Street Legal Racing: Redline

Gameplay

The game takes place in Valo City (possibly a play on the word "velocity"), a metropolis known for its vast underworld of illegal street racing. The plot of the game is to beat every club and accomplish the requirements to enter the Race of Champions, a prestigious racing competition where one can win a bonus car. Players have to race others on the streets during the day for prestige (respect) or money to customize the car. During the night, players can either participate in a drag race against another driver or watch the race.

A unique feature of the game is its detailed level of customization for the vehicles. The player can buy a completely new car from the dealership, a used one from a local shop where they were already customized or even totaled, or build the car from scratch with a chassis. Unlike a traditional street racing video game, the player must manually replace each part, and these parts can get permanently lost if the car gets damaged.

Patches

Currently, there are three patches for the game: the 2.2.1 MWM (by Miran & Wichur), 2.3.0 Live Edition (by Raxat) and SLRR2015 (by Bigg Boss93, available on VStanced.com). The latest version was released on Steam and is gradually improved by the European game developer ImageCode in collaboration with Raxat.

Mods

Thousands of mods were made for this game, including vehicles, parts for said vehicles, tracks (which only work for 2.2.1 MWM), sounds, menu interfaces, and textures. Because the game is very unstable, it is highly likely to crash when too many mods are installed.

Cars

Cars in the game look similar to their real-life counterparts, but are given fictitious names. For example: Mitsubishi is called Shimutsibu, Subaru is called Ishima, Chevrolet Camaro is called MC, Volkswagen is called Einvagen, Honda is called Duhen, BMW is called Baiern, Nissan is called Emer and Dodge is called Hauler's. Depending on the version of the game, there are two prize cars: Prime DLH 500 (based on a Shelby GT500) or if 2.3.0 Live! Edition is installed, the "Furrano GTS" from its prequel. Players can buy cars from the Used Car Dealer or the New Car Dealer. Initially, players are only given enough money to buy a used car and repair it, if it was inexpensive enough.

In addition, players can modify any part of their vehicle using a dynamic garage system. Like the cars, the parts are fictional, and are supplied by the game's fictional parts developer SL Tuners. In particular, the many engine components are highly modifiable, including intake, exhausts, camshafts, crankshafts, engine blocks, intake manifolds, cylinder heads, and turbochargers. Parts can be mixed and matched to create unique engines.

When cheat codes are put into the game, the player will hear a car horn on the regular version of the game, the phrase "You lose!" if the 2.2.1 MWM patch is installed, and "Holy Shit!" in the 2.3.0 Live! Edition.

Reboot

Thanks to public funding, the game was greenlit and eventually re-released on Steam on May 7th, 2016. The Steam release is still very unstable, but is gradually improving. Its textures and interface make it more contemporary, and the career is altered for more of a challenge.

Possible sequel

Dave Singh, the owner of streetlegalmods.com, made a deal with Invictus Games, Ltd. stating that if the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign reached a minimum of $150,000, the development of the sequel to SLRR, Street Tuning Evolution, would officially begin, as long as the game was playable and the community was allowed to add content. $500,000 was demanded to make a complete game.

After having a bad launch with the Kickstarter, and due to the popular demand of a PayPal option, Invictus Games, Ltd. and Dave Singh decided to move the campaign to IndieGogo to solve the many problema, and also to extend the deadline. Backers could then use PayPal to make a pledge. The campaign would have been funded only if it had reached $150,000. The IndieGogo campaign had a significantly better launch than the Kickstarter campaign, which raised around $24,000 a little more than 40 days after its launch in December 18, 2014. The IndieGogo campaign raised nearly $10,000 just one day after its launch. Unfortunately the campaign failed, reaching just over $30,000.

Despite the failure, another person, Bartosz "Wichur" Bieszka, plans to make a sequel to this game under the "CarTune" title. ImageCode LLC also plans to make a similar project or join an existing one, as they have already done with Raxat's 2.3.1 verison.

Script/game engine

Street Legal 2 runs on a combination of configuration files and compiled Java files. In the initial release, the original Java source code was removed from the installation of the game, leaving only the compiled .CLASS files behind for the game to read. This was done to prevent users from editing the published game once it was released, so no modifications could be made to it.

However, soon after its release, the syntax of the source code was leaked and users began creating mods for the game. The key to creating mods was a folder named 'src' in the scripts directory of the vehicle/part(s) folder. The Java source files were compiled by the game's main application and compiled from raw Java to compiled .CLASS format, placed into the main script directory.

However, not all of the game's system file have been released, meaning that the game itself can only be modified to a certain extent in its script. This make bugs and crashes quite difficult to repair, and to this day, it remains quite an unstable game, suffering memory errors and crashes when loading files.

There are also limitations in the script. Once the Java source files were compiled, they could not be decompiled. The mod creator had to either create their own code from scratch or use an existing third-party Java file from the game itself. Many mods for this game, especially 'VIP' mods, have their src folder removed so that users cannot edit the mod once it is published.

The directories themselves (mainly vehicle and part directories) are loaded with a system of compiled .rpk files, which served the same purpose as .CLASS files. RPK files are the compiled versions of RDB source code, which is compiled to create .rpk files. However, unlike CLASS files, .rpk files can be decompiled. This enables users to modify existing content and add to existing modifications in this way.

The game itself revolves around sets of hexadecimal code which is globally read by other sources of the game. RDB (.rpk) files define these hexadecimals to be used in configuration files of a certain directory.

The RPK runs off of a system of loading types: texture, mesh, click, render and script. In the RDB code, texture is defined as a 'typeof 7', mesh 'typeof 5', click 'typeof 9', render 'typeof 14' and script 'typeof 8'. The 'typeof' ids 7 and 5 load three-dimensional data into the game. In all ids in the RDB (or compiled RPK) assign hexadecimal codes to each of the loaded-in files. These such codes are named 'typeids' and they can be used in other files that are specified in the RDB. In the typeof 9 code the game configures a part to be tuned and adjusted in-game; however this can only be used on applicable part types. The typeof 14 combines the texture and mesh specified previously in a file and generates a visible object in the game. This means that the game itself manually applies textures, which can lead to issues if the textures are not listed correctly in the RDB file. This is called the 'loading order'

The loading order is generated as one of two files given by 3D Studios Max when a 3D model is exported using Invictus' SCX format. With this file, there is also a .tex file, generated to tell the user what the loading order is. It lists the order of the textures, which is important for applying them in-game, because the textures won't apply correctly if the loading order is incorrect.