"It's got a cop motor with a 440 cubic inch plant. It's got cop tyres, cop suspension, cop shocks;
          it's a model made before caddalydic converters so it'll run good on regular guais. 
                         Whad'ya say, is it the new Bluesmobile or wat?"

                                      THE BLUES BROTHERS CAR
                                      For: Midtown Madness 1
                 Brought to you by 5tephen & Patwo, collectively Patwo Design 2001
                                        www.patwodesign.com
                                                   
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                                   "Fix the cigarette lighter."

Model:               5tephen
Textures:            5tephen/Patrick
Damage Textures:     5tephen/Patrick
Dashboard:           5tephen/Patrick
Sounds:              5tephen
Tuning:              5tephen

New sounds:          Yep
Realistic tuning:    Near enough
Fun tuning:          Too right
Software rendering:  No, would have made file size too big (download the software version 
                     separately from www.patwodesign.com)
Interior:            Nope
Dashboard:           Yes
Loudspeaker:         hehe

Software used:
3D Studio MAX 2.5
Adobe Photoshop 6.01
Steinberg Wavelab 3.0
CoolEdit Pro 1.2a
Goldwave
Wordpad

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Please take a couple of minutes of your time to read through this text - it's all that we ask.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:
- This model is one of the Bluesmobile used in the Blues Brothers original film, which was in 
   turn actually a heavily modified 1974 Dodge Monaco Pursuit car. Elwood picked the car up at 
   a police auction for dirt cheap, replacing the previous Bluesmobile (an old Caddie that was 
   traded for a loudspeaker, hehe)
- If you've seen the movie, you know that car. 
- If you haven't seen the movie, rent it.

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NOTES:
It's been a while in coming, but finally the Blues Brothes are now able to blast through Chicago 
once again just as in the movie - now you can relive those hilarious car chase scenes for yourself.
The Blues Brothers was the first thought that came to my mind when I heard of "Midtown Madness: Chicago" 
for the first time. Quite a while later I decided that the car had to make it into Chicago, 
so here you go. I hope I've done it justice. One thing you'll certainly notice, reminiscent of 
the film, is the option to have that massive loudspeaker up top - this is what made the car unique 
from any other, and I simply had to include it. Stupid, funny, whatever, you can have it :)
The full run-down of features has been included in the model - the ram bars, BDR 529 license plate,
loudspeaker and whatever, and I tried as much as possible to replicate the appearance of the car.

I decided that since the Blues Brothers movie was such a laugh and great fun to watch, that the car 
featured here would have an element of that too. Hence I did not tune the car to exact dead-on realism,
but it's close enough. I could not find any accurate performance stats of a custom 1974 Monaco anyway, 
but I went by the basis that it was pretty fast. I've concentrated more on the handling, and the car 
will be able to pull nice powerslides around corners, and escape from the cops with slick 180-degree 
turns, so try to enjoy it more than worrying about having a car that's 10mph too fast - at least that's
what I do :)
Also, the Dodge Monaco itself was a typical big American car of that era, heavy and packed with 
horsepower; the high mass and size of this car is what gives it the higher durability, being able 
to punch quite a few traffic cars out of its path before coming to a stop :)

All of the textures of the car were hand-painted totally from scratch, apart from the headlights 
and cop badge which were taken directly from photos and then modified. The truth is that there were no 
perfect photos out there of the car that could be applied directly, so I made do with making them myself. 
I don't think they turned out too bad. I remapped this car about 5 - 6 times over just to get the extra 
details that I wanted, so I hope the hard work paid off. Take a look at some of the detailing such as 
the clarity of the 'Mount Prospect Police' scripting of the cop badge on the sides and the texturing of the 
rear bumper and you'll see why it took a lot of work. Alpha-channeling has been used to simulate the 
effect of the exhaust pipes and wing mirror 'breaking off' as well as the front license plate being 
crumpled at the edges when damaged.

The car does not feature reflections; I preferred the shading of the car textures instead to imitate 
the lighting effects, and the Bluesmobile was not known to be nice and glistening-new anyway.
Note that, as in the movie, only the two outermost headlamps work on the car.
I decided not to model an interior with drivers, or an undercarriage for that matter, since the car had 
reached a high enough polygon count with the loudspeaker setup and whatever else. They're not essential anyway.
Check out the camera view when reversing, it's a feature I found in the camera tuning files which I don't 
think has been used before; also, there's not many rear-wheel driven cars for MM1 that can pull 
reverse 180 turns like this one - make the most of it :)

This was not exactly a very easy project for a first time car, what with the complicated model and 
scarceness of texture sources. So I had to genuinely work hard to get the results; but in the end I 
liked the challenge and learned many, many new things in the process and have gained even more enthusiasm 
than ever for making cars. Hopefully this shows in the future.

So, the car's here for you to enjoy now; just drive like a pro, if you can handle it.
Once you can handle it, enjoy.

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MANY THANKS TO:
- Patrick: for
...choosing to bring me onboard the Patwo Design crew and realising my potential. 
...bringing me into the world of Photoshop and 3d Studio MAX, and car making.
...his excellent MAX Intro tutorial, and always being behind me when I needed further help with MAX.
...those awesome window damage and wheel textures, and supplying me with some excellent alpha-channeled 
    templates which I used in creating areas of the damage textures.
...helping with the bounding box problems.
...allowing me to use parts of his A-Team Van dashboard textures as a template for the Bluesmobile dash.
...some very fun and VERY thorough beta-testing :)

- Barracuda: answering the odd questions that I popped here and there proved to be very helpful indeed. 
   Another guy who really knows his stuff.

- Paul_7: helping greatly with the multicolours options - it's a hard concept to pick up at the start.

- Rocket: helping with the selection screen image problems and with inserting the bounding box. 
   Also for some very thorough testing and fault-finding. He's worked wonders for the community, and
   his work & discoveries are reflected in many of the great cars we see released for Midtown Madness today.

- Markus [TNP_Gangsta]: you deserve a special mention ;-) Pictures, sounds, continuous support, 
   scouring web search engines for hours, being a nice guy :)

- Qwerty_86 - supplying car dimensions and stats.

- Lance Dobersek: webmaster of www.bluesmobile.net , a truly amazing a site for Blues Brothers fans 
   and otherwise, and most definitely my biggest source of reference for textures and model of the car. 
   Great work, and a highly recommended site.

- Absolutely everyone who sent in photos of the Bluesmobile and provided their ever-continuous support - 
   the general Midtown Madness community out there is amazing. You people were such a great help, and 
   your interest in the development of the car was fantastic and kept me going the whole way through.

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DISTRIBUTION:
This car may be modified/distributed freely under the following conditions:
- Full credit is given to Patwo Design, the makers of this car.
- This readme file is included.
- The original car and readme files are not modified in any way whatsoever.
- You may distribute this file in any electronic format (diskette, CD, DVD, etc) as long as you include 
   this whole zip file intact, with NO charge (other than possible incidental charges for time spent online).
   However, you still need the written permission of the author.

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INSTALLATION:
Unzip the downloaded file and place the vpblues.ar file into your Midtown Madness 
main directory: eg. 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Midtown Madness\'

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CONTACT:
5tephen:      5tephen@bigfoot.com
Patwo:        pwisselo@xs4all.nl

Have fun people, and we look forward to bringing you many more quality releases in the future!
In the meantime....

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     "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark...
                                      and we're wearing sunglasses."

                                                "HIT IT."