Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

While installing games on the tablet mentioned in the previous article, I remembered an interesting project. And a very interesting game too. It is called Re-Volt! One of the very first good looking 3D games I ever played. Even though it is from 1999, the graphics still look amazing. We can remember many early 3D games that look relatively ugly, but this is an absolute gem.



I think everyone knows this game, but for those who don't, it's an RC car racing arcade, in different tracks and environments, with collectable bonuses/weapons. You can race on the street between the houses, in the toy shop, in the Wild West village or on the boat. The tracks are very varied and so are the cars.

The game is so popular, and the modding community is so big, that you can download hundreds of interesting cars and dozens of very good and well-made tracks, just copy them to the folder with the game, and enjoy.

And here comes the RVGL project, an open source re-implementation of this great game, bringing it to Android devices. I tried the "official" build about a year ago. It required the files from the original game to be copied to the device in order to work. So I took my old PC backup, with lots of custom content, and put it on my phone, and it was... problematic. Some of the textures were buggy, the menu controls were a bit confusing... but it was playable and I still enjoyed a few hours of playing.



Now I have discovered a custom build of the Android package, with built-in data files. So I gave it another try on my new tablet. So I just installed the .apk and to my surprise everything worked fine. Yes, the controls in the menu are still confusing, as it is basically designed to be controlled by the keyboard, but if you give it a few tries, you can learn to control it.

The game runs really smoothly, even on this really old machine, which is fantastic. It also includes cars and a level from the Dreamcast version of the game, which I did not know. There is only one bug I noticed. In the "open world" tracks, the texture of the sky rarely flashes, but it is nothing really worth mentioning.

So no, i have "stock" game, and now i would maybe try to install some more additional community content, and will see. if it would work. But I think it should.

Until then... see you after finishing all the championships :)