FUEL (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows)

To do: Debug menus, commands, and key combinations. Unused things in Bigfiles (DPC files), there's a treasure trove of stuff. Document Preview build Apr 1, 2009

FUEL is a 2009 open-world racing game set in a postapocalyptic United States on a procedurally-generated map about the size of Connecticut. Drive anywhere you want with no loading screens, as long as you don't wreck or reset your vehicle.

Indian Missions#

The GameTsc/Story/indianMissions.tsc file contains 2676 cut missions. A BSource command to execute this script is commented out in the GameTsc/Story/LoadMissionsTsc.tsc file, uncommenting this line will load the cut missions. Since these missions have not been added to any hubs, they will not appear on the map, GPS, or hub menu. Additionally, they will behave like edited races because a hub does not own them. They can only be found by encountering the start gate in freeride, this should be easily visible since none of these missions use the EMD_HideStartEnd command.

There is a small chance that trying to enter one of these races will crash the game. Most do not set which vehicles the AIs should use with the EMD_SetFilterIA command. When the AI vehicles are not manually set, the game will randomly choose from the list of all vehicles. Unfortunately, 2 test vehicles crash the game when loaded. If one of these vehicles is chosen randomly, the game will crash when the race starts. Therefore, the preconditions for one of these missions to crash the game are that (1) no AIs are manually set with EMD_SetFilterIA, (2) there is at least 1 AI set with EMD_SetNbIA, (3) and one of the crashing test vehicles are chosen at random.

Hidden Missions#

In addition to the Indian Missions, 3 "hidden" missions do not belong to a hub and must be found in freeride. Unlike the Indian Missions, no files need to be edited to access these, they are uncommented and in the same file as the normal career races, GameTsc\Story\miss_official.tsc. Like the Indian Missions, these behave like edited races.

CR42-Chec-BJ#

Located in the Firemoor Fields region. Start gate at (47186.960938, 593.490601, 28920.480469). EMD_HideStartEnd is used, so the gates are invisible. The CR42-Chec-* mission that is actually used in the game is CR42-Chec-CT, the "SUNTOWER SPEEDWAY" career race in Firemoor Fields.

CR_Tutotest1#

Located in the Stargazers' Heights region. Start gate at (-15805.786133, 2417.266113, 58477.617188). EMD_HideStartEnd is used, so the gates are invisible.

CR_Tutotest2#

Located in the Redrock Bluffs region. Start gate at (50511.191406, 1098.989746, 49937.539063). EMD_HideStartEnd is not used, so the gates are visible. The end gate for this mission is located next to the start gate for the "ROAD RAGE" career race in Redrock Bluffs.

Unused Assets#

USA1#

Old Logo#

These unused textures feature an alternative logo for the game. The one on the right has the domain WWW.FUEL.COM, a domain that neither Codemasters nor Asobo has ever owned. The game's actual domain was www.fuel-game.com as mentioned on the SecuROM support page for FUEL.² This used to redirect to the game page for FUEL on Codemasters' website³ but is no longer hosting a web server.

Old Text#

This unused texture has text and icons that may have appeared in menus and on banners during development.

Unused Text#

Trident Restriction#

The translation text files trtext/ttXX.pc contain an unused translation string id 5980 warning that the Trident vehicle is restricted to only one challenge. This message is similar to the string for the Damocles vehicle which is used. In the released game, the Trident vehicle may be used anywhere and is not restricted.

TT 5980 "The Trident vehicle is restricted to the Checkpoint challenge within the Dead Lady's Lake zone."

Leftover Banned Word List#

The game contains an unused list of banned words left over from previous games' profile name checks (see also: WALL-E). FUEL uses the player's Games for Windows - Live username and does not perform any checks.

Command-Line Options#

FUEL accepts 6 undocumented, case-sensitive command-line options:

• -E: Explicitly checked and has a global variable corresponding to it but the global variable is never used.
• -HS: High-resolution shadow map. When present, the game will use a 2048x2048 shadow map instead of a 1024x1024 one.
• -I: When present, several initialization steps are skipped and the game crashes during startup. Among others, the InstallGameFiles command is not registered when this option is present. The check for this option is followed by an empty function indicating that the functionality associated with it was stripped from the release build.
• -L: When present, logfile.txt is used as a log file. There are 2 places in WinConsole_Z that could potentially write to this file but they are unused. It is likely that all logging calls were stripped in release builds.
• -mce: Related to Windows XP Media Center Edition. When the game is launched with this command line option, the %SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe executable will be run upon exiting the game, or if Windows Virtual-Memory is not enabled, if the executable is present.
• -W: Launch in windowed mode with right-click menu. This option was revealed by Codemasters on their forum, with no mention of the Popup Menu.

References#