A Black Falcon
Member
Perhaps not, but it's up there on the list.
Note: this is ver.2 of this article, done on 9/3/2012. I just learned about the GOG release of the game, PodHacks, and nGlide, and have integrated mentions of all three of these important releases and tools into the review. Most of the text is unchanged, but GOG and PodHacks particularly make some things simpler and fix some of the game's outstanding issues, so the game works even better now than when I originally made the thread. Links have been updated as well.
I'll cover Pod 2: Speed Zone in a later post (it isn't nearly as great as the first game)... but first, Pod.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVyYY6o4sA -- The intro CG, watch this first!
The game's name, by the way, is entirely appropriate, but you'll need to see the awesome ending to see exactly why. Don't spoil it by watching the Youtube video, play the game!
Pod 1.0 (OEM Edition) disc - the one I have.
Pod is a racing game developed and published by Ubisoft for the PC in 1997. It was one of the first games to support Intel's new MMX technology, and supported the 3d cards of the day too. After it came out, the game had a series of patches, updates, and fixes, and the number of game versions profligated from just a few at first to many.It supported DirectX 3, DirectX 5, 3DFX Glide, lesser cards like the S3's junk and whatever ATI had then, Matrox, and more, each with separate patches. Despite all the patches, however, some of the core issues were never fixed...
Time has, however, made things slightly simpler. Most of those patches I mentioned are now irrelevant. Also, they fall into two general categories, the 'lesser graphics' versions, and the 24MB 'better graphics' ones. Only two versions of the game are 24MB (referring to the size of the patch) better graphics versions -- D3D DirectX 5, and 3DFX Glide. Of those, the Glide version has better graphics, and supports 800x600 resolution, while the D3D 5 version is limited to 640x480. As a result, the best way to play the game now is with a Glide emulator. The game is now also available on GOG, and as expected they have fixed the worst problems, though there are still some things to know for that version, in particular for how to add the additional cars and tracks.
On that note, In addition to the patches, the game also had numerous official car and track downloads, as well as a few unofficial car and tracks that were made by users and are available. The results of this are that Pod folder in my Game Downloads folder being 715 files and 425MB large, though a lot of that is the track and car downloads. For a 1997 game though, that's a lot of stuff.
First, the many Good Points. This is why the game is so amazing.
+Pod is a pure racing game. There are no weapons or attacks of any kind, except for just bumping into the other cars. Weapons work in a lot of futuristic racing games, sure, but in this case not having them focuses the game on the racing, and it works really, really well.
+Physics -- you slow down on uphills, speed up on downhills. Some complain that the effect on your speed from going up a hill is too significant, and it makes the game feel slow, but while sometimes you are slowed down quite a bit on uphills, shouldn't you be? When a car goes up a hill, unless it can accelerate more, it loses speed. That's exactly how it works here. It is an arcade-style racing game, but it uses a very playable, and fun, driving model.
+The controls are very simple -- In fact, the game only has four controls: turn left, turn right, accelerate, and brake, unless you're using manual transmission, in which case there are also two gearshift buttons. Nothing more is needed. There are some configuration buttons and a pause button, but none of those are related to the actual gameplay... the actual gameplay controls are as simple as can be. You focus on the racing, not on trying to remember the controls.
+Those cars and tracks... despite the irritation of the CDPatcher (see below), how many racing games have this kind of variety? There are a huge number of available tracks and cars in this game! The game comes with 16 built-in tracks and 8 built-in cars that are always installed. The main Championship goes through those sixteen tracks. Beyond that, you can have up to 32 of the additional 20 official tracks available for download (in Europe most of these were originally available in an expansion pack, but the expansion didn't come out in the US. Instead, all of its tracks were put up for download, with regular new track releases (free of course) until they were all available.), and up to 32 of the and 44 official car downloads installed into the game at once. In addition, there are five unofficial car downloads, seven OEM versions of official original courses available (they were altered in the final release, but you can see the original versions with these tracks), two other beta versions of official courses, and a bunch of user courses -- 11 new tracks (some of which crash, and which do not have any AI so it's timetrial or multiplayer only), 8 reskins of official courses, and several reskins of user courses (some of which crash). Every track, original and expansion, looks completely different and has its own theme and setting, as well as layout an obstacles. I don't know of any other futuristic or arcade racing games with this much variety...
+The actual track DESIGNS are fantastic and unique. Pod has a visual style all its own, and unique track designs as well. The tracks are highly varied in locations, length (though overall race time is kept similar by having more laps on short courses and fewer on long ones -- a great system!), width, style, and difficulty, providing for greater variety than almost anything else in the genre. This is probably the greatest strength of the game, as no other racing game ever has tracks that have the feeling and design of Pod's. There are tracks for everyone here. The easy tracks are short (in lap length, not race length, thanks to the short tracks having more laps), the hard tracks long. The easy ones have no shortcuts, the hard ones many paths to find your way through. The designs are amazingly good and always interesting and go far above and beyond the requirements for courses for your average futuristic racing game. The harder tracks, in particular, are truly challenging, full of blind turns, dead ends, tricky shortcuts, mazelike arrays of passages you have to find your way through, traps, and obstacles you can bump into and push around. At times, when you're winding your way through a particularly hellish maze of corridors, such as the track of doom, Megapol (play it and you will understand how appropriate that appellation is...), the game can barely feel like a racing game at all... except for that lap time of yours, falling minutes behind the competition, that is. Of course, spend the time to memorize the course and you can do well too... but if this gets too frustrating, many simpler, but just as great, tracks are available.
+As I said in the previous point, the game has great art design, as you might expect from a French game. The abandoned, futuristic world of Io presented here is very well designed. Each track has a consistent theme and style which comes together very well. While all of the original courses and many of the addon ones have collapsing-world themes, each one has its own unique environment and design; they each look unique, and all are interesting. The cars are just as well done and also come in great variety. The graphics are admittedly a product of their time -- they have a similar '1997 PC' feel to, for instance, Jedi Knight 1 -- but while this means a very limited polygon count, it also gives them a distinctive style. Considering when the game was made the graphics are fantastic, and the texture work looks amazing in emulated 3DFX mode at 800x600 or higher. The textures are absolutely beautiful in emulated 3DFX mode. The game's interface theme also fits perfectly with the game's. Everything looks like it's on corroding metal plates, essentially. It fits the game perfectly, and I think the interface looks great. Oh, and no, the game's colorscheme isn't just brown and grey. There is a lot of brown, but there is also grass, lots of multicolored skies, brightly colored areas, flashing barriers, the works. It's not just brown.
+While all of the original tracks have a consistent overall theme, in the expansion Ubisoft went farther afield. As a result, many of these tracks have varied, non-Io themes -- a giant casino table (and spectacularly great course), an ice field with giant penguins, a halloween-themed course, a tropical island, and more -- these tracks offer some nice variety, and are some of the best looking, and best designed, courses in the game. The original game has a consistent story and plot; why not try some interesting, different things for the addon tracks? This variety makes you want to download, and try, every one of these great tracks. They really are some of the best in the game. Some even have themed vehicles to go with them!
+Even if they only work in multiplayer or timetrial and some crash, the user-made tracks that don't crash are interesting and can be as well designed as any of the official courses. There are still Pod websites active on the internet (yes, it had a real fanbase, and this has lasted. There are still Pod fansites on the internet. ) and you can find other timetrial times to compare yours to if you wish. Timetrial mode was very popular in Pod, like it would later be with Trackmania. You can save and load ghosts in order to compare your times to those of the best players who have played the game. These ghost downloads can be found on fansites, which also provide a place or link to places to download all of the patches, emulators, track downloads, and car downloads that I've talked about from.
+There is an optional car damage system. You can set it to Off, Global (a simple model where the whole car takes damage when you get hit), or Sector, which breaks the car down into six parts which take damage separately (the most challenging form of damage modelling). While cars cannot be destroyed (unlike in the intro... ), and there is no visible car damage, just an on-screen graphic, damage affects top speed and performance, making avoiding it a very good idea. Each track has a repair zone to stop in that will slowly repair car damage, but they are always on sidings and are sometimes well hidden, so taking one WILL be a delay. Deciding to go fix your car will usually lose you some time, but will fix your top speed. It's a tough decision on some courses... Oh yes, and car damage carries over from race to race. If you finish hurt, you'll start the next race the same way. You cannot be destroyed, though; the main effect is that your top speed will go down.
+The championships use a flat point system, no disqualifications. There are eight cars per race. Eight points for first, seven for second, etc, to one point for last. You only win if you finish in first overall at the end of the championship, but how you get there doesn't matter. Except for the only-every-four-races save system, it's pretty much the ideal championship design. There are also random championship and custom championship options, in addition to the default one that goes through the base 16 tracks, and single race and time trial modes, as well as multiplayer. You can restart any race in championship mode after you complete it, so though you can only save every four races, if you are patient and restart races when you do poorly you will do well anyway. It's best to just run through and see what place you get, but when you have a particularly bad race, having a redo option is fantastic.
+Despite the loss of online play via the gameservice, the two-player split-screen multiplayer mode works great. If you have another copy of the game, you could also try the IPX, direct-modem (cable), or direct IP (Internet, type in IP address) play options.
+That aforementioned intro is really, really awesome. At four minutes long, it's very long for a racing game, and it does a really good job of setting the theme for the game and giving you a feel for the location. The graphics of the various tracks all fit in with the game's general themes of decay and ruin within interesting surroundings, and the emptiness and abandoned equipment in the middle of once-populated areas helps remind me that I'd better win the championship...
The story isn't utterly amazing or anything, but it's rare for a racing game to have one at all, much less one done as well as this. I mean, F-Zero GX is definitely better than this game, but its attempts at storytelling failed pretty badly... this does much better. Simpler, but better.
+The music is great. It's fantastic futuristic racing game electronica, but with a unique sound to it... watch the intro video and the race videos at the end of the post, they have a good amount of it in it. It's a soundtrack I have no problem listening to over and over and over... great stuff.
+It'll bring you back to the days when MMX was supposed to be the next great thing... (and darnit, after playing this game, I still thought it would be... oh well. )
+Ingame map code. While racing, type "map" (no need to let off the accelerator, just press the keys in that order). Presto, the tachometer was replaced with a map. Now, the F9 key will switch between this simple map (which changes color based upon where you are) and another one which shows the exact locations of all eight racers. This second map is great, I never race without it!
Second, the Minor Problems. These don't hurt the game too much, but can be annoying.
-If you want the intro and ending videos to play, figure out a way to get Intel Indeo to function on your system. Otherwise just watch them externally and skip them ingame... the video files are in an open format, so you can watch them in any video file player. (I thought I'd gotten Indeo working on this computer, but running Pod yesterday it clearly isn't working...) Modern computers and OSes don't exactly like Indeo... Annoying. The great PodHacks user patch tool (link in the Links section below) can fix this problem. GOG fixed this issue in their version.
-You need to set Windows to 16-bit graphics for the game to start, even if you have dgVoodoo set to 32-bit color (which would be a bit odd given that 3DFX cards can only do 24-bit color...). The PodHacks user patch file can fix this error too. GOG fixed this as well in their release.
=On the note of PodHacks, it can not only fix those two issues, it also can fix any CPU detection problems easily (below), allow users of the GOG version to use alternate Glide wrappers such as dgVoodoo or nGlide, and even redirect calls to the c:/windows/ubisoft/ubi.ini and CD file locations, so that you can copy that data somewhere else if you wish.
-Ubisoft shut down the online system years ago, meaning that all that's left for multiplayer is IPX, modem, 2-player splitscreen, or direct cable link. You can, I believe, do stuff like combine splitscreen with modem though, I think. I've only ever played it online (when that was available) or splitscreen.
-The game occasionally freezes for a moment, like a sudden drop in framerate that it quickly recovers from.
-The save system is a bit wonky -- save data has been known to disappear or corrupt. In addition, in championships you can only save after every four races, which is annoying at times when you keep doing badly at the last race before the save point... though if it won't save anyway when you get there, there's no need to worry about it. Most of the time it saves properly, though; this is a rare issue.
-There's an odd black space between the sky textures and the track, like a black ring in the lower edges of the sky between the ground and the sky... I would bet that this is an artifact of the fact that the sky was designed for 640x480, not 800x600, and in the higher resolution, there is a gap between the sky and ground. Not that annoying, just kind of odd sometimes.
-The game can be hard, even frustrating. It often feels like once you pass someone they stay on your tail forever, but once they pass you they quickly zoom far ahead... even on Normal, you will lose, a lot, until you get pretty good. This is even more true on the more complex tracks; don't expect to do well your first few tries. You will need to learn them. However, there are some good sides, too -- the AI is not perfect. The other cars will crash, run into walls, get stuck on corners, take damage and need to use the healing areas just like you do, spin out on the slime, and more. Even so, it always feels like the computers are faster than you... this game can be hard. There is a difficulty level selection, and Easy is suggested for beginners, but for veteran racers, you win far too easily, and even there, they bunch up behind you quite a bit. There is a solution, though: Just learn to race better. The challenge level is always pushing you to find a better path and improve your driving skills.
-In order to get the game running in 800x600 (assuming that you are running in 3DFX mode, as described below; D3D mode, or any of the lesser patches, do not support 800x600), you need to edit the game's config file, in C:\Windows\Ubisoft. Once there, edit the ubi.ini file as described. The ingame interface has a "graphical options" button, but that button doesn't work; instead, to change the resolution, you must edit that file. But that's simple enough. GOG's release of course comes prefixed.
https://www.murmuran.net/pod/viewtopic.php?t=607
Through dgVoodoo you can actually raise the resolution above this (for widescreen for instance), but this is what the game will actually be rendering.
And last, the Major Problems. These mostly relate to the long and complicated install procedure anyone wanting to play the game needs to follow, as well as a few other significant flaws.
- The sound effects are broken. The CD audio music is fine, but the sound effects are broken. Voices ('3-2-1-go') crackle and break in and out, engine noises stutter loudly often nearly drowning out the music for the whole duration of the race... it's really annoying. It's kind of a blessing when the sound breaks completely... I want to listen to the music, not that staticky engine noise. I don't know if GOG fixes this or not.
- The process of properly installing the patches and emulator needed to run the game are a big hassle. The process, for a disc-based release: To run the game on a modern computer, first install the game from the CD, in normal DirectX3 mode. Then install the 40MB OEM-to-Retail patch if you have the OEM version CD (as I do). Next install the 24MB 3DFX patch. Then install it again; it's buggy and needs to be ran twice. Next install the Force Feedback patch if you either have a force feedback gamepad or joystick or an ATI CPU, because for some reason that patch fixes the game for them. Next, if you have a Pentium 4 (and only that, not any other Intel CPU) run the unofficial Pentium 4 exe patcher and patch the EXE to get it to run. Alternatively just run PodHacks after installing the 3DFX patch properly, and the Force Feedback patch if you have a directinput force feedback joystick (though is there an xinput-to-dinput mod, like there is for the reverse, for using a 360 controller with this? I'll have to look it up.) -- PodHacks can also fix these CPU detection issues. GOG's version of course prefixed to work.
-Next, copy a Glide emulator and its files (I use dgVoodoo, it, nGlide, or the GOG built-in one are by far the best options for this game) into the Pod folder and configure the emulator to your liking. This emulates Glide so you can run Pod in higher resolutions (or 800x600, at least, maybe higher) and with better graphics than you can get in the second-best graphics patch, the (640x480-limited) D3D DX5 one. Test the game until you find settings that (hopefully) get the game to actually run on your system. dgVoodoo requires at least a GeForce 3 video card -- I could not run Pod on my old computer because my GeForce2 wasn't good enough to display anything ingame. This shouldn't be a problem for many people anymore.
-Alternately, instead of the Glide patch, if you want worse graphics but no emulator, you can install the D3D DX5 patch, if that still works with modern versions of DirectX (I have no idea). This will probably require installing the two Gameservice patches (in the correct order) to fix speed problems, as without the emulator the game tends to run too fast without the Gameservice patches.
-There is also a newer Glide wrapper that can be used instead of dgVoodoo that's called nGlide. It has more accurate Glide emulation than dgVoodoo. It's used as with dgVoodoo -- unzip it into the Pod installation folder, and set it up there. It does come at the cost of not working with the FMVs, sadly.
-For the GOG Release things are simpler, but there still are some decisions to make. GOG includes a built-in Glide wrapper (emulator) with the game of course, and that works okay, but there are however other options, dgVoodoo or the newer wrapper nGlide. See below for the links. nGlide has more accurate Glide emulaton than dgVoodoo or the GOG wrapper, but comes at the cost of not working with the FMV files, so the intro, ending, and credits won't play. dgVoodoo is compatible with the videos, however, so it might be the better choice. In order to use alternate wrappers, first install PodHacks by unzipping it in the GOG ver. Pod installation folder. Then run PodHacks and select which options you want to use. Next do the same two steps with the wrapper you want.
Note: this is ver.2 of this article, done on 9/3/2012. I just learned about the GOG release of the game, PodHacks, and nGlide, and have integrated mentions of all three of these important releases and tools into the review. Most of the text is unchanged, but GOG and PodHacks particularly make some things simpler and fix some of the game's outstanding issues, so the game works even better now than when I originally made the thread. Links have been updated as well.
I'll cover Pod 2: Speed Zone in a later post (it isn't nearly as great as the first game)... but first, Pod.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVyYY6o4sA -- The intro CG, watch this first!
The game's name, by the way, is entirely appropriate, but you'll need to see the awesome ending to see exactly why. Don't spoil it by watching the Youtube video, play the game!
Pod 1.0 (OEM Edition) disc - the one I have.
Pod is a racing game developed and published by Ubisoft for the PC in 1997. It was one of the first games to support Intel's new MMX technology, and supported the 3d cards of the day too. After it came out, the game had a series of patches, updates, and fixes, and the number of game versions profligated from just a few at first to many.It supported DirectX 3, DirectX 5, 3DFX Glide, lesser cards like the S3's junk and whatever ATI had then, Matrox, and more, each with separate patches. Despite all the patches, however, some of the core issues were never fixed...
Time has, however, made things slightly simpler. Most of those patches I mentioned are now irrelevant. Also, they fall into two general categories, the 'lesser graphics' versions, and the 24MB 'better graphics' ones. Only two versions of the game are 24MB (referring to the size of the patch) better graphics versions -- D3D DirectX 5, and 3DFX Glide. Of those, the Glide version has better graphics, and supports 800x600 resolution, while the D3D 5 version is limited to 640x480. As a result, the best way to play the game now is with a Glide emulator. The game is now also available on GOG, and as expected they have fixed the worst problems, though there are still some things to know for that version, in particular for how to add the additional cars and tracks.
On that note, In addition to the patches, the game also had numerous official car and track downloads, as well as a few unofficial car and tracks that were made by users and are available. The results of this are that Pod folder in my Game Downloads folder being 715 files and 425MB large, though a lot of that is the track and car downloads. For a 1997 game though, that's a lot of stuff.
First, the many Good Points. This is why the game is so amazing.
+Pod is a pure racing game. There are no weapons or attacks of any kind, except for just bumping into the other cars. Weapons work in a lot of futuristic racing games, sure, but in this case not having them focuses the game on the racing, and it works really, really well.
+Physics -- you slow down on uphills, speed up on downhills. Some complain that the effect on your speed from going up a hill is too significant, and it makes the game feel slow, but while sometimes you are slowed down quite a bit on uphills, shouldn't you be? When a car goes up a hill, unless it can accelerate more, it loses speed. That's exactly how it works here. It is an arcade-style racing game, but it uses a very playable, and fun, driving model.
+The controls are very simple -- In fact, the game only has four controls: turn left, turn right, accelerate, and brake, unless you're using manual transmission, in which case there are also two gearshift buttons. Nothing more is needed. There are some configuration buttons and a pause button, but none of those are related to the actual gameplay... the actual gameplay controls are as simple as can be. You focus on the racing, not on trying to remember the controls.
+Those cars and tracks... despite the irritation of the CDPatcher (see below), how many racing games have this kind of variety? There are a huge number of available tracks and cars in this game! The game comes with 16 built-in tracks and 8 built-in cars that are always installed. The main Championship goes through those sixteen tracks. Beyond that, you can have up to 32 of the additional 20 official tracks available for download (in Europe most of these were originally available in an expansion pack, but the expansion didn't come out in the US. Instead, all of its tracks were put up for download, with regular new track releases (free of course) until they were all available.), and up to 32 of the and 44 official car downloads installed into the game at once. In addition, there are five unofficial car downloads, seven OEM versions of official original courses available (they were altered in the final release, but you can see the original versions with these tracks), two other beta versions of official courses, and a bunch of user courses -- 11 new tracks (some of which crash, and which do not have any AI so it's timetrial or multiplayer only), 8 reskins of official courses, and several reskins of user courses (some of which crash). Every track, original and expansion, looks completely different and has its own theme and setting, as well as layout an obstacles. I don't know of any other futuristic or arcade racing games with this much variety...
+The actual track DESIGNS are fantastic and unique. Pod has a visual style all its own, and unique track designs as well. The tracks are highly varied in locations, length (though overall race time is kept similar by having more laps on short courses and fewer on long ones -- a great system!), width, style, and difficulty, providing for greater variety than almost anything else in the genre. This is probably the greatest strength of the game, as no other racing game ever has tracks that have the feeling and design of Pod's. There are tracks for everyone here. The easy tracks are short (in lap length, not race length, thanks to the short tracks having more laps), the hard tracks long. The easy ones have no shortcuts, the hard ones many paths to find your way through. The designs are amazingly good and always interesting and go far above and beyond the requirements for courses for your average futuristic racing game. The harder tracks, in particular, are truly challenging, full of blind turns, dead ends, tricky shortcuts, mazelike arrays of passages you have to find your way through, traps, and obstacles you can bump into and push around. At times, when you're winding your way through a particularly hellish maze of corridors, such as the track of doom, Megapol (play it and you will understand how appropriate that appellation is...), the game can barely feel like a racing game at all... except for that lap time of yours, falling minutes behind the competition, that is. Of course, spend the time to memorize the course and you can do well too... but if this gets too frustrating, many simpler, but just as great, tracks are available.
+As I said in the previous point, the game has great art design, as you might expect from a French game. The abandoned, futuristic world of Io presented here is very well designed. Each track has a consistent theme and style which comes together very well. While all of the original courses and many of the addon ones have collapsing-world themes, each one has its own unique environment and design; they each look unique, and all are interesting. The cars are just as well done and also come in great variety. The graphics are admittedly a product of their time -- they have a similar '1997 PC' feel to, for instance, Jedi Knight 1 -- but while this means a very limited polygon count, it also gives them a distinctive style. Considering when the game was made the graphics are fantastic, and the texture work looks amazing in emulated 3DFX mode at 800x600 or higher. The textures are absolutely beautiful in emulated 3DFX mode. The game's interface theme also fits perfectly with the game's. Everything looks like it's on corroding metal plates, essentially. It fits the game perfectly, and I think the interface looks great. Oh, and no, the game's colorscheme isn't just brown and grey. There is a lot of brown, but there is also grass, lots of multicolored skies, brightly colored areas, flashing barriers, the works. It's not just brown.
+While all of the original tracks have a consistent overall theme, in the expansion Ubisoft went farther afield. As a result, many of these tracks have varied, non-Io themes -- a giant casino table (and spectacularly great course), an ice field with giant penguins, a halloween-themed course, a tropical island, and more -- these tracks offer some nice variety, and are some of the best looking, and best designed, courses in the game. The original game has a consistent story and plot; why not try some interesting, different things for the addon tracks? This variety makes you want to download, and try, every one of these great tracks. They really are some of the best in the game. Some even have themed vehicles to go with them!
+Even if they only work in multiplayer or timetrial and some crash, the user-made tracks that don't crash are interesting and can be as well designed as any of the official courses. There are still Pod websites active on the internet (yes, it had a real fanbase, and this has lasted. There are still Pod fansites on the internet. ) and you can find other timetrial times to compare yours to if you wish. Timetrial mode was very popular in Pod, like it would later be with Trackmania. You can save and load ghosts in order to compare your times to those of the best players who have played the game. These ghost downloads can be found on fansites, which also provide a place or link to places to download all of the patches, emulators, track downloads, and car downloads that I've talked about from.
+There is an optional car damage system. You can set it to Off, Global (a simple model where the whole car takes damage when you get hit), or Sector, which breaks the car down into six parts which take damage separately (the most challenging form of damage modelling). While cars cannot be destroyed (unlike in the intro... ), and there is no visible car damage, just an on-screen graphic, damage affects top speed and performance, making avoiding it a very good idea. Each track has a repair zone to stop in that will slowly repair car damage, but they are always on sidings and are sometimes well hidden, so taking one WILL be a delay. Deciding to go fix your car will usually lose you some time, but will fix your top speed. It's a tough decision on some courses... Oh yes, and car damage carries over from race to race. If you finish hurt, you'll start the next race the same way. You cannot be destroyed, though; the main effect is that your top speed will go down.
+The championships use a flat point system, no disqualifications. There are eight cars per race. Eight points for first, seven for second, etc, to one point for last. You only win if you finish in first overall at the end of the championship, but how you get there doesn't matter. Except for the only-every-four-races save system, it's pretty much the ideal championship design. There are also random championship and custom championship options, in addition to the default one that goes through the base 16 tracks, and single race and time trial modes, as well as multiplayer. You can restart any race in championship mode after you complete it, so though you can only save every four races, if you are patient and restart races when you do poorly you will do well anyway. It's best to just run through and see what place you get, but when you have a particularly bad race, having a redo option is fantastic.
+Despite the loss of online play via the gameservice, the two-player split-screen multiplayer mode works great. If you have another copy of the game, you could also try the IPX, direct-modem (cable), or direct IP (Internet, type in IP address) play options.
+That aforementioned intro is really, really awesome. At four minutes long, it's very long for a racing game, and it does a really good job of setting the theme for the game and giving you a feel for the location. The graphics of the various tracks all fit in with the game's general themes of decay and ruin within interesting surroundings, and the emptiness and abandoned equipment in the middle of once-populated areas helps remind me that I'd better win the championship...
The story isn't utterly amazing or anything, but it's rare for a racing game to have one at all, much less one done as well as this. I mean, F-Zero GX is definitely better than this game, but its attempts at storytelling failed pretty badly... this does much better. Simpler, but better.+The music is great. It's fantastic futuristic racing game electronica, but with a unique sound to it... watch the intro video and the race videos at the end of the post, they have a good amount of it in it. It's a soundtrack I have no problem listening to over and over and over... great stuff.
+It'll bring you back to the days when MMX was supposed to be the next great thing... (and darnit, after playing this game, I still thought it would be... oh well. )
+Ingame map code. While racing, type "map" (no need to let off the accelerator, just press the keys in that order). Presto, the tachometer was replaced with a map. Now, the F9 key will switch between this simple map (which changes color based upon where you are) and another one which shows the exact locations of all eight racers. This second map is great, I never race without it!
Second, the Minor Problems. These don't hurt the game too much, but can be annoying.
-If you want the intro and ending videos to play, figure out a way to get Intel Indeo to function on your system. Otherwise just watch them externally and skip them ingame... the video files are in an open format, so you can watch them in any video file player. (I thought I'd gotten Indeo working on this computer, but running Pod yesterday it clearly isn't working...) Modern computers and OSes don't exactly like Indeo... Annoying. The great PodHacks user patch tool (link in the Links section below) can fix this problem. GOG fixed this issue in their version.
-You need to set Windows to 16-bit graphics for the game to start, even if you have dgVoodoo set to 32-bit color (which would be a bit odd given that 3DFX cards can only do 24-bit color...). The PodHacks user patch file can fix this error too. GOG fixed this as well in their release.
=On the note of PodHacks, it can not only fix those two issues, it also can fix any CPU detection problems easily (below), allow users of the GOG version to use alternate Glide wrappers such as dgVoodoo or nGlide, and even redirect calls to the c:/windows/ubisoft/ubi.ini and CD file locations, so that you can copy that data somewhere else if you wish.
-Ubisoft shut down the online system years ago, meaning that all that's left for multiplayer is IPX, modem, 2-player splitscreen, or direct cable link. You can, I believe, do stuff like combine splitscreen with modem though, I think. I've only ever played it online (when that was available) or splitscreen.
-The game occasionally freezes for a moment, like a sudden drop in framerate that it quickly recovers from.
-The save system is a bit wonky -- save data has been known to disappear or corrupt. In addition, in championships you can only save after every four races, which is annoying at times when you keep doing badly at the last race before the save point... though if it won't save anyway when you get there, there's no need to worry about it.
Most of the time it saves properly, though; this is a rare issue.-There's an odd black space between the sky textures and the track, like a black ring in the lower edges of the sky between the ground and the sky... I would bet that this is an artifact of the fact that the sky was designed for 640x480, not 800x600, and in the higher resolution, there is a gap between the sky and ground. Not that annoying, just kind of odd sometimes.
-The game can be hard, even frustrating. It often feels like once you pass someone they stay on your tail forever, but once they pass you they quickly zoom far ahead... even on Normal, you will lose, a lot, until you get pretty good. This is even more true on the more complex tracks; don't expect to do well your first few tries. You will need to learn them. However, there are some good sides, too -- the AI is not perfect. The other cars will crash, run into walls, get stuck on corners, take damage and need to use the healing areas just like you do, spin out on the slime, and more. Even so, it always feels like the computers are faster than you... this game can be hard. There is a difficulty level selection, and Easy is suggested for beginners, but for veteran racers, you win far too easily, and even there, they bunch up behind you quite a bit. There is a solution, though: Just learn to race better. The challenge level is always pushing you to find a better path and improve your driving skills.
-In order to get the game running in 800x600 (assuming that you are running in 3DFX mode, as described below; D3D mode, or any of the lesser patches, do not support 800x600), you need to edit the game's config file, in C:\Windows\Ubisoft. Once there, edit the ubi.ini file as described. The ingame interface has a "graphical options" button, but that button doesn't work; instead, to change the resolution, you must edit that file. But that's simple enough. GOG's release of course comes prefixed.
https://www.murmuran.net/pod/viewtopic.php?t=607
Through dgVoodoo you can actually raise the resolution above this (for widescreen for instance), but this is what the game will actually be rendering.
And last, the Major Problems. These mostly relate to the long and complicated install procedure anyone wanting to play the game needs to follow, as well as a few other significant flaws.
- The sound effects are broken. The CD audio music is fine, but the sound effects are broken. Voices ('3-2-1-go') crackle and break in and out, engine noises stutter loudly often nearly drowning out the music for the whole duration of the race... it's really annoying. It's kind of a blessing when the sound breaks completely... I want to listen to the music, not that staticky engine noise. I don't know if GOG fixes this or not.
- The process of properly installing the patches and emulator needed to run the game are a big hassle. The process, for a disc-based release: To run the game on a modern computer, first install the game from the CD, in normal DirectX3 mode. Then install the 40MB OEM-to-Retail patch if you have the OEM version CD (as I do). Next install the 24MB 3DFX patch. Then install it again; it's buggy and needs to be ran twice. Next install the Force Feedback patch if you either have a force feedback gamepad or joystick or an ATI CPU, because for some reason that patch fixes the game for them. Next, if you have a Pentium 4 (and only that, not any other Intel CPU) run the unofficial Pentium 4 exe patcher and patch the EXE to get it to run. Alternatively just run PodHacks after installing the 3DFX patch properly, and the Force Feedback patch if you have a directinput force feedback joystick (though is there an xinput-to-dinput mod, like there is for the reverse, for using a 360 controller with this? I'll have to look it up.) -- PodHacks can also fix these CPU detection issues. GOG's version of course prefixed to work.
-Next, copy a Glide emulator and its files (I use dgVoodoo, it, nGlide, or the GOG built-in one are by far the best options for this game) into the Pod folder and configure the emulator to your liking. This emulates Glide so you can run Pod in higher resolutions (or 800x600, at least, maybe higher) and with better graphics than you can get in the second-best graphics patch, the (640x480-limited) D3D DX5 one. Test the game until you find settings that (hopefully) get the game to actually run on your system. dgVoodoo requires at least a GeForce 3 video card -- I could not run Pod on my old computer because my GeForce2 wasn't good enough to display anything ingame. This shouldn't be a problem for many people anymore.
-Alternately, instead of the Glide patch, if you want worse graphics but no emulator, you can install the D3D DX5 patch, if that still works with modern versions of DirectX (I have no idea). This will probably require installing the two Gameservice patches (in the correct order) to fix speed problems, as without the emulator the game tends to run too fast without the Gameservice patches.
-There is also a newer Glide wrapper that can be used instead of dgVoodoo that's called nGlide. It has more accurate Glide emulation than dgVoodoo. It's used as with dgVoodoo -- unzip it into the Pod installation folder, and set it up there. It does come at the cost of not working with the FMVs, sadly.
-For the GOG Release things are simpler, but there still are some decisions to make. GOG includes a built-in Glide wrapper (emulator) with the game of course, and that works okay, but there are however other options, dgVoodoo or the newer wrapper nGlide. See below for the links. nGlide has more accurate Glide emulaton than dgVoodoo or the GOG wrapper, but comes at the cost of not working with the FMV files, so the intro, ending, and credits won't play. dgVoodoo is compatible with the videos, however, so it might be the better choice. In order to use alternate wrappers, first install PodHacks by unzipping it in the GOG ver. Pod installation folder. Then run PodHacks and select which options you want to use. Next do the same two steps with the wrapper you want.
