks the old system of defining Curve, Surface and Length will suffice, although it is recommended that you use the new four-column system when writing new tracks. It is even possible to mix the two systems, but this too is not recommended. The old system may be used for extremely large track files that will be shared in multi-player mode, because the new fourth column adds to the filesize, but apart from that the new system is generally faster and allows you to define sounds more accurately.
The information stored in the first value of each row is now split between the first and the third value of that row. The new column headers could thus be named Curve, Surface, Ambient Sound and Length. In other words, the type of the curve (straight, left, hairpin left) and the noise that is to be heard during that particular part of the road (none, crowd, airplane) can now be seperately defined. Lists of curves, surfaces and ambient sounds are located in our track creation tutorial
The obvious benefit of this system is that you can now also play sounds in curves, whereas with the old system you could only trigger sounds on straight parts of the track. But there is more. If you specify the same ambient sound for multiple parts of the track in sequence, then the total length of these parts is calculated and the sound will play for that entire part, including correct fade-in and fade-out effects where applicable. If you need to convert a value from the first column of the old system into two values for use with the first and third columns, simply subtract 8 from the number. Notice that 8 represents the number of available curves. For example, consider the following definition:
0 1 1 20000
7 0 1 25000
0 0 1 20000
0 2 0 30000
This would start fading in the sound of a cheering crowd as soon as the player drives onto the straight part with gravel as the surface type. The sound would then reach its maximum volume in the hard right on asphalt, and from there fade out. It would stop playing as soon as the player reaches the area with water as surface type. As you can see this makes building tracks a lot more flexible. This, together with the new ambient sounds available in version 3.0, is especially useful for designing street adventures.
This release contains two new surfaces, sand and snow. Other surface sounds have also been optimized. Driving on sand decreases your vehicle's acceleration, meaning that it will take longer to get to full speed. The advantage, however, is that your deceleration is also considerably increased, allowing you to come to a full stop in less time. When driving on snow it's your steering that you should be watching. Due to an increased sensitivity of your vehicle's steering wheel even the easy turns can become difficult to take, especially at higher speeds.
Top Speed version 3.0 contains a variety of new sounds for track designers, both oneshots (sounds that only play once, like an airplane flying by) and backgrounds (sounds that are constantly playing, like a massive crowd).
Top Speed version 3.0 also includes a number of new ambiences, sounds that play as long as a race is active. To define such a sound, end your track definition as follows:
-1 0 2
Where the 2 can be any valid ambience. Keep in mind that you have to define the track's weather before defining an ambience, otherwise the game will interpret the number you specify as a weather sound (see the next section, 1.1.3.5).
Finally, version 3.0 of Top Speed contains some new weather types. These are similar to the ambiences described in the previous section. The advantage of being able to define them seperately is that you can combine two background sounds, one ambience and one weather sound. Specify the weather type just below the -1, like this:
-1 1
This section describes the new and incompatible syntax for vehicle files, additional parameters and the concept of using backfire sounds.
The new syntax for vehicle files is actually not all that different from the current one. All parameters that could be used for version 2.0 remain the same, but instead of specifying car1 or cycle2 to refer to a built-in sound, you should now write lines such as:
enginesound=builtin1
startsound=builtin11
The value builtin1 represents the old car1, builtin2 is car2, and so on up to the last car (which is builtin9 right now). To reference what used to be cycle1 you have to specify builtin10. The third motorcycle, which was added in this release, is represented with builtin12. Furthermore, some cars will have different numbers than in version 2.0. For example, specifying car4, in fact builtin4, will have a different effect in this version. To find the right number for the vehicle you want, simply count the items of any vehicle selection menu in the game, or review the vehicles folder which you can find in the sounds folder of your favorite language pack.
The following new parameters can be used when writing vehicle files:
You can either use builtin1 through builtin12 for these parameters, or you can specify a sound file of your own. These sound files should still be in the PCM wave-format (*.wav). If you do not provide values for these parameters, the default values will be used. These are usually the sounds used for the first vehicle available, currently the Blackbird racecar.
The backfire sound is played occasionally when switching gears (up or down) and when you release the throttle. This can make certain types of vehicles, such as trucks and motorcycles, sound a great deal more authentic. Two examples of how to use this new feature are included in the game in the form of the Old schoolbus and the Chopper. To define a custom backfire sound, simply use the backfiresound parameter in your vehicle file. Please note that although you can specify builtin1 as a value for this setting, the player will not hear any backfire sound for that vehicle as it does not have one. If you want to make use of the game's built-in sounds for backfiring, use builtin9 (the Old schoolbus) or builtin12 (the Chopper).
Top Speed version 3.0 boasts a number of enhancements for soundpack creators that this section will discuss.
Another great new feature introduced in this release is the capability to instantly switch from one language pack to another, i.e. without restarting the game. This may also be useful for changing soundpacks in the same language. To change your language or soundpack, go to Options and choose Game Settings->Language. To add your own item to this selection menu, add a folder with the name of your pack to the Sounds folder found in the Top Speed installation directory. Next, add a file encoded in Ogg Vorbis and with the same name as your pack to the Sounds directory. For example, for the original English language pack there is a folder Sounds\En and a file Sounds\En.ogg. Also remember that your entire language pack should be encoded as Ogg Vorbis.
All sounds used in Top Speed 3.0 are now located in separate subfolders. It is recommended to use the original English language pack as an example, if you are going to create a new pack.
To give the player more variation during the race it is now possible to provide multiple sound files for certain actions, for example the co-pilot announcements. Those are all the curve and surface announcement messages. The game will play a randomly selected sound file every time such an announcement is made. To use this new facility, simply create multiple files, giving each of them an index number starting at 1. For example, left1.ogg, left2.ogg and left3.ogg, or snow1.ogg to snow12.ogg. Other possibilities are finish*.ogg, front*.ogg and tail*.ogg. The maximum number of sounds per announcement is 32. As a consequence, even if you only want to put one sound file in your soundpack for a given announcement, you should include a number in the filename, e.g. hairpinleft1.ogg.
Top Speed version 3.0 uses an improved version of the original setup program that allows you to make more detailed adjustments to what is installed on your computer. You can now choose whether or not to install the ReadMe and/or the English language pack. You can also choose not to install the main program. This is useful, for example, when you want to restore the official language files after installing a third party pack. Fully completed and high-quality soundpacks for other languages may also be included if they become available.
Regardless of whether you are playing in Time Trial, Single Race or multi-player mode, Top Speed now has the ability to provide you with useful race information through a few simple, easy to remember hotkeys. These hotkeys are listed below. We will go more into detail in section 6.2 about what they do exactly.
Notice that these hotkeys (F1-F12 and Q, W, E, R and T) are placed next to each other on the keyboard for easy access. If you wish, however, you can reassign these in the Options->Controls menu, accessed from the Main Menu. The only keys you cannot change are the F-keys, F1 through F12.
Here is a list of new settings in Top Speed version 3.0. You can find a brief description of what they do in section 2.2.7, along with the other, old options.
If you are using a screenreader (which is very likely), you might be used to disabling it before starting Top Speed. Starting from version 3, we have included support in the installer which allows you to leave your screenreader on while playing.
If you are using JAWS for Windows and do not disable it when playing Top Speed, life gets quite unpleasant. This is why we added a JAWS configuration file to our installer, which puts JAWS in sleep mode and makes it possible to leave it enabled.
To enable this functionality, navigate to the Top Speed 3 installation folder, and open the folder Scripts. You will find a file called TopSpeed.jcf. Now go to the Start menu, select (All) Programs and find the Explore Jaws folder in the menu of your preferred JAWS version. Choose Explore my settings. A new instance of the Windows Explorer will appear, showing you your JAWS settings folder. You are done as soon as you have copied the TopSpeed.jcf file from the Top Speed Scripts folder to your JAWS settings folder. You can now leave JAWS on while playing.
If you use another screenreader like Window-Eyes, NVDA or Dolphin SuperNova, things are a lot easier. You can just leave your screenreader on, however you might want to disable your speech synthesizer.
This section lists the changes, improvements and bug fixes made in Top Speed version 3.0 compared to version 2.0. Thus, this also includes the changelog for the release candidates, 2.1.RC1 and 2.1.RC2.
The system requirements for Top Speed 3 are very low. The basics of the game will work on almost any pc running Windows 2000 or newer with DirectX 8.1 or newer installed. This also includes 64-bit systems. Windows 98Se and Windows ME should work as well, but has not officially been tested. If your computer is running Windows XP or newer, DirectX 8.1 is installed by default. Should you need DirectX, you can download version 8.1 or preferably version 9.0C for free from the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/directx . Furthermore your computer must be equipped with a stereo soundcard and a headset or stereo speakers.
Note: In windows Vista or newer, some alterations made to 3d-sound may affect the positioning of network and computer players. Unfortunately, we have not been able to fix this. See section 8 for more information.
If you wish to install Top Speed 3, then open the file you downloaded from the Playing in the Dark website. A welcome screen appears. Click Next. On the next screen you can alter the install path or you can use the default path. If you agree with the destination, click next. The next screen shows the components to install. If you agree with a full installation, just click next. To install Top Speed 3 without the English language pack, select Core only. Otherwise, set the installation type to custom and select the components manually. The next screen asks you for changes that will be made to the start-menu. If you agree with the default settings, click next. The following screen shows you the option to create a desktop icon, and the final screen shows the settings you chose. When you agree with these, click Install and the game will be installed. Once the installation is finished you can start the game, and you can read this manual by clicking on a checkbox if you like. Otherwise select Finish and the installation is completed.
It's really simple to remove Top Speed 3, but we'll explain it anyway. Go to the Windows Start menu, Programs, Playing in the Dark, Top Speed 3. Select Uninstall Top Speed and follow the instructions. If you want to make sure everything is removed after the process, remove the Playing in the Dark folder from c:\Program Files.
Top Speed 3 comes with a feature that allows you to install new Vehicles and tracks downloaded from the internet, with a maximum of 64 each.
Vehicles will consist of a number of sound files and a .vhc file. To add a vehicle to the game, copy these files to the vehicles folder within the installation folder of Top Speed 3. The next time you play the game, the new vehicle will automatically appear in the list of available vehicles. Note that, however they will show up in the list, vehicles made for Top Speed 2 won't be compatible with Top Speed 3. Choosing one of those vehicles will probably cause a program faillure.
A track consists of a sound file and a .trk file. To install a downloaded track, copy these 2 files to the Tracks folder. The new track will be added to the list of available tracks automatically. Unlike with vehicles, tracks made for Top Speed 2 should be compatible with version 3.
This section contains information on how to play Top Speed 3.
As in any racing game, the goal of the game is to complete a track or a number of laps as fast as possible without crashing. In this game you can't see the road, but you can hear it. When playing the game, you'll hear the sound of your engine through your speakers. When you are driving neatly in the middle of the road, the sound will be coming from both speakers. If you drift to one side of the road, the source of the engine sound will shift to one side as well. If you drift too much, you will end up crashing your car. But of course you can count on your co-pilot to tell you what lies ahead, at least when he's paying attention and you didn't leave him behind.
Top Speed 3 has an elaborate menu with dozens of options to choose from. We will go over the most important ones in this section.
Navigating the Top Speed menu is simple. Use the up and down or left and right arrows to browse through the options and press the enter key to select one. You can also use a joystick or steering wheel. You can go up a level of the menu by selecting the Go back option or use the escape or the backspace key.
This option is a real quickstart. It will put you on a random track immediately in a random vehicle. you will be driving a number of laps against a number of computer opponents. The number of laps and the number of computer players depend on the options you have selected from the options menu, but by default you will drive 3 laps against 3 other players.
In time trial mode, you will race against the clock. No opponents, it is just you, your team, your vehicle and the road. Try to beat your own fastest time on a circuit, street adventure or even a custom track. This is also a great mode to practise driving and to get to know the different tracks and Vehicles.
The single race mode puts a number of computer opponents with you on the track. The target is to beat them and to cross the finish line first. You can choose for normal race tracks and street adventures, the same as in time trial mode. You can change the difficulty and the number of opponents in the options menu.
Street adventures offer a little bit more action then the regular race tracks. They feature different kind of road surfaces. The road is narrower and contains more curves. You can choose them in time trial or single race mode. Street adventures are always one lap.
Via the multi-player game menu, you can connect to other players over a local network or over the internet to race against each other. The gameplay itself is identical to the single race mode except now it is your own friends that push you off the road! We will go further into how to set up a multi-player game in chapter 3.
The options menu contains a number of items that let you personalize the gameplay of the game. The options menu has a number of submenu's:
The title says it all. This will fade out the music and exit the game.
Starting from Top Speed 2, this game contains an exciting multi-player mode, which this section explains.
If all players are on a local network, things are pretty simple. One person will have to be the server. This preferably is the one with the most powerful computer, and more important, a fast connection to the network, preferably an ethernet one. This person selects the option host a game on your own server and continues to select a tracktype and so on. Once the server has started, all other players select join a game on the local network from the multi-player menu. The game will then search for servers on the local network. After about five seconds the game returns with a list of all found servers on the local network. Each server is identified by a 4 digit number. This number is given to you when you start the game for the first time, or restore the default settings, and allows players to identify a server as yours. Most of the time only one server is found and choosing is easy. When all players have joined and selected their favourite car, the server needs to press the enter key (or button 1 on the joystick) to start the countdown to the start.
Over the internet things get a little more complicated. Unfortunately, depending on the setup of your network, internet play is not always possible. Here we will explain a number of steps to achieve the highest possibility of success.
Not everyone has the ability to start a server that can be reached over the internet. The highest probability of success is to start a server that is connected to the internet directly and not through a router. To check whether you are behind a router you need to check your IP address. An IP address is an address containing 4 numbers that identify your computer on a network or even the entire internet. You can read your IP address using the Top Speed 3 Configuration Tool found in the tools folder of the Top Speed 3 folder in the start menu. The configuration tool is a piece of software that will let you configure to which internet server you want to connect, as well as an option which allows the developers to debug the game, Enable tracing. It is highly recommended that you leave tracing disabled unless you're asked to provide a trace log containing debug information. The tool will also tell you your IP address. If the IP address starts with 192.168 or with 10.0.0 then you are behind a router. It is likely that other players will not be able to connect to your server should you start one. Let someone that is not behind a router start a Top Speed 3 server.
Once you have decided who will start a server, this person has to give his IP address to the rest of the players. He can do this by using the Copy IP to clipboard button in the server selector tool and pasting it in messages to the other players. All other players then have to fill in this IP address in the textbox of the Server Selector tool found in the start menu.
After all players have filled in the IP address of the server in the textbox of the server selector tool and pressed the OK button, you are ready to start the game. The person selected to start the server selects host a game on your own server. Once the server has started, all other players can select join a game on the internet in the multi-player menu. When all players have joined and selected their favourite car, the server needs to press the enter key (or button 1 on the joystick) to start the countdown to the start.
This section contains some tips you can try when you are unable to connect over the internet. Turn off firewall software. Windows XP service pack 2 or higher contains an embedded firewall that might prevent other players from connecting to your server. You might even have other firewall software installed. If you are having problems letting other players connect to your server, try turning it off or configure Top Speed 3 as an exception. Do not forget to re-enable it when you are done playing. When you are behind a router there is still chance you can host a game. If your router supports the uPnP protocol it will allow you to start a server in the normal way. However, players who want to connect need to enter the IP address of your router instead of that of your computer. The easiest way to find out your routers' IP address is to surf to http://www.whatismyip.org. If you are an advanced user and know how to configure your router, you can let port 25255 (both UDP and TCP) pass through to your computer.
To know how to get in touch with us, quickly jump to section 4.4.
Since extra Vehicles can be as powerful as you like them to be by editing them yourself, it would be very easy to cheat in multi-player races. You could build your own super vehicle and win every race. Another problem is, extra Vehicles in multi-player would be hard to do since it is not guaranteed that every player has these Vehicles installed.
Some basic rules apply to driving a vehicle in Top Speed 3. These are the same rules as with a real life vehicle:
Top Speed 3 has been tested extensively during its development. But we are only human and there are lots of differences in computer hardware that might influence the performance of the game. If you have encountered an error in the game, you can report it to us and maybe we can provide a fix in later releases. When you send us an error report, please specify the nature of the error and in what circumstances it happens. Also, please include your Windows and DirectX version. Every time you play the game, a file called TopSpeed.trc is generated in the installation folder. This file contains information that might help us track down errors. Please attach this file to any error report you send us. Since this file is overwritten every time you start the game, be sure to make a copy of it before restarting the game or simply send it to us right after finding the error. You can send error reports to info at playinginthedark dot net.
You can send your question to [info@playinginthedark.net]. However, please keep in mind that we receive a lot of questions and it might take some time before we can send you an answer. You can also check the audiogames.net forum to ask your question, or to see whether someone else has already asked and answered your question. Since we live in social times nowadays, you can also find us on Twitter!
Read this section to learn how to create your own tracks and vehicles.
This tutorial describes how to build your own tracks for use with Top Speed 3. though tracks made for Top Speed 2 are still accessible in version 3, instructions on how to convert a Top Speed 2 track to the new syntax are written down in section 1.1.3.1.
All you need is notepad and a microphone to record the soundfile describing your track in the menu.
You need to create a textfile with the extension .trk. Look at the zandvoort.trk track for an example.
The file contains four columns of numbers. Each line of four numbers describes part of the track. A part consists of:
The type of curve:
| Straight | 0 |
| Easy left | 1 |
| Left | 2 |
| Hard left | 3 |
| Hairpin left | 4 |
| Easy right | 5 |
| Right | 6 |
| Hard right | 7 |
| Hairpin right | 8 |
The surfacetype:
| Asphalt | 0 |
| Gravel | 1 |
| Water | 2 |
| Sand | 3 |
| Snow | 4 |
An optional sound to be played:
| No sound | 0 |
| Crowd | 1 |
| Ocean | 2 |
| Propeller plane | 3 |
| Church clock | 4 |
| Jetplane | 5 |
| Thunder | 6 |
| Pile drivers | 7 |
| Construction | 8 |
| River | 9 |
| Helicopter | 10 |
| Owl | 11 |
The length of that particular part of the track, the minimum length is 5000. The number doesn't have a unit, but you could say that it is more or less in centimeters.
The last line of a track file could look as follows:
-1 1 2
The -1 indicates the end of the track. The other two numbers represent the type of water and the ambience of the track. These are both sounds which are played during the whole race. You can choose between the following weather types:
| No sound (sunny) | 0 |
| Rain | 1 |
| Wind | 2 |
| Storm | 3 |
The following ambiences are available:
| None | 0 |
| Desert | 1 |
| Airport | 2 |
The filename needs to end on .trk and needs to be placed in the Tracks folder of the game. Next, you need a wave file with the same name as the track containing the sound to be played in the menu. So if your trackfile is called mytrack.trk, you also need to have a mytrack.wav file in the Tracks folder.
If the filename starts with adv, it indicates a street adventure. Happy track making!
This tutorial describes how to build your own vehicles for use with Top Speed 3. Instructions on how to convert a Top Speed 2 vehicle to the new syntax are written down in section 1.1.4.1.
All you need is notepad and a microphone to record the soundfile describing your vehicle in the menu. You can use your own soundfiles for the different sounds of the vehicle, but you can also use the ones already included in the game.
You need to create a textfile with the extension .vhc. Look at the streetracer.vhc file for an example.
The file contains several variables describing your vehicle. Here's for example the description of the Chopper:
enginesound=builtin12
throttlesound=builtin12
startsound=builtin12
hornsound=builtin12
backfiresound=builtin12
crashsound=builtin12
brakesound=builtin12
acceleration=13
deceleration=45
topspeed=24000
idlefreq=22050
topfreq=27550
shiftfreq=23550
numberofgears=5
steering=150
steeringfactor=66
haswipers=0
Warning: spaces and capital letters are important in this file, so the easiest and safest way to create a vehicle is to start from an existing file. We will go over each variable:
Just like with a track, you need to create a .wav-file containing a sound describing your vehicle that will be used in the game menu. It has to be named exactly like the .vhc-file.
That's it. You can leave variables out of the file and the game will use defaults.
Since most of the keys assignments can be changed in the options menu, the keys in this section state the default values.
First of all, we'd like to say a few words about the development of Top Speed. Most importantly, we'd like to thank all our users for their continued support, suggestions and ideas. It should be obvious that a game without players isn't much of a game at all. Secondly, we are happy to introduce our PayPal donate button! By making a donation you can assure us, the developers, that those years of hard work, all in our own time, were worth it, and that there may even be room for a future release of Top Speed 3 that would add even more of the most requested features. However, remember that Top Speed is and always will be a free game. You will never be required to pay in order to play the full game, although we'd be lying if we said donations aren't welcome. Please go to our website and visit the donate page to find out more and, if you'd like, make a donation.
The Playing in the Dark team is Pieter de Ruijter, Bram Duvigneau, Leonard de Ruijter and Davy Loots. There is no strict task separation but in general:
All of these people work on Top Speed 3 in their spare time despite each having a busy and full schedule. They receive no physical reward for their work and distribute their work for free. Please keep that in mind when casting judgement on the game and it is creators.
For more information about Ruby Accessware, feel free to visit their website!
We would also like to thank the following people for the work they did on Top Speed 3:
If Top Speed 3 reaches a high quality standard, it is because it has been thoroughly tested before its releases. Months before the release of version 2, an international group of betatesters started testing betaversion after betaversion. The bugs they found and improvements they suggested are numerous and therefore we would like to thank them. In random order they are:
We'd like to thank Arjan Tool for the intensive testing of Top Speed 3 before its release. Also a thank you for the creators of several language packs.
The following is a list of issues that are known to the developers but that have not been resolved in this release, for a variety of reasons. Please do not report these problems again unless you have additional information that could help to fix them.