GT5 Used Car Database [in progress]

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Famine

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Rule 12
GTP_Famine
The Used Car Dealership (UCD) follows a pre-determined list of cars, which is not in any way affected by game progress or achievements. The participants of this thread have been working on logging the cars that show each day.

Every in-game day, a new batch of 6 cars is added to the top of the UCD. An in-game day passes every time you enter a race, practice session, Special Event, or an online lobby (you do not need to start the race/session, merely get to the event screen). Seasonal time- and drift-trials will not advance a day.

There are 2 possible lists, which we have named ML1 and ML2 (Master List 1 and 2) for simplicity. Everyone is on one of these lists, but the starting point differs from player to player. We have called the difference between a player's day 1 and the master list day 1 their 'offset'. This offset is not necessarily a whole day (a 6-car batch), it may overlap the next day by 3 cars for example.

While there is a theory that the two lists might cycle back to day 1 eventually, or perhaps join each other, so far there is no evidence that they do so.

The information you need
Hopefully, the methods stated below can be followed without any prior information other than the cars in your current UCD.

However, a useful piece of information will be knowing your current GT5 "in-game day". This can be seen on the game save information. On the XMB (the PS3 home screen), go to Game -> Saved Data Utility (PS3), and hover over the GT5 save file until a few lines of text appear.

The Master Lists
These are tied to your PS3, so all profiles on that PS3 start in the same place on the same Master List.

The latest data can be found in the following links:[/b]

GT5 Searchable UCD (click on download link)
GT5 Used Car Cycle (Online Search only)
GT5 Used Car Cycle Downloadable

You will see that the lists are continuous, whereas your UCD cars appear in groups of 6 per day. As the most recent cars added to your UCD are placed at the top of the dealership, the lists appear 'reversed'. For example day 8 would appear in the UCD as shown in the image, and the cars would be logged in the Master Lists as shown in the list (note that this example shows someone who started on the same day as the master list):

definitionucdscreencopy.jpg
definitionlistorder.jpg

Methods to predict cars
1. If you are in the earlier stages of the game (up to day 1000 or so), the quickest and easiest way to see what is due to appear in your UCD is to visit http://gt5cars.net/used_car_searches and following the instructions there.

2. If you do not get a result from gt5cars.net, then you will want to look at the first of the spreadsheets above. If macros are enabled, you can do a search by entering the current top 6 cars in your UCD and it will take you to their position on the relevant Master List. Reading down the list will give you the cars that will next appear in your dealership.

3. If there is no match (i.e. beyond days 1900 on ML1, and 3900 on ML2 at the time of writing), then I'm afraid we haven't yet logged that far...

No data available? Help us progress!
If we have not yet logged the days you are playing through, we would very much appreciate any help that you may be able to give us.

If you are able to help, we would need to know your 'offset', and the master list days you are logging. While not a necessity, we would prefer if you can take a pic of your day 1 UCD screen (which would require starting a new game on a different account on the same PS3) - that way we can satisfy ourselves that the days being listed are correct!

Ideally, we would ask for a quick spreadsheet listing Day, Manufacturer and Model as a minimum. Some players have been taking photos of their UCD screen, and others are logging the data from these photos.

If you are to log data, we would recommend taking the car names from an existing name template such as the Car Database list here, so as to avoid spelling errors that will trip up search functions.

Please post below if you would like any further advice, or wish to help.
 
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I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to tell us. I assume you're aware that the Day 1 used car list is different for different saves?
 
I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to tell us.

What used cars are available when.

I assume you're aware that the Day 1 used car list is different for different saves?

Short of a spectacular coincidence, it's not. Since I've tested it on five new saves on four different accounts on two different PS3s.
 
So I'm assuming there aren't any "rare" cars, that show up out of the blue. Because if there are/were, it would make trading cars/collecting cars quite a bit more interesting.
 
Famine

My day 1 list is different than yours. Maybe because I have a US version?

EDIT:

I just got my game like 12 hours ago, I'm on day 3. Here is my first sixpack:

Daihatsu Cuore TR-XX Avanzato R (J) '97
Toyota MR2 1600 G-Limited Super Charger '86
Honda S2000 (EU) '01
Lotus Esprit Sport 350 '00
Nissan Skyline GT-R (R33) '96
Nissan Cube X '98

The bottom 2 cars from my day 2 (first loading screen) sixpack must be the last ones of the Day 6 tab on the excel file. Those are a Chevrolet Silverado and a Ford Focus, but neither Chevrolet nor Ford are even on the list.
 
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Short of a spectacular coincidence, it's not. Since I've tested it on five new saves on four different accounts on two different PS3s.

And yet on the second account I created to try to figure out the rotation myself, my list bears no resemblance to yours. 22 "days" in I haven't seen most of your Day 1 cars at all.

I'm not certain whether my two saves on two accounts have the same list or not. I believe not, but I don't think I've got far enough with the second to reach the patterns I did make a note of on the first.
 
This makes it all very interesting, since I've had exactly the same "day" 1 through 11 lists. Many times.

I think, thus, I shall temporarily unstick this thread until I figure out what's going on. I'll wager it's a GTPSP-like affair (stock rotation, with differing initial lists).
 
I'm sorry this is more complicated than we thought.

Maybe is a different list for every disc. I asume you used the same disc for those 11 lists?
 
This makes it all very interesting, since I've had exactly the same "day" 1 through 11 lists. Many times.

It certainly is. After advancing another week or so I think I might actually have the same list on both of my saves so far.

My initial theory was that it's a calculated "random" rotation using an algorithm deliberately intended to be a poor approximation of randomness, so the list will be predictable and repeat in a reasonable timeframe. (Sidenote, I've always assumed this is how it was done in GT4 as well, rightly or wrongly.) Deriving the initial seed from something which varies (unlike in GT4) would mean everyone could get the same list, but starting from a different point...

If my own two lists proved to be different that seed might have been derived from the PSN ID, if they proved to be different then it might be the console ID. The fact that you've seen the same list on different PS3s is particularly interesting for me though, as it rules out pretty much everything I'd considered to be likely.
 
I've heard that you can find out what day you're on by looking at the info on your save file in the XMB. If this is true it might eliminate some of the guessing involved.
 
It certainly is. After advancing another week or so I think I might actually have the same list on both of my saves so far.

My initial theory was that it's a calculated "random" rotation using an algorithm deliberately intended to be a poor approximation of randomness, so the list will be predictable and repeat in a reasonable timeframe. (Sidenote, I've always assumed this is how it was done in GT4 as well, rightly or wrongly.) Deriving the initial seed from something which varies (unlike in GT4) would mean everyone could get the same list, but starting from a different point...

If my own two lists proved to be different that seed might have been derived from the PSN ID, if they proved to be different then it might be the console ID. The fact that you've seen the same list on different PS3s is particularly interesting for me though, as it rules out pretty much everything I'd considered to be likely.

Well... it could be just like GTPSP - a small number of variable lists (there were one per starter car in PSP - this wouldn't apply here) which are determined and locked by the disc/console combination. If there were a small number, it wouldn't be massively unlikely - very long odds for horses though - that I could get the same list on both my disc/console combinations.

I've just had the same day 1-11 lists again on my main save, so I'd be ruling out PSNID.

This is good news for me as it means my list is good if you have the same start list and also that it becomes a community project, like the GTPSP lists did 👍
 
This is good news for me as it means my list is good if you have the same start list and also that it becomes a community project, like the GTPSP lists did 👍

It's bad news for me because I was hoping that your efforts would spare me the effort ;) I'll continue to maintain my list, and hopefully we might discover at some point that they're different parts of the same list.

One somewhat depressing thing I've noticed with my own list is that every car which has appeared more than once has so far always appeared in the same colour.
 
Excel, an Excel viewer or OpenOffice Calc or similar. Anything that'll read an .xls file.

I've heard that you can find out what day you're on by looking at the info on your save file in the XMB. If this is true it might eliminate some of the guessing involved.

Yes it does. Good shout 👍
 
EDIT:

I just got my game like 12 hours ago, I'm on day 3. Here is my first sixpack:

I hadn't noticed your edit before. Not only is your start list apparently different from Famine's, it's also different from mine.

This is good news for me as it means my list is good if you have the same start list and also that it becomes a community project, like the GTPSP lists did 👍

Community project indeed! 60 days in to my testing save I'm now convinced I have the same list as my playing save - the standard cars I'd bought tie in with my list exactly in terms of the order. The question is how many lists (or starting points in the same list) are there? I don't believe it's different for everyone - I've seen enough posts in the various trading/request threads to suggest that other people have had the same day 1 lists as both of us.

I've also noticed that my used car colours tie in with yours for the cars common to both our lists. I very much hope this doesn't mean that each (non-prize) standard car is only available in one colour.
 
I've also noticed that my used car colours tie in with yours for the cars common to both our lists. I very much hope this doesn't mean that each (non-prize) standard car is only available in one colour.

I was worried about that after noticing a few repeating colours (I stopped buying every Laguna Seca Blue M3 I saw), but I just purchased my second '98 Mini (listed as a German car, no less), and it's a different colour than my first. So there's hope.

Famine, I think I might start a save with my backup account too, and record the used cycle as well. See how it compares in a different part of the world, and hopefully it can help with this whole project (as I'm certainly curious how the lots work).
 
Is it possible one of your Minis was a prize car? I've noticed that standard cars that I win as prizes are different colours from the ones in the used car lot (and different between saves as well - I have two different colour B-license Demios).
 
Any new info on this?

Loads - we're just not sure of the relevance of it presently. Be assured though that if there's a pattern to be found (and I'm still certain there is), we've got the people who'll find it.
 
Is it possible one of your Minis was a prize car? I've noticed that standard cars that I win as prizes are different colours from the ones in the used car lot (and different between saves as well - I have two different colour B-license Demios).

I added the .xls on the end of this file and tried pulling it up. No dice. It shows abunch of jibberish.
 
One thing I find is weird, the first day after installing and playing, my days went to day 26 very quickly within.. 2 days and 4 hours of game play. now after almost a week, that has slowed down, I am at day 31, and that was with 4 hours of game play each day too! Its weird how it works.
 
One thing I find is weird, the first day after installing and playing, my days went to day 26 very quickly within.. 2 days and 4 hours of game play. now after almost a week, that has slowed down, I am at day 31, and that was with 4 hours of game play each day too! Its weird how it works.

You're at 31?? Are you sure?

The number in the top right isn't the in-game days, it's the real world date. I'd hope it's saying 1 rather than 31!
 
I'll try to throw in info as I get started on the game this weekend. I am hoping for a pattern as I like to be able to plan car buying strategies.
 
Is it possible one of your Minis was a prize car? I've noticed that standard cars that I win as prizes are different colours from the ones in the used car lot (and different between saves as well - I have two different colour B-license Demios).

D'oh, that's right, the first Mini was a prize...

I did find it weird that I've won two LP400 Countach's, and they're both the same colour. I wonder if this means GT5 doesn't actually have all of a car's palette saved? Would be very disappointing if true.

(EDIT) - Also, started up my own fresh game to record stats... yep, mine is completely different from Famine's list too, though the same every time I delete the game data and restart.
 
Famine, did you happen to pick the same starting uniform on all the different saves you started to test this?

I was thinking maybe the starting lineup depends on the uniform you pick at the beginning of the game (which would be nice, considering there's only twelve to worry about).
 
The only crappy thing is, there are over 800 standard cars to rotate through the Used car garage. With only 30 cars per list, it might take a while for some cars to pop up. Like, I've yet to see the Spyker C8 or the Lamborghini NOMAD Diablo. However, there are several cars that will appear pretty regularly. Like, there's usually a few skylines, civics and miatas every time.

This list should be helpful for me. I am waiting for the Spyker, NOMAD Lambo and the Skyline Midnight Purple III.
 
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