[Mod] Gran Turismo 2 plus (bug fixes, restored content and new content) - beta 7 released

[a_p_vox]

Hello, everyone. First time as user (I think).

I was wondering if next update of GT2 plus would include the NTSC-J music for all regions (including "Moon Over The Castle" for intro). I mean, nothing against western music selection, but I personally find NTSC-J's more epic and suitable for game vibes. Besides, can't find an english-translated NTSC-J out there yet.

 

[pez2k]

Thanks for the feedback everyone - I think I probably am going to lean towards ditching the upgrades for those cars then. I've had a fiddle on with most combinations, and I can't find a setup which retains all of the adjustable / 'customisable' upgrades and still fits, as the suspension alone is enormous in terms of data. If that's the case, then it probably makes less sense to keep just the adjustable transmission or LSD and not have everything else.

Honestly I'm not really sure what benefit is gained from porting them over in the first place, since the same look can be achieved by applying a racing mod to a street car. Are there statistical differences between the street cars and their arcade rally variants?

They're exactly the same as the normal cars, to the point where in Arcade mode they just use the original car's parts. The body is renamed to give it a unique logo and replay name, but that's all. They have a preset combination of upgrades (generally a lot of power mods, some weight reduction, rally tyres, and the RM) which can be reproduced almost exactly with the original cars, outside of the lack of full weight reduction.

Historically, being able to own those cars in GT mode was a very common request, which is a large part of why I included them, along with the two license test cars. Several GT2+ changes are inspired by ancient forum posts wishing for then-impossible features, because I was one of those people back then too.

In terms of game design, it also makes the rally events a bit more rewarding to have some prize cars scattered through them, especially since they take a decent investment of credits to buy and tune a car for them, but giving out a six-figure WRC car would be way too much, and the basic untuned cars aren't special or collectible enough to be worth it. Most of the base game events reward the player with something interesting, even if it's just a Demio with a unique bodykit, so receiving something like a Saxo with Polyphony's basic rally tune on it ticks that box. Some of them can even be useful for completing the other rally events earlier in the game too.

IMHO I think the rally cars from arcade should only keep the "official" specs to make them more authentic, and if it makes room for more content it's a win-win scenario

I tend to agree with this too - those rally cars aren't tunable in Arcade mode, so I think I'm alright with them not being tunable in GT mode either (like the other race and rally cars). I was originally concerned that they're not brilliant in terms of part choice and are objectively worse than a tuned version of the original cars, but this is also true for several other prize cars, such as the MR-S Motor Show Version.

I was wondering if next update of GT2 plus would include the NTSC-J music for all regions (including "Moon Over The Castle" for intro).

Not possible I'm afraid, the length of each music track is hardcoded and nobody has yet managed to find and understand how it works.

 

[a_p_vox]

Not possible I'm afraid, the length of each music track is hardcoded and nobody has yet managed to find and understand how it works.

I see, that's too bad. So, where could I possibly find an english translation for NTSC-J, and if possibly was compatible with this mod?

 

[pez2k]

I see, that's too bad. So, where could I possibly find an english translation for NTSC-J, and if possibly was compatible with this mod?

I don't think there is one, as there's already an English version of the game. It might be possible in theory but would take a lot of custom work to backport files from the US version, probably including patching some of the text that's embedded as a file into the executable, plus code patches to set the default language to US English in order to actually load the copied-over files. The Japanese version isn't identical to the other regions either, the launch version has a lot of the more serious bugs still present and no proper support for other language files, so it would have to be based on the re-release which is closer to the US release but still missing some features. The Arcade disc would be pretty much a custom job from the ground up, as it wasn't updated in the re-release and is the oldest version of the code sold to customers.

 

[Hlavco]

Since racing modified cars are counted as separate from their stock versions, would it be possible to apply the Arcade Mode logos and replay names to just the racing modified versions? Or am I misinterpreting how that works?

 

[tomo 427 S/C]

Since racing modified cars are counted as separate from their stock versions, would it be possible to apply the Arcade Mode logos and replay names to just the racing modified versions? Or am I misinterpreting how that works?

That'd be a good idea, then a race modified Megane is no longer an [R] Megane but an [R] Megane Rally Car

 

[pez2k]

Since racing modified cars are counted as separate from their stock versions, would it be possible to apply the Arcade Mode logos and replay names to just the racing modified versions? Or am I misinterpreting how that works?

Yeah, logos and replay names are tied to the car body model, rather than the car parts themselves. I wouldn't want to do that though, as it would be inconsistent with every other car in the game, and the replay name would no longer match the garage name which is messy. It wouldn't give any benefit either.

 

[Deckard_33]

I tend to agree with this too - those rally cars aren't tunable in Arcade mode, so I think I'm alright with them not being tunable in GT mode either (like the other race and rally cars). I was originally concerned that they're not brilliant in terms of part choice and are objectively worse than a tuned version of the original cars, but this is also true for several other prize cars, such as the MR-S Motor Show Version.

Are arcade mode rally cars' specs accurate regarding to real life performance? Maybe this could be an opportunity to update those cars performance instead of "clone" them from arcade mode

 

[pez2k]

Are arcade mode rally cars' specs accurate regarding to real life performance? Maybe this could be an opportunity to update those cars performance instead of "clone" them from arcade mode

They're entirely fictional, literally just the normal cars with some power upgrades purchased and the RM on top. They generally aren't making any attempt to represent real rally cars in terms of physics, they're simply there to give the Arcade car selection a bit more variety. I don't have any plans to redesign them like that either, it's well outside of the scope of this mod.

 

[Deckard_33]

They're entirely fictional, literally just the normal cars with some power upgrades purchased and the RM on top. They generally aren't making any attempt to represent real rally cars in terms of physics, they're simply there to give the Arcade car selection a bit more variety. I don't have any plans to redesign them like that either, it's well outside of the scope of this mod.

So even the ones with no "regular street car" counterpart in the game, like the Lancia S3,are fictional?

 

[pez2k]

So even the ones with no "regular street car" counterpart in the game, like the Lancia S3,are fictional?

No, just the Arcade mode rally cars that aren't normally in GT mode.

 

[karelpipa]

There's nothing to "fix" as it was PD's decision to make it so only Time Attack/Time Trial updates the course record. Changing it so races also update it would require non-trivial modifications to the game's code.

When i was just a kid, i thought my game is broken because of that )

 

[pez2k]

I've not posted any progress in a while, so here's something I've been working on for a bit - an overhaul of the Vipers in GT2, because the more I looked at them, the more they seemed off.

In GT1, the Vipers were 1997 spec, whereas for GT2 they were switched to 1999 spec to remain current. Unfortunately, this change happened very late in development, and so there are a ton of details that aren't quite right.

For 1999 the Viper had new 18" wheels with thick flat spokes, which Polyphony added to the car, but without changing the tyre sizes from 17" to 18". The foglight covers and the black seal around them were also scrapped, but remained on GT2's models. While they did update the paint colours to reflect the range available in 1999 (removing the 1997 blue colour, to everyone's disappointment), for some reason the silver colour was missed out from the RT/10. The stripes on the GTS were also a cost option, and in retrospect it turned out that they were a rare choice - apparently as few as 22 of the GTS in silver with blue stripes were sold that year as anyone paying for the stripes just upgraded to the then-new Viper ACR instead.

As a result, I've retouched all of these points to get them right for the 1999 Viper. No foglight covers, 18" wheels, the full colour lineup, and the option to have your GTS without stripes.

Once all of these things were corrected, the blue paint looked very wrong on the 1999 model, with every detail now sticking out. Almost exactly six years after adding it to the Viper (and that then snowballing into a mod with thousands of edits) I removed it again.

...Of course, I wasn't just going to get rid of the best paintjob. Since the Vipers in GT2 already had a lot of 1997 details, I also went the other way with them and removed all of the 1999 changes, and split them off into independent cars.

Both models have the 1997 colours from GT1, plus the thin-spoked 17" wheels and foglight covers. The 1997 RT/10 also hadn't gained the bonnet vents from the GTS yet, so I've removed them for that model. Performance is the same as the '99 and so are the two RMs, but I'll be adjusting the prices slightly to reflect that they're older models.

I also had to paint out the foglight covers in the dealership render for both 1999 cars, and because the RT/10 was rendered when it was still modelled as a 1997 car, I had to paint on the new wheels and bonnet vents. The GTS model has had a little fix ported over from GT1+ too - for 1996 only, the stripes were unbroken around the whole car, but for 1997 onwards they stop at the top of the rear numberplate recess and only start again at the bumper. Easy enough to paint them out in that gap, and fix the one last weirdness with the car.

 

[The Real Emil]

I personally use the power upgrades on the arcade rally cars but that's more for my YouTube series. I think getting rid of them is a good call if you need the space, I like the Vipers being split of into seperate cars! Always found it weird that they upgraded the Vipers to 1999 spec without adding the ACR to give them some distinction

 

[Oreca 1998]

@pez2k I noticed that the stabilizers on the Lotus Elise GT1 cannot be adjusted. Is it a bug? I also noticed that the downforce figures on the Zexel & Kure R33 GT are lower than that of other GT500 cars.

 

[pez2k]

@pez2k I noticed that the stabilizers on the Lotus Elise GT1 cannot be adjusted. Is it a bug? I also noticed that the downforce figures on the Zexel & Kure R33 GT are lower than that of other GT500 cars.

The stabilisers on the Elise GT1 are explicitly set up to be unadjustable - it's not necessarily ideal, but it does seem to be intentional for some reason.

The Zexel and Kure GT-R are 1997 cars, so presumably they're pegged back a bit to reflect that the aero isn't quite as developed as the 1999 cars. However, the '96 Supra and '97 300ZX have the full downforce level, so who knows!

 

[Oreca 1998]

The stabilisers on the Elise GT1 are explicitly set up to be unadjustable - it's not necessarily ideal, but it does seem to be intentional for some reason.

The Zexel and Kure GT-R are 1997 cars, so presumably they're pegged back a bit to reflect that the aero isn't quite as developed as the 1999 cars. However, the '96 Supra and '97 300ZX have the full downforce level, so who knows!

Is it possible to increase the downforce values on the R33s and add higher values to the Elise stabilizers?

 

[pez2k]

Is it possible to increase the downforce values on the R33s and add higher values to the Elise stabilizers?

It's possible of course, but I don't know if I'll change it - it looks intentional in both cases.

 

[Oreca 1998]

It's possible of course, but I don't know if I'll change it - it looks intentional in both cases.

I pointed your attention to this for balancing purposes as the AI struggles when using those cars.

 

[pez2k]

I pointed your attention to this for balancing purposes as the AI struggles when using those cars.

Oh, interesting. I've not had a lot of luck with subtle car setup changes actually being reflected in AI performance though - at one point in development I mistakenly had a car in the Nationals with 100hp more than anything else and it didn't even win races.

The two 1997 GT-Rs already have enough adjustability on the downforce sliders to match the car setups being run by the various 1999 cars that show up as opponents, but the 1997 opponents are configured to run a lower downforce setup in comparison.

I don't think adjusting the stabilisers on the Elise GT1 would make it any faster either - the opponent setup uses the default value, and it's off the pace because it's set up as a roadgoing supercar, competing against dedicated racecars with way more downforce. When I added its missing RM I set the downforce levels in the opponent setup quite high to try to match the R390, but it's still not brilliant.

To be honest though, I'm okay with some performance variation between opponent cars, because it would be an immense amount of work to rebalance all opponents across all races. Submaniac is tackling that with GT2.1, but I think it's too far for GT2+. I've tried to fix the really obviously out-of-place stuff, for example the XJ220 and Elise road cars in race car events, or a 4WD car in the FF Challenge, but I probably won't be going through the 1200 opponent car setups to find which ones aren't great and optimising them. Setups with different downforce levels are quite possibly entirely intentional, especially when it's consistent across all setups for both '97 GT-Rs.

 

[pez2k]

Here's another thing going into the next release, although this time a lot smaller. Someone with a great knowledge of Porsches and an eye for detail pointed out to me a while ago that the 964-based Ruf models in GT2 use the taillights from the older 930-based models.

All of the normal roadgoing 911s prior to 1989 had simple lights on the corner of the tail, which from outside in contained an indicator, reverse light, then brake light. Later models had a red reflector across the back of the car between the lights, making them look like one integrated unit. When the heavily revamped 964 arrived in 1989, it used a new setup for the lights, with the outer section now consisting of a red-tinted indicator, brake light, then a reflector. The reverse light moved into the panel between the lights, along with optional fog lights. In GT2, the 964s all have the correct centre section with reverse lights, but have the outer section copied from the 930 BTR with another set of reverse lights and the wrong colour for the lenses.

A simple before and after view makes it very easy to see the difference, and I've lit up the lights in the animation just to show how the brake light has moved.

It's a relatively small thing considering the car overall, but like the details on the Vipers the car suddenly looks much more like a real Ruf RCT with just this correction.

The change was a little bit of a pain to make, because the lit brake lights on the original model are actually a separate face overlaid on top of the taillights, and as the brake lights have moved it no longer worked at all. I ended up moving the tails to the brake light palette entirely, and blanking the texture for the overlaid face. Another small obstacle was that the front indicator lenses remained orange while the rears needed to turn red, and the part of both that stretches onto the side of the car used the same colour for both, with no space to split them. The solution was to find the single face per side with the rear indicator lens on it and reassign it to a spare palette, which now uses a duplicate set of colours with only the orange changed to red.

I also needed to make all of the changes in a simple and repeatable way, because of course GT2+ Complete brings back four more Ruf 964s, and so all of those have had the same fix applied.

 

[Oreca 1998]

@pez2k
I have been testing multiple race cars with the same weight and fiddling with the weight reduction stages. What I noticed is that cars under a certain weight (can't exactly pinpoint it but it's probably under 2000 pounds) become twitchy & difficult to handle and mid engined cars in particular are affected the most by it. I compared two cars - Lotus Esprit GT1 and Toyota GT One - and despite weighing the same, the Esprit's handling is twitchy as if there's not enough rear wheel grip or there's extreme weight transfer on acceleration. Can you compare the values of both cars and see where the difference is?
Also can you look into the weight issue.
Edit: The Honda CR-X del Sol LM weighs less than the Esprit yet it handles better. Something's off here.

 

[pez2k]

I compared two cars - Lotus Esprit GT1 and Toyota GT One - and despite weighing the same, the Esprit's handling is twitchy as if there's not enough rear wheel grip or there's extreme weight transfer on acceleration. Can you compare the values of both cars and see where the difference is?
Also can you look into the weight issue.

Examining specific behaviours of the physics engine is beyond anything I can do unfortunately. In general though, stiff suspension will be very bouncy on many cars, especially with low weight. The physics engine is running at only 25-30Hz, the track surface is very, very low-poly thus not smooth, and so things start to get bouncy and twitchy as the car hits those bumps hard. It's even worse in GT1 I believe.

 

[Oreca 1998]

Examining specific behaviours of the physics engine is beyond anything I can do unfortunately. In general though, stiff suspension will be very bouncy on many cars, especially with low weight. The physics engine is running at only 25-30Hz, the track surface is very, very low-poly thus not smooth, and so things start to get bouncy and twitchy as the car hits those bumps hard. It's even worse in GT1 I believe.

Yes in GT1 it's more pronounced. I know I'm asking for a lot and thank you for your feedback. I'm looking forward for the next update.

 

[submaniac93]

It's not as bad in GT1 imo, as cars overall have a lot more grip so this type of bounce doesn't really throw your car off. However, the suspension shaking side effect of the game does slow you down a lot. And lighter cars will very much have a tendency to literally lift the inner wheels in every turn lol

 

[Oreca 1998]

@pez2k I was doing the Tuned NA cup and noticed the AI were slow compared to the original game. Did you adjust the horsepower figures of opponents' cars?
Also I know this request could be a burden but do you have a spreadsheet of AI opponents horsepower figures?

 

[pez2k]

@pez2k I was doing the Tuned NA cup and noticed the AI were slow compared to the original game. Did you adjust the horsepower figures of opponents' cars?
Also I know this request could be a burden but do you have a spreadsheet of AI opponents horsepower figures?

I haven't touched the opponents in those events. All changes are listed in the change log in the first post of the thread.

The best reference for opponent car stats is the same data dump as the used car list.

 

[karelpipa]

Here's another thing going into the next release, although this time a lot smaller. Someone with a great knowledge of Porsches and an eye for detail pointed out to me a while ago that the 964-based Ruf models in GT2 use the taillights from the older 930-based models.

All of the normal roadgoing 911s prior to 1989 had simple lights on the corner of the tail, which from outside in contained an indicator, reverse light, then brake light. Later models had a red reflector across the back of the car between the lights, making them look like one integrated unit. When the heavily revamped 964 arrived in 1989, it used a new setup for the lights, with the outer section now consisting of a red-tinted indicator, brake light, then a reflector. The reverse light moved into the panel between the lights, along with optional fog lights. In GT2, the 964s all have the correct centre section with reverse lights, but have the outer section copied from the 930 BTR with another set of reverse lights and the wrong colour for the lenses.

A simple before and after view makes it very easy to see the difference, and I've lit up the lights in the animation just to show how the brake light has moved.

It's a relatively small thing considering the car overall, but like the details on the Vipers the car suddenly looks much more like a real Ruf RCT with just this correction.

The change was a little bit of a pain to make, because the lit brake lights on the original model are actually a separate face overlaid on top of the taillights, and as the brake lights have moved it no longer worked at all. I ended up moving the tails to the brake light palette entirely, and blanking the texture for the overlaid face. Another small obstacle was that the front indicator lenses remained orange while the rears needed to turn red, and the part of both that stretches onto the side of the car used the same colour for both, with no space to split them. The solution was to find the single face per side with the rear indicator lens on it and reassign it to a spare palette, which now uses a duplicate set of colours with only the orange changed to red.

I also needed to make all of the changes in a simple and repeatable way, because of course GT2+ Complete brings back four more Ruf 964s, and so all of those have had the same fix applied.

fantastic. Actually i always knew something was wrong the RUFs back then and didnt use the much
They are great to drive though.

 

[2lazydontcare]

I was doing the Tuned NA cup and noticed the AI were slow compared to the original game.

The only cars I remember being competitive in those races were the Spoons (Integra and Civic). And by competitive, I mean competitive with similar class/power cars that one might use. Because you can use a 700HP Viper if you want, but that might take the fun out of it. I'm not sure why they didn't have some HP cap on these races, but then the harder I try to understand this game, the more my head hurts. I have to thank pez2k and others here for making my head hurt less.

 

[Zertyuoo]

Hello everyone and a huge thank you to the creator(s) of this colossal and incredible mod.

Having read the whole patchnote, (yes, the whole thing.) I'd like to come back to a point that I hope hasn't already been addressed, so as not to waste your time.

You say you've changed the color names of the "Venturi" cars, explaining that it's a typing error. But it's a mistake on your part. In fact, since "Venturi" cars are French, their color names are also in French. (This is also the case for other brands whose color names are translated). In French, however, we write "Bleu" and not "Blue".

Than you again for this amazing project.