Newbie guide

Turbo Sliders is a racing game with the classic top-down perspective. It allows up to 20 players to compete against each other in network cups. There is an extensive track record support and unlimited extensibility with new tracks and cars.

Quick launch

When starting the game for the first time, pick your language, enter your name and select your color. All selections are made with the arrow keys and Enter. The next thing you can do is to train, which means playing a short cup alone using the default tracks and the default car. By default, the car is controlled by using the arrow keys. There are four controls: acceleration (up), brake (down), turn left (left) and turn right (right). Race can be ended by pressing Esc. If you want to change key bindings or enable joystick, go to menu Settings/Keys.

Selecting players

In the main menu, go to "Players". There are four slots for local players. You can create a new player by selecting a slot and then selecting "New Player". You can clear a slot by pressing Backspace or by selecting a slot and then choosing "none". You can change the color of a player by using Left/Right with or without left Shift/Ctrl/Alt.
You can also change the number of computer driven cars that will be included in your local games here. AI Fill means the total number of cars that will be in the race. For example, if you have one local human player and set AI Fill to four, there will be three computer cars included. You can also adjust AI player skill. Note that AI players will only appear in the races if there are AI driving lines for the track and car. So, if you download tracks or cars made by other people, you also need to get driving lines in order to play against AI in those tracks.

Selecting cars

In the main menu, go to "Cars". Car selection can be in three modes. In fixed, non-fixed or random. If the car is fixed, the same car is always used. In non-fixed mode, players can change their car before each race. In random mode, each player gets the same random car. You can still control which cars are available.

Selecting tracks

In the main menu, go to "Tracks". There you can select which tracks are to be raced in your cups and the number of laps in races. You can also control whether you allow downloading tracks from a server in a network game. You can also allow or disallow uploading tracks to clients when you are running a server. Note that downloaded tracks come to directory "Download". You can also create your own subdirectories under the tracks directory if you have lots of tracks and want to reorganize them. Pressing 'R' when on top of a track shows the track profile and records. By holding Shift, Alt or Ctrl when pressing Enter you can add the same track multiple times.

Train / Local cup

When you select "Train" or "Local Game" in the main menu, you run a cup between your local players using the selected tracks and cars.

Network game

Go to "Network game" in the main menu. If you know the IP of the server you want to join, type or paste it in the "Server" item. Otherwise, you can select "Server List", which lists the current active servers which are advertizing themselves. The servers are ordered by ping. The lower the ping to a server is, the better the network game is expected to work. Under 100 ms is probably very good and over 200 ms can be very laggy. Note that what tracks and cars you have selected does not have any effect on what tracks and cars are allowed by the server. If the server is not using fixed cars, you can change your car before each race.

Recordings

You can record your races either by having automatic recording on or by pressing the recording key (F4 by default) during a race. You can view your recordings by selecting Recordings in the main menu. You can browse the directory structure under the video directory, possibly deleting recordings by pressing Delete or Backspace. To see a video, you must have the cars and track the recording was made in. If you have associated TSR files with sliders.exe, you can also view recordings by double-clicking them in Windows Explorer. You can change the car you are following by pressing Up and Down arrow (or whatever you use for acceleration and brake for player 1). You can change the playback speed by using player 1 Left and Right buttons. Shift+Left starts the recording from the beginning, Shift+Right warps a few seconds forward. You can enter free camera

Command Line Parameters

There are several command line parameters you can use to launch the game in different modes or settings:

  • (<1|0> means 1 or 0)
  • -f <1|0> full screen on or off
  • -x <size>    x size of the window/screen
  • -y <size> y size of the window/screen
  • -opengl <0|1> whether to use OpenGL
  • -directx <0|1> whether to use DirectDraw
  • -connect <ip> immediately connects to the given IP
  • -name <name> select (only) the given player
  • -sound <1|0> sound on or off
  • -priority <0|2|4> sets process priority, 0-2 normal, 4 high (default: 2)
  • -debug <0|1|2|3> sets debug level for output.txt (default: 0)
  • -usestore <1|0> whether to use surface store, use 0 to save memory but Alt+Tabbing may not work in Windows (default: 1)
  • -fontcache <1|0> whether cache fonts, use 0 to save video memory
  • -forcesw <1|0> whether to try to save video card memory instead of loading everything in the card (default: 0)
  • -macros <file> sets the macros file (default: macros.ini)
  • -menueffects <1|0> enables or disables menu effects (default: 1)
  • -music <1|0>    enables or disables music (default: 1)
  • -capture <n> Capture the first n seconds as bmp files in capture folder when playing a recorded video. Use this only if you want to make videos. OpenGL is automatically disabled when using capture.

It is also possible to put the command line parameters into a file with extension .tss and open the file with sliders.exe. Each line is considered a different command line parameter. This way, it is possible for example to join a certain server by double-clicking its icon (if .tss is associated to sliders.exe). Remember that things like if for example you want the game to start in full screen mode, "-f" must be on its own line and then "1" in the next line.