money, with higher ranked finishes resulting in higher payouts. This can be used to buy parts or repair droids, unlock new tracks, and unlock new racers. Free Race mode allows the player to practice any previously unlocked courses using any unlocked racer. The player character cannot earn money or unlock tracks and racers, but can set the difficulty of the opponents. Time Attack pits the player character against the clock, racing along to try to achieve the fastest time on the given course. This mode is absent from the PC version. Instead the Free Play mode allows the player to set the number of computer opponents to 0. Multiplayer is also offered on all platforms, though it differs between the PC and console versions. The Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast versions feature a two player splitscreen mode, while the Windows and Macintosh versions allow for play over a Local Area Network (LAN). This Windows version uses the deprecated IPX protocol to accomplish this, while the Macintosh version uses the TCP/IP stack. The multiplayer mode can support up to eight players. Development and releaseStar Wars Episode I: Racer was developed and published by LucasArts for Windows PCs in May 1999. Development took approximately two years. Two project leads responsible for Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire began initial development once Shadows was completed. The game was developed in-house at LucasArts. Tools used during development included 3D Studio Max, Alias Wavefront and Autodesk Softimage. During development, multiple graphical application programming interfaces (APIs) were tested, including 3dfx Glide, OpenGL, and Direct3D. Ultimately the game shipped with only Direct3D support because according to Project Lead Brett Tosti when testing Glide and OpenGL the developers "didn’t see any performance increases so didn’t add support." The team had to develop their physics simulation in the game from only a few short clips of the film given to them. According to Tosti, their approximations ended up very close to the film. "We really didn’t get to see how good our estimates were until the very end." Project lead John Knoles emphasized that the team's goal was for a strong sense of speed. He stated they wanted to make it "feel like an eyeball-peeling racing game, where you're going so fast, you're just nervous." The game was originally titled Star Wars: Podracer, however the subtitle was changed to Episode I Racer when LucasArts learned that another company owned