IgaCells.tsc - widberg/fmtk GitHub Wiki

The GameTsc/Story/IgaCells.tsc file contains a series of AddIGACell commands. Each command has a unique index starting at 1 and incrementing for each command as the first argument. The second argument is a string containing the path to a billboard texture in the USA1.DPC BigFile.

The IGA in the file and command name likely means "In-Game Advertisement." There is some evidence that the billboards were initially intended to display advertisements for real-world brands instead of the made-up ones seen in the game. A Polish presentation about integrating advertisements into games references FUEL under the name ATV Outlawed. There is also a command named StartIGA, but it is a stub and does nothing.

The existence of this system likely comes from the game's potential involvement with Acclaim. Acclaim Games was known for using in-game advertising. The project osfarrapos/spree/project2 resembles a source code leak from a game by the name of 9Dragons online. The original 9Dragons MMORPG was published by Acclaim Games. 9Dragons online contains a macro called _ACCLAIM_IGAADSYSTEM, the name indicates that the direction to add IGA to the game came from Acclaim. Due to the similarities between FUEL's IGA and that of 9Dragons online and the further evidence of Acclaim's involvement due to the ATV Outlawed name, I believe the IGA remnants are from demands Acclaim made while they were the prospective publisher.

P.S. I stumbled across this connective via 9Dragons while investigating binkw32.dll. 9Dragons online uses the version of Bink directly before the one used by FUEL. They added the macro checks to the Bink header since they use Bink for playing the IGAs which is what initially jumped out at me.