Hi everyone,
I've recently made an editor for the original NFS 4: High Stakes Career, which allows editing the Career structure, tournaments, restrictions, rewards, and other parameters stored in "CircDef.cdb" and "TierDef.cdb".
At the moment, the editor is based on the US/European version of the game.
I recently received a request from a user to add support for the original Australian PC version, so I'd now like to properly adapt the editor for it as well.
This came up because the Australian version has some Career differences, most notably the HSV Pro Cup instead of the Chevrolet Pro Cup, with an HSV manufacturer restriction and the MHRT Commodore as the prize.
I managed to get the following files from what should be an original:
- "DATA\TEXT\CircDef.cdb"
- "DATA\TEXT\TierDef.cdb"
- "DATA\TEXT\MAN.DAT"
I also got the original IDs of the Australian cars:
- MHRT Commodore — Serial "24", Car ID "Hcom"
- VT Commodore / HSV Clubsport — Serial "38", Car ID "HSV9"
- Police Commodore — Serial "21", Car ID "PHsv"
- Ford XR8 — Serial "37", Car ID "FXr8"
However, this raised some new questions.
The Australian "MAN.DAT", "CircDef.cdb" and "TierDef.cdb" appear to be the same as the standard files.
In particular, "TierDef.cdb" still contains Chevrolet Pro Cup rather than HSV Pro Cup.
Or did I get the wrong files?
So I'm now trying to understand how the original Australian version handles these differences.
Is there another data file involved? exe?
Is the Career modified at runtime by the Australian executable?
Or is there some other regional mechanism I'm missing?
If anyone has experience with the original Australian PC release, has investigated its files/executable, or knows anything about how the HSV Pro Cup and Australian-specific Career data are implemented, I'd really appreciate any information.
I'd also be interested in any other differences between the Australian, Japanese, and US/European Career versions that should be taken into account when adding proper support for these regional versions to the editor.