GPM2 CD - music, commentary and animations for all mods!
Feb 7, 2020 0:45:01 GMT 2
Nuvolari and rodrigoxm49 like this
Post by Nuppiz on Feb 7, 2020 0:45:01 GMT 2
So I recently stumbled upon a full CD rip of GPM2. One interesting feature is that it's the very first version of the game back when it hit the shelves in 1996. So it's not 1.02 or 1.02B, oh no. It's not even a Win32 executable! It's version 1.00, and being a 16-bit program, getting it to run on modern PCs requires the same sort of trickery as GPM1.
However, as it's a straight CD rip it does have a few advantages. First off it has the LRGDAID.EDY file missing from the common abandonware versions (finding this file was actually the first reason I went looking for the full CD-rip). The lack of this file causes a famous graphical glitch in the Driver Aid menu. Second, it has a full complement of 20 main menu pictures for the original game - again, the abandonware versions only ship with 7.
The main reasons for excitement though are the original commentary files by Stirling Moss, and the original CD music. And after some experimenting I managed to make these work even on cracked versions (i.e. all mods) of GPM2. Not only that, you don't even need a CD/DVD drive for that.
What follows is a bit long-winded story, so you can skip it if you want. After installing the original CD version through DOSBox/Win 3.11, I patched the executable to 1.02B (and removed the 256-colour check but not the CD check) so it could be used on modern PCs again. I also burned the ISO on a CD-R, being careful to keep the same file structure. So I tried to boot up and... GPM2 can't find the CD because it's looking for it from the D: drive. Meanwhile my DVD drive is in fact E:, because C: is my SSD and D: is my HDD. So to guarantee my CD-R wasn't faulty I hopped over to my old Win98 PC (yeah I have one of those), where D: is the CD drive. The CD worked and played like it was a genuine retail copy, so the fault wasn't there. After a bit of thinking I decided to move the CD contents to the root directory of my D: drive, started GPM2 and... everything worked! I got the intro animation, music and Stirling Moss commentary. Not only that, I quickly discovered that the same applied for any mod I had installed without having to move any files around, even though they are cracked versions.
Eventually I found out the four folders that contain CD-exclusive content - everything else from the CD folder could be deleted without ill effects. The download I'm supplying only contains these folders, and you can then choose which ones to use.
However, as it's a straight CD rip it does have a few advantages. First off it has the LRGDAID.EDY file missing from the common abandonware versions (finding this file was actually the first reason I went looking for the full CD-rip). The lack of this file causes a famous graphical glitch in the Driver Aid menu. Second, it has a full complement of 20 main menu pictures for the original game - again, the abandonware versions only ship with 7.
The main reasons for excitement though are the original commentary files by Stirling Moss, and the original CD music. And after some experimenting I managed to make these work even on cracked versions (i.e. all mods) of GPM2. Not only that, you don't even need a CD/DVD drive for that.
What follows is a bit long-winded story, so you can skip it if you want. After installing the original CD version through DOSBox/Win 3.11, I patched the executable to 1.02B (and removed the 256-colour check but not the CD check) so it could be used on modern PCs again. I also burned the ISO on a CD-R, being careful to keep the same file structure. So I tried to boot up and... GPM2 can't find the CD because it's looking for it from the D: drive. Meanwhile my DVD drive is in fact E:, because C: is my SSD and D: is my HDD. So to guarantee my CD-R wasn't faulty I hopped over to my old Win98 PC (yeah I have one of those), where D: is the CD drive. The CD worked and played like it was a genuine retail copy, so the fault wasn't there. After a bit of thinking I decided to move the CD contents to the root directory of my D: drive, started GPM2 and... everything worked! I got the intro animation, music and Stirling Moss commentary. Not only that, I quickly discovered that the same applied for any mod I had installed without having to move any files around, even though they are cracked versions.
Eventually I found out the four folders that contain CD-exclusive content - everything else from the CD folder could be deleted without ill effects. The download I'm supplying only contains these folders, and you can then choose which ones to use.
- FLIS
- SPCHEXC
- WAL
- WAV
Specifically, the files in the WAV folder only play if you check both "Music" and "High" in Settings while in a game.
HOW TO INSTALL:
If the D: drive of your computer is a hard disk or SSD, installing is very easy. Just extract the download into your D: root directory (D:\), and you'll end up with D:\GPM2. Then just delete the subfolders you don't need and run any version of GPM2 you like, regardless of where it's installed.
If the D: drive of your computer is a CD/DVD drive, it is recommended that you instead download the original ISO (see the link at the top of the post) and burn that on a CD-R. Then, while that CD-R is in your CD/DVD drive, run whatever GPM2 mod you want to.
CUSTOMISATION:
As the commentary and music files are simple WAV files, you can replace them with your own content. So for example, if you want to have something like The Chain playing in the main menu, just convert the file to WAV and replace the WAV file in question (in this case IG1_M.WAV). You don't even need to worry about the correct bitrate as GPM2 is perfectly happy even with CD-quality WAVs (i.e. 44100 Hz sample rate) in both music folders. In fact, by using both folders you could even have two separate soundtracks - one playing with the "High" setting on and one without it.
And if you're really mad, you could even re-record the entire commentary!
