Virtua Racing Deluxe (32x) ROM Editor

[Tony H]

A new ROM editor for Virtua Racing Deluxe. Found a lot of stuff to edit, so had to make 4 separate tabs/pages:



This page (above) lets you edit the performance of your car. You can adjust engine power, handling, etc. You can edit the handling so that your car can take turns at full speed if you'd like.



This page lets you make changes to the CPU cars. You can adjust the top speed of all 15 CPU cars (these adjustments last for the entire race). You can also adjust how fast they are at the very beginning of the race. Using lower values will slow down all of the CPU cars when the race starts so you can get a better position. Setting the value low enough will allow you to get into 1st place. This adjustment only lasts for a few seconds at the very beginning of the race, then the CPU cars go back to their normal speeds.



Here you can adjust things like how many laps, how much time you get for races, how much bonus time you get for passing check points, enabling the "Mirror" tracks (race tracks backwards), etc.



You can adjust gear ratios here, as well as how many gears the manual transmission has. There is also a set of gear ratios in the ROM that are never used in the game. You can copy these unused gear ratios over to any of the 3 cars and then go test drive them to see how they work.

You can download it from my site (The Code Hut), or you can get it from RHDN with a full description: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1697/

[Blades]

Super cool, can't wait to try this out.

[dr apocalipsis]

AWESOME!

I will try this for sure.

[dark]

Great job! What a nifty set of tools! Thanks for putting in the work to do this

[Tony H]

Thanks guys, let me know if you have any problems with it.

Forgot to mention, the editor works on all 3 ROMs (USA, Japan, and Europe), as well as the Aug 29th and Sept 5th prototype ROMs.

[ComradeOj]

Amazing! It's cool that people are hacking 32x games. An in-depth and approachable graphical editor like this is great. Well done!

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Tony H again.

[Joe Redifer]

This is amazing and such a novel thing. Love it!

[Barone]

A new ROM editor for Virtua Racing Deluxe. Found a lot of stuff to edit, so had to make 4 separate tabs/pages:

Hi Tony!

This is absolutely amazing! Thanks for working on a 32X game. Virtua Racing Deluxe is easily one of the best racing games ever made, so this tool you created is really something that I have always wanted to have.
It reminds me of the editors we used to have for Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix II for the PC. It goes to show how solid and expansible this engine was.
A shame we never got a sequel to this game for the 32X.

One of the more interesting aspects of Virtua Racing, compared to other F1 games of the time, is how they "layered"/modeled the CPU-controlled grid into different groups, which reflects how F1 teams were seen at the time. You had the top-tier cars, the midfield cars, and the really crappy cars.

A feature that would have made VRD even better and more fun to play would be if the AI cars, at least in the HARD mode and for the top 3 or top 5 cars, would gain a small boost in performance when you overtake them; like a "fight back" mechanism.
The human-controlled Formula 1 car with manual transmission can reach 330 km/h as top speed; and as I see it, the top 1 CPU-controlled car can only reach 324 km/h tops. That works nicely for you to be able to catch up with those cars during the race coming from the back of the grid but once you overtake the Top 2 cars, it's your race to lose. It would be nice if once overtaken by you, the top 1 car would be able to reach 330 km/h too, that would be a much crazier fight for position.. especially if you extend the race length beyond 5 laps per circuit.

This would be more in line with actual F1 competition - especially for the time - as the cars were prone to DNFs due to technical fatigue so the top running cars would always be saving equipment *unless* that would mean they had been overtaken.

Also, by seeing the options here, I assume that Formula cars have no drifting mechanics applied to them. Would it be possible to have a switch to turn it on/off for that mode as well?

And regarding the CPU cars, they really don't have any other performance parameters in the game other than top speed? Handling, wind resistance, drifting, etc; all that don't affect them according to the game engine?

[Tony H]

Hi Barone.

I spent a lot of hours playing the game while making the editor and I have to agree with you, absolutely fantastic racing game.

I like your idea of having the top car get a little boost in km/h to make it a fight to the finish. I've been thinking about that, and obviously just editing the top car or two to have a slightly higher top speed to match yours wouldn't work because you would never be able to catch them in the first place. However, I think there is a way to achieve something not too far off from your idea. The editor lets you adjust the amount of acceleration that the CPU cars have at the very beginning of the race (at the bottom of the "Computer Controlled Cars" page). You could edit those values so that you get up into 1st place at the very beginning of the race. Shortly after the race starts, the CPU cars will go back to their normal acceleration, and if you set the top speed a little higher on a couple CPU cars, they would be right on your ass for the rest of the race. Might be worth experimenting with.

One thing to keep in mind when adjusting the km/h for the CPU cars, is that there is some math going on in the game when it's determining the km/h, and the actual km/h in the game may be about 1 km/h off (faster or slower) from what you entered in the editor.

As far as the Formula car drifting and handling adjustments that are missing, they were in the same tables as the other two cars, but they had no effect. My guess is that since the Formula car was used in the Genesis version, those drifting and handling adjustments must be in a different table that was used for the Genesis version. It was very unusual to have the performance table for all 3 cars in one place, and have a very small part of the Formula car stuff not be used. I had already spent a ton of time working on the editor and was losing momentum, so I decided to just leave it out. May go back and look for that table in the future. EDIT: The one "handling" adjustment that's included for the Formula car in the editor has the biggest effect on handling, so that single adjustment can make a big difference. You can easily adjust it to take corners at full speed.

If I remember correctly, I wasn't really looking for any handling adjustments/tables for the CPU cars, so not sure how it works in the game. I found their acceleration rate at the very beginning of the game, but I don't think it was part of their handling table. This is something else that I might go back to in the future and try to find.

[dark]

A feature that would have made VRD even better and more fun to play would be if the AI cars, at least in the HARD mode and for the top 3 or top 5 cars, would gain a small boost in performance when you overtake them; like a "fight back" mechanism.

Oh man, that's just what we need, the game is hard enough as it is Even running a good line and not crashing isn't enough to get first in Virtua Racing 32x. Are you really that good at it that coming in first on any track is no longer a challenge? That would be quite the accomplishment!