Modding and restoration discussion

[pez2k]

By implicit request of the moderators, here's a specific thread for researching, discussing and showing off modifications to Gran Turismo 2. This covers bug fixes, restoring cut content, bespoke custom modifications and more.

Useful links:

• GTVolTools (and GT2DataExploder)
• adeyblue's GT2 datamining
• Various GT2 tools by me
• Translating body codes
• The Cutting Room Floor
  
• 7Zip

Please note that no discussion of emulation, piracy or disc images is permitted.

 

[submaniac93]

Alright! Well i'm gonna kick this off with what I already share on my personal thread located at the link below where I put all that i've contributed/shared so that there's an easy way to find stuff
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/hello-sub93-here-d.341451/

I will offer no information on how to "install" them here. Contact me in private if you really need help.

NOTE: Cars on which i've ADDED more colors than what the base game allows to buy will only let you view the colors at the dealership screen. Adding selectable colors to the game is currently being researched by pez2k.

Direct copy-paste lawl.

A few months back, I picked up on logo making, and here is a pack of them.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/01po881o025xsjx/GT2_customlogos1.rar

Nissan NISMO GTR LM Gran Turismo 1 Race Mod (black color corrected and wheels)
Adds a body to the game as a secondary RM for the GTR LM Road Going version
nl33s | 1858411D | [R]Nismo GT-R LM GT1 Version

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/k6y49xwv6jzp3md/Nissan_NISMO_GTR-LM_GT1_version.7z

Dodge Viper RT/10 with added Yellow color from Gran Turismo 1
Replaces normal RT/10 RM

Spoiler

FILES (v1.1 2020 update)
v1.1 update: fixed yellow's night lights on the LOD2 as well as flipped inner blades of the spoiler.

Jaguar XJ15's real world colors (request - Sirius-R made the base colors)

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3qvxb87qqa828dt/XJR15_realcolors_submaniac93.7z

Subaru Impreza 22B recolor. [OUTDATED]
Decided to give the 22B a closer to real life color, instead of the purplish blue it had in GT2.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ntnghefj5og23js/Impreza22B_recolor_submaniac93.7z

Subaru Impreza Rally Car '99 [OUTDATED]
In the same vein as the 22B, I decided to give my favourite WRC a recolor.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2s95b5zapyyojad/ImprezaWRC99_recolor_submaniac93.7z

 

[submaniac93]

Please don't mind me double posting, this could become a regular thing. How else are you guys going to know about updates if I only update my one giant post?

Anyway, today's mod:
Mazda RX-7 GT-C LM + Hidden #8 RM skinny night model fix
The GIF only shows the #8, but both are fixed

http://www.mediafire.com/file/pvu564ya776kd1d/Mazda_RX-7_GT-C_LM_NightFix_Submaniac93.7z

Yes, I did find how to mod car models basically. HOWEVER! I can't add OR delete anything, therefore let's not get ahead of ourselves. I can only modify existing models.

I did manage to make a batmobile Impreza WRC when I was looking through the data though xD

Spoiler

Oh and also, you all get to pick my one and only fully working custom rim, "dish" and all (which actually isn't a thing, there is no actual polygon making the rim's dish, it's the inside of the tire that's colored, strangely enough. I don't know how they made having one side of the tire black, and one side colored... so basically, wheel's dishes are actually just us being able to see a color around the wheel's texture, which has its corners turned transparent). Try as I might, in over an hour and 30 tries, I couldn't make a second fully working wheel, so there. Back to its rightful owner. (GT1's Legacy Wagon GT's wheels).
Rename to whatever you want to replace, by default this replaces the first BBS wheel.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/3vow5u8o652ua16/bb001--s.tim

Spoiler

Also, you are not getting my awesome test wheel (because it doesn't exist anymore)

Spoiler

 

[Overload_35]

Nice work with the bodymodelling! (Would be cool a Rocket Bunny Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak xD)

I'm happy too see that the modding is not dead!

 

[pez2k]

Been quiet for a bit as I was writing a lot of code, but it's borne fruit now.

@SuperFrizzio pointed out that adding the Honda Life '98 RM had broken the opponents so they were using RM bodies themselves, which has now been fixed:

@submaniac93 noted that the Renault Clio had the wrong stats, so that's been fixed:

It also had neither a Turbo Kit nor NA Tune, so that's fixed:

The Vauxhall versions of the Corsa and Tigra didn't have the turbo kits that the Opel versions had, and that's fixed:

And finally, to test removing parts as well as adding them, I fixed an infamous bug:

 

[pez2k]

Tackled some bigger fish than an MR car having a carbon propshaft upgrade today:

The other cut Honda Life RM returns:

The cut Mark Martin Taurus RM is now an alternate option:

The cut Gran Turismo 1 Nismo GT-R LM RM is also now an option (thanks @submaniac93):

I also made a start on fixing the Golf V6 - it's now AWD with the right gearing and weight, but still has a VR5 when you buy it:

edit: one more!

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

Jaguar XJ15's real world colors (request - Sirius-R made the base colors)

Awesome, I wasn't aware that the XJR15 came in other colors. I've only seen it in blue on google images.

 

[submaniac93]

I also wasn't aware. All the coloring research and base .bmp work was made by Sirius-R, I just transposed it into GT2-usable material

 

[pez2k]

Latest tweak:

Turns out there's nothing complex about adding cars, you just need to add all the relevant parts.

 

[pez2k]

Two more working cars added, this time the special license test only versions of the Roadster and Silvia:

These are straight ports of the car parts from the license test data to GT mode, so they don't have any upgrades but drive identically to the way they do in the tests. Currently just got them in the Honda UCD for testing as with the Mugen S2000, but they'll probably become prize cars somewhere. Interesting too that the Mazda has a logo, and a US one at that.

 

[pez2k]

Apologies that this seems to just be me multi-posting over the course of a few days!

I've been looking into the CDP texture format lately, so I figured it's worth making it public knowledge. I started off hacking at it myself, but ended up poring through the source code for GT2CarViewer to fill in the gaps, so credit where credit's due there.

I'm going to skip the simple stuff about the header listing the number of palettes (one per car colour) followed by the palettes themselves, and jump straight to the texture data. From 0x43A0 to the end of the file, there's a big chunk of data that represents a 256x224 texture. The way that this is laid out is that it simply lists each pixel in order, line by line. Two pixels are packed into each byte, with the two halves of the byte representing a colour index, 0 to 15. While the palettes contain up to 244 colours, they're split into 14 16-colour CLUTs, hence the 0-15 range. Nothing in the CDP associates a CLUT with a particular pixel, it looks like that's all stored in the UV map data in the CDO model itself.

In short, each face of the model as it's drawn selects which of the 14 CLUTs it requires, and the texture data mapped to it maps to those 16 colours. No face can contain more than 16 discrete colours, which explains the extreme colour banding on larger body panels compared to the intricate detail on taillights and wheels.

Unfortunately this makes texture editing tooling rather a big task, as it's strongly tied into model editing and needs to retain that knowledge of which 16 colours are used for which section in order to create a functional texture. It's not impossible though - again GT2CarViewer is an example of how interpreting the model formats is a task that has already been solved.

 

[submaniac93]

I don't see a problem with multiple posts as long as it's not meaningless, personally.
Hopefully you manage to crack the system over time. It's already great that you're willing to work on all this

 

[pez2k]

Quick tool release today:
http://www.pez2k.net/mods/GT2UsedCarEditor.rar

It can export the Used Car Dealership stock lists to CSV, then rebuild them back into the appropriate game file. A readme is included with more indepth instructions, but note that if you mangle any of the CSV files you'll just get a crash rather than any sort of error message currently. Excel can and will wreck CSV files if you let it, so it's best to just use Notepad.

 

[pez2k]

Working on another tool that allows export / import of the wheel textures and palettes, so here's a little demo of it.

The wheels are a set of Enkeis from the aftermarket wheel shop, but with a quick hue shift to match the body colour instead of a red rim. Since each car colour has its own palette, I figure colour-coded wheels made a good example of what's possible.

It'll also make adding wheels to pre-release cars like the A4 Avant a 5-second job rather than lots of hex editing - export from the retail A4, import to the Avant, and done.

 

[Gamerjman19]

Do you guys have any plans to make your own RM's? Like using the r32 RM to make other group A skylines, and adding the proper sponsors to RM's that they couldn't use due to copyright?

 

[submaniac93]

@Gamerjman19 If at all possible, that will be my personal plan.

 

[pez2k]

I've been working on a texture editing toolchain, it's just made very complex by the way that the game handles colours and the limited amount of colours per body panel. It would be possible right now to paint a custom RM, it just takes a ton of artistic skill that I don't really have.

I have been using it to fix existing RM bugs though, like the Stageas:

The night version of the '97 260RS has a bit of the stripe missing on the bumper:

The night version of the '98 RS Four V has the stripes missing around the whole headlight:

And the '98 260RS has both bugs, one on the day version and one on the night:

For the '98 models at least, whoever did the lit headlight texture used so many colours for it there weren't any left to do the stripes on that part of the texture. I reduced the number of colours so that I could restore the stripes, and the resulting headlight change isn't really noticeable.

 

[pez2k]

More texture fixes today:

The Honda Integras had the wrong windscreen banner on their RMs:

The Prius RM night version had blue paint around the headlights on both the blue and the red livery:

The Familia GT-R RM night version had a mangled front bumper, including a blank numberplate painted on:

 

[pez2k]

After 18 years of it bugging me, I've finally fixed the Golf V6 permanently! Originally in GT2, the car is actually a clone of the Golf V5 at 150PS / 1284kg and FWD, but the real thing is more powerful and AWD. It shows up with the right power in the dealership, but those numbers are faked and don't represent the real physics data.

The original 5-cylinder engine that the car gets, taken straight from the game data:

This is how it should look - a proper 24v VR6 at just over 200PS, based on and adapted from the Bora V6 in Forza 4:

Ingame, including the correct weight and drivetrain for a 1999 Golf V6 4Motion:

It's also now correctly a 6-speed, rather than having the 5-speed from the V5:

I've also added / removed upgrades as appropriate for an AWD car - less LSD choices but it does now have a carbon propshaft upgrade.

 

[tankuroded]

Putting in my rim mods. I was going to do more, but never bothered to do it.

Audi S4 Estate
BMW 3-series Sedan (E36)
Castrol Mugen Accord JTCC

 

[B_rad88!]

Well damn its been awhile since I've posted. Thanks for the link pez2k!


Update,

- gt1 menu sounds are in a vab/vb/vh into seq format my quess. Since they will load in vabtool.


But I'm not familiar with midi format sounds...... I'm still learning how to use dj programs like fl studios and ect.


Wow alot of car texture fixes have been finished. So has any one have done a custom texture mod?

And Submaniac93 you gotta let me in on the mesh mod how-to. So is that elusive cosmo spoiler now closer to being actually implamented? And btw, if you do a widebody mod 97 240sx/s14 then I can adapt the gt1 texture to it..... same with the chaser lm edition.



I'm trying to get back into modding again, after my grandmother's passing has taken alot out of me. I'm starting to feel the modding mood again!



EDIT: @pez2k it would be cool if I could also get my hands on your GT2CTtool, that would make things alot easier! A favor from one modder to another. Is there any help you need let me know, lol do you need a beta tester? Also curious question.... does your GT2CTtool have export/import features? Example export a texture to .png to mod it in say example GIMP2.8 and then import it back in? Very curious about this now, lol.


@submaniac93 wow, alot of work done updating that sound bank id list! Nicely done! Btw to fix the ufo sound problem is simple...... just as easy as porting gt1 sounds over!

Spoiler

Boot screen mod!

Just a reminder I did several car mods already! Most can be found here:

https://mega.nz/#F!b8cFACbY!-pOltCMzyBOzwmr05AvjCw


Fixed RM Laguna texture

Decal delete acura nsx

WIP: black pulsar vz-r n1 with decals

WIP 4door neon RM!

And a brand new title screen here:

https://mega.nz/#!DslFWLjD!0Fapsbg4QopzD11yf1xnoR4Sy50NuuCKk64DMR0Zguw


And the GT2 PAL eurobeat music mod v.01b in-race soundtrack music mod here:

https://mega.nz/#!L0FSiLAL!SzgYFJhAI49WHgA182_xt7kFrNZkPN3sCftzUPXCbAI


Custom nameplates

Custom track mod, changed from dirt track to grass track!

Enjoy!

 

[Gamerjman19]

You got pictures of all your mods?

 

[B_rad88!]

Quick tool release today:
http://www.pez2k.net/mods/GT2UsedCarEditor.rar

It can export the Used Car Dealership stock lists to CSV, then rebuild them back into the appropriate game file. A readme is included with more indepth instructions, but note that if you mangle any of the CSV files you'll just get a crash rather than any sort of error message currently. Excel can and will wreck CSV files if you let it, so it's best to just use Notepad.

@pez2k thank you very much for this tool. But for me on my old 2002 windows xp pro desktop it says "not a valid windows32bit application", so did you make that for win7 and newer? Any possible chance of asking for an 32bit version?

Putting in my rim mods. I was going to do more, but never bothered to do it.

Audi S4 Estate
BMW 3-series Sedan (E36)
Castrol Mugen Accord JTCC

And thank you @tankuroded but the bmw glitched out in my gt2carviewer......

You got pictures of all your mods?

Who are you talkin too? Edited last post with pics, check spoiler! I have lots posted in the other gt2 thread.....

 

[pez2k]

Wow alot of car texture fixes have been finished. So has any one have done a custom texture mod?

I haven't, but it's more down to a lack of artistic skill than a lack of ability to edit textures now. Trying to reduce the colour count of the existing textures to make room for colours to paint with is a chore.

EDIT: @pez2k it would be cool if I could also get my hands on your GT2CTtool, that would make things alot easier! A favor from one modder to another. Is there any help you need let me know, lol do you need a beta tester? Also curious question.... does your GT2CTtool have export/import features? Example export a texture to .png to mod it in say example GIMP2.8 and then import it back in? Very curious about this now, lol.

I've never written anything called 'GT2CTtool' nor do I have a texture editing tool.

The problem with texture editing is that there isn't really a rational way to convert textures to an easily editable format. Each section of the texture is a separate 4-bit indexed texture with its own palette, and which palette is used by which section is dictated by the model it's mapped onto. If you export the texture as one 256x224 sheet, most of it will be using the wrong palette. If you export each bit individually per palette, you need to have the model format fully understood and loaded in order to split it up, and need some method of resolving what happens if the user paints outside of that area.

The closest I've gotten to a toolchain is adding the correct headers to turn a CDP file into a multi-paletted TIM file, using already available TIM tools to modify it, and then stripping the headers back into a CDP file. You then also run into issues with most software such as Photoshop not supporting 4-bit indexed palettes, and it's easy to accidentally turn it into 8-bit indexed which can then no longer be used.

@pez2k thank you very much for this tool. But for me on my old 2002 windows xp pro desktop it says "not a valid windows32bit application", so did you make that for win7 and newer? Any possible chance of asking for an 32bit version?

It's written in .NET 4.7 - I don't think XP has been supported since 4.0 in 2009. Sorry, but I have no plans to roll back to a decade-old language version just for XP support, half the point of writing tools in C# is the amount of syntactic sugar in more recent releases that makes it quicker and neater to write code with. Any tools I write aren't going to work for you on an OS that far out of date.

 

[B_rad88!]

I haven't, but it's more down to a lack of artistic skill than a lack of ability to edit textures now. Trying to reduce the colour count of the existing textures to make room for colours to paint with is a chore.

Oh, lol I ment mix matching parts of cars to make a new one........ for example like a skyline wagon. Using parts thats already there.

I've never written anything called 'GT2CTtool' nor do I have a texture editing tool.

The problem with texture editing is that there isn't really a rational way to convert textures to an easily editable format. Each section of the texture is a separate 4-bit indexed texture with its own palette, and which palette is used by which section is dictated by the model it's mapped onto. If you export the texture as one 256x224 sheet, most of it will be using the wrong palette. If you export each bit individually per palette, you need to have the model format fully understood and loaded in order to split it up, and need some method of resolving what happens if the user paints outside of that area.

The closest I've gotten to a toolchain is adding the correct headers to turn a CDP file into a multi-paletted TIM file, using already available TIM tools to modify it, and then stripping the headers back into a CDP file. You then also run into issues with most software such as Photoshop not supporting 4-bit indexed palettes, and it's easy to accidentally turn it into 8-bit indexed which can then no longer be used.

Oh may bad I though I had read that you made a gt2 car texture tool...... so hows the header alternate working? Can I please ask you for that header? It might just solve my headache troubles. Took me a week just to delete the decals (byte by byte, pixel by pixel) of the acura nsx mod I did. If not I understand, every modder has they'er secrets. GIMP2.8 views, mods, and exports in .tim format and keeps it correct color indexed with the correct bbp most of the time. Thats how I make my custom billboards and rims!

It's written in .NET 4.7 - I don't think XP has been supported since 4.0 in 2009. Sorry, but I have no plans to roll back to a decade-old language version just for XP support, half the point of writing tools in C# is the amount of syntactic sugar in more recent releases that makes it quicker and neater to write code with. Any tools I write aren't going to work for you on an OS that far out of date.

Oh ok, thougt I'd ask. Thank you. I started my modding on this old comp cause 1 it was given to me and 2 most of the psx mod programs are old (1999-2005) besides the ms-dos made programs which I keep finding more of. So most is either to new or to old....... But I dunno how I have managed so far with this dated win xp....... might buy a new comp just for "back-dating birds" (high-5 if you get that! As of writing this my friend didn't, lol) with ms-dos and win xp purposes. Theatrically I need 3 comps just for proper gt2 modding without changing "back-dated birds".

 

[pez2k]

Oh may bad I though I had read that you made a gt2 car texture tool...... so hows the header alternate working? Can I please ask you for that header? It might just solve my headache troubles. Took me a week just to delete the decals (byte by byte, pixel by pixel) of the acura nsx mod I did. If not I understand, every modder has they'er secrets.

No need for keeping secrets, that would just stop others from building on what I've found. Everything I've done so far has been built on the research of others too.

It's not quite as simple as adding a single header - there's the overall TIM header, a palettes header and a header for the image data itself. You also need to trim out some of the CDP that isn't TIM data and add it back in afterwards. It's all technically doable by hand (look up the TIM format, the headers are really simple to create), but I wrote a little tool to do it for me since I'm lazy. Again though, it's .NET 4.7 and won't work on XP.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

I'm actually trying to edit car textures myself. Somehow, I made the Viper RM silver. Mainly because I just randomly changed a few bits and guessed.


EDIT: Here is something more successful, I edited the RM for the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution III to have the yellow color option scrapped from the demos. I copy/pasted the values of the yellow Beta Evo III Rm to the final car data. Though I accidently pasted the night textures to the day version, I'll fix that.

I went back and applied the scraped color of the Pulsar GTI-R RM to the final model. Now, I can have the color and with the final game wheels.


EDIT 2: 3 more attempts at editing a car model.
I applied a second color to the concept car LM from the special colored Dodge Concept Car from GT2 demos.


My first attempt in giving the S2000 GT1 the colors from the regular S2000. I ended up missing some textures.


After some messing around, I successfully managed to give the Lancer Evolution III RM the scraped yellow color option from the demos.

 

[Gamerjman19]

You going to make that Silver Viper look like this?

 

[Epic B]

This is cool stuff. Unfortunately I have no idea where to even start with nodding the game myself. There is a lot I would want to do with restoring cut content and whatnot but I don't know what to do.

For the record I do have a real copy of GT2 (it's NTSC 1.2 I believe) but that's it.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

You going to make that Silver Viper look like this?

Not intentionally. I also kinda scrapped that file and started over again, I went towards making a black Viper RM now. The only problem is that I can't quite get everything down right. The rear window on my black viper is glitchy for instance and some of the decals are messed up on the sides of my edited Viper. It's going to take some more messing around before I even fix it.

EDIT: My Viper editing progress. My big issue is that I forgot which bit rows were for the windshield banner and wing.