This is a brand new section to the site, and I felt that it was a much needed section based on what all has come aboard the last few years. Those that know me, or have kept tabs on the site, know that I'm a car fanatic probably first and foremost to anything out there. That said, I'm not a gearhead, although I frequently admit to wanting to be, it's just a matter that the resources aren't exactly at my disposal for the time being, nor is my passion so much in the race driving. That little aspect is quelled in other arenas.

One of those arenas is the gaming community. My friends all tend to play the traditional favorites, the role playing games, the battle and attack style games, the games that require raw-thinking brain power and skill and determination. While I do have a pretty high GPA in school, to me a game is a form of relaxation, and the only forms of thinking I like in a game is out-thinking my opponent to turn 1. ;-)

So, I wanted to take the time to speak of one of my personal favorites, and another game that astounds me in how far it has been taken by a bunch of renegade hacker-types. Those being Ratbag's Dirt Track Racing (and it's subsequent launches, DTR Sprint Cars for PC, WoO 2002 for PS2, and DTR 2 for PC) and Hasbro Interactive's NASCAR Heat, which has been dutifully tweaked and as they say ".mod'ed" into what is commonly known as UDTRA Heat, and now is most popular with the SAS Heat Mod.

These two games, are of the many racing games out there I've played. Yet, Dirt Track Racing was the one that ignited many fan's appetites. You see, there already had been a strong mod community forming as far back as NASCAR 2 by Sierra's Papyrus division, yet... it was basically running tweaked body shapes on paved tracks painted brown. Nothing like what Dirt Track Racing brought to the table upon launch. This game laid down the gauntlet, and started a fervent passion within the online sim community to get some sort of recognition for the sport, and further ignited a band of youths to go from simple gamers, to online versions of the famed big stars of the real sport we know and love.

With those youths, that determination, comes an unquellable urge for more. Much like a Smoky Yunick or Roger Penske did years ago, these youths sought every unfair advantage, any option to find a grey area, and reinvent the wheel. For better or worse, Dirt Track Racing really pushed the online dirt track racing simulation segment forward, and for that it deserves a great bit of kudos for the foresight it brought.

Yet, with it's 2.0 update, many of the online sim. community are a bit disappointed. The reasoning? Not so much that DTR2 isn't an improvement over the original in almost every way, it's the lack of detail and improvement on a level similar to what is probably the biggest, baddest, most insane, tweaked, improved, and fought over ".mod" in history. By people like Anth2c, Warr1oR, Stizmo, DirtWizard, FOD Radelon, Phathry, and various others hacking Hasbro Interactive's NASCAR Heat, they brought forth a game .mod in UDTRA Heat that is the most amazing feat I can think of. They basically took a game, a pre-defined gaming engine, pre-engineered, compiled, coded, and altered and tweaked it to their task. They created new body models in 3D Rendering programs, edited code, and alterred parameters with resource editing tools, and produced something that is nothing short of miraculous. What DTR 2 improved upon, UDTRA Heat blew away before DTR 2 even got to the shelves. What DTR 2 lacks in realism, UDTRA Heat overly submerges you in. To consider that a band of hackers beat an entire game development company in Australia is pretty crazy, but it's in this affirmed race fan's eyes as being a done deal.

With UDTRA, SAS, and DTR it brought so much more. From online racer's of the Bloomquist and Moyer variety, to online color scheme (skin) painters that rival the Ron Jovi's and John Flinner's of the real world. It is it's own culture, it's own fan base, and it's one... as an artist, as a designer, and as a race fan that I love being a part of. For those that play Mechwarrior, Diablo, or Unreal Tournament, you have your realm. For me, this is mine.

LINKS:

Visit SimWizards.com for all of your online racing needs.

Visit ModWorx.net - Official home of SOLO Graphix.

Visit Shorttracksim.com, the official home of the Late Model Project.

Visit OutlawPaintshop.com for all of your NR2K3 Paint Needs.

Visit Racingrafix.com, paint contributors to various NR2K3 mods.

Get my layered UDTRA/SAS Heat Photoshop Template.