Skids: a Super Skidmarks revival

A cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) engine written in Rust that plays Super Skidmarks (Acid Software, 1995) on the original Amiga data.

At build time it reads the game's ADF disk images from this repository: it unpacks the LHA archives on them and builds the game files into the executable. At run time it decrunches the CrunchMania-packed files and decodes the planar track graphics and AGA sprite banks. The finished program is a single self-contained file, with no disks needed to play.

Because the binary carries the original game data, anyone you give a build to also gets the game data.

What works

• All 24 tracks across the four track files. Each has its isometric height map and lap gates.
• All 8 vehicles (Mini, Beetle, Porsche, Formula 1, Midget, Truck, Police, Cow), with 32 headings and 25 body-tilt frames for hills.
• 1 or 2 players (split screen) plus up to 7 computer drivers.
• Power-slide handling, slopes, car-to-car bumping, and skid marks burnt into the track.
• Lap and position tracking, lap times, and a results table.
• Procedural engine, tyre and crash sound.

What's reconstructed

Disk 1 of the six-disk set is missing from this archive. It held the executable, palettes, sound and music. As a result:

• Handling, AI and race rules are new code written to feel like the original, not a translation of the original 68000 code.
• Colours come from a reconstructed palette, built around how the tracks use their 16 colour indices. If you have the real palettes, put them in a palettes/ folder next to the disks as .pal files (16 lines of RRGGBB):
  • track1-3.pal for one track
  • track1.pal for all six tracks in a file
  • default.pal for everything
• Sound is synthesised.

If you find disk 1, drop it in with the others. Anything it contains under track/ or vehicles/ is picked up automatically. The format notes in docs/FORMATS.md cover everything reverse engineered so far.

Running

cargo run --release

The built executable (target/release/skids, or skids.exe on Windows) runs on its own from anywhere.

--data DIR adds to or overrides the built-in data with more ADF images, LHA archives, or extracted track/, vehicles/ and palettes/ folders. Without --data, a folder like that in the current directory or next to the executable is picked up automatically. That means dropping disk 1 or real palette files next to the game just works.

Action	Player 1	Player 2
Accelerate	↑ (or W in one-player games)	W
Brake / reverse	↓ (or S)	S
Steer	← → (or A D)	A D
Pause	P
Leave race	Esc

Options: --scale 1|2|4 (window size), --mute.

Tools

skids info    --data DIR                  # list tracks and vehicles found
skids extract --data DIR --out pngs/      # dump every track (with gates) and car sheet
skids bench   --data DIR --seconds 120    # race CPU cars on every track: laps and time on road
skids trace   --data DIR --track 11 --out t.png   # plot CPU racing lines
skids render  --data DIR --track 3 --out shot.png # headless screenshot

Building

You need a stable Rust toolchain.

• Linux: install the ALSA and X11 development packages, e.g. sudo apt install libasound2-dev libx11-dev libxkbcommon-dev. To build without sound (no ALSA needed), use cargo build --release --no-default-features --features embed.
• macOS / Windows: cargo build --release works as is.

The build embeds the data from the *.adf files next to Cargo.toml. To use images from somewhere else, set SKIDS_EMBED_DIR=/path/to/adfs. To build without embedding, so the game needs --data at run time, use --no-default-features --features audio.

GitHub Actions builds all three platforms on every push (.github/workflows/build.yml).

Layout

build.rs       unpacks the ADFs and embeds the game files at build time
src/formats/   ADF (OFS/FFS), LHA and CrunchMania readers
src/data/      track, vehicle and palette decoding; locating the game files
src/game/      physics, AI and race rules
src/render/    software renderer at 320×256 (PAL low-res) and a bitmap font
src/audio.rs   synthesised sound (cpal)
src/app.rs     menus, race screens and results

Credits

Super Skidmarks is by Acid Software. This project is an unofficial revival for preservation. The CrunchMania bitstream layout follows Teemu Suutari's ancient (BSD-2-Clause).