Click for the large version. Lovely.
Contemplating
Garage Issues
Spent a short while last night reading through some discussion groups about how to fix my garage issues within Gran Turismo Sport mentioned in this communication. I found a good level of discussion over at GT Planet and came up with a possible method for returning my cars.
I am a member of Playstation Plus and so my saved games are backed up regularly to the PS+ servers. If the save data there is old enough I might be able to download that save file and restore my garage. There was an anxious wait while I started the PS4 and hoped that it hadn’t uploaded my save file anytime in the last 48 hours. When I could see the remote storage space I did indeed see that the game save file was over a week old. I think this is largely to do with me turning the PS4 off correctly rather than leaving it in stand-by mode all the time. I suspect that if I had left it in rest mode the remote save file would have been newer and I would not be as cheery today.
I was able to download the remote file and overwrite the local version. Then I had to start the game and wait.
The game loaded fine and the car shown on the homescreen was, in fact, one of those that had disappeared. So, I was confident that my cars were back. Shortly after that the game must have synced some information with the GT servers because I received 4 cars for completing my “daily workout”. My money wasn’t restored and the few races I had done over the last week were blank again but at least there was success in getting my cars back.
So, thanks to me turning off the PS4 and not using rest mode I think I have managed to restore the garage and my happiness. Once I did get into the garage it turns out I have over 200 cars and my initial estimate of 100 was quite low!
I had about 100 cars in my garage yesterday. Now there’s only 23. WTAF? #GranTurismoSport
— Ian Parish (@iparish) February 7, 2018
Now it’s fixed:
I guess I underestimated the number of cars slightly ! #PS4share pic.twitter.com/cdydiPT9ky
— Ian Parish (@iparish) February 8, 2018
Here’s the photo that I wanted to take a few nights ago that started this all off:
Garage Failure
I am annoyed. Very annoyed and if I make it through this communication without using expletives I will be fucking impressed.
Yesterday I logged into Gran Turismo Sport. I wasn’t going to play but you get bonuses when you’ve logged in for 100 days etc and I thought a couple of minutes looking at the new user content would entertain me.
On the screen the Monza scapes icon was glowing with a little red dot meaning I hadn’t looked at it since the last update. Well, I thought, I could take a couple of photos of my own cars around the iconic circuit. So, I opened up the Scapes option and then chose a decent corner with some nice rumble strips. Then I went to add one of my own cars to the scene and that is where rage starts.
I ONLY HAD 26 CARS IN MY GARAGE
I have spent a lot of in-game credits building up my garage with lovely new cars and a few of them I have used for a significant amount of races and set them up so they behave in a way that I can drive fast.
AND THEY WEREN’T IN THE GARAGE
Somehow, about 60 cars have disappeared from my garage. They don’t show up in my custom liveries as they aren’t IN MY GARAGE.
I am going to get in touch with support at some point and I hope they can fix this. I am quite annoyed. I have earnt around 20,000,000 in-game credits and so have spent around that much too. I am so pissed off I might even have to say “bollocks” to this game and just fucking quit.
If the magicians can get my data back then I will be happy. I’m not even sure why that particular group of 26 cars still exists in the garage. My main concern is that every time you make an action in the game it saves the data. It is possible that the save file with all my cars in has been over written many times. I’ve also tried rebooting the PS4 in case it has some bizarre reason to do with the machine itself but no success there. Fuck this shit.
Lovely Views
Not a lot to say, just promoting these pictures from my twitter feed.
#detail #PS4share pic.twitter.com/Ei6wGofawH
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 18, 2018
Throwing up dirt #PS4share pic.twitter.com/cLoFqpFfYu
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 18, 2018
Racing #PS4share pic.twitter.com/eHstwtCMyk
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 18, 2018
That’s me, in the #2 car.
Racing The Ring
In a follow up to this communication I’ve spent some time getting to know the Nurburgring and I’m getting there. These two videos show the same lap just from different perspectives. There’s the TV view and then the front spoiler view. The front spoiler view is the main one that I race with.
Enjoy.
More F5
I suspect that you are going to get bored of these over the next while as continue to mess around with the livery editor in Gran Turismo. These next few shots are another F5 livery I created. It’s a Japanese car this time, my next one might end up being a Ford F150!
This livery is called Sylvana for obvious reasons. Perhaps you want to ponder the union flag being so prominent when I care not for nationality?
Finally, here’s a photo, just because it looks beautiful.
Arctic Hiding
When I’ve finished racing in Gran Turismo and don’t have time for more detailed races I sneak over the the livery editor and create car liveries. This feature is surprisingly more fun than I had expected.
Gran Turismo has a feature where graphic files can be uploaded and then added to the cars you design. However, this has meant I have had to learn how to edit SVG files and mess around with a graphics editor. For whatever reason the file size for upload is limited to 14kB. This isn’t a great deal and means you have to be quite creative within the editor software. The SVG format is perfectly sensible but Microsoft don’t really deal with them, however, there is a free editor available, I use Inkscape.
This car livery is my own design, even the polygon arctic camouflage pattern. I think it looks good:
This is partly based on an RAF Jaguar scheme, I might try and look up some more planes and get a decent version of each. I know the car is German, but it still looks good.
Here are some snow views of the car:
A Livery Company
In the new Gran Turismo it is possible to design the paint scheme for cars, helmets and racing kit. I’ve done some terrible versions, trying to get use to the UI, and now I have finally created quite a nice looking car.
This is an Aston Martin Vantage for the Fulham Five reprobates. I’ll try and get some more shots because not all the detail is visible from here. I like the wing mirrors.
And, because some of us are US based, here’s some location in the USA.
Finally. This is a clip of me taking the thing around the Kent Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit:
Sponsorship
I think I have finally figured out how to upload decals to Gran Turismo. This means I can add whatever I want (within bounds of decency) to car liveries.
The best bit is I can save video to YouTube!
Now all I need to do is colour match my decals with this website and upload some groovy KSC based colours!
Lighting The Ring
I had to complete a Gran Turismo challenge which required racing sections of the Nurburgring Nordschleife. I’m not normally blown away by graphics in games, I tend to concentrate on the action more than anything else and so I don’t really see the quality of the graphics. HOWEVER, this challenge had me racing around dawn and the lighting of the Nordshleife was incredible. Then, there were the mist patches. There was actual mist along the track. Just amazing. Really impressive. It looked awesome.
