My Diaries

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

Sun May 30, 1999

Prize car colours (http://www.granturismo.com/scei/docs/bbgtfaq10.txt)

At the time of writing, there were following two versions of a similar FAQ:

The latter looks more recent, but is smaller!

There are also other interesting documents to be seen under http://www.granturismo.com/scei/docs/

The Two FAQs give a fairly long answer to the question:

3d. I can't win a specific car/color. What do I need to do to get it?

The gist of the answer is that cars are awarded purely randomly (by implication they seem to mean with uniform distribution), but that bad use of bad pseudo-random number generators causes some prize cars never to appear.

I don't believe this answer applies in the case of the International Serieses. (USvsJP, etc) I can predictably increase the probability of getting different prizes by using a car to win all GT League events and their "specialized" (FF, etc) event. True, once a car (or perhaps event) is "primed" in this fashion, various techniques can be used to "unstick" it from winning one particular car. For instance, my ConceptCar appeared to be able to fairly regularly win three of the four cars in the UKvsUS series, and washing it would usually change which car was being won.

To begin to get all four cars, I believe it is necessary to win all GT League events with a car of *each* nationality. (For good measure, win the other International Series with each car, too).

Now I can believe the ordering of the prize cars for these events is done randomly, but I cannot believe the overwhelming bias of prizes I saw in 3000+ days of racing was due purely to bad use of bad random number generators. I could also believe the assignment of prize cars is probabilistic, but not uniform, if a competing car is not primed. I.e. perhaps there is a very small (say 1/16 or (much) less) chance of winning car #4 with a "non-primed" car, which would add to the confusion.

I used to avoid the GT-I. I typically play in the living room with another TV going and my wife occasionally talking to me. But players who played and won GT-I a lot would gradually "unlock" the prize cars automatically, and *they* would then be convinced that the prizes were awarded with a uniform distribution.

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So a key hint about winning all cars in both colours in the
International series seems to be to race (and hopefully win, and not
lose) as many events with each car as possible.  Even the Sunday Cup
(even though you'll feel stupid), and especially GT-I.  And build and
race at least a couple of cars from each nationality.

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The Specialized Series (and Mega), while they did seem to get "stuck", and have "hold-outs", seem to respond to entering as many different cars as possible. I completed most of the car collections in those series using racing-mod cars, so the game does not seem to penalize you for that.

All-in-all, with (ie perhaps because of) my style of entering events, the "specialized" serieses did appear to award prizes that could be "random with uniform distribution".

To get the yellow ConceptCar, I finally started "another" game, and I won it with the first GT-I winner in the game, a race-modded Viper. In the case of that game, I believe the yellow ConceptCar was ordered as #3 instead of the purple RX7. Starting another game could be a hint for people who get confident in their license-winning ability. (I started from a completely different game started to see how quickly I could get A+B licenses and also keep track of used car stock; I took the day 60 save which had A1-A7 done, but not A8)

The pattern in this game suggested too that you are unlikely to win more than even one prize car in an International Series unless the competing car has won some other event (perhaps entire A-level GT league plus specialized). See the semi-detailed log in my diary entry yesterday for more details.

When I have 6 to 10 hours to waste, I might go back and verify that winning GT-I with an American car then allows it to win the purple RX7, but not before. I also might try and win the yellow ConceptCar in my "main" game. (In the meantime I "traded" it into the Main Game) Current theses suggests purple ConceptCar *might* do it now, or a race-modded Viper should be able to win GT-I and then get it (if my exsting GTS does not work, perhaps I'll need to by and build an RT/10; it seems "old" cars lose their prize-winning ability--maybe). I don't think I'm good enough to win GT-I with a Corvette. (Theory would say the Griffith 500 and ConceptCar should have unlocked the prize, but maybe the ConceptCar is too old, or perhaps prize cars aren't quite good enough; the Griffith 500 won all four UKvsJP cars in rapid succession after winning GT-I).