Questions about SHAR

I have been playing SHAR for a long time and there have been alot of questions I have always had about the vanilla game, so I thought I will share these questions with you guys and see what you guys think the answers to these questions might be.

1. Why is a seperate police car model used during Hit and Run.

Most people know that the Police Car you can purchase from gil and the AI police car during hit and run use 2 different models, but why? It is also worth notting that the AI police car also has it's own gil shop model and it's own phone booth image indecating it was purchasable at some point in developmemt

2. Why do traffic and vehicles have no damage texture.

All the cars that can be aquired threw the phone booth have a damage texture and even some cars that where made only for missions even have damage textures as well, but I always wondered why the traffic cars and the bonus vehicles never hand damage textures. It just seemed weird that some cars do have damage textures and others don't.

3. Why are there cars that only show up for missions.

Whil you can access these vehicles threw a cheat when you complete 100% of the game I have always wondered why you can't get these vehicles in a normal game without cheats. Some of them are even quality enough that you should have been able to buy them from gil. (examples of these cars are Cell Phone Car, Bonestorm truck, milk truck, black ferrini just to name a few.)

4. Why are some cars not even seen in the normal game.

Cars like the Cube Van, Ice Cream truck, Station Wagon and SedanA never show up in the normal game even though they are all complete vehicles and all have a working script, and they aren't even unused because on rare occasions they do show up in the Bonus Races, but does anyone know what theses cars purpose was at one point and why they are still there.

1. Why is a seperate police car model used during Hit and Run.
The one you can get in game is a much better version, they didn't want multiple of this version driving around when you had a hit and run to reduce on console memory usage.

2. Why do traffic and vehicles have no damage texture.
What if I told you that all traffic vehicles you see in one level, is the same traffic vehicle you'll see in another part of the level? Mind blowing right? The game teleports the vehicles around, keeping them in memory. If you destroy a traffic vehicle, once you drive away from the wreckage (sometimes before that actually), they'll respawn that car and position them somewhere. They can also change the colours of the vehicles. Damage textures for traffic vehicles don't exist because of them moving them around and because it wasn't really necessary. Someone could probably explain more information, but I really don't know. Bonus cars do have damaged textures, not sure what you meant.
You also have to remember that some cars not having damage textures wasn't necessary and added to both memory usage and time spent on this game. This game was made in about a year, keep that in mind.

3. Why are there cars that only show up for missions.
Because there's no reason to give the player every single vehicle. I don't fully understand why this is a problem either.

4. Why are some cars not even seen in the normal game.
They were unused for whatever reason. Not a big deal.

Thanks for the reply. By Bonus car I was ment to say secret cars. My mistake.

3. Why are there cars that only show up for missions?

Pretty much what Jake said. A couple of the cars you mentioned from a player's perspective are kind of pointless (the Bonestorm Truck is basically the Duff Truck, already sold in Level 1, except even worse). However, I do feel as if there were some really cool cars that could've been used outside of missions. The Black Ferrini being left out was kind of odd since stat wise it's alright, and the game already gives you even other alien-related car to control. I was also fascinated with the Cell Phone Car when I was younger, possibly due to me liking the color of the car. It was a shame I couldn't drive it and when I finally did figure out how to drive it, the car makes a really obnoxious ringing sound...

There were also some kind of questionable car choices here and there. Why exactly does Gil sell Wiggum's car, and the only Level Wiggum actually drives it in is Level 1? Why is the Electaurus not Lisa's default car, when it was her car in Road Rage and Lisa ends up hating the Malibu Stacey brand in the same episode it's introduced? From a character perspective, the Malibu Stacey as Lisa's default car really makes no sense.

On a similar note, there's a lot of signs that point to Grampa's Rocket Jeep being a car you could keep and use outside of L7M7 at one point. The rewards.mfk actually has stats defined for it. Right at the very bottom:


4. Why are some cars not even seen in the normal game?

Pretty much what Jake said, we sadly don't know what the heck Radical planned for these cars. Most of the cars you mention I feel were probably just meant to be traffic cars and not much else, but the Cube Van is an interesting oddity. I always theorized it was perhaps meant for Duff For Me, Duff For You (L6M4). At first I shrugged the graffiti of Kang and Kodos off as the artist getting bored, but then I realized Kang and Kodos end up using a car with a very similar design later on in the game:


I feel like at one point the idea at this point in the plot was that the aliens are just camping out in the Duff Brewery and hiding lasers in these generic trucks, but Professor Frink's dialog was re-worded so his the lasers were being hidden inside the Duff Trucks, rendering this unused. That's just wild speculation though and there isn't much that points towards that.

There something that just came to my attention, if they made a second lower quality police car for hit and run why didn't they do the same for level 7 with the hearse?

Because they didn't and what Jake said above isn't exactly accurate, as far as I can tell from looking at them cPolice (the Hit & Run car) is seemingly a slightly older version of wiggu_v (Wiggum's car). It's not really less detailed in any notable way.

I personally think the reason the cPolice is used in hit and run instead of Wiggums Police car is because of memory, but also because of the fact that wiggum may or may not appear in the vehicle depending on the level and it appears to be wiggums unique vehicle, like how the Lil Bandit is for snake and the hovercar is for Frink, and the cPolice is alot more generic and easier to load in multiple times

cPolice has a driver modeled into the car as a workaround (and maybe memory reasons) where they couldn't have an actual driver in the car as they'd jump out after the first time that instance of the vehicle is reused (Police Cars are reused like traffic, and this is also why traffic has low poly drivers modeled into the car).

This is most likely why it's a separate vehicle, it also lacks an antenna for some weird reason but my guess is it's just an older version of the car they never bothered updating (as I said above).