Gp2lap & HOF2lap

A little background:

As soon as people started competing against each other in GP2, a system was needed to verify that everyone was driving legally. The various game-editors that appeared made it possible to tune the car and circumstances in GP2 to your advantage.

HOF2lap.exe, programmed by Dave Gymer, was the first tool to check performance settings that can be found in a hotlap replay file. If you applied the original HOF2lap on a replay, it would show you the BHP used, grip, car setup details etc.. This was a very useful tool as long as only values were edited that are stored in a replay file. In addition, most cheats that could not be detected by examining a replay file, would show up by replaying on an unmodified copy of GP2.

After a while, some cheats were discovered that were very difficult to detect, even when reviewing an illegal replay on a legal GP2.exe. On top of that, the slowmo-virus had contaminated GP2 offline racing. HOF2lap, no matter how useful, was powerless against these cheats.

It took Rene Smit and Frank Ahnert (worship our heros!) more than half a year to develop an antidote against just about any possible cheat-method. The result of this hard work was GP2lap, a program that can be hooked into GP2 and keeps an eye on things from the frontseat. What's more: GP2lap can be run in HOF2.5-mode to support the special HOF2.5 driving rules.

  You must drive the laps that you submit to HOF2.5 with the latest GP2lap in HOF2.5-mode or they can not be accepted.

 

Summary:

Instead of running GP2.exe directly, we execute GP2lap.exe. GP2Lap then starts GP2 and hooks into it. It monitors and logs all useful values, and stores this into the normal hotlap replay files when you save them. Additionally, GP2lap will also give you information that is important for driving legally. Afterwards, you use the latest version of HOF2lap to extract this info out of the replay files and generate an authentication code. This authentication code is then submitted, and can be decoded by the league director.

(Think about it as Big Brother is watching you)

 

Step by step

Here are the step by step instructions for using GP2lap and HOF2lap correctly:

1. Download the latest version of GP2lap and HOF2lap from René Smit's homepage. Whenever new versions are released, you'll get an announcement.

2. Unzip GP2lap.exe, GP2lap.cfg and DOS4GW.exe (included) into the directory of the GP2 copy that you use for HOF2.5, and unzip HOF2lap.exe into the directory where you save hotlap replays (usually the "Gpsaves" directory).

3. Enable the special HOF2.5-mode (1=enabled, 0=disabled) by editing the GP2lap.cfg textfile with either MS-DOS Edit, Notepad or similar programs.

4. Each time you decide to drive new laptimes for HOF2.5, execute GP2lap.exe. It will automatically start GP2. You can verify that it is running because there will be a small logo and version number in the upper right corner of the screen (not visible while on the track):

5. Drive your laps as you would normally do, but make sure that you drive according to the rules, and that you use your real name in the game! GP2LAP in HOF2.5-mode will assist you in several ways to minimize the risk of violating the rules by accident. Read more details.

It is VERY HIGHLY recommended that you drive under DOS instead of Win95 or Win98, and this for two reasons:

1. your processor occupancy is lower under DOS
2. the game often crashes when trying to save a replay under Win95/98

6. If you drive a hotlap that you think is good enough to submit, then just save (<ESC> + "save hotlap") it. If all goes right, you'll get the messagebox "GP2lap extended hotlap saved".

7. After you have driven and saved your hotlap(s), it's time to extract the info from the replay files. Remember that, although you normally don't have to submit the replay files themselves, you have to keep your replays in a safe place because they can be requested at any time!

8. To extract data from the replay (let's call it "mylap.hla"), we use HOF2lap from the commandline:

[your GP2-path here]\gpsaves\HOF2lap.exe -v mylap.hla

The -v switch is used for "verbose" output, otherwise you only get the Avg PO printed. To extract to a textfile, use the redirector symbol:

[your GP2-path here]\gpsaves\HOF2lap.exe -v mylap.hla > mylap.txt

9. You can use the readable output to verify most parameters by yourself (BHP, helps used, is it your name?, PO Average,Max and seconds slowmo,....). The rules tell you what you should keep an eye on.

If you read the helpfile included with HOF2lap, you'll see that there are switches to output only the authentication codes, that it is possible to use wildcards etc.. 

If you plan to just send me the authentication codes by e-mail, the simplest way of generating them is to do the following:

1. Copy all of the hotlap files of the laps you wish to enter into the HOF2lap directory.

2. Then just type HOF2lap.exe -q *.hl* > mylaps.txt. This will generate the code for every lap and store it in the one text file which you can then attatch to an e-mail and send to me.