Hidden track?

[OddbOd]

I was going through the Playstation Wipeout disc the other day and came across something that I found rather strange, there appears to be 15 tracks. Now before you get too excited bear in mind that 14 tracks makes perfect sense - 7 tracks including Firestar in Venom Class and 7 in Rapier Class - but that still leaves one left over (the one in the TRACK02 directory).

Has anyone managed to hack this mystery track and get it working? There appears to be some essential files missing and personally I have had no success, but hey, there's some clever people out there maybe somebody has managed to reverse engineer enough of the game to make it work.

rest of post removed as it no longer served its intended purpose

[Task]

Those weapons aren't "unused", they're "head-to-head only".
One of them alters the controls (up is down, down is up, similar nonsense) of whoever you hit with it, generally the other human player. They're listed in the manual, even.

[zargz]

oddbod: what program r u useing (O_o)?

[Shem]

Flare, Halo? Was this included in the game?
I'm not sure...(long time since i played W'O)
As for the camera - I say "Shapshot". I'll write some more later, I'm in a hurry :D

[Cobol]

The images can be seen with PSIcture (http://snailrush.online.fr/soft/#PSicture). The loading screen was used in the Wipeout demo. It is very common to leave unused images and log files in the final version of a game. In addition to the pictures they also left a lot of log files, the ones with .INF extension.

In Wipeout 2097/XL you can find the following pictures (copy and paste):

The Wipeout 1 title screen (WIPTITLE.TIM)::


http://ultraboard.topcities.com/WIPTITLE.JPG


The copyright screen from Wipeout 1 (LEGALNTS.TIM):


http://ultraboard.topcities.com/LEGALNTS.JPG


The XL title screen (RSTARTXL.TIM):


http://ultraboard.topcities.com/RSTARTXL.JPG


The 2097 title screen (STARTPAL.TIM):


http://ultraboard.topcities.com/STARTPAL.JPG


The E3 demo title screen (E3PIC.TIM):


http://ultraboard.topcities.com/E3PIC.JPG


Those pictures were left in both the demos and the final versions.

[OddbOd]

zargz: I used TIM file import plugin for Photoshop as its much quicker when opening multiple files.

Task: thanks for the info, I meant to take those three out :oops:

[Shem]

do you think it's possible to find such graphics in W3O or SE? I've looked through the files of W3O and found nothing. Most likely becouse I don't know the extensions of these files, maybe they're there..I don't know, OddbOd, you seem to know much more about these files. Have you searched the W3O for these extra graphs?

[OddbOd]

Who knows, unfortunately I haven't got a copy WO3 at the moment. I'm going to try and find it when I head into the city tomorrow.

Knowing the file extensions doesn't really help that much with more recent games as developers use their own custom graphic formats, back when WO and XL were written nearly everybody used the Sony Dev Tools which produced the same types of files (STR for MDEC video, VAG for sounds, TIM for pictures etc). Also developers have a nasty habit of compiling all their graphics and sounds into large monolithic files instead of using seperate ones.

I'll let you know if I find anything.

[Lance]

.
OddbOd, thanks for the pics, but please post only the remote links to the pics instead of direct [img src] links. the pics cause too much slowdown in page loading for people who only have dial-up connections, particularly if they don't use good browsers [ wait for it...] like Opera! :D

(even though i do use Opera, i leave the images switched off and only load the ones i want to see. that way the page loads really fast so i don't have to wait for the info i want)
.

[Shem]

OddbOd wrote :
Also developers have a nasty habit of compiling all their graphics and sounds into large monolithic files instead of using seperate ones.

That's what I've found in W3O. A few files, really big ones. What's interesting - the music was described as a .wav file, just when I thought i was Audio...uhhmmm I suppose it is audio, couse I can hear the music tracks on my stereo..so why was it described as .wav? I don't know...

[Task]

The music is stored as .wav so that you can play it in your CD player.
You see, when you buy a Wipeout game, you're not just buying a game, you're also buying a music CD! Wipeout (and, by extension, the people who made it) is just so awesome that you can enjoy the music all on its own without even playing the game.
Go ahead, plug WO3 into your car CD player and just _try_ to hit the airbrakes on your steering wheel. I do it all the time, it's quite the sensation. Try not to get arrested for speeding. 8 D

[yuusen]

–
sony released a .tim file extractor plugin for adobe photoshop that allows you to extract picture and graphics files from playstation discs. you can download it using the link below :

http://www.keylearn.net/kemuland/utility/tim_plugin.zip
[warning : this link will download a file onto your computer. do not click unless you feel safe in receiving this file. the file has not been tested by myself but is from a respectable source and seperate versions of the file have been tested by myself and have posed no problems.]

you will need a copy of adobe photoshop in order for it to work.

if i remember correctly, the path to install it in is: Adobe Photoshop > Plug-ins > Import / Export. there may be a readme in the .zip file that has more specific instructions.

i cant guarantee itll work on W3 or SE but its worth a try.
–
¥

[Lance]

.
did you try it in Photoshop CS? i just downloaded a 30 day trial copy of that about a week ago. is it different from other versions of Photoshop?
.

[yuusen]

–
the directory structure of CS is the same when it comes to installing plug-ins, so yes.
--
the differences between CS and previous versions are small yet very powerful. the main stock of filters now provide a dynamic preview pane in which to test them out before rendering them to the main image. these are kept in one large window and allow for faster experimentation between filters. there are also some nice new filters that allow you to piece photos together to create panoramas, as well as a filter that creates a realistic focus blur effect. workflow is also increased not only with tighter integration with other adobe CS programs but within the standalone photoshop environment. this version of photoshop also supports triangular pixels, in case you want to make graphics for triple-lens movie film.
--
do an internet search for 'dr. russel brown' and 'photoshop tips' for some entertaining insights. ( im not on commission :) )
–
¥

[Mator]

Looong time since my last post on this forum...
Hello To all members (again:)

The "Track02" dir contains the 1st track -altima . I have the PC wipeout 1 , so i copy/pasted the files that were in "track02" dir to the other dirs- track01...15. When i started the game, the "terramax", and the other tracks became "altima", but with misplaced and misshaped textures. And yea, these unused graphics are left in the PC wipeout , too...

[Lance]

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yuusen: aha. very good.

hm.. so Adobe is finally adopting something that the 100dollarsUS Paint Shop Pro had two years ago? that's good. ;)

------

Mator. good to see you back. since you were here last, i've learned that we have two other members who were born in Bulgaria, but moved away. so now we have a 'Bulgarian mafia' to join with or compete with the 'Catalonian mafia' which now has about four members here. :D
.

[zargz]

if u mean me, lance, i 'just' grew up there. i was born in moscow! 8)

[Lance]

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uhoh, you are one of the ones i meant. eek. i've made a mistake! i can feel senility creeping up behind me and laying a creepy finger on my shoulder. either that or i was preoccupied with other thoughts at the time. either one causes f____ps. :D

we do seem to be getting gradually more international at WZ in the sense that there are progressively more countries from which our members come
.

[Cobol]

I've found that the mysterious TRACK02 folder belongs to the Wipeout demo. There are not 15 tracks. Also, I think that the same happens in Wipeout 2097/XL.

[OddbOd]

Thanks Cobol, I checked my old Demo 1 disc and sure enough the 2097 demo includes a TRACK02 directory.


That's what I've found in W3O. A few files, really big ones. What's interesting - the music was described as a .wav file, just when I thought i was Audio...uhhmmm I suppose it is audio, couse I can hear the music tracks on my stereo..so why was it described as .wav? I don't know...

Yeah unfortunately I've had no success getting anything interesting off the WO3 disc except for something rather weird, there's two separate copies of Sasha's "Icaras". The first is a WAV file and is at LBA 5935, the other one is the expected CD Audio track 4 at LBA 99798. Why? I have no idea.

As for the WAV files on the disc, they ain't there, well not in the data portion of the disc anyway. They are actually pointers in the ISO filesystem to the CD Audio tracks. This is one of the cool features of CD's, you can have several different file systems all pointing to the same data. Though I have to admit I've never seen a mixed-mode disc with pointers into the audio portion.


the pics cause too much slowdown in page loading

While I appreciate your reasoning, 33kb worth of images couldn't really be considered large even the forum banner is larger than that.

[Lance]

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and i rarely ever look at that banner or any other. the kilobytes add up. the average load rate for images on my connection is 3 KBs per second. a 33 kilobyte pic takes 11 seconds to load. there were 22 pics in your first post. if they averaged a 'small' 33 KB per pic, they would take four minutes to load, just for that one post. there are millions of people still on dial-up; they notice every one of those 240+ seconds.
i have seen many webpages with multiple images, sometimes with 50 or more, that averaged 70 KB per image. this is why i turn images off, and only selectively load individual images on the basis of the captions or the alt text provided by html in those cases where the web author is thoughtful enough to provide it. when we are not ourselves subject to a particular condition, it is easy to forget that other people are, and we often forget to help them out when we could. it is not a dishonour to suffer the occasional failings that our humanity subjects us to, so that we forget about other people sometimes, but it is a positve honour to remember what other humans have to face, and to help them out. even in so small a way as this.

[yes i'm feeling particularly philosophical today. birthdays do that to a fella when the birthdays have piled pretty high. ;) ]

edit: oops. human imperfection struck me; i left out a 2 letter preposition. but it's there now. :D ]

[zargz]

right on, dude! :D :D (well spoken?)