SODA Off-Road Racing is an off-road racing simulation released for both DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

 and Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 PCs. The game was based on the SODA

SODA (series)

The Short-course Off-road Drivers Association was an off-road racing sanctioning body in the United States.-History:...

 series but featured only fantasy vehicles and tracks. The game was produced by Software Allies, a collaboration of companies that included Papyrus

Papyrus Design Group

Papyrus Design Group, Inc. was a computer game developer founded in 1987 by David Kaemmer and CEO Omar Khudari. Based in Watertown, MA, it is best known for its series of realistic sim racing games based on the NASCAR and IndyCar leagues, as well as the unique Grand Prix Legends. Papyrus was...

.

Role as development for Grand Prix Legends

There has been speculation that SODA was actually effectively an early testbed for the physics engine that was to be used the following year in Grand Prix Legends

Grand Prix Legends

Grand Prix Legends is a computer racing simulator developed by Papyrus Design Group and published in 1998 by Sierra Entertainment...

.

Gameplay

The gameplay, done with full 3D physics, allowed the car to roll over if pushed too hard through a corner, and launch into the air off jumps. The damage taken to the cars could result in body panels falling off, transmission/engine destruction, and multiple wheels flying off (this was common if a jump was taken the wrong way).

Races were done with up to six competitors.

Vehicles

There are three vehicles to choose from.

• 150 hp Rear wheel drive buggy
• 800 hp Rear wheel drive truck
• 800 hp Four wheel drive truck

The game allows you to tweak the vehicles setup. The usual suspension and gearing options are there as well as the option to adjust the amount of hp produced by the engine. The hp adjustment is much needed in the rear wheel drive truck which is almost undrivable with the full 800 hp.

There is also an option to turn on vehicle damage. The damage model was advanced for the time and features engine, drivetrain, suspension and tyre damage.

Tracks

There are three environments country, desert and tropics which featured different track surfaces and scenery items. Each environment contained four supplied tracks.

The tracks are open environment, but races are done with checkpoints, meaning a racer must go through each checkpoint on the course to complete a lap. Track designers needed to keep this in mind, as it was possible to cheat and drive laps "checkpoint to checkpoint" instead of following the actual track course.

Track editor

In addition to the twelve supplied tracks the user could create more using the supplied fully featured track editor. Layout files for all the in game tracks where also supplied. One drawback to the track editor was that in order to race against the ai they had to learn the track. On computers of the time the learning process could take several hours, but on modern machines it is much faster.