[0:01]For years now, the retro Gran Turismo games have grown in popularity thanks to advancements in emulation and community-made enhancements and modifications.
[0:10]The community has enjoyed an enhanced experience of these games, but one game in particular has remained an outlier, getting somewhat left behind.
[0:18]Despite being based on Gran Turismo 4's game engine, Touris Trophy has exhibited game-breaking issues when emulated, including game freezes,
[0:28]replays not loading,
[0:33]saving a replay results in a corrupted file size,
[0:37]license demonstrations fail to load or desynchronize,
[0:41]and the riding form editor failing to display the preview.
[0:46]While some subpar workarounds have existed for some time, they involve editing advanced settings that can be confusing to deal with, which is a big turnoff to players.
[0:55]Even with the setting tweaks, they don't fully fix the emulation problems, and so Touris Trophy's ability to capture the community's attention has definitely suffered as a result.
[1:06]After coming up with a solution to make custom license demos for Gran Turismo 4, it occurred to me that Touris Trophy's main playability issue likely stemmed from its own license test demonstrations.
[1:18]We've known for a long time that PS2 GT games have issues with replays and demos.
[1:22]Even today, you'll find many examples of them not loading at all or their playback is inaccurate.
[1:38]So where do these issues come from?
[1:41]The answer is in how the PlayStation 2 handles its floating point operations, and the crucial bit comes from the accuracy of emulating it.
[1:50]The replays of the PS2 era Gran Turismo games are particularly sensitive to that difference.
[1:56]And despite PCSX2 being very mature, the nature of the PS2's non-standard floating point operations have let this issue persist.
[2:04]The good news is that we can get replays to work, but only under the condition that the emulator itself generates the replay.
[2:11]When we record our own, we can see that they work.
[2:14]In Gran Turismo 4, the scene view in license tests works once the player makes an attempt,
[2:23]and replays recorded on the emulator work perfectly,
[2:32]while the original on-disc replays fail to load.
[2:39]Touris Trophy is the same, so we can use that to fix the game for PCSX2.
[2:45]Through proper testing and modifying the game, it becomes clear that the replays are the sole reason for the freezes and corrupted starting positions in the licenses.
[2:54]The reason why Touris Trophy is so much worse is purely coincidental. It just so happens that Touris Trophy suffers more severe corruptions from the floating point differences than the other games.
[3:05]Thanks to the Gran Turismo modding community and all of the existing mod tools for Gran Turismo 4, Touris Trophy is easy to modify, making it easy to fix this long-standing problem.
[3:16]Introducing the PCSX2 patch for the three main versions of Touris Trophy.
[3:21]This patch replaces the on-disc license demos with ones compliant with PCSX2.
[3:28]On its GitHub page, you can find the Xdelta patch for the US, European, or Japanese version on the releases page.
[3:34]The link is in the description. With the patch installed, the last fix for Touris Trophy is to set the emotion engine clamping mode.
[3:43]This is optional and is not needed to play the game, but setting it to extra preserve sign restores the rider form view and the rider gear icon in the main menu.
[3:52]No side effects occurred in testing. To do so, right-click the game list entry, click properties, go to advanced, then set the EE clamping mode to extra preserve sign.
[4:05]This sets the specific game setting, not the global one. That way, this change does not affect other games.
[4:10]From here, you can set it and forget it.
[4:13]The PCSX2 patch fixes the playability issues, and allows the scene view to work correctly in licenses as well.
[4:24]At the time of recording, version 0.1 of the patch has released.
[4:29]0.1 brings a fully playable experience, but some things are left unfixed. Some license demos and the on-disc replays you can find in the replay theater need new recordings.
[4:38]If you would like to help further improve this patch, you can open an issue and submit your own replays on the GitHub page.
[4:45]On the main page of the GitHub, you can view the current state of the patch to see which license tests or replays need recordings.
[4:52]I have to say that Touris Trophy is pretty fun, and the PCSX2 patch unlocks the potential that we've been unable to tap into before. Enhancements, texture replacements, and game mods are on the table more than ever.
[5:05]If you've been curious about this game, it's never been a better time to give it a try.
