Magic Data GP3 2000 & GP3 1.13

Hello everyone

I need your help to clarify the following question.

I often play GP3 1.13 and I have seen some DAT files with Magic Data and others without Magic Data.

When the DAT file has Magic Data the "CC Car setup" line appears in the list and when there is no Magic Data this line does not appear.

So far so good and that's what I knew

But in GP3 2000 I realized it's different

I took a DAT file without Magic Data and inserted Magic Data MD2 with cmagic2000.exe tool

When I opened DAT with GP3TrackEditor to my surprise there was no "CC Car setup" line inside it as I expected to see.

To make sure whether or not Magic Data MD2 was inserted into the DAT file I used the cmagic2000.exe tool and extracted the MD2 file from the DAT file.

Yes the Magic Data was there and it was just like what I entered.

The question is. Is it right ?

Has anyone ever seen this?

And how do I see the magic data settings inside the DAT file? How I saw it when I was Magic Data GP3 1.13 ( "CC Car setup" )

Another thing I already played GP3 1.13 with these files thinking there was no Magic Data inside them and there was GP3 2000 Magic Data

Shouldn't it stop working? Or simply the game ignore it.

My God !!!

Evandro ( Brazil )

I think they stopped working on the Track Editor before having the chance to include that feature for GP32K or simply decided not to do it because cmagic2000 could take care of it already, avoiding confusion

You can trust cmagic2000 on this. If you don't, the easiest way to check (that I can think of) would be searching for the setup inside the .dat file with a Hex editor.

For some reason, you need to add 151 to each value so if your setup is (FW/RW/Gears 1/2/3/4/5/6) 11 09 26 34 42 49 55 60 you are gonna search for 162 160 177 185 193 200 206 211 which converted to hex value will give you A2 A0 B1 B9 C1 C8 CE D3. You would need to open the .dat file in the hex editor, go the search feature (usually CTRL + F), chose "binary search", "hex-values", "bytes" or something like that, enter your hex values and hit search. I use the program HxD for that kind of stuff.

I'm pretty sure René Smit can come with an actual explanation lol



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2019 02:04AM by RRRReméééédiooo.

Hi Roberto

Living and learning. But you said something simple and to the point "avoiding confusion"

As for the Hexadecimal editor I believe I don't need to go so deep.

I've done some tests and everything worked out. I believed the DAT file with MD2 did not run on GP3 1.13. I thought the game would crash.

As this never happened I believed that DAT was simply missing the Magic Data file.

Was it just me who thought that?

I learned one more.

Thank you for replying to my post.

Evandro ( Brazil )

evroic Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've done some tests and everything worked out. I
> believed the DAT file with MD2 did not run on GP3
> 1.13. I thought the game would crash.
>
> As this never happened I believed that DAT was
> simply missing the Magic Data file.

Sorry, I missed replying about the last part.

In order to use MD2 on 1.13 I think you must first convert it to .md with Roberto Scandura's converter -> [www.grandprixgames.org]

What probably happened when you tried .md2 in 1.13 is that either GPxPatch ignored the magic data since it was in the wrong place or had the wrong structure inside the .dat file or it used those values but since they were not in their meant positions/order (due to differences between .md and .md2 structure), you didn't get the same effect as that magic data would produce in GP32K or in 1.13 if you had converted it (or like simply using a .md file with random crazy values). If you never noticed something crazy like ccs with completely wrong speeds or the road having no grip, it is probably just ignoring the wrong data and reverting to the default data. Or you can also check that by using a short track (with .md2 data that would be correct in the track) and testing it in a slot originally from a long track (like the original Spa slot), that way if the game is ignoring the md2 data, it will load the original bump table and it will crash when you try to load the track because it is too short.

What I meant with "avoiding confusion" was that the car setup being in the Track Editor may lead to people changing it there and not in the magic data file, which would be useless.

Cya



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2019 08:39AM by RRRReméééédiooo.

Hello Roberto

Yes, I have no doubt about that.

What you said in this message is exactly what I already concluded.

Don't worry, I already understood that in your previous message.

As always you are very cool and concerned about sharing the information.

When I said "I did some tests" I did just that.

1 - DAT with GP3-2K Magic Data

2 - Magic Data Extracted with "cmagic2000.exe" Tool

3 - The MD2 file was generated

4 - I made conversion using the tool "md2-md Converter.exe"

5- The MD file was generated

6 - I made a copy of that DAT with GP3-2K Magic Data ( item 1 )

7 - Inserted MD file in this DAT with "cmagic.exe" tool

Ready. Now I have

A - DAT file with GP3-2K Magic Data + MD2 file
B - DAT file with GP3-1.13 Magic Data + MD file

In the first DAT the information "CC Car setup" does not appear and in the second it appears.

As you said yourself and I understood "avoid confusion"

But we could have a flag saying whether or not there is MD2 inside the DAT file. I only discovered this because I extracted it with "cmagic2000.exe" and then I realized that I had Magic Data hidden

No doubt if we had the information "CC Car setup" in both DAT files how would we know if this would be GP3-2k or GP3.13?

I would say this was a nice joke. ( I remembered Riddler vs Batman )

But in the end everything became clear.

I hope anyone who is reading this and didn't know will know it now.

One more case solved.



Evandro ( Brazil )