Searching For Evidence of Hidden Things

  • Thread starter HACKr
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I'm not a pro or anything, but I just recently used a hex editor to find some things I have found mysterious about GT2.

I searched for palm strip and here are my findings:
at 00468ab9 it says Palm Strip in a whole slew of what appears to be french.
at 0046d271 it says Palm Strip in a group of german words.
the next two are about the same idea.

There are no instances of "drag strip".
No instances of "Eigen Loop"
No instances of "CLK-GTR"

More findings shortly...
 
OK, thanks for that. Have you tried searching this forum for some of the things you are searching for or is that what got you started?
 
Correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure it's called Plam Strip. This was supposed to be the drag racing track, which didn't get included in GT2 due to time restraints (supposedly). The Mercedes CLK should be in the game, it's hidden, though; you'll only gain access to it with a gameshark or some other device, but the drag strip? It doesn't exist (despite all the conpiracy buffs who say otherwise). YOu won't find it anywhere.

At www.granturismoforum.com there were some folks with hex editors hacking into the game codes back in 1999/2000 when GT2 was released. They managed to figure out that there were 2 initial productions of GT2...version 1.0 had "october 29, 1999" and version 1.1 (i think) was dated sometime in "November or december 1999". Believe it or not, this caused alot of concern and flaming initially. There were only a handful of folks who had 1.1, and the hundreds who had the glitchier 1.0 version didn't believe the folks who had managed to buy 1.1, even after they posted screenshots of various imrovements found in 1.1 (like the Peugeot in the 2nd Tahiti Maze rally. In 1.0, it crashes into a wall and gets stuck there for the entire race. In 1.1, it finishes the course.)
 
Palm Strip and Eigen Loop are mentioned extremely briefly in the Arcade Mode disk's intro movie.

The CLK-GTR has been discussed ad infinitum before on these forums. There was a preview disk that contained an image of the CLK-GTR (just like the GT4 prize car). There were also pre-release screenshots showing the CLK-GTR. In the end, the CLK-GTR did not appear as a drivable car, nor is any of the car information available hard-coded on the disk in any version of the game.

Speculation leads us GT2 fans to believe that PD created the "CLK Race Car" in response to the CLK-GTR's exclusion from the game. For some reason, it's hidden in every version of the game. It's a truly hidden car, like the Volkswagen Polo, or the Shelby GT500KR...no body or engine codes need to be added; you just punch in the code for the purchse of the car with a GameShark (or equivalent) and you buy it with your credits. You can also buy it off someone else's memory card.

The CLK Race Car (also informally called the CLK DTM) shares no resemblance to the CLK-GTR, as they are not the same car as all.

There's also lots of other body-only cars, you need to find a drivetrain to go with it (i.e. just place the body code of your choice over the car you wish it to be). There's also some duplicates: Infiniti cars that have Nissan equivalents, Esso rather than Exxon sponsorship duplicate GT-Ones/Peugeots.
 
Yeah, I'll search for more things like that. I know that I've heared of a hidden drag strip outside Laguna Seca.
As for Palm Strip, the words appear to be in some sort of discription (don't know many of the words in the languages). It could by some left over or abandoned license tests or something like that.

Excuse me while I run my CLK-GTR around Tahiti road...
 
Oh yeah, and TMM, I just started doing this cause I was bored to death. The local car dealer says I can't buy a Caterham for $10 a month.
 
HACKr
Yeah, I'll search for more things like that. I know that I've heared of a hidden drag strip outside Laguna Seca.
As for Palm Strip, the words appear to be in some sort of discription (don't know many of the words in the languages). It could by some left over or abandoned license tests or something like that.

Excuse me while I run my CLK-GTR around Tahiti road...

That “hidden” drag strip you;ve heard about outside of Laguna Seca is the rumor i was talking about. There are still plenty of websites out there that contain this false info, many of them haven't been updated since the year 2000! Trust me, even if you break out of Laguna, all you'll find is empty space with a generic Polyphony background.

Yeah my local dealership says i can't use my 1988 Isuzu Trooper as collateral to buy a Miata. Go figure..i mean come on...my Trooper has way more ‘character’.
 
Well, I found some things outside of Laguna Seca. One thing looked kinda like a dragstrip, but when I went to drive on it, it dissappeared! There seems to be abandoned modelling, or junk as I call it, outside the track.
Or it could be just an illusion.
 
Yeah, I said it could be abandoned modelling or something like that. The folks at Polyphony could have made a few different straightaways and then tested each one. What I'm seeing could be the bad one that they decided not to use, but forgot to delete before the release.
I also notice that the games general engine (graphics and physics) seems to be a lot like Re-Volt, an Acclaim R/C racing game released the same year. In the game, anything within the supposed drivable area of the track is solid (only on one side though). Anything outside of the track is not solid. Therefore, anything outside of the track is not driveable (unless Polyphony marked the area or stray model as drivable track, which would probably cause strange and unnecessary glitches.)
Plus, gravity in the game seems to be relative to the track surface. This is proven by the big air you get after braking out of Laguna Seca and driving under the corkscrew. This glitch also proves that any contact or hit point (where the car is able to hit and react with) is one sided.
These two things I have just mentioned are there for the sake of Frame Rate speed. If everything is hitable, not even on both sides, the Playstation would have too much to compute. Think about it. The physics engine is so complex, and the graphics are very detailed (for the time and system). If the Playstation had more to compute, the framerate would suffer, and the system would crash a whole lot more.
Wow... I do have too much time on my hands. :dopey:
 
Ha ha, it's okay, i've posted massive text here before. You're obviously intelligent, too. There's no need for the PS to compute every little fragment you see; hence, it's possible to make it thru and get outside the game if you are persistent enough.

Hey, another hidden car / conspiracy topic is the milk truck. In case you never heard of it, there's a rumor that got started right after GT2 was released that there was a milk truck in the game. But it's not anywhere to be found. It seems the Daihatsu Midget would be the most qualified candidate, but the MIdget is not truely a milk truck per se. It's not like there's words on the side that say “Cloverland Dairy”*or something.
 
Parnelli Bone
Hey, another hidden car / conspiracy topic is the milk truck.
The "milk truck" was always more of an inside joke than a rumor.

There were lots of kids swearing by the existence of cars that never were in the game (McLaren F1, CLK-GTR, BMW M-cars, Lamborghinis, actual Porsches, etc.)

The milk truck just sort of made all those claims even more absurd.
 
pupik
The "milk truck" was always more of an inside joke than a rumor.

There were lots of kids swearing by the existence of cars that never were in the game (McLaren F1, CLK-GTR, BMW M-cars, Lamborghinis, actual Porsches, etc.)

The milk truck just sort of made all those claims even more absurd.

Yet i've seen people take it seriously, as if it really existed. There was also a rumor at granturismoforum.com that some fool picked up from someone else. It went like this: buy all black cars (100 of them) and fill your garage. No duplicates allowed. I forget the exact criteria but basically the gist once you get your garage filled, the game would reward you and put the McLaren in your garage. The guy swore it was true and a few early gT2 explorers tried to believe him...one even tryied it out for himself even tho the first guy couldn't produce a screen shot of his McLaren.

Eventually, the liar fessed up...admited the rumor was false. Needless to say he was flamed incessantly. I'll try and dig up the exact post and location if i can.
 
Sorry I didn't really post this weekend. The Hotel's internet access was down or something. I looked at the links breifly and I realized the absurdity of some rumors. A lot of this stuff is crazy.
I don't want any rumors to be created in this thread, though it would be funny to see what people would say... or just disgusting:crazy:
 
...Some people go too far. I wish I could flood their computers with endless hex dumps of GT2.vol. The rumors ar kinda funny though...
 
HACKr
Sorry I didn't really post this weekend. The Hotel's internet access was down or something. I looked at the links briefly and I realized the absurdity of some rumors. A lot of this stuff is crazy.
I don't want any rumors to be created in this thread, though it would be funny to see what people would say... or just disgusting:crazy:

No apologies necessary. And i wouldn't worry about rumors starting here cause GT2 is old news. All the conspirators and hypers can currently be found playing GT4 nowadays, i'm sure. And if they're not doing that, they're out there spreading mistruths about GT5 or something.

By the way, that guy Klostrophobik (the one who began to try Vol4Ever's false McLaren story over at GTF) was one of the first to buy a version 1.1 copy of GT2. While hundreds of gamers were complaining that their game had all these problems, Klos was claiming his disc was comparatively less glitchy.

His car wash said 50 credits. When he did the Tahiti Maze rally, the Peugeot finished the whole race. Some of the words mispelled in their version were correctly spelled in his. Stuff like that.

I can't find the exact post, but basically Klostrophobic got massively MASSIVELY flamed because he couldn't back his claims up with any screenshots. I mean, NO ONE believed him, and those that wanted to were obviously skeptical. But eventually someone else had bought a version 1.1 and he actually did post screenshots...which some folks said were doctored on photoshop!

But as we all know now, turns out Klostrophobic was right...that's why he says "well Vol4ever, since you believed me..."
 
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BTW... (sorta off topic) Whats a good site where I can post screenshots for free? I would like to post pictures of the undrivable "drag strip" and some other things that I found interesting.
 
HACKr
BTW... (sorta off topic) Whats a good site where I can post screenshots for free? I would like to post pictures of the undrivable "drag strip" and some other things that I found interesting.
You can use imageshack.
Click here.
 
Ok, here is the screenshot of the undrivable dragstrip if anyone is interested, and thank you Cosmic.

And the Nsx is a hybrid, cause otherwise it would be hard to break out.
 
Well done HACKr 👍
It suck that it's undriveable tought? But couldn't you drive on it atleast or just not at all?
 
It suck that it's undriveable tought? But couldn't you drive on it atleast or just not at all?

You can just "hover" over it, but when you try to drive on it (like I said earlier) it disappears. The way it disappears is strange. Rectangle sections of the track seem to disappear one at a time. These rectangular sections could be something like the "track zones" in afore mentioned (spelling?) Re-Volt. They are a way of dividing up the track for editing and are very useful.
These divisions in GT2 may be for editing too. If the folks at Polyphony wanted to make a road segment with a different textrure, they may just have edited the segment.
This is all just theorizing, keep in mind. Further and extensive investigation is needed to make sure this is true.
 
I know that the whole Gt2 enchillada is in GT2.vol. I think this is a Linux or Sun Solaris file. If I ever get Linux running on my Mac (a beautiful machine) I could look into actually dumping files out of it.
 
Cosmic
Why did that site die?

Apparently Kenji (the guy that owns GTF) closed down the Pit Stop or something and people stopped going to GTF. The Pit Stop...we have our own version here at GT PLanet called the Rumble Strip. It was the place folks could go to post off-topic stuff. I don't know exactly what happened..i'm sure ther's more to the story.

Another great GT site was called Racing-Line.org. The guy that originally owned it was real mellow, but he sold it to another guy who turned out to be a real @$$whole, and hundreds of people either were banned or voluntarily and publicly deleted their accounts.
 
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