Performance and Magic Data

Hi everyone. In my GP4 I selected 70 circuits that I inserted in the "Circuits" folder, each of which has its own gpi file and its loading. Naturally they are recalled each time with the patch. I noticed, however, that using the same performance file, in some circuits are too fast compared to other cars, in others too slow, failing even to reach them. What could be done to avoid having a performance file for each circuit?
Thank you for the answers you will give.

Fabio

I have same issue and would look forward to advice on that, too. Thanks

An option is to edit the magic data for each track to adjust the AI performance.

René Smit, Independent Software Developer.
Download my GPx tools here.

Thanks for the reply René. It was just what I feared, because I never did it. in fact, just because I've never tried, I do not know if I can do it. I thought about it tonight, but I did not have the time. Unfortunately, time is always short.

#SDI: I can confirm that! Lately it took me a whole day to make the 124 laps Le Mans (Petit Sarthe) race more realistic for my Le Mans 90 MOD (will soon be released...), adjusting the magic data, performance file (*.txt) plus *.g3p physics...
But now it works and its nice to drive a Jaguar XJR 12 thundering down the long straight at 300 plus km/h... But it was a tricky thing, anyway...

Thank you guys. I will consult some tutorials and hope to be able to work on the Magic Data (I hope especially that the work and the family leave me the time). To make it more realistic, I would also like to have a maximum speed of at least 350 km/h. On the straight of Monza, driving from the keyboard, I touched the 347, in the snake of Spa more straight the 317 and 319 in the wake. I'd like the car to always have the same performance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2018 08:45AM by mralpha.

For my shame, I only now notice that, per example, in Zolder 1979 the start grid was different than today. The cars was in same line: The 2nd at gird was in the same y.position as the pole position, and so on...
Can it be simulated in Cmagic?

Zolder 1979? This track is already released!? I never heard of that before!

TGF1Driver2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Zolder 1979? This track is already released!? I
> never heard of that before!


Funny I thought the same, but I saw on youtube, see it here [www.youtube.com]

TGF1Driver, did you released? Is it available? The Zolder that I have has only the .dat and the graphics of the track.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2018 10:52PM by landex.

Hi everyone. I rummaged through the Magic Data, I tried to change some parameters, but I do not seem to have obtained significant differences. I modified the "Downforce" and the "Wing level" hoping to increase the max speed of the cars, but I had no effect. Where am I wrong? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried these?

desc53=cc power factor ace
desc54=cc grip factor ace

René Smit, Independent Software Developer.
Download my GPx tools here.

Mr Alpha, if you do as Rene has suggested, you will need to adjust the gear ratio settings. Something I ran into when I changed the MD setting Rene mentioned.

Glenn (Cdn)

Help! Maybe I'm going beyond my knowledge and possibility.

mralpha - What you want to do is more than possible. In fact, I guarantee I can help you do what you want to do. As for your knowledge, I'll share what I know with you and together we'll leave a guide that others can use, OK?

The problem with GP4, I found, was that I didn't know where to start initially. What with car settings, performance files (PF), magic data files (MD), physics files and even torque setting files it all seemed ridiculously complex. Not only did I not know which was most important, but I noticed that settings in one file sometimes seemed to overlap with settings in another file.

Sound familiar? Don't worry. It actually IS quite complex, but stick with it and all will become clear.

But first we need to go back a step. So...

1. If you haven't already, please download and install René's excellent GPxPatch to your GP4 folder.

2. Once you've done that, close GPxPatch and open your file manager.

3. You should now find a folder called gpxpdata in your GP4 folder. Open it and double click the file called gpxset.ini

4. In this file, find the section that says [PerfManager]. It probably looks something like this:

snip...

[PerfManager]
Enable=1
Path=gpxpdata\somefilename.txt
Path01=
Path02=
Path03=
Path04=
Path05=

.../snip

What this tells you is that the GPxPatch PerfManager is enabled and that it is going to override the performance settings built in to GP4 with the settings it finds in somefilename.txt. By default this will affect all 17 circuits.

The Path01=, Path02= options on the other hand, can be used to tell GPxPatch to ignore somefilename.txt and use a different performance file for each circuit instead, like this:

[PerfManager]
Enable=1
Path=gpxpdata\somefilename.txt
Path01=gpxpdata\01-Detroit.txt
Path02=
Path03=
Path04=
Path05=gpxpdata\05-Monaco.txt

In this example. GPxPatch is going to use a file called 01-Detroit.txt when you play the first track, but somefilename.txt will be used for tracks 2,3 and 4, while track 5 will use the 05-Monaco.txt file.

Now, close gpxset.ini and run GPxPatch.exe.

Click on the GPxSet tab.

Notice that you can only view and/or change the Path= variable from this screen (ie you can't access or view the Path01, Path02 etc variables. You can only do that from within the gpxset.ini file itself). This might seem a minor point, but I remember it took me a while to figure this out and later, when you finally decide you want to use a different PF for each track (because you probably will), you'll know how it's done!

OK so far? Let me know if you have any questions and then if you want to proceed we can move on to the PFs themselves, where we'll get closer to doing what it is that you want to do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2018 07:48PM by Noog.

Since you're nowhere near my timezone I'm going to assume you want me to go on OK?

Part 2: Understanding Performance Files

Open up GPxPatch, click on the GPxSet tab and make sure that the 'Player car performance team dependent' option is set to 'Old behavior'. There's a reason for this but we don't need to cover it here.

Now, in your GP4/gpxpdata folder open up the actual PF file that the GPxSet tab tells you it's using. In my example above it was called somefilename.txt and it looks something like this:

** gp3edit - performance file **

[Team #00]
Name=Ferrari,Ferrari
Performance=758,822,15938
First Driver=1,Alain Prost,15029,540,15412,481
Second Driver=2,Nigel Mansell,15192,456,14726,352

[Team #01]
Name=Tyrrell,Ford
Performance=715,785,23214
First Driver=3,Satoru Nakajima,15686,747,15691,246
Second Driver=4,Jean Alesi,15908,544,16031,390

etc

Let's take a quick look at what each of these values represents:

Performance=(race power, qualifying power, failure probability)
First Driver=1,(Driver Name, race grip, race grip variability, qualifying grip, qualifying variability)

In essence, these values are used to determine the likelihood of mechanical failure for each team and make one driver and/or team quicker than another. The power values are often referred to as BHP values (which they aren't really). Regardless, the higher they are, the faster the cars will go.

You could then, in theory, keep increasing the Q&R power levels of all the cars until you reached your desired speed, but sooner or later you'll run into the gearing problem identified by gap177 above, which we'll be dealing with later. Suffice it to say for now, that the PF is NOT the place to do what YOU want to do. It is simply used to make the drivers and teams perform more realistically, relative to each other.

Thus, in the example above (which is taken from my PF for the first race of the 1990 season) it is clear that the Ferrari cars will be faster and will tend to be more reliable than the Tyrrells, both in qualifying and the race. But notice the grip values assigned to each driver. Clearly the Tyrrells have the advantage in that respect, so we would expect to see Ferraris doing well on the straights and the Tyrrells possibly gaining some ground on the corners. Jean Alesi, in particular, is likely to do well, but chances are the Ferraris will still come out on top most of the time on account of them having 5% (or so) more power.

So what? Well the point is, the PFs should be viewed as something quite subtle. They bring extra flavor to the game, which is why most mods make good use of them. You could just stick with the one PF to cover all the races in a season, but I find it's much more fun to construct a unique one for each race. You see, years ago, a team like Lotus was often known for creating very nimble cars with great handling that weren't necessarily all that fast in a straight line, whereas other teams tended to focus on brute force power at the expense of a bit of handling (like Ferrari or other teams of the period that used heavier V12 engines). Because of this difference, the Lotuses would tend to do well at a circuit like Monaco, which played to their strengths, but the Ferraris would have the advantage at somewhere like Hockenheim where top speed mattered more. The PF is the only place where you can attempt to re-create such nuances in on the track behavior, because the others (MD files, Physics files and Torque files) CANNOT address individual cars or teams directly - only ALL cars equally. This is an important point.

Although I hope to release a very significant update to it one day, PRBlanco's Performance Calculator.xls is an excellent tool for constructing PF files of your own. (I'd link to it for you but I can't find it).

One little tip (in my experience) is to keep the Q&R values between 16200 or so at maximum and 14000 or more at minimum. Set too high the cars might become too easy to handle (like they're on rails), while too low a setting could make the cars which behave like they're on ice, which is frustrating. Fortunately, most mods include a set of PFs, so certainly at first, you can just let them do their thing while you ignore them.

On a side note; some mods make all the power settings the same in the PF - in effect, not using them to regulate power at all. We might touch on the reason for this later, but it's not important right now other than it reinforces the idea that this is not the place to do what you want to do!

My aim here was just to show you where the PFs live and to clarify what you can do with them. For me, they bring GP4 to life.

On another side note: Unlike my example above, I actually store my PFs in a sub-folder called Performance that I create in the gpxpdata folder and I usually include the circuit number in the PF name like I did above. I find it just makes things tidier and easier to work with if ever I need to edit them.

So, if you're OK with the above, we can move on to MDs next and actually get to your question. Let me know how I'm doing so far - and if you have any questions about anything I've covered up to this point, please ask.

PS: I'm trying not to drag this out, but it's just that I'm sure I would have benefited if I could have read all this in one place at the start. I spent... just too long..., sorting all this out for myself and I got totally frustrated and nearly gave up until I began to get some perspective on the way things worked and how they fit together.

Sorry. I could not answer before. You did well to keep going. Great! In fact I was running on each circuit to create a differentiated and suitable performance file. What you have told is perfect and explained very well. Thank you so much. I think everything you say is not only useful, but also interesting.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2018 01:10AM by mralpha.

You are creating an excellent tutorial. As for the performance files it seems to review what I did (I use exactly the values ​​between 16500 and 14000) and I was also numbering them based on the numbering of the circuits. Consider that in the "Circuits" folder I have 70 numbered folders, in each of which there is the "wad", the "dat", the "gpi" and the "loading" file for each circuit starting from Melbourne, naturally included the "settings" file. Write and explain very well. It is such a pleasure that I can not wait for you to move forward.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2018 01:31AM by mralpha.

Praise indeed. Thanks.

But guess what. I just closed the next installment I've been working on for several hours without saving. Yep. Seriously.

I covered MDs and some other useful bits and pieces before answering your question and then I got distracted by the other thread and closed the editor without thinking when it got in the way.

Time for bed methinks. Good job I don't have a cat to kick...

I'll try to get something up tomorrow (ie later on today). If not, it might be Friday before I get the time again.

Noog, a very very nice and useful tutorial! Should be a only section for those tutorials in the forum, like: Downloads...

About the performance file: I notice,(I dont know if is true) some mods use the same PF for all tracks. Making the same cars failures in all races.

Some times, I choose the PF manually before the Q&R, because Iam not sure if GPxpatch do it like it set on gpxset.ini.

Thanks, Noog

Before I post the next installment, let me address landex's observations.

Yes, some mods do use one PF for all races. There's nothing wrong with that, but I would argue it misses out on a level of potential subtlety.

As for giving a team the same failure probability in all races, yes a single PF will do that, but I actually do that anyway in my multiple PFs. The reason is that while I DO want the season as a whole to reflect the reliability of a team, I don't like starting a particular race knowing for sure that I'm going to bomb out at some point. It makes for a more exciting season by throwing up a few more surprises. I'll still fail to finish in roughly as many races, but I won't know which ones they will be until it happens. I find that exciting - and as you'll see in my next installment, I'm not really the type of person that insists on historical accuracy in all cases.

As for your point about choosing your PF manually before the Q&R I'm not sure what you mean. I've always found GPXPatch to work pretty flawlessly and I think I'm right in saying that GPxPatch creates the gpxset.ini, so it must be using it correctly, no?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2018 04:50PM by Noog.