Monster Truck Madness
Improve AI Truck Performance
On modern PCs, Monster Truck Madness 1's AI trucks are pathetic, even on the 'professional' difficulty. The reason for this is because the game was created for the earliest Pentium processors, and as such it is meant to be run by computers that play it at a speed between 15-30 frames per second. The AI trucks were also designed with that in mind.
Simply put -- the lower your framerate is, the better the AI trucks will perform. Inversely, the higher your framerate is, the worse they will do, until they eventually just wander about aimlessly. With any kind of modern computer, your framerate will probably be in the 100s of frames per second. With VSync enabled on your video card, you can typically lock the framerate to 60 FPS, but 60 is still way too high for the AI trucks to be competitive.
So how do we lower the framerate to that 15-30 range so that the computer trucks can give us a challenge? I use a program called Bandicam. Bandicam is primarily a screen capture/recorder, but it also includes a nifty little FPS limiter.
To set a FPS limit in Bandicam, click FPS on the sidebar. Put a check next to "Set FPS Limit to," and UNcheck "Only when capturing." Then put your desired FPS number in the box - you can see I have mine set to 20 here.
Load up MTM with bandicam in the background. During a race, you can type "frame" (without the quotes) to see your framerate listed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. If Bandicam is doing its job, this number should match, or very nearly match the FPS limit number you entered.
You should see a major improvement in the AI - in testing, I found the AI trucks ran roughly 5 seconds a lap faster at "A Crazy 8" when the game is played at 20 FPS as opposed to 60 FPS - but even that is kind of misleading because at 60 FPS the AI trucks don't finish their lap without wrecking most of the time. :p
So watch out, because Grave Digger won't be a pushover this time.
