What is possible to have in GP2?

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rremedio
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What is possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

On the 1991 MOD topic, the old discution of what we would like to see improved in GP2 came up again.

Well, over the past years I've been trying to understand and tweek some of the inner workings of GP2 and I've managed to create some cool things, but nothing like I expected. Someone with debugging and Assembly knowledge could understand GP2 way better than me, but it seems like there's no such person available at our community.

Most of the time it came by understanding the way previous GP2 tools changed the game, I'm able to find similar things to be changed, or to be changed in a similar way. Also, Rene Smith kindly sent me some documents with knowledge he have gathered from early GP2 and GP3 patchers discussions. These prople were much more able than me to discover and create things for the game and in the documents there is mostly data that was used in the creations of the great tools we know, like GP2Edit, track Editor, GP2Lap and everything else. But there's also few things that were not used anywhere and may still useful in the future.

The aim for this topic is to be a reference and dicussion point on such things. I can update this message with new knowledge, proved/unproved things, points I missed to include, etc...

Traps of Memory Editing

After you read this text you may think: "why the hell nobody created a memory editing tool for GP2?". Well, somebody created, its name GP2Lap.

Several reasons might explain why GP2Lap didn't dig into all of this. Maybe simply its creator maybe not wanting something, maybe he didn't think about it, maybe most of these things are hard to achieve (when I say something is possible it doesn't mean it's easy), maybe becouse GP2lap is very careful with saved games and hotlaps, as most of the memory editing that I say being able to make something for GP2 would make saved files unusable inside the game.

There are also technical limitations. GP2 is mostly used via emulators today (DosBox, VirtualPC, VirtualBOX, etc) and our tool would need to dig into the memory of those emulators and they are obviously very different from each other.

GP2Lap doesn't have that limitation becouse it's also a Dos program and can make its magic from inside the emulators.

So now take your time to read this boring text and we can start talking about these things and other things will wish we could have in that fantastic game.
Last edited by rremedio on 21.10.2012, 15:24, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

Graphics

Improving graphic quality - NOT POSSIBLE

Notice that I'm no graphics expert or anything closer and as far as I understand we will always be limited on editing jam files (256 colours bitmaps). Enabling the loading and display of 16bit graphics or higher would require deep changes in the game engine and as far as I can tell, it would require the game source code. So I think it's not possible.

Changing texture mapping for the cars - MAYBE POSSIBLE

This would be a groundbraking improvement in the game and nothing makes me think it's not possible.

After extensive tests, I came to the conclusion that the texture mapping is not contained inside the carshape area of the exe (or in the carshape files used by the Car Editor). It must be somewhere else in the exe but I don't have any clue about it. We managed to tweek the way the shape loads the texture mapping by hex editing the carshape and it's all we can do for now (you can see the results at Michael82's 80ies F1 carsets).

Individual liveries for cars - MAYBE POSSIBLE

I'm not sure about that, but it seems to me that when running, GP2 creates two versions of the bitmap in the memory, so maybe a tool could access GP2 memory and override the current bitmaps. But first we would have to understand how are the bitmaps stored in memory.

Rain - MAYBE POSSIBLE

AAS has created a snow version of Aida. With current limitations on Jam sizes, I don't think we can use the same system for much tracks. But GP2Lap is able to insert graphics in the game display and using a similar, but different approach, GPxPatch makes marvelous things (like the analogic cockpits and changing helmet vision) for the later games. Updating GP2laps seems like an unviable option today. But this could change, or someone could create other tool to manage GP2 in realtime. Who knows?


Other possible improvements / Audio - MAYBE POSSIBLE

Using the same thinking about the rain, maybe someone could create 3D and/or analogic cockpits, dynamic helmet visors, better race overlays and even radio messages. GP2 doesn't use Directx or OpenGL, so I think those things are much hard (maybe impossible) to achieve than they were in the other GPx games.
Last edited by rremedio on 29.07.2012, 18:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

Physics / AI Racing

Rain - POSSIBLE

We already have some kind of wet racing in GP2 by tweeking grip parameters. A tool reading and writing on GP2 memory could improve things and add things like changing driving conditions.

KERS/Push to Pass - POSSIBLE

Again, KERS/Push to Pass are possible with a memory editing tool, we already know the locations of car powers on the memory.

DRS - NOT POSSIBLE

Wing values are fixed on the memory, so it's not possible to change them. However, someone could fake it's effects the same way he could add KERS.

Fix power factors for slow cars - MAYBE POSSIBLE

If we use low powered cars, the human player will have a big advantage at race start and accelerating out of slow corners. There's a turn around using the physics editor and ignoring real life power values, but tweeking the phisics to have the correct top speeds. Anyway, Belini found the values which need to be changed for GP3 and GP32K, so probably it can be done in GP2 too with much better effect than using the Physics Editor to fake it.

Individual physics for cars and other racing improvements via memory editing - POSSIBLE

Again, it could be done with memory editing. We know values for grips, power and fuel consumption in the memory. Also, tyre consumption could be faked. We could also fake car reability: GP2 sorts who and where will have failures before race start, so don't matter the driving style. The memory tool could make the calculations and management on this, as well as dictate car failures if someone wants to fully recreate a real life race (dictation is already possible without the need of memory editing, but hacking saved games). Other possible improvements are better management of AI pit stop strategies, performance sorting (not dependent on Grip Range), pressure on AI (AI mistakes not random or slot dependent), non-rain related track condition changes, yellow flags / safety car (without the safety car showing up on track, obviously, stop and go, drive-through, parade laps and maybe more things.
Last edited by rremedio on 29.07.2012, 18:31, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

Common things we'd like to have

Longer tracks - NOT POSSIBLE

I have no clue on how to make it and I can guess it would be a memory management problem. GP2 is very optimized and it would be very hard to overcome such limitation.

More slot/teams - NOT POSSIBLE

Looking inside GP2.exe it's easy to see that at some point of GP2 development, they've thinked about having 20 teams and maybe more tracks. But there's no obvious solution to achieve it and I guess it's not possible.

More players on network game - NOT POSSIBLE

It would require a change in the core engine. So unless someone else with more knowledge about it looks inside GP2 and says it's possible, I say it's not.

Better/faster network game - MAYBE POSSIBLE

I'm not expert on networking and i don't know too much about how it works in GP2. But day after day, computers become more capable of faking or emulating a lot of things, so it may be possible or become possible in the future.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

So guys, does anybody have something more to share? Would you like to talk about any wished features I didn't think about? Do you have any question? Do you understand my crappy English?
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by Michael82 »

Thank you roberto for your good report for the state of GP2 advencement ;)
Don't worry about your english! Mine is very bad and worst.
But after all your comments, I wonder if it would be really different with the source code of GP2. Do you think that it's possible to ask at the old micropose team to have a answer about this? I would like to have some better knowledges about the programming :/
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

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It's hard to tell. We dont know who owns the source code. MicroProse was sold several times and it's not clear which games rights were sold togheter. Or even if the code was owned my them or by Geoff Crammond. Even MicroProse founder Sid Meier had to fight a long war on the courts to have the rights over his games. And convince those people to give away the code wouldn't be easy task, I think.

Would it be different if we had that code?

Well, first thing is that it seems that GP2 was coded in Assembly language which is as understandable as hieroglyphs to most people. But someone, including me, could learn Assembly, even if just a little just to understand some pieces of the code. And we could probably find Assembly programmers who would have interest in the opportunity of playing with GP2 code, even if they are not GP2 fans yet. Improvements would be slow, there would be a lot of technical problems to overcome when it comes to compilers and things like that. But I think all things we would learn and would be able to make for the game would compensate all the trouble.

But I think such thing will never happen. [schild]Give me the damn code!![/schild]
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by ngendro »

A few things I'd like to be improved:

1) First of all, Windows compatibility. It would be a huge step foward if the game could be ran on windows with full sound compatibility, without the necessity of emulators.

2) multi session power issue. On every player change the human car turns to default GP2 power (780 HP), being impossible to play with multiple payers on, for example, underpowered cars.

3) Rain. I red Geoff Crammond said that rain was a huge complex work and that's why he didn't inlude it on GP2. Would be possible to do it?

4) Sound. It would be great if the game can manage at least 3 engine sounds, like for example V8, V10 and V12 at the same time. Every car would have its own sound according to its engine.

Sometimes I get sad because we are just very few people on this comunity compared to rfactor, gp4, etc. So it's hard that programmers notice our interest on this incredible simulator and continue developing and editing GP2.

I guess is up to us guys....
Hope you anderstand my poor english.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

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Ngendro, my friend, GP2 will be NOT able to run on Windows newer than ME in any way :!: Possible Windows OS are 95/98/NT/ME because they include DOS. GP2 is programmed to be a DOS game so it can't run without DOS... Of course port can be possible but for that you must have the source code, the brain and a lot of dedicated people around. So for now emulators such as DOSBOX are welcome. :wink: Also be glad about that GP2 is a DOS game. The early Windows games are crap :!: For example to play F1 RS 1996 I must use one program called "Turbo" to slow down my CPU and one other game ICR2 for Windows can't run at all on my PC...

Roberto, the onlyh way for a faster Network play is to wait and hope for DOSBOX. This program is our best hope for such a thing. Even now it can run network games but in the future the network play at all will be improved. :) But why there aren't any news since May 2011 :?: [-o<

About ideas I suggest that even Speedometer can be possible to be drawn at the cockpit and to be usable. GPXPatch can do it why we couldn't :?:

What about bigger resolution for the sprites? 256 colors are not problem for me at least with programs like IrfanView.

Changeable skybox during the races? If we could have a rain this skybox can't be static right?

Smarter AI which can block your movements. This was introduced in GP3 2K right?

And also better controls for keyboard will be nice. You know that these can't be changed at all... :(

Fixed replay bug. Only people which had saw it know for what Im talking about (I had saw it too.).

Sound for the opponents when you are driving.

Hmm that's all for now. :D By the way my English is "the best". :lol: :lol: :lol:

And again by the way...... :D Roberto, why in your earlier post you say that rain is MAYBE POSSIBLE and after that rain is POSSIBLE :?:
Last edited by RacerBG on 30.07.2012, 13:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by Michael82 »

RacerBG
Haha ! Yes I know this bug with the replay. :lol
GP2 with AI cars able to block us would be awesome.. !! Your idea for change skybox in real time is good! But I think it is not possible..
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

ngendro wrote:A few things I'd like to be improved:

1) First of all, Windows compatibility. It would be a huge step foward if the game could be ran on windows with full sound compatibility, without the necessity of emulators.

2) multi session power issue. On every player change the human car turns to default GP2 power (780 HP), being impossible to play with multiple payers on, for example, underpowered cars.

3) Rain. I red Geoff Crammond said that rain was a huge complex work and that's why he didn't inlude it on GP2. Would be possible to do it?

4) Sound. It would be great if the game can manage at least 3 engine sounds, like for example V8, V10 and V12 at the same time. Every car would have its own sound according to its engine.

Sometimes I get sad because we are just very few people on this comunity compared to rfactor, gp4, etc. So it's hard that programmers notice our interest on this incredible simulator and continue developing and editing GP2.

I guess is up to us guys....
Hope you anderstand my poor english.
1 - As RacerBG said, it's not possible.

2 - This is possible. Maybe a simple patch would fix the issue, but we need to understand GP2.exe beter than we do now. A real time memory editing tool could fix it as well.

3 - As I said. I don't know about the graphical side. The physical side could be implemented with memory editing, it would be a complex task but it' doable. We have to understand that even most modern simulations don't match GP3 wet simulation quality. So, even if it's possible, it's not likely to happen.

4 - I really don't know about that. I can only guess it would require changes in the source code. But maybe a real time tool could handle this too.
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

RacerBG wrote:Ngendro, my friend, GP2 will be NOT able to run on Windows newer than ME in any way :!: Possible Windows OS are 95/98/NT/ME because they include DOS. GP2 is programmed to be a DOS game so it can't run without DOS... Of course port can be possible but for that you must have the source code, the brain and a lot of dedicated people around. So for now emulators such as DOSBOX are welcome. :wink: Also be glad about that GP2 is a DOS game. The early Windows games are crap :!: For example to play F1 RS 1996 I must use one program called "Turbo" to slow down my CPU and one other game ICR2 for Windows can't run at all on my PC...
That's the sad true... :?
RacerBG wrote:Roberto, the onlyh way for a faster Network play is to wait and hope for DOSBOX. This program is our best hope for such a thing. Even now it can run network games but in the future the network play at all will be improved. :) But why there aren't any news since May 2011 :?: [-o<
Yes, you are right again. And it gets worst becouse GP2 network code is not very good, as people have said several times. GP2Lap tries to add IPX connection, but I don't know how good it is.
RacerBG wrote:About ideas I suggest that even Speedometer can be possible to be drawn at the cockpit and to be usable. GPXPatch can do it why we couldn't :?:
As I said on the post about graphics, GP2Laps is able to insert graphics on screen while GP2 runs. So it is possible. I don't know how it does so I can't tell if we can use the same method for all real time graphics we would like to insert. GPxPatch uses DirectX, becouse GP3 and further games also use it and it makes such task a lot easier and faster.
RacerBG wrote:What about bigger resolution for the sprites? 256 colors are not problem for me at least with programs like IrfanView.
We would need to understand how GP2 loads bitmaps. As far as I know, it would also require changes in the source code. For track textures we can have (and several tracks have) bigger textures than the original ones. For car bitmaps we can't (becouse of the texture mapping, I think) but even if we could, we would be limited by the maximum jam size (which already punishes tracks). If we could get rid of the jam limit and change texture mapping, GP2 would already look much better even with current bitmap sizes for cars.
RacerBG wrote:Changeable skybox during the races? If we could have a rain this skybox can't be static right?
If a real time tool could change loaded resources when needed, the sky jam could be replaced, rotated, edited as we needed. If not, it would require changes in the source code.
RacerBG wrote:Smarter AI which can block your movements. This was introduced in GP3 2K right?
It depends on what we can learn about the AI. A lot of GP2 internals are managed by simply changing some values at specific memory locations, if we can find something that's usable, than it would be possible.
RacerBG wrote:And also better controls for keyboard will be nice. You know that these can't be changed at all... :(
It have been done with other games and there are tools that fake key presses (to enable joystick in games wich don't have support for it), so I bet it is very possible.
RacerBG wrote:Fixed replay bug. Only people which had saw it know for what Im talking about (I had saw it too.).
I don't think we will ever know what causes it. But if it is corruption on the replay buffer, it should be possible to fix.
RacerBG wrote:Sound for the opponents when you are driving.
I have no clue...
RacerBG wrote:Hmm that's all for now. :D By the way my English is "the best". :lol: :lol: :lol:
Surely better than mine 8)
RacerBG wrote:And again by the way...... :D Roberto, why in your earlier post you say that rain is MAYBE POSSIBLE and after that rain is POSSIBLE :?:
Graphical simulation of rain MAY BE possible, but we can't be sure. Physical simulation of rain IS possible. I know becouse I've already changed the required memory locations with a real time hex editor. But, like most of those things I say possible, we need a program capable of reading and writing automatically on GP2 memory every frame.

Of course, If someone knows a ninja programmer, we could convince him to save us :mrgreen:
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by eky78 »

This possibility of Kers/Push to Pass is very interesting! Could be nice for IndyCar and F1.
About more slot/teams, interesting that fact of 20 teams!! Maybe can depend on his predessor, F1GP, that had 34 cars!! But having more than 14 teams perhaps can be possible! Well, as you said, possible doesn't mean simple! :(

About other possibilities, i have thought about:
- having more than 2 car shapes (maybe useful with LeMans races: Closed Proto, Open Proto and GT)
- no speed limit in pitlane or set a different limit for all the cars (not only for the human player)
- increasing or decreasing the duration of the pit stop (3s in average if I remember well in current F1, not less than 8s in GP2)
- having more than 14 drivers at the same time in qualifying (but probably this depends only from the number of pit boxes, 14)

About our English...well i don't think there are a lot of english people here in this community at the moment so maybe we don't have to take care a lot! :D :D
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by rremedio »

eky78 wrote:- having more than 2 car shapes (maybe useful with LeMans races: Closed Proto, Open Proto and GT)
I don't see how this might br possible without the source code.
eky78 wrote:- no speed limit in pitlane or set a different limit for all the cars (not only for the human player)
This would be really nice. As far as I know, it couldn't be done yet even for other GPx games (am I wrong?). But the speed limit must be there somewhere in the .exe and should be possible to edit it. The fact that nobody ever found it must be a tip that is not simple like changing the human value.

UPDATE: Yes, I'm wrong. GP4 Tweaker fix it for GP4. I think GP4 Tweaker guys may recieve a mail with some questions soon...
eky78 wrote:- increasing or decreasing the duration of the pit stop (3s in average if I remember well in current F1, not less than 8s in GP2)
I think Belini was sucessful changing this for GP3 and GP32k. So I think it would be possible in GP2 too. In current F1 there's no refuelling and there's no way to simulate this in GP2 keeping pitstops for tyre changes. But, it could be faked with memory editing.
eky78 wrote:- having more than 14 drivers at the same time in qualifying (but probably this depends only from the number of pit boxes, 14)
GPXPatch can do this, so it may be possible in GP2. Maybe it's time to send another mail to Rene Smith :)
eky78 wrote:About our English...well i don't think there are a lot of english people here in this community at the moment so maybe we don't have to take care a lot! :D :D
Agreed! :lol:
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Re: What it's possible to have in GP2?

Post by RacerBG »

So it's time to contact with THIS guys. \:D/ .............But how :?: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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