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Strobe (STRB) Flash Animation

Applies to: >=GT4 · Extension: .strb · Endian: Little

Strobe Files are Flash Player (yes..) animations that was introduced in GT4. In GT4, they are primarily used for car dealership background animations, championship menu background fade-in/out animations. In GT5 and above, they are used for car interior dashboards (including 7!).

Strobe files are executed by a custom flash runtime (with the strobe namespace internally) and supports most of the original flash features (albeit with a subset of the scripting functions). It follows most of the general SWF Specification (archived) in terms of functionality, though the file layout itself is reshaped to be more inline with Polyphony Digital's general format standards. Regular image references are TextureSets for example.

Strobe files were likely authored using ActionScript 2.0 with Flash MX 2004 during GT4's development (and Macromedia Flash 8/Adobe Flash >=CS3/ Adobe Animate in newer games). Hints in GT4's GpbData contain file paths with their original .swf extension. This is enough information to speculate that .swf's were directly converted to .strb with a post-processing tool.

Links for the aforementioned tools can be accessed here. Adobe takes extensive measures to take down installers hosted on archive.org, despite being total abandonware (and without serials even).

010 Editor Templates

Warning

Macromedia Flash 8 and earlier do not play very well with (at least) Windows 11. Even Adobe Flash CS3 may glitch slightly with multiple monitors.

If you target GT4, make sure to use software that can output to period accurate Adobe Flash 7 (~2003) and ActionScript 2.0.

Templates

While no direct .swf to .strb converter exists yet, here is a list of templates that aims to replicate some of the original flash project files.

  • gt4_gtmode_american.fla (SWF, use with Ruffle or flash emulator) - Replicates american.swf from GT4's gtmode/US/RaceAmerican.gpb, which transitions between two backgrounds multiple times across 10 seconds. Requires Adobe Flash Professional CS3.