Hints - on the road Rig'n'Roll Guide

Main orders from warehouses

The screen of choosing and accepting orders.

You can choose and accept consecutive orders presented to you in warehouses located in towns you're visiting. These warehouses belong to California Commercial Warehouse Alliance (CCWA). After watching the cutscene (unfortunately you can't turn them off) showing your truck arriving at the warehouse, you'll see order accepting screen. You can sort orders on the list with buttons atop, according to their kind (cargo delivery, race with opponents without a cargo, tender/open offer), destination, type of cargo and max. fee you will receive for successful delivery of the chosen cargo. Of course you can damage a cargo on the route and your payment will be smaller then - if cargo damage exceeds 90 %, the delivery will be cancelled and the trucker penalized. All goods differ in terms of fragility. For example, the fragility of imported cars is about 80%. This means that such a cargo can be easily damaged in even a minor road accident. On the other hand, fragility of scrap metal is under 10%. This means that such cargo can survive numerous serious accidents.

Under the list of orders you can see a window showing the details of this particular order. You can also choose orders by clicking the arrows on the map to the right. Towns' names marked green on it are within the "operational range" of your firm (one of its offices). Though, if you've selected an order with its destination outside of your "operational range", you'll see a warning window on your screen. Then you can decide if you want to take this order after all (button on the left) with a mindfulness that you won't be able to choose and accept another order after reaching your current destination (so you're returning without a trailer), or you can cancel this order (button to the right). Check a square in this warning window and you won't see it again. I'm making these two annotations having in my mind the owners of the Russian version of the game, who may be not orientated well, what function has a given button. After taking an order and quiting the warehouse, the first information you see on the screen applies to your current place in the race - you should remember that you make all deliveries by racing against the time and opponents, drivers of other spedition companies. And this info will be refreshed when you pass your opponents (or vice versa).

Orders available in warehouses belong to three categories. These are respectively: 1) "Competitions", when you have to race against a running time and other drivers, but without cargos (trailers), 2) "Deliveries", when you race with a trailer against the time and other opponents, and 3) so-called "Open Offers" (I write more about them in next chapter of this guide). You can easily recognize all three kinds of orders by their specific icons. Pay attention that you can drive into a warehouse from its one side only, marked on your mini-map with an icon of a green hook! Do not abandon the trailer, even if the delivery has been cancelled - you must deliver it to a warehouse, or they will charge you for having to tow it themselves!

Additional orders

Before you accept any order of these characterized below, it is necessary to save your game status, in case of this new task collides somehow with the order you currently carry out (for example, new task requires from you to go in the opposite direction). Obviously you won't be always able to sniff out that after awhile you'll be given a proposal to deliver a cargo (this applies mainly to contracts proposed via CB-radio). In such a case exit to in-game menu and rename your quicksave saved earlier. To keep it, just in case - if you won't rename your quicksave, then the next one will overwrite it!

The Hitchhikers

Hop in, dude!

You can often see the hitchhikers of both genres on roadsides. In order to give them a lift you have to slow down first to the speed lower than 10 mph and press Enter key. Attention! Not every hitchhiker will be interested in traveling with you! If he (or she) doesn't flail his (her) hands, then you shouldn't be able to take him (her) to your cab. There are several types of tasks related to hitchhikers. 1) You must take the hitchhiker to the place indicated by him. You can check out the exact location by viewing tasks' window in your PDA, after accepting his request. You can give a lift to only one hitchhiker at the same time. Usually you have to drop off the hitchhiker at the truck stop (bar or motel).

2) The hitchhiker may also ask you to drop off the parcel (consisting ferrets, for example) at some place (usually at the truck stop too), instead of himself. You can deliver only one parcel at a time. 3) 3rd type of tasks related to hitchhikers relies on delivering the cargo indicated by them (usually you can see such a trailer near the hitchhiker) to specific places, like shops, etc. Naturally, you complete all kind of these orders by racing against the running time. Sometimes you will be awarded by a thankful hitchhiker with some money, sometimes you'll earn some reputation points, or you'll get... big 0, nothing. You can check out what will be the reward only by viewing task's detail window displayed by PDA, merely after accepting this task.

Orders from PDA

Next type of orders is bound up with events you can read about in the journal of your hand held organizer book (PDA). These events pop out in the journal when you're close to the place where something interesting is actually happening. The journal also records rumors from Long Haul News and radio broadcasts. These events are marked in it with an icon of the envelope. While driving around the California take a look from time to time at the upper edge of the screen, looking for similar icon of the envelope - when you see it there, this is a sign that the new event related to it just occurred in journal. By clicking this icon in the event window you can add such a message as a task to your tasks' list.

Icon of the envelope means that you can add this event to your tasks' list.

This kind of tasks usually relies on transporting some cargos from one place to another. As for most intriguing orders I can recall myself a task of evacuating from the beach the remains of a dead whale.

Contracts received via CB-radio

This lady has a proposal for Nick...

Imagine yourself this situation: you drive across the California and in some moment somebody just calls you over the CB-radio and proposes you a delivery task. First you have to listen to what this person says (what conditions he offers, etc.), then you have to decide (by pushing suitable keys), if you want to take this order or not. If you press P during this conversation you can pause game and extend chat window - you can then read once more and understand the whole conversation, if you had problems with following it to this moment. This type of orders received over the radio involves usually transporting of some cargo (first you must drive for a trailer to the place indicated by the ordering party).

Though not always - sometimes over CB-radio comes the request for help: from a cop, whose partner was badly injured during dangerous action, or from a trucker, whose truck broke down somewhere on the road, etc.

Orders received in bars

Another way of getting a job in R'n'R world is to visit one of "60 miles" bars, which you can find at the truck stops. On the right side of the screen you can usually find the tasks of giving a lift to bar's hitchhikers, delivering the parcels or cargos given to you by these people. On the left side of the screen there are usually listed so-called "open offers" bound up with CCWA warehouses. You can learn more about "open offers" in the penultimate indention of this subsection of my guide.

Open offer or "Driving Miss... Trixy" - the choice is yours.

Hm, what about quitting driver's job and sailing to Europe?...

Sometimes you can find in a bar even one more type of tasks - game may give you an opportunity of visiting some places, where something intriguing just happens. For example, you may have a unique occasion to pay a visit at San Diego port, in order to see beautiful sailing ship staying there at anchor. Of course you'll not receive any cash or reputation points for completing these tasks.

When you're on time at the indicated warehouse, it's time for race without trailer and fee first.

After winning this race you can finally choose amongst several lucrative orders of cargo delivery.

And now few sentences about these so-called "open offers". As I mentioned above you can learn about them by reading "Long Haul News" newspaper in bars located on truck stops. These news contain an information where you should go (to which warehouses, what towns), before time expires, to be able to get this offer. When you're on time at the indicated warehouse, you'll recognize order of open offer by its characteristic icon (picture on the left above). This order consists of two stages. In the first phase you race against your opponents, trying to get on 1st position to the next, indicated warehouse. You do not haul a trailer in this race, and you won't earn anything after winning it. After arriving at the warehouse on 1st position (in other words: after winning the race - other places don't count!) you will be rewarded with a possibility of choosing amongst several orders of premium deliveries of cargos. These are the most lucrative offers in game - their fees are 2 or 3 times higher than usually (in cases of delivering same cargo on identical route but on normal conditions)! Hunt for these "open offers" whenever you can!

Often there's no problem to have several irons in the fire at once. This means that you can, for example, select a race-without-a-trailer order in one of the warehouses, then you can accept a task proposed over the CB radio that requires transporting of some cargo, and finally you can give a lift to a hitchhiker - all of this at the same time, simultaneously.

Hand held organiser book

Hand-held organiser book.

On the route, during your journey, you can use your hand-held organizer book (function key F3), called Black Shark PDA, to take a look at some important data. Tabs atop of it (from left to right) are: the main window of this organizer book, the journal, the weather report and "exit" button of course. After pressing F3 key you'll see the main window of this organiser book showing a map, list of tasks and details of current order. You can sort your tasks on the list by their importance, status (completed/failed/in progress - icon of egg timer), type (cargo delivery, race, package delivery, giving a lift to a hitch-hiker, order to get to concrete place), location where you've accepted an order or where you have to deliver a cargo to, and finally - according to the time that left for mission accomplishment.

Pressing the button in the upper right corner of this list deletes all done or undone orders - for better readability. Below, in a window that displays the details of a particular order, you can see two small buttons with dots (...) - after pressing this lowest one you can see in a new, small window an exact location where this particular order should be accomplished. It can be a base (warehouse), where you have to deliver a cargo, a truck stop - in case of a hitch-hiker, or some other location (Police post, for example) which you should visit, to make the next step in the storyline. Two buttons under the details of a particular order let you set it as current (button on the left) or delete it (right button) - have in mind, that this second option involves paying a penalty from your pocket! On a foot-note one can see (from left to right): current date, account position, rank and rating (displayed as numbers).

Task cancellation.

You can cancel particular tasks, if you wish, but it's often punished by paying a forfeit and/or deduction of some reputation points. This applies mainly to orders when you haul a trailer (cargo), so to ordinary deliveries taken from warehouses.

In the next tab ("journal") you can read entries related to events in game, listed in chronological order. If you see an envelope icon to the left of a particular entry, you can click on it, to open another, small window, which lets you chose amongst adding this event to the list of orders (button on the left), not adding it, or deleting it. These entries marked with envelopes are usually related to events, you have learnt about by reading the newspaper "Long Haul News" in a bar on the truck stop, or from radio broadcasts.

Another tab allows you to acquaint yourself with weather forecasts for California state - by pressing the buttons near the right edge of the screen you can view weather reports for today, tomorrow and the next two days.

The Police

And now some hints related to driving a truck, dealing with "ambushes" on the roads, etc. In other words - hints that make playing easier.

It can't be hidden that the Police in this game may toughen you up. These cops have got an elephant's memory and don't give up when pursuing you for even small offences committed on the road, like crossing the continuous yellow line (in this case the police will only react if a patrol car is nearby). You can't shake them off by hiding in the repair shops and changing the colour of your truck - this is not GTA, it doesn't work here. So how to deal with Californian cops? First of all you should accept the fact that, if you broke the rules of the road, you'll have to pay for this, sooner or later. Period. Though in some cases, to be concrete - when you have pursued your opponents and you've managed to catch up with them on a straight stretch of the road - but you hear police sirens behind you, it is worth to play Tom and Jerry with cops. Because if they stop you on this straight and fast stretch of the road (they have to pass you and slow you down, in order to give you a ticket) your rivals will drive away quickly again. In this case you shouldn't let the Police stop you, until all of you (the whole convoy) reach a sharp turning - on this bent everybody must slow down, of course. Then, even after stopping by the Police, you still have good chances to quickly gain ground on the rest of your rivals.

How to "make a stand" against the cops? There are several ways of doing this. If the road isn't wide, all you have to do is to zig-zag from one curb to another, not letting the cops to pass you. Though, you have to watch out and not to graze or hit a police car with your trailer - otherwise the trailer can easily disconnect! In case when the road is wide and makes zig-zaging ineffective, but traffic lanes are separated with a tight, neutral lane, you can bomb along this lane. Local cops are stupid and won't be able to cut you off - they always stick to their traffic lane and ride abreast! If all else fails, you can drive off your traffic lane into the opposing lane. Though you must remember, that the more rules of the road you'll break, the bigger will be the ticket you'll have to pay later.

It is also worth to notice, that if you play with low traffic density, the Police also more often turn a blind eye on your road offences and sometimes you can even drive regularly into the opposing traffic lanes with impunity. Remember also, that pulling into the truck stop or accomplishing the order will not acquit you magical from pursuing cops. Though, sometimes cops will forget about your road offences if you spend enough time on selecting next order in a warehouse.

In a long time interval it is not worth to avoid paying your tickets, because you can slip down under the distribution board of your truck, when you finally see the amount you have to pay.

And now exemplary tickets for selected offences committed on the road: Reckless driving - you'll have to pay 820$ on Police retirement fund Driving on the wrong side of the road (upstream) - 540$ Interfering with another vehicle while changing lanes - 346 $ Failure to give way to a vehicle on the right - 374$ Driving after the sunset without active/working lights - 248$ Creating a danger on the road by driving on reverse gear - 284$ Creating a danger on the crossroads - 398$ Assaulting a police vehicle (collision with Police patrol car) - 1.640$ At the bottom you see "pay" button.

Don't worry, even if you broke all rules of the road, the cops won't take away your driving license.

The wrecker

Driving at night, in complete darkness, without active/working headlights (and you can easily crack them in this game; though it may happen less often in English version of R'n'R) may be another tidy challenge (besides the intrusive Police) for some players. You've got luck, if the route goes through well illuminated cities and city roads. But if you're outside of these cities you'll have to face the complete darkness mentioned above... Generally you won't be able to continue your journey without calling for emergency road service first. Though, if you've decided for some reasons to continue your travel without working headlights, the only thing that can rescue you is to stay close to other car(s) driving abreast or ahead of you. Stick close to them until you get with this companionship to a better illuminated city. Though even then pulling into a less-trodden truck stop may become a problem that you won't be able to hurdle. Unfortunately other trucks rarely (or even never) use truck stops in this game, so there is nobody you can stick to when exiting road. Generally, in case of damaging truck's headlights, I recommend to call for emergency road service immediately. How to do this?

Menu accessible after pressing the Esc key.

By pressing the Esc key you can pause game and get to the menu with tabs (from left to right): "Continue game", "Call for emergency road service", "Restart game", "Save/load game", "Game Settings", "Exit to main menu" and "Quit game".

Price list of services offered by a wrecker may look like below: Towing - may costs us above 1.000$ Repairing - may amount up to 15.000$ in case of badly damaged vehicle, that makes further journey impossible Refueling - can cost us up to approx. 340$ (they'll fill up only half a tank!) Button on the left - "pay", to the right - "cancel".

Mechanic, wrecker, Police officer - these are very lucrative jobs in this game.

Save your game progress often - it's advisable to do this when you're closing to every serious road crossing, before you pull into a warehouse, or after seeing a hitch-hiker standing further off on a roadside. Game allows you to quickly save your progress, but you have to notice, that the next quicksave overwrites previous! So you can additionally rename such a quick save to avoid overwriting it later.

Remember about the possibility of changing the scale of the mini-map, zooming it in. Bring this option to your mind when closing to bigger crossroads, or when you drive through the town's dense web of streets. Zooming in the mini-map will help you to maintain the orientation.

Remember also about the possibility of switching tasks on this mini-map. You don't have to look at your hand-held organizer book every time when you want to change your current task.

If you have problems following the CB-radio messages while driving, press the pause key during your conversation - it will not only stop the game, but will also display the whole chat history with your radio interlocutor.

When using electric side mirrors it is worth to set them up this way, to be able not only to see the road behind us, but also a sideboard of a hauled cargo. One look at the mirror then lets you quickly find out if you're still hauling a cargo, or you've just shed it, because you'll not always hear clearly an audible signal informing you about loosing the trailer.

If you must reverse for your lost trailer and it lies on its sideboard, you can try to put it in a right position by hitting it gently with the rear part of your truck (otherwise you'll bruise your headlights!). Generally it's just better and easier to load a saved game, than reverse for a lost cargo...

Visiting a repair shop

The mechanic will effectively cool your ardour for acting like a maniac on the roads.

This game rewards a fast, but cautious driving, and your truck, even when it's upgraded, is still very fragile and vulnerable. All breakages may cause serious failures to your truck and in consequence may force you to visit a repair shop. And this gentleman (a mechanic) can drain your pocket very quickly with his prices - his services cost from hundreds of $ up to dozens of thousands of $! There's no sense in mentioning here all the break-downs that may happen to your truck on the road, so I'll describe here only these most frequent, with an assessment, if they qualify for urgent repairs, or you can drive for a little more with them.

For a kick-off:

• All small breakages (except cracked headlights), broken wind-shield, broken or lost side mirrors, not closing side doors. With this type of damages you can still drive for a long time without a need of visiting the repair shop. You can still see the road ahead of you even through the broken wind-shield, needless to say that you can drive using the external view. Loss of a trailer is also signalized with an acoustic signal, so broken or lost side mirrors don't make an inconvenience too.
• Flat tires or scintillating rims without tires. Truck will drift to one side of the road (unless you've lost tires on both sideboards of your truck - in that case drifting will be aligned). If also steering system is damaged drifting will become enhanced. It's also easier to skid when taking sharp corners with high speeds. However, you can still drive in these conditions.
• Attrited brake shoes. In a result braking distance will become longer, of course, so you must remember about pressing the brake pedal earlier than usual and avoid driving with high speeds. Nevertheless this failure often leads up to another, namely...
• Broken headlights, in consequence of "parking" of your vehicle in a trunk of a car driving ahead of you. In this case you should ruthlessly pull into the closest repair shop, though you can also wait a while and do this right before the sunset.
• Gearbox malfunction. It happens usually after crashing into something with very high speed and this failure occurs in several variants. If the reverse gear isn't working you can still wait with visiting the mechanic - you don't use reverse gear very often in this game. But if other gears aren't working (when using automatic transmission) then you have no choice and you must call for emergency road service, otherwise you won't be able to continue your journey.
• Other serious internal defects (usually after the major crash) signalized with a smoke going from a bonnet (or maybe this is a water vapour going from a broken cooler?). You won't be able to continue your journey for sure, so call for wrecker (for help). And one more, very important note: watch out what you crash into and with what force, because there is some risk that this accident will finish not only with a demolition of your truck, but you can also be killed in it (and this ends your gameplay!). I've experienced such a bad end once, after hitting an indestructible lantern...