My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Mon Mar 22, 1999

Definitive Discoveries about the Used Car Inventory

The Gran Turismo used car inventory repeats itself, both content and prices, after 600 simulation days. It changes only every tenth day (i.e. on days with a "zero" as their last digit, so actually the first time it changes after only nine days, since the game starts at day 1).

I discovered the length of the cycle after I noticed that day 1820(!) inventory was identical to day 20. Actually, the fiji blue Mitsubishi '92 GTO at day 1800 for Cr8860 stayed in my mind too.

Having thereby verified that content and prices did cycle in synch, I realized the thing to do was look on appropriate days for a milano red del Sol '93 S for Cr8580 in Honda slot 1. I knew the cycle wasn't 100 or 200, so, starting with my saved 250 day game I tried 300, 360, 450, and finally at 600 I found the cycle. I was glad, because otherwise I probably would have stayed up and inspected day 900. (I would have got to there as fast as possible; I'd actually turned attempts before that into a semi-reasonable, although slow, A-license game; hopped up a Supra, won the Chaser, but couldn't win USvsJP with the Chaser on first try, and then my wife began watching television on her set beside mine, so I started just doing or abandoning more license tests).

I think the fastest way to run up days is to get into a license test, and keep saying "Try again", and "exit" instead of running the test. Each abandonment uses a day without needing to do any "Loading..." (Amusing note; the game actually stores the in-memory replay data for your abandoned try