Modding and restoration discussion

[GT714]

So! I'll put this video here~




Now that i've got your attention. Back 1 or 2 years ago, B_rad88! uploaded his edited GT2 with custom soundtracks. However, at the time, he hadn't explained how he had made it and so we were left wondering. BUT! Tonight, i've figured it out, thanks to pez2k once again, because he had a tool saved somewhere on his pc that made this possible. A tool that was able to read and convert MUSIC.DAT into the raw .XA file... which itself is a .STR (don't ask, I don't get it either). All that matters is that I can now edit GT2's OSTs.
The main limit for now is that i'm limited to swapping in tracks of the same length or shorter, and/or lighter in kb.
I'll need further testing to see what can be done.

Good job on figuring out how to change the music tracks.
Is it possible to swap the menu music to something else as well? Or is it hardcoded into the game?

 

[pez2k]

Is it possible to swap the menu music to something else as well? Or is it hardcoded into the game?

The menu music files are easily replaced, however it's all a custom MIDI format, so not only would someone need to fully crack the format, they'd need to compose their own music using the instruments, or figure out and replace the instruments too.

 

[submaniac93]

What can easily be done is port GT1 menu music or other GT2 regions' music. But you have to swap every track. Can't mix and match.

 

[Ryan2t4]

hey, submaniac93, i need help, where GT2.vol in gt2.bin?

 

[submaniac93]

it's one of the 6 files inside a GT2 CD/ISO. Can't miss it

 

[Ryan2t4]

ok, i extract Evo V, RM 330i, from GT2 Car Viewer, but wheels are merged with car

 

[submaniac93]

That's normal. The wheel model is about a complete unknown. The author of the program just created a base mesh for it (i dunno if he actually found the wheel data or just made an approximative representation of one) and applied the wheel UVs to it.

 

[gtfrick]

What can easily be done is port GT1 menu music or other GT2 regions' music. But you have to swap every track. Can't mix and match.

What the heck though? Why not? Is it because something's hardcoded or something?

 

[pez2k]

What the heck though? Why not? Is it because something's hardcoded or something?

Each set of music is written for a different set of instruments. The game only supports one instrument set at a time.

 

[gtfrick]

Each set of music is written for a different set of instruments. The game only supports one instrument set at a time.

Oh... I thought that the tracks used one big set of instruments.

 

[pez2k]

Oh... I thought that the tracks used one big set of instruments.

Yes, but that set is different per region and per game, so all of the tracks used have to be compatible with that particular instrument set. I know Submaniac has experimented with playing tracks with the wrong instruments, and the results are... amusing to say the least.

 

[gtfrick]

Yes, but that set is different per region and per game, so all of the tracks used have to be compatible with that particular instrument set. I know Submaniac has experimented with playing tracks with the wrong instruments, and the results are... amusing to say the least.

Oh... so you can swap them. Thanks for the info. I thought that you literally couldn't just mix and match the tracks because the game didn't let you, and that didn't make any sense... of course the tracks would sound completely messed up, but you still could swap them. That makes much more sense. Reminds me of that video with the PS1 BIOS but with the GT2 soundram.

Also, what happens if you try and swap the tracks with GT1 US/PAL tracks? Just how messed up is it? I assume very messed up since that game uses drum loops as big instruments instead of individual instruments for each of the percussion instruments.

 

[submaniac93]

It's mostly a mess yeah, although some combinations produce... listenable songs. Still nothing great. I've tried a combination of GT1west and GT1jp music with GT2 soundfonts, and GT2 music with GT1jp soundfont. Mixing and matching is weird haha.
If you want to hear how it is yourself.... here
Fair warning: Some are disturbing, few sound 'good'. Most are just... yeah. It's surprisingly not as bad one could think.

 

[Evangel]

I made an account here solely to ask if there was a way I could learn and a way I could help mod the game. I've always wanted to add so much more to the game, especially more RM textures, maybe even custom made RMs based on community requests. I don't know what all is and isn't possible, I saw the videos on YT and then oddly enough stumbled on this forum post about 20 minutes later.

 

[gtfrick]

I made an account here solely to ask if there was a way I could learn and a way I could help mod the game. I've always wanted to add so much more to the game, especially more RM textures, maybe even custom made RMs based on community requests. I don't know what all is and isn't possible, I saw the videos on YT and then oddly enough stumbled on this forum post about 20 minutes later.

Unfortunately I don't know how viable that would be... I think GT2 already uses almost all of the 660 MB that the disc can take, considering that the Arcade mode is on a seperate disc. And there's always the possibility that the sizes are hardcoded into the game. I think it's easier to replace textures than add new ones (unless they're compressed.)

 

[Evangel]

These guys that have modded this game have already pushed it far past what I ever expected it to be capable of. I don't know if disc size would be an issue if it's something being emulated. It might be. The size being hardcoded into the game is something I can see being overlooked considering how many other things got left out or overlooked or forgotten about, whether it was due to time or size constraints.

 

[gtfrick]

It's mostly a mess yeah, although some combinations produce... listenable songs. Still nothing great. I've tried a combination of GT1west and GT1jp music with GT2 soundfonts, and GT2 music with GT1jp soundfont. Mixing and matching is weird haha.
If you want to hear how it is yourself.... here
Fair warning: Some are disturbing, few sound 'good'. Most are just... yeah. It's surprisingly not as bad one could think.

Some of those actually sound pretty good. GT2 with GT1 JP soundfont sounds pretty nice in the piano section of the Car Wash (besides the bass,) even though else it sounds like a kazoo cover. I'm oddly digging the drums in GT1 JP with GT2 soundfont too, even though that slap bass as a hi hat is pretty annoying. For some reason in the Mitsubishi dealership though in the chorus the slap bass hi hat changes into an actual hi hat though. GT2 with GT1 west soundfont is easily the worst one though, although the drums remind me for some reason of the ZX Spectrum custom sound drivers some people made. GT1 west with GT2 soundfont reminds me for some reason of the stock GBA soundfont that a lot of games used though (probably came with the GBA SDK or something.) Especially that bass. I wonder what happens if you put GT1 JP songs in GT1 west though... how do you even replace the SEQ files in the first place?

Does GT2 have reverb enabled? In GT1 the note cuts are pretty obivous, but not so much in GT2. Or is the reverb just baked into the instruments themselves?

These guys that have modded this game have already pushed it far past what I ever expected it to be capable of. I don't know if disc size would be an issue if it's something being emulated. It might be. The size being hardcoded into the game is something I can see being overlooked considering how many other things got left out or overlooked or forgotten about, whether it was due to time or size constraints.

Oh, you can replace the cut cars, yes. I forgot about that. Then yes, I think it's possible to add more cars into GT2 without replacing the old ones. You should probably watch out for which ones have bodies and logos and which ones don't, though.

 

[pez2k]

I made an account here solely to ask if there was a way I could learn and a way I could help mod the game. I've always wanted to add so much more to the game, especially more RM textures, maybe even custom made RMs based on community requests. I don't know what all is and isn't possible, I saw the videos on YT and then oddly enough stumbled on this forum post about 20 minutes later.

Adding new bodies is possible - not all of the tooling to do so is finished and public yet (as you need to tell the game that the car has a RM part that uses your new filename) but it will be at some point. The game does have a body limit, in that past a certain number of files in the folder it refuses to load any more, but this is probably a RAM limit rather than a hardcoded number, and in PAL at least there's room for a few dozen new bodies. Disc space is not an issue as the models and textures are miniscule.

Repainting existing RMs is easily enough done, the only thing to be aware of is that each face of a model can only be textured with a maximum of 16 colours, and there are effectively only 12 16-colour palettes per texture that can be used across all faces. Model edits are required to change which palette a face uses, which is possible but involves hex editing.

There's also a Discord channel for modding - drop me a PM if you want an invite (and that applies to gtfrick too).

 

[submaniac93]

@gtfrick I don't have a way of rebuilding GT1 yet so I can't test that, however for GT2 it was simply a matter of copying over GT1's .seq (and the .ins if you want a full proper port) and renaming them accordingly (GT2 uses "spu_xx.seq" instead of "aston.seq" etc). GT2 sadly has less menu songs than GT1 so you have to choose what you want to leave out. The formats between the 2 are identical, just GT2 has more/displaced instruments than GT1 (but some still match well enough as you heard) which is the reason why some songs are very messed up. Especially that one TVR...

 

[Evangel]

Adding new bodies is possible - not all of the tooling to do so is finished and public yet (as you need to tell the game that the car has a RM part that uses your new filename) but it will be at some point. The game does have a body limit, in that past a certain number of files in the folder it refuses to load any more, but this is probably a RAM limit rather than a hardcoded number, and in PAL at least there's room for a few dozen new bodies. Disc space is not an issue as the models and textures are miniscule.

Repainting existing RMs is easily enough done, the only thing to be aware of is that each face of a model can only be textured with a maximum of 16 colours, and there are effectively only 12 16-colour palettes per texture that can be used across all faces. Model edits are required to change which palette a face uses, which is possible but involves hex editing.

There's also a Discord channel for modding - drop me a PM if you want an invite (and that applies to gtfrick too).

Sure, I'd like an invite. I don't know if it's a stretch, but if you had the time, would it be possible to update the cars in the game to their more modern counterparts?

 

[Gamerjman19]

do you have gt2 music with the western gt1 soundfont?

 

[pez2k]

I don't know if it's a stretch, but if you had the time, would it be possible to update the cars in the game to their more modern counterparts?

Editing models is a painstaking process - with current knowledge it's possible to do anything that doesn't require altering the reflections (so any new faces will be matte and not shiny), but it's done by hand with a hex editor and a lot of trial and error. Texture editing is fairly simple now though, so long as you don't need to adjust the texture mapping.

 

[submaniac93]

@Gamerjman19 It's not really pretty either lol.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

Woah I never expected GT1/2 music to be in MIDI format with their own instruments. I thought they were just simple MP3 files. Does this also apply to the licensed in race music? Seems crazy to me that PD would go to great lengths to also re-encode all those western songs in their own instruments, not to mention the vocals as well.

I don't have a tech or musician brain so if someone can explain it would have to be in very laymans terms

 

[pez2k]

Woah I never expected GT1/2 music to be in MIDI format with their own instruments. I thought they were just simple MP3 files. Does this also apply to the licensed in race music?

The race music is XA audio - not quite plain CD audio but close enough. The menu music is MIDI because it's absolutely tiny in terms of disc space, because the PS1 has good native support for MIDI audio, and because the menu music is all in a similar style and can share one set of instruments.

MP3 files are enormous in comparison to MIDI (think 1000 times the size or more), would require paying for a license for the technology, and would be very hard work for the PS1 to decode back into sound. MP3 was only just beginning to take off when GT2 was made too - the boom in digital music piracy around 1999 / 2000 was one of the major things to bring MP3 to prominence.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

The race music is XA audio - not quite plain CD audio but close enough. The menu music is MIDI because it's absolutely tiny in terms of disc space, because the PS1 has good native support for MIDI audio, and because the menu music is all in a similar style and can share one set of instruments.

MP3 files are enormous in comparison to MIDI (think 1000 times the size or more), would require paying for a license for the technology, and would be very hard work for the PS1 to decode back into sound. MP3 was only just beginning to take off when GT2 was made too - the boom in digital music piracy around 1999 / 2000 was one of the major things to bring MP3 to prominence.

Very interesting thanks. I remember some PS1 games you could just pop the game CD into a CD player and it would play music. Guess the format difference is why GT doesn't work this way.

Also explains why GT2 has a lot less individual dealership music. Gotta free up some space for all the new cars & tracks

 

[karelpipa]

These games took so tiny space, developers could just use the remaining space for simple audio files (red book is the term?). You know some time in history 650MB CD was so huge it was possible. )
MP3 CD cannot be played on PS1.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

It's been a while since I posted anything in this thread, but...

 

[submaniac93]

Quick update to the MUGEN CIVIC mod I did (on page 4) which fixes an issue i saw thanks to @RandomCarGuy17 's video above where the head and tail lights dim in the shadows and at night. Oopsie~ (To my defense, we couldn't edit those at the time but it's still my bad)

 

[submaniac93]

New mod~
I started this about 7 months ago (already, wow...) and finished it today.

Ford Focus WRC 1999, Martini livery.

Lots of little model edits, vertices, UVs... and new wheels that I created using a 3D model and some color touches.


Anyways, y'all want the files

And the usual video.