Welcome to September's version of ICYMI, where it's basically news from what has been released for GP4 by authors across our great community. It's always good to see old and new authors modding different areas of the game.
It's here and ready - the 2025 CSM mod has just dropped.
As with my previous 2023/24 season mods, this mod is the base mod with everything working smoothly. So it is a kind of work in progress release, designed with future add-ons in mind.
The mods that I have released this year have been redesigned to make use of Öggos' InjectDLL and bringing new features to current season mods. Whilst the structure has many similarities to the previous seasons, it has significant changes means this is a completely new mod.
Much of the content in this mod has been released here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/gp4-2025-download-sources.html
All the cars have been brought to us by the RSCT team of Excalibur and Isaint. I have modified Isaint's cars a little, mostly bug fixes to stop the flickering textures and I have repositioned some of the rear wheel hubs to be more realistic.
I have also taken all these cars and created them for internal cockpit use. This is a new feature, and with the dashes on the wheel instead of the cockpit shape, it makes for a much easier conversion. Because these cockpits use the main texture, track specific liveries work seamlessly without any additional editing.
Also new, to go with the individual cockpits, are steering wheels for each team. They are based on the 2024 versions and both internal and external versions of these wheels are in the game. As it remains a limitation to run one steering wheel for all teams, you simply need to select a driver from the CSM menu to use that team's steering wheel.
Thanks again to Excalibur for his excellent 3D rims, however I have amended the size of them and created lods, as in previous seasons with Carl_gpgames.
Thanks once more to Gitanes for his work on performance files, including torque files, physics and magic data files for each track. The magic data, as in previous mods, is a little experimental, it does depend on how you install your tracks and the TSM profile name you use. I have added an option to turn the torque tweak off, this occassionaly makes cars sit in their pitbox for a good while before the mechanics start work - it is not a foolproof fix though.
Thanks to Mailson_Teles for his lovely loading screens and to jcgrj for the 2024 engine sounds.
I will talk about the new helmets in their own dedicated post, but I'm indebted to Theofilos for creating and sharing his Real Helmets Project. So far only the Arai and Bell helmet variations have been done, a very nice upgrade from before. Thanks to Excalibur for help in the conversion. Instead of waiting for the set to be complete, I have quickly painted some Schuberth and Stilo helmets on Jvinu's shape for the time being. These temporary helmets are not as accurate as the main set.
To get this mod released, I had to rush to put some generic items in, like high resolution team arts, plain pitcrews and engineers, not in any way accurate. There remains a generic internal visor. To get this mod released, I thought it was better to have something generic, and these can be patched later as people create them.
As always, thanks to a good number of community members who made this mod possible - some of them long gone from modding sadly, but their work is still being used to this day.
Carl_gpgames - CSM structure base, Generic internal cockpit, pitprops, pitmonitor, GPxPatch graphics, background videos, music and GP4 Memory Access and coding help.
Öggo - Blender plugins, Car Collision editor, Individual tyres & helmets tweak, Visor colour cap, gpf editor, Injectdll, csm procss and general support and bug fixing.
32bobo32 - Pitcrew & Engineer Template, Director & marshal skins. Hi res menu items, no refuel animation, menu fonts, HUD. hi res menu font
prblanco -various caps
gplaps - DirectX 8 patch
crosire - DirectX 9 patch
gp4wonder / DOSOAL - Sound Hardware Acceleration
Petrus - GPH Updater
btone & Ruboy - Def Panel
Duffer - LCD font editor
Zaz - CSM, TSM, Slimtex... and the rest of Zaz Tools
Rene Smit - GPxPatch
Madman271 - GP4Tweaker
Lo2K - GP4 Builder
KerleyF1 - general help, support and testing
Installation Notes
Zaz Tools & GpxPatch
As with all my mods, you will need Zaz Tools and GpxPatch installed. You will also need to install CSM Process (CSM Add-on) for this mod to work too.
It's been a little while since I have posted on my blog. Inactivity on the blog does not mean that I am not busy working on projects, but mods takes time and dedication and sometimes real life has to take precedence.
You may have noticed, this site has been going through a bit of a rebrand, hopefully to make things easier to see and find. This is not least because there's close to 100GB of downloads now available on this blog.
However, that has not stopped the community from being busy and sharing their works.
There's been a flurry of activity on the 2025 cars, and Excalibur and Isaint have been doing a great job in bringing the entire grid to Grand Prix 4.
This is one is from the archives, thanks Ross Hunter for sharing it with me back in the day, and Quickslick for requesting this (or one very similar to this).
