Post by Nuppiz on Nov 3, 2020 22:24:02 GMT 2
Rick Hammercat on the Discord server asked me to write a history on GPM2 modding. Due to other things going on in my life I kind of forgot this, but here it finally is in all its glory.
Prior to GPM2World, there's very little evidence of GPM2 modding. The Starfire Editor was made and updated between 1996 and 1999, but after Grand Prix World's publication it seems interest in GPM2 pretty much died which is also why the Starfire Editor was never updated to work with GPM2's last patch, 1.02B. A single example of early GPM2 mods survives to this day: most of the car topdowns in my 1997 Mod were "salvaged" from a very bare-bones 1997 Mod actually made in 1997 that was eventually posted on the GPM2World forum.
The original GPM2World team was IanWoollam, rams and NeilPearson. From what I recall IanWoollam did pretty much all of the graphic stuff including drawing the car topdowns, rams was the statistic/data guy and NeilPearson did... something. The first full season mod was 2004, finished in late 2004 and probably also released to the public around that time. The forum came around in 2005.
Initially the GPM2 content was hosted as part of Ian's old GP4Sound site, before the new GPM2World domain was launched in mid-2007. I discovered the game in late 2007 from Abandonia, and joined the forum in January 2008 after googling for GPM2 mods. I quickly discovered that it's not that difficult to make your own mods for GPM2, and released the first version of Real 1996 in February 2008. I then moved on to making my first full season mod, 1993, released late that year alongside 1997.
Kroah, who specialized in reverse engineering old games, was introduced to GPM2 by a member called Voxcon in late 2008. Kroah's work would eventually lead to a number of discoveries, including always-on customisation, the secret "Option 13" menu and most importantly a track editor. All of these would be put to good use during 2009.
2009 was probably the most important year in GPM2 modding history. DJ_ByteDisaster, who programmed the Starfire Editor back in the day, had returned to the fold and intended to program a new editor with much-expanded features and support for the 1.02B patch. Updating the Starfire Editor was no longer an option as he had lost the source code for it. To help with this, IanWoollam started researching the data stored in the GPM2 executable and how it could be modified via hex editing. Among the first discoveries was changing the start year of the game.
DJ_ByteDisaster also created a command-line program which allowed converting the mysterious EDY graphics format to BMP and back. This made it possible to edit the user interface elements of the game - among them the nationality flags. Kroah also released a tool which allowed the viewing of EDY files with a graphical UI, making the process of determining which EDY files are important and which are not much easier.
Meanwhile, Backmarker was researching the possibilities of hex editing the season config file, and was eventually able to find all technical rules in the config. Later on Backmarker was able to interview both Edward Grabowski (EdCom CEO) and Steve Goodwin (lead programmer) and ask them various things about the game and its development.
On my part, 2009 was by far the most productive year and I made no less than 10 full season mods. The shortest time it took me to finish a mod from start to finish was three days. Needless to say, the quality did suffer a bit which is why the 1989-90 mods I finished late in the year wouldn't be released until a couple of years later...
With all the EXE and config hex editing and UI modifications now possible, IanWoollam created the 2009 Mod which was, by far, the most complete overhaul of the game seen up to that point. Even internet multiplayer with 2009 data (with slight limitations) was now possible!
Unfortunately 2009 was the brief high point of GPM2World. A few months into 2010 IanWoollam drastically reduced his activity on the forum. I was left to pick up the pieces and acted as project leader for the 2010 and 2011 Mods, which were mostly just superficial updates on the 2009 Mod. By then my interest in F1 was very low and I had minimal involvement with the 2012 Mod which was mostly done by the people I had worked with on the 2010 and 2011 Mods.
In early 2012 IanWoollam left the community completely, and the future of GPM2 modding was in doubt. Around the same time I made my first 1.02B mod from scratch: the F1 Rejects/Leftovers Mod, based on the F1 community that is still very important to me (the alternate name came from the fact it comprised of teams left out from the 1989-94 mods due to team limitations). In August 2012 I also made the first attempts to start updating my older mods with fresh graphics and 1.02B hex editing, but I quickly lost interest. Eventually by mid-2012 it was obvious we needed a new site and forum, and so Sionco started GPRaceGames in October.
The GPRaceGames era featured fairly little advancements in GPM2 modding, and I mostly remained in a consultant role for other people's projects. I updated my overall guide for GPM2 modding, which I had started on GPM2World, and complemented it with guides for hex editing and EDY/BMP conversions. A new generation of GPM2 modders rose up to the challenge; Sean, ivaneurope, DNPQ, Giovani Santana and FranS99 just to name a few of the key figures. Projects of this era included the 1986-88 mods, as well as contemporary season updates. In 2014 I restarted - and reabandoned - the mod update project, and it wasn't until late 2016 before the first "Remastered" mods saw an actual release. GPM2World went permanently offline due to domain expiration in late April 2015.
In the spring of 2017, I started working on the 1982 Mod. Previously I had vowed not to work on any turbo seasons due to not liking the way how turbos are simulated in GPM2, but I was looking for a fresh challenge for my vastly improved modding skills - and it was going to be the 35th anniversary of that season anyway. My interest in GPM2 waxed and waned (as it had so many times before) and it wasn't until almost two years later that the mod would see a full release. In the twilight age of GPRaceGames, as it would turn out. Running the site had gotten too costly for Sionco, and despite a fair warning in advance I didn't take backups of all the guides I had written before the site eventually went offline in late August 2019. Bugger.
For a while the Facebook page was the only community in existence, until the Discord server was launched in November. A free website hosting a number of mods and tools was also created at this time. In February 2020 I finally started the forum I had already promised in September. I chose the name GPM Planet, partially as a nod to GPM2World and partially as an intentionally nostalgic name (a lot of websites in the 1990s/early 2000s were Planet-something...). It also reflected the site's focus on all management games, not just GPM2.
The guides were restored from backups taken by other users. During GPM Planet's relatively short existence, we've already made a couple of discoveries. Over the years I'd made some tentative attempts at editing GPM1, and DNPQ picked up my notes and managed to make a full update on the original 1995 season. DNPQ also discovered a couple of more tricks when it comes to GPM2 EXE editing.
And now we're here!
Prior to GPM2World, there's very little evidence of GPM2 modding. The Starfire Editor was made and updated between 1996 and 1999, but after Grand Prix World's publication it seems interest in GPM2 pretty much died which is also why the Starfire Editor was never updated to work with GPM2's last patch, 1.02B. A single example of early GPM2 mods survives to this day: most of the car topdowns in my 1997 Mod were "salvaged" from a very bare-bones 1997 Mod actually made in 1997 that was eventually posted on the GPM2World forum.
The original GPM2World team was IanWoollam, rams and NeilPearson. From what I recall IanWoollam did pretty much all of the graphic stuff including drawing the car topdowns, rams was the statistic/data guy and NeilPearson did... something. The first full season mod was 2004, finished in late 2004 and probably also released to the public around that time. The forum came around in 2005.
Initially the GPM2 content was hosted as part of Ian's old GP4Sound site, before the new GPM2World domain was launched in mid-2007. I discovered the game in late 2007 from Abandonia, and joined the forum in January 2008 after googling for GPM2 mods. I quickly discovered that it's not that difficult to make your own mods for GPM2, and released the first version of Real 1996 in February 2008. I then moved on to making my first full season mod, 1993, released late that year alongside 1997.
Kroah, who specialized in reverse engineering old games, was introduced to GPM2 by a member called Voxcon in late 2008. Kroah's work would eventually lead to a number of discoveries, including always-on customisation, the secret "Option 13" menu and most importantly a track editor. All of these would be put to good use during 2009.
2009 was probably the most important year in GPM2 modding history. DJ_ByteDisaster, who programmed the Starfire Editor back in the day, had returned to the fold and intended to program a new editor with much-expanded features and support for the 1.02B patch. Updating the Starfire Editor was no longer an option as he had lost the source code for it. To help with this, IanWoollam started researching the data stored in the GPM2 executable and how it could be modified via hex editing. Among the first discoveries was changing the start year of the game.
DJ_ByteDisaster also created a command-line program which allowed converting the mysterious EDY graphics format to BMP and back. This made it possible to edit the user interface elements of the game - among them the nationality flags. Kroah also released a tool which allowed the viewing of EDY files with a graphical UI, making the process of determining which EDY files are important and which are not much easier.
Meanwhile, Backmarker was researching the possibilities of hex editing the season config file, and was eventually able to find all technical rules in the config. Later on Backmarker was able to interview both Edward Grabowski (EdCom CEO) and Steve Goodwin (lead programmer) and ask them various things about the game and its development.
On my part, 2009 was by far the most productive year and I made no less than 10 full season mods. The shortest time it took me to finish a mod from start to finish was three days. Needless to say, the quality did suffer a bit which is why the 1989-90 mods I finished late in the year wouldn't be released until a couple of years later...
With all the EXE and config hex editing and UI modifications now possible, IanWoollam created the 2009 Mod which was, by far, the most complete overhaul of the game seen up to that point. Even internet multiplayer with 2009 data (with slight limitations) was now possible!
Unfortunately 2009 was the brief high point of GPM2World. A few months into 2010 IanWoollam drastically reduced his activity on the forum. I was left to pick up the pieces and acted as project leader for the 2010 and 2011 Mods, which were mostly just superficial updates on the 2009 Mod. By then my interest in F1 was very low and I had minimal involvement with the 2012 Mod which was mostly done by the people I had worked with on the 2010 and 2011 Mods.
In early 2012 IanWoollam left the community completely, and the future of GPM2 modding was in doubt. Around the same time I made my first 1.02B mod from scratch: the F1 Rejects/Leftovers Mod, based on the F1 community that is still very important to me (the alternate name came from the fact it comprised of teams left out from the 1989-94 mods due to team limitations). In August 2012 I also made the first attempts to start updating my older mods with fresh graphics and 1.02B hex editing, but I quickly lost interest. Eventually by mid-2012 it was obvious we needed a new site and forum, and so Sionco started GPRaceGames in October.
The GPRaceGames era featured fairly little advancements in GPM2 modding, and I mostly remained in a consultant role for other people's projects. I updated my overall guide for GPM2 modding, which I had started on GPM2World, and complemented it with guides for hex editing and EDY/BMP conversions. A new generation of GPM2 modders rose up to the challenge; Sean, ivaneurope, DNPQ, Giovani Santana and FranS99 just to name a few of the key figures. Projects of this era included the 1986-88 mods, as well as contemporary season updates. In 2014 I restarted - and reabandoned - the mod update project, and it wasn't until late 2016 before the first "Remastered" mods saw an actual release. GPM2World went permanently offline due to domain expiration in late April 2015.
In the spring of 2017, I started working on the 1982 Mod. Previously I had vowed not to work on any turbo seasons due to not liking the way how turbos are simulated in GPM2, but I was looking for a fresh challenge for my vastly improved modding skills - and it was going to be the 35th anniversary of that season anyway. My interest in GPM2 waxed and waned (as it had so many times before) and it wasn't until almost two years later that the mod would see a full release. In the twilight age of GPRaceGames, as it would turn out. Running the site had gotten too costly for Sionco, and despite a fair warning in advance I didn't take backups of all the guides I had written before the site eventually went offline in late August 2019. Bugger.
For a while the Facebook page was the only community in existence, until the Discord server was launched in November. A free website hosting a number of mods and tools was also created at this time. In February 2020 I finally started the forum I had already promised in September. I chose the name GPM Planet, partially as a nod to GPM2World and partially as an intentionally nostalgic name (a lot of websites in the 1990s/early 2000s were Planet-something...). It also reflected the site's focus on all management games, not just GPM2.
The guides were restored from backups taken by other users. During GPM Planet's relatively short existence, we've already made a couple of discoveries. Over the years I'd made some tentative attempts at editing GPM1, and DNPQ picked up my notes and managed to make a full update on the original 1995 season. DNPQ also discovered a couple of more tricks when it comes to GPM2 EXE editing.
And now we're here!
