Drive a Physics-Crazed Motorcycle

Ah, Elasto Mania; bouncing around on shareware motorbikes was never such fun.

It’s fortunate that, in writing this book, I’m allowed a tiny bit of self-indulgence to point to some of my very favorite things to grab for free, exploit, and hack. Let’s face it, what normal book includes an entire hack about a crazed two-wheeled shareware game with super-addictive gameplay, a laughably cheap upgrade price to unlock the full package, and an insanely dedicated community? That describes the infamous 2D time-based motorcycle game Action Supercross, created by Balazs Rozsa, and its better-looking pseudo-sequel, Elasto Mania. The latter is so good, it deserves a hack of its own just as much as DOOM or Unreal does.

Introducing the New Bike Ballet Flava

The description for the Windows game Elasto Mania can easily apply to its less pretty DOS predecessor, Action Supercross. It’s “[a] motorbike simulation game based on a real physical model.” Could it be that simple?

The basic gameplay of Elasto Mania is as simple as it is bizarre. Drive your rear-wheel-drive, slow, bouncy-physics motorbike around a crudely drawn level, collecting apples by touching them with the front or back wheels of your bike and touching a flower to complete the level. The object of the game is to complete each level in the fastest time possible by accelerating, braking, and rotating your motorcycle to hop, skip, and jump around sometimes puzzling courses. You lose the level if your rider’s head or body hits a piece of the scenery, so be careful. There’s also a two-player split-screen mode and a level editor, though it’s extremely limited in the shareware version.

Big deal, huh? The addiction comes from battling the wonderful physics to throw your motorbike around in crazy ways, constantly compensating for bounce and gravity factors, figuring out faster and faster alternate routes through maze-like levels. Bear in mind, though, that the physics also make it extremely frustrating. It may take a while to acclimate to the weird, unreal floatiness (Figure 8-2).

Figure 8-2. Elastomania’s basic but amazingly playable stylings

Tip

As a testament to the game’s hypnotic powers, following its 1997 debut, the entire Guildford, U.K. video game development community that I was part of was hopelessly addicted. Ostensibly, we should have worked on much more complex stuff, such as Black and White.

You can still find the shareware version of the original DOS Action Supercross from seminal fan site MopoSite (http://www.moposite.com/info_across.php). Version 1.3 includes 16 levels in the shareware version and 42 official levels plus a level editor in the registered version. There are also hundreds or thousands of custom player-designed levels.

However, Action Supercross has had its day. The Windows version, Elasto Mania, is definitely the program to grab. Download the current shareware version (1.1) from the official web site (http://www.elastomania.com/sharewa.htm). It includes 18 stages and a very basic level editor. Register at the princely sum of $9.99 to receive another 36 official levels, the completely unlocked level editor, and the ability to load any of an almost infinite amount of great levels created by sadistic, addicted players.

Check out Elastomaniac (http://www.elastomaniac.com/) for the biggest selection of Elasto Mania files. Levels tend to run 2 or 3 KB apiece, so multiple 7-MB archives will keep you entertained for days on end.

Achieving World Record Times

If you want to move in Elasto Mania expert circles, you’ll have to play for hundreds of hours to challenge the crazy skills of the hardcore Elma players. The current world records table (http://www.moposite.com/records_elma_wrs.php) includes some incredibly swift times. If you can beat them, then send your state.dat (overall records) and .rec (actual replay recording) files to the MopoSite folks. They’ll add you to the high-score tables.

Unfortunately, you can’t download replay recordings of all the world record holders. We suspect this is partly for trade secret reasons. The champions want you to work out the fastest routes on your own! Fortunately, there are good professional-style replays available elsewhere on MopoSite (http://www.moposite.com/downloads_replays_professional.php), as well as on the message boards for those interested in seeing expert tricks and tactics.

If you’re just starting out, here are some tricks to speed up your best times:

Keep your footing.
In Elasto Mania, your back wheel creates traction. Keep your back wheel on solid ground as much as possible, then stomp on the gas pedal to increase your speed. This is especially true on bumpy terrain. Rotate the bike to put your back wheel back down instead of waiting to hit the ground again after a drifting jump. Be wary of accelerating too hard when the bike is at a strange angle and flipping upside down, though.
Consider your route.
Think carefully about how you’re collecting the apples. Because of the flow of the level, some routes are much faster that others. More dramatically, some routes will leave you stuck and unable to pick up apples because you chose the incorrect order. As a basic goal, pick up the final apple as part of your final approach to the flower. This is often tricky, but it’s a good goal.

Sometimes speeding up is the only way to traverse sections at all. For example, in some Elasto Mania levels, it’s almost impossible to drive at full speed down stepped downhill sections without hitting your head on the ceiling. Instead, pluck up some courage and whiz down the tunnel as fast as you can, flipping your bike 180 degrees for traction off the roof of the tunnel and avoiding hitting your head on the overhangs to save seconds and look cool at the same time.

Dismount ungracefully if necessary.
Remember two things about ending a level. First, you have to touch the flower with the front or back wheel of the bike or your head. Second, the level ends immediately. Even if you’re in some kind of kamikaze death dive, as long as you hit the flower on the way down, you’re good.

Hopefully, this will help you become an Elasto Mania master. Even if it doesn’t, at least you’ll have had the requisite apple a day that keeps the doctor away.

Hacking Elasto Mania Any Way You Can

Over at the excellent MopoSite you’ll find a page (http://www.moposite.com/stuff_programs.php) devoted to extra hacks, exploits, and cool stuff you can do with Elasto Mania, even after grabbing the shareware version and registering it. In particular, here’s some cool stuff you might like to try:

Import your own graphics.
The LGR Development Kit (http://www.moposite.com/programs/lgrdk10.zip) allows you to replace the default, rather basic apples and flowers with your own images.
Change game texts.
Elma Text (http://www.moposite.com/programs/elma_text.zip) can change the text in the game so that when you fail, you can have Elasto Mania swear colorfully at you or commiserate with you in sympathetic verse.
Bypass impassible levels.
You’re normally allowed to skip only a maximum of three levels as you advance through the game. If you’re completely stumped, use Level Unlocker (http://members.fortunecity.com/elastomania/zips/LevUnlck.zip) to see the rest of the game.
Track records.
If you play the game a lot and want to know your average times over each level when you’ve played it tens or hundreds of times, Average Times Counter (http://www.moposite.com/programs/average_counter.zip) will take your statistics and work out your mean time for each level in the game.

Running Elasto Mania on Alternative Operating Systems

A game as cult-like as Elasto Mania, originally coded only for Windows and DirectX, inevitably brings conversions and exploits to run it on other systems. One’s official, and one’s not.

Oddly, the only remotely official Elasto Mania conversion came out for the lamented BeOS (http://www.bebits.com/app/2195). The site holding the full BeOS version was down at the time of writing, but you can at least try the shareware version and ask around for the full version.

If you’re one of the 10,000 people without BeOS installed (or is that with?), you can run Elasto Mania on Unix-based systems. The excellent MopoSite fan site has a text file explaining how to run it on FreeBSD (http://www.moposite.com/misc_text_files/unixelma.html). Other forum posts indicate Linux versions of WINE (http://www.winehq.com/) work just fine. This is great news for Linux freaks who want to run Elasto Mania.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to run either Elasto Mania or Action Supercross on the Mac. It may be possible to play the original Action Supercross using DOSBox ( [Hack #8] ), though there are no online records that confirm or deny this.

Grand Theft Motorbike

In a bizarre, only partly rumored side point, the cooler-than-thou Rockstar Games of Grand Theft Auto fame licensed the Action Supercross concept for its Game Boy Evil Knievel game. This is a relatively unknown fact, mainly because Evil Knievel was, well, abysmal. Apparently, Rockstar failed to realize, presumably after licensing it, that the fun in Action Supercross is in juggling physics and rotation; the bike moves pathetically slowly for a daredevil game.

This leads to all kinds of what-if? fun, imagining Rockstar showing the game to Mr. Knievel himself during development, eliciting reactions such as “I don’t remember moving at 3/4 miles an hour during all my famous stunts.” The final Game Boy cart version, presumably based on Action Supercross, is much faster and completely messed up. The online gaming site IGN.com gave it just 2/10. Oh dear. Even worse, Rockstar/Take Two reused the concept for the awful Austin Powers Gameboy game, complete with fake Windows OS and motorcycle with attached Mini-Me. Don’t ask. Really... don’t ask.

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