Hey fellas,

I'm doing some research regarding Interstate '76 and I was wondering about a couple of things...

1) Has anybody ever found a way to untether yourself from Taurus in the first mission? I know about the "getdown" cheat, but I'm actually looking for a way to bug out or glitch the game in order to do so and still complete the first mission as intended. Normally you're free to go only when a particular trigger is activated when you're on your way to the Wagon Wheel Diner and I'm looking for a different way to do this, preferably earlier in the level.

2) Similarly, is there a way to finish the race in the fourth mission prematurely and still complete the level? Obviously you can't just kill Patriot and his goons straight away. But, I know for a fact that if one of them kills himself (for example by flipping over accidentally or getting... a little help doing it), the game doesn't count that as you killing them, and the race proceeds as normal. Like with the first mission I'm looking for ways to bug out or glitch the race.

3) Is there a way to view the ingame TRIP levels in a viewer/editor to print out some maps for taking notes, seeing the terrain, various triggers, the line in the race in mission 4 that the game is looking for and/or other details?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Note: this post contains links to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which GOG's forum doesn't parse correctly (probably because they contain "http" twice). They need to be copied and pasted manually.

Regarding your third question, there are maps of all the TRIP levels available here (search for "I '76 Map Images"). According to that site, the maps were created by someone named Kalle Siukola and seem to have been produced by parsing the mission and terrain files associated with each level using a custom program.

For reference, someone going by the name "That Tony" posted several blog posts about Interstate '76's file formats in 2016 and 2017; his first post about the level files is archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211202225027/http://hackingonspace.blogspot.com/2016/08/even-more-i76-levels-and-heightmaps.html

Regarding your first and second questions, I don't know of any way to override the logic you mentioned, but each mission file contains a finite state machine section that defines the level's logic; theoretically, these state machines could be inspected to look for exploits, but doing so would be a fair amount of work.

It appears that the Open76 project contains at least a partial implementation of a parser that can read the state machine logic (see this issue; this file appears to contain the FSM parser), so the associated code might be worth looking at if you're curious! Also, "That Tony" wrote posts about the game's FSM processor; they're archived at
https://web.archive.org/web/20211202221216/http://hackingonspace.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-i76-fsm-processor-in-painful-detail.html
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20211202224108/http://hackingonspace.blogspot.com/2017/01/i76-rest-of-fsm-processor-op-codes.html

Hey, thanks for your reply!

What I'm interested in is finding way to break that logic in some manner not predicted by the developers and still be able to finish the levels. Kinda like with oversights in the "This ain't right / This really ain't right" triggers that let you get out of bounds of the levels if you're careful and know where to drive.

Yesterday as I way playi... I mean, uh, researching ;) ;) ;) I ended up having the best race in Mission 4 so far. I was doing the first lap when all of a sudden there's a explosion and Road Knight just adieus and dies somewhere. In the second lap I was behind Patriot and I saw him fly off the second hill that follows the dip after you navigate the first left turn of the track. This just left Gas Bandit and I had him lined up perfectly as I was finishing up the race. That's the fastest I ever completed the race. I really wish I was recording it, I must have ran it hundreds of times now and never got so lucky.

I bet that the developers thought of this and the accidental deaths of competitors don't fail the mission, as the physics can sometimes get wonky and work against you. I'm wondering what would happen if all three of them died by flipping over before the race ends. Is there a special fail message or does the mission end successfully as normal? I think it's probably the latter, but I'll try to find a way to make 'em all flip next time I play.