Gearhead Garage (TeamVanilla rebuild)
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Build 2026-09-30 06:24 UTC (2026-09-30).

Snap-on Gearhead Garage (Mekada, 1999), rebuilt: the whole game on DirectX 12 (DirectX 11
and OpenGL as fallbacks), at any window size, with the original's screens, cars, jobs,
sounds and music. The game is all here: nothing else to install, no CD, no DirectX 7.

WHAT YOU NEED
  - Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
  - A graphics card with DirectX 11 or 12 (AMD, NVIDIA or Intel).

PLAYING
  1. Put this folder somewhere you can write to (Desktop or Documents, not Program
     Files): the game keeps your mechanics, photos and settings in it.
  2. Run GearheadGarage.exe. It opens on the sign-in sheet: NEW beside an empty row
     starts a mechanic; click a mechanic's row to sign in.

  Mouse: point, click and drag, as in the original. In the WorkShop, drag the car to
  turn it (the right button, or the arrow keys, turn it while painting too) and the
  wheel brings it nearer. In the JunkYard and the Car Lot, drag the view to walk along
  (or use the arrows). Esc backs out of a place.
  SETTINGS, on the sign-in sheet, has the renderer, window, picture (filling the
  screen, or 4:3 with bars), frame rate, anti-aliasing, volumes and music, and the
  snapshot browser.

YOUR FILES
  Data\Mechanics   your mechanics (N.mek, the original game's own format)
  Data\SnapShots   the photos you take in the WorkShop
  settings.cfg     the settings
  Mechanics from the original game can be copied into Data\Mechanics and play on.

UPDATING
  Replace GearheadGarage.exe with the new one. Your mechanics, photos and settings stay.

IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG
  Send game.log (in this folder) with a few words on what happened. It names the build,
  your graphics card and driver, and, after a crash, where it happened.
  Start-up options (add them to a shortcut's target):
    --d3d11 / --gles  draw with DirectX 11 / OpenGL this time
    --warp            draw with Windows' software renderer (slow; tells a driver
                      problem from a game problem)

LICENCES
  licenses\VanGUI-*.txt   VanGUI (the interface library), MIT.
  licenses\ANGLE-*.txt    ANGLE (OpenGL on DirectX), BSD. The exe carries its DLLs and
                          unpacks them into runtime\ when OpenGL is used.
  Gearhead Garage is (c) 1999 Ratloop, Inc. ("Gearhead Garage", "Mekada" and the Mekada
  logo are Ratloop's trademarks); it was published by Head Games Publishing. "Snap-on" is
  a registered trademark of Snap-on Incorporated. The vehicles' likenesses belong to
  their makers. The game's data (art, sound, cars, jobs) is included with permission;
  the cars made by fans came with them from the community's copy of the game.
