Built in HOF2.5-support
 
GP2lap in HOF2.5-mode assists you in preventing accidental mistakes against many HOF2.5 rules. It is not a complete guarantee that your laptime is legal, but it covers most unintended misconfigurations. The support consists of warning messages and information on three levels: while loading the track, during driving and when saving the hotlap.
 
1. Loading the track
 
You should be warned, but it might happen that you accidentally use a custom track that wasn't downloaded from this webpage. Like all other rules, this is discovered when checking the authcode. But GP2LAP in HOF2.5-mode is kind enough to warn you at the time of loading with this messagebox:

Messagebox when loading a custom track that wasn't downloaded from the HOF2.5 webpage

A more common mistake could be placing custom tracks in the wrong trackslot. This is also signalled with a messagebox:

Messagebox when using a track in the wrong trackslot

 

2. Information while driving
 
While you are on the track, you can use the "2" and "0" keys (not on the keypad) to display/remove some information: (also in VGA, but less readable  because of the lower resolution...)

GP2LAP output when pushing "2"

Most important and most used is the last line: it tells you the average and maximum value of the PO during the previous lap, and the number of seconds that the PO was over 100%. Before you drive "for real", you should do some test laps and check in the rules whether these PO-figures are legal. If not, you can still change framerate and details to tune the PO. This is more convenient than driving a testlap, quitting GP2 and applying HOF2LAP on a replay to check these values.

Other informative messages that appear at the start of a lap:

[HOF2.5] Warning: No slowdown before start of lap! Lap will be DQ!

As explained in the rules, you must start from before the last slow corner if you start your hotlaps from a saved game. If GP2lap doesn't detect a slowdown for at least 11 frames, it will not permit you to save an extended hotlap!

[HOF2.5] Warning: Not a GP2lap extended file!

As explained in the rules, you can only start your hotlaps from a saved game (instead of starting from the pits), if this loaded game is GP2lap-extended (=if GP2lap was running while you saved that game).

Finally, not a warning-message, but a rule-enforcement is that you will lose your wheels when cutting chicanes! Practice will tell you how far you can go.

 

3. Saving the extended hotlap replay
 
Additional warnings are given when trying to save hotlaps:

It is not allowed to use F4 (indestuctability). This is what you get when you try to save a hotlap in which you used it:

Messagebox when trying to save after using F4-help

And if you reloaded from a non-GP2lap extended saved game:

Messagebox when trying to save after loading a non- GP2LAP extended game

 

I wish to thank Rene Smit again for the extra effort to include this support in GP2LAP!