Re-Volt Shrine

Have you ever heard of the game, Re-Volt? If not, it's a racing game, created by Acclaim Entertainment and released in August 1999... with a twist. The twist is: Instead of racing real cars, you race... RC cars! Sounds fun, right? Of course, (pun unintended ;) :P ) it is!

In fact, you might've played it a long time ago, on a Windows computer... ;) Feel a twinge of nostalgia? Well, you're on the right track! (another unintended pun ;) ). As you may (or may not) already know, some Re-Volt fans (Huki, Marv, and Jigebren; Jigebren's inactive) managed to get the game working on modern systems, and released it as a patch called Re-Volt v1.2. But that's deprecated now, since Huki made a version of Re-Volt called RVGL, (OpenGraphicsLibrary ;) ) which works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android (also ported to OpenPandora and ODROID by others!). Download RVGL here. If you lost your CD or if it doesn't work anymore (or if you're of the pirate persuasion ;) although it's out of print now, so I don't blame you), the original files are at Marv's Re-Volt portal.

You race cars on tracks, there's a championship; you even get pickups, which look like the Re-Volt executable icon ;) like in Mario Kart! It also supports custom cars and custom tracks of many types! There's also a Track Editor included with the game, but it requires admin permission on newer Windows systems (Vista and onwards) and it's not on the main menu anymore; you have to download it from here on the Internet Archive, since it was completely removed from RVGL (there's also a Unity remake of it). There's a practice mode and a Stunt Arena, both with stars to collect, and when you collect all the Stunt Arena stars, you get a nice surprise which you may or may not already know about. ;) There are also mirrored tracks, reverse tracks, and reverse/mirrored tracks.

WARNING: It's really hard. Like, REALLY. Really. Hard. Hard with a capital H. It's not quite as hard as, say, The Impossible Game, but, it takes quite a while to unlock all the cars (you unlock cars as you progress through the game; your progress is tracked by a Progress Table inside the game). Some stars are even seemingly impossible (eg. some of the Stunt Arena stars, Toys in the Hood 2 practice star, Toytanic 1 practice star, Ghost Town 2 practice star, Museum 1 practice star)!

Re-Volt was also released for arcade (the Arcade port has a cool exclusive track), Nintendo 64 (not bad, has cool exclusive music), Playstation (worst), and Dreamcast (best, has cool exclusive cars and a cool exclusive track named Rooftops; both are available for the PC version now due to fans; they're downloadable from the RVGL site).

There are even active forums for Re-Volt. Wow! The Re-Volt Hideout is the main forum. (Our Re-Volt Pub and Re-Volt Live have now been replaced by The Re-Volt Hideout due to Tapatalk replacing Invisionfree and changing the UI drastically (more info here). Tapatalk links: Our Re-Volt Pub, Re-Volt Live). Anyway, it's impressive, since Re-Volt was abandonware. Re-Volt's amazing history is detailed right here, but if you don't want to click or tap links, basically Acclaim interfered with the old RV team's plans, cut corners, and so on... and since Acclaim is gone now... ;) WeGo Interactive, a Korean company, took over Re-Volt and released some... not very good sequels (with microtransactions up the wazoo)... ;) At least Re-Volt Classic for iOS and Android's good! But glitchy. (All of WeGo's games aren't available anymore from the official stores though, so... ;) ) Anyway, after that, Re-Volt's rights got handed over to Superday Inc., made of former WeGo employees, and it got put on Steam and GOG in April 2022.

On Steam and GOG though, it's the unpatched 1.0 version! Why? Well, back in October 2013, when WeGo still owned Re-Volt, it was released on GOG with fanmade patches used without permission, so it was removed from GOG soon afterward by request of the fans.

There are also two sequels for Re-Volt: RC Revenge (Playstation), and RC Revenge Pro (Playstation 2). People say they're not as good as Re-Volt, and I say they're decent.

Go play Re-Volt! Even if you haven't played it before, it's a great game! :D

Now onto the guides...

(Note: To know more about track creation and some tips, tricks and hints for racing, read the manual that comes with the original game data. Download above.)

Track Creating Tips

To create tracks, you can use the Track Editor mentioned above, or you can use a multitude of other tools. There are already guides for the latter (albeit outdated; find 'em on ze forums) and since I don't know how to create a track with that method (yet), I'll just go over how to make a track in the Track Editor (maybe later I'll make some guides for the latter though...).

Track Editor

Track Editor Guide

There's already a Track Editor Guide above, and even though it's for the Nintendo 64 version of Re-Volt, it's still relevant to RVGL, so it's still useful. If you want to create an exciting track, go there!

The only thing it doesn't cover is how to solve one error that the Track Editor may give. The error is:

Track doesn't form a loop, or has an upwards step in it. The cursor will be placed at the last valid position.

To solve this problem, look for missing parts; or you may not have put corners in the right places. Sometimes it complains about banks, which are included in it! O_O But actually that's pretty straightforward, ;) simply make sure the jump has both an up and a down (and no, apparently cars jumping after a down doesn't count O_O). (Eg. Straights 'waves' ;) ).

A final comment: Why is it called the Track Editor if you cannot edit the stock tracks (ones that come with the game) with it? ;) (You CAN edit the stock tracks with MAKEITGOOD; more below; if you mess up, replace the files with the originals from above).

Cheat Codes

Re-Volt has cheat codes which make the game more fun. The cheat codes are in all versions. :D (except N64 :( )

To enter the cheat codes, go to the name typing screen and type the cheat codes in, then press Enter. A sound will play if you did it right without typos. There's also a special one as of RVGL and Re-Volt 1.2... ;)

The following table comes from the wiki (edited for clarification):

There's also a Dev mode (more info below, but it's sorta secret ;) ) and a special cheat code as of the early October 2019 RVGL version ;)

Dev mode

You can use this mode to put instances and objects in... da FRONTEND! Yes, you can edit the main menu background (and drive in it, although there's a lot of funny quirks ;) ).

Also, all cars and tracks are unlocked, and you can calculate car stats (that's a mode where a car you choose drives through Toys in the Hood 1 (no collision though) and its stats are shown at the end), and the secret mode you get when you finish Stunt Arena is unlocked, and more!

If you're lazy, or just don't wanna jump through hoops ;) simply start Re-Volt from the command line (in Terminal for Linux and Command Prompt or PowerShell for Windows) and type in '-dev' (no quotes) in the command. You could also create a desktop shortcut for RVGL and in the Target field, after every thing else in it, type in '-dev' (no quotes).

MAKEITGOOD

It is the best one since it unlocks an Edit Mode. In Edit Mode, you can edit the stock tracks (and custom ones made by others or by you, by either the track editor or other tools). The modes inside Edit Mode are: (from wiki)

Light, Vizibox, Objects, Instances, AI Nodes, Track Zones, Triggers, Camera Nodes, Farce Fields, Erm, nothing to see here (Portals), Pos Nodes, and Acoustic Zones

There's a good picture guide for Objects here.

Instances

Keys used (from wiki):

• F4 to enter edit mode.
• Insert to insert instances (.prm)
• Numpad (plus)+ and (minus)- to cycle through available instances.
• Use the Blender-like axes circle to rotate the model. Blue is X, green is Y, and red is Z.
• P, [, and ] to increase RGB.
• ;, '', and \ keys to decrease RGB.
• Minus (-) & Equals (=) to increase/decrease LOD.
• Slash (/) & Star (*) keys to increase/decrease priority.
• Ctrl+F4 to save changes.
• Select an instance or object by clicking on it, then press the Delete key to delete it. It can be hard to find where to click occasionally to select an object.

Note: On my HP laptop, I have to press Fn before pressing the F keys, and the insert and print screen key are the same key (I just have to press Fn before pressing Printscreen/Insert).

• Q - Backwards.
• E - Forwards.
• W - Up.
• A - Left.
• S - Down.
• D - Right.

Function keys

On my HP laptop, I have to press Fn before pressing any of these. Maybe it's the other way around on other laptops... ;)

F1 - Change Camera (normal; close to car; car view; hood view)

F2 - Shows view of you (your car) from the front.

F3 - Shows view of your opponents.

F4 - Changes which opponent is focused on in the opponents window. Opens Edit Mode if it's on.

F5 - Uses Camera Nodes instead of regular camera, for cool action shots. Resets camera to normal in Edit mode.

F6 - If TVTIME or DEV mode is on, changes camera to free roam mode (you can look anywhere in the track using the mouse; zoom in using the left mouse button, and out using the right mouse button; use the scroll wheel to zoom in without moving the camera; it's basically noclip mode); if pressed again, makes camera attach to car from far away.

F8 - Takes a screenshot! (RVGL only?)

F9 - If DEV mode is on, overlays various info on the screen, like car position, race time, sparks, etc.

F10 - Deposits car anywhere in DEV mode (like off the Toytanic... :) Or directly on a hard to reach star ;) ).

F11 - Switch to windowed; press again to switch back to fullscreen.

Links to helpful sites

Re-Volt Wiki (everything has a wiki; heck, even Boowa and Kwala has a wiki! ;) from the UpToTen kids site)

Re-Volt World (custom stuff to download; active; WARNING: very addictive due to the cool RVGL Launcher auto-download feature, as I've got over 20 GB of downloads now; successor to Re-Volt Zone)

Re-Volt I/O (the place for everything Re-Volt! Has links to forums you may want to visit for advice. Our Re-Volt Pub and Re-Volt Live might have bad UIs though, because their forum software got changed to Tapatalk. Read the whole saga here.)

Gallery

(Page created on Feb 13, 2017, 7:07 AM, page is emboldened! ;) )

Track Creating Tips made on March 13, 2017, 8:54 AM.

Edited on Dec 10, 2017. Found a missing bracket! Added Re-Volt I/O too. Added the rest of the F keys and some misc edits. Added which cipher to use for the secret link.

Edited again on Mar 17, 2018. Found another missing bracket, added a mention of Android version of RVGL, link to Shader version of RVGL, added Re-Volt Hideout, and added the fact that there are no cheat codes in the N64 version. Also, misc edits in the Track Editor section.

Edited once more on July 9, 2018. Fixed some typos and a broken link. Misc edits (wording, etc.) Added that the shader-based edition is now activated through an INI (settings) file. Updated the RVGL site's link.

Updated on July 31st, 1999... er, 2017. ;) Happy Birthday, Re-Volt!

Edited once again on Sep 13, 2018. Added that Re-Volt Live's forum engine is also Tapatalk now.

Important edits on Oct 18, 2018. Fixed broken link to original Re-Volt files, and various other edits.

Updated some more on July 29, 2019; just in time for Re-Volt's 20th anniversary! :D (Which is July 31st, 1999- er, 2019 :P ). Removed most of the bolds (but not all of 'em ;) ) and various other edits, especially fixing links. ;)

Updated again on July 31st, 1999... er, 2019. ;) (; Happy 20th Birthday, Re-Volt! :D Added more links, removed some more bolds, added a caption, alt. text and description to the main picture (finally! ;) ), and misc. edits.

Updated on Wed, Oct 16, 2019. Added new cheat code and another way of enabling Dev mode, misc. edits.

Updated on Sat, Nov 12, 2022. It's been a while, huh? Fixed a few links and updated RVGL-relevant info.

Updated once more on Mon, Nov 21, 2022. Added the first pic of the Gallery.

The unofficial guide to almost everything Re-Volt. Will be updated a lot.