OK guys ! after 14 hours worth of work,,,, heres something to show your kids. Took 100s of screenshots with the emu , and aligned them manually by eye in a painting program. Seriously, What a pain in the ass. :P Its not quite finished. There seems to be some blank spots on the map, since sonic cant see the areas. I've already started dividing tiles into 32 x 32 so that the missing areas can be filled. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the map rip anytime soon. Have lots of other things to deal with for the next few days. TGA and Png inside! DOWNLOAD NOW! Enjoy !
Hey man ! , how were you able to extract the graphic files from the bin. ( this is where I get stuck) Also what format are they in. I may have a few saturn texture converters laying around somewhere that may be of use.
Andrew, I did something similar long ago in Gens with Panic Puppet zone. It may need to be tweaked to align with the tiles, though. Use it as you wish. Sorry for the shitty download link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/j3nuho The other thing I wanted to mention is someone created a 32x32 tile viewer for the Genesis version of 3D Blast a while back. I can't remember who the author was, but if hes reading this I would encourage him to please re-post it. I still have the software, but I'm not going to share it without more info as I completely forgot who created it/where it came from.
Ahh, I see. >__< maybe the PC version files are the same as the Saturn ? Hey,similar question to the above, do you have any tools for extracting assets from Saturn games( from the small bin files found within many sat games) ? as I really need something like that, not just for this game but for a few others. Anyways A friend of mine, DaGuAr has introduced me to a program that takes video and paints using that video to do overlays automatically with pixel matching. I ran threw act 1 again while using Fraps in less than 10 minutes. The program than took the video and generated the map in about 4 minutes automatically, My mind is serously blown ! oh yeah and I double checked the new map that was automatically generated with the one I put together by hand and its a 100% pixel perfect match! ( checked via photoshop layers) there are no artifacts and or color distortions anywhere from what I can see, This really beat doing it manually by hand in 14 hours... I'll post more on this later, Anyone know how to hack in an invincibility mode for 3D blast sat or PC?
All 3 Acts from Green Grove Zone are done. These are crisp, clean 2D Sega Saturn Graphics at there finest. Make sure to enjoy them at the 1 to 1 pixel aspect ratio as god had intended. TGA and PNG inside http://www.mediafire.com/?u6wvtbsd37v6np4 Jpeg Sample image.
That's just, like, your opinion man. The game gets way too short when you take out the Flickies; the level design does not work as a single-route start-to-end sort of game. As the maps reveal the levels are pretty goddamn sparse, and if you have even a basic idea of where to go you can cut off more than half the map of some levels. Most of the game is an absolute joke, especially because it means there's almost no reason to put yourself in harms way to accomplish anything, as, especially in the later levels, obstacles are mostly only around to mess up you collecting flickies and defeating enemies, rather than trying to outright kill you; in Spring Stadium the only reason you're likely to get hit more than once in a specific area is because you're dodging spikes coming out of the ground trying to collect your lost flickies; if you just run straight through the level you can just regrab one ring and screw the birds.
Most likely. I own both versions, so I did a hex compare of \PCSONIC\CDDATA\LEV4\GFX4C.BIN from the PC version and \LEV4\GFX4C.BIN from the Saturn version, and they were 100% identical. If you need me to check any more files I can do that too, of course.
Quick question for anybody working with the Saturn version. How large is the ISO file? I'm trying to download a copy to mess with and see if I can help, but I've been having trouble getting the download to work, so I'm running one from two different sites at the same time to see if I can at least get one to finish. However, one is packed in a .zip folder and comes out to 571 MB, and the other is packed in a .rar folder and comes out as only 75.4 MB.
On the other hand, the .PC files have some minor differences. As far as I can tell, it loads both files, and checks for differences, which indicate where pointers are, so it can convert them to little endian and add the RAM offset that they get loaded at.
Hmm, level and sprite graphics are currently indecipherable... but are the collision or object layout files that way? You could get better in-game rips if you simply nuked all the objects and let Sonic walk everywhere I'd think. By the way, what is this recorder mapper program?
You can get Screenshot Autostitcher here, Many thinks to DaGuAr for sharing the information on this amazing little program. http://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=516. By the way, heres my workflow. Run around the levels aimlessly jumping all over the place while using FRAPS to record. ( man this really beats doing the same thing and taking screenshots every few inches) (it helps to jump a lot when near back walls) and wiggle the stick around when near low walls to get as much offscreen area as possible. Make sure you have all options dissabled in your emulator that cause screen stretching or distortions of any sort. also Fraps must be set to a 1 to 1 pixel aspect ratio when recording. I'm using SSF emu , so the resolution its double the pixel size, Its easyet to let the screen cap program take in the raw AVI file than resize later in photoshop after the map is stitched. to resize in photoshop make sure you use Nearest neighbor ( preserve hard edges) selected in the ( edit than image size drop down menu) you can disable the sprites threw emulator options. this gives you the clean map, also there are 2 graphic layers that could also be disabled 1 at a time showing the floor or just the plants and background elements. I left both on to get a more full map. although it would be good to make 2 run thews with the divided graphics. Another tip in case you get the black bar in the bottom of the video. you can crop the video threw the stitcher program. ( I use a height of 448 instead of the default 470 something. Watching the autostitch in action, I find it to be breath taking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGR5PbvFY10&feature=relmfu And yes I wish there were some kind of debug mode in 3D blast allowing us to just run up and down the level in rows not needing to worry about enemies and such.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrSk7Y_5pk8 Now if someone could do this to the Saturnn version Via savestats. lol
I was looking at the PC .EXE I extracted with 7ZIP via TiledGDD, and I found some interesting things in /CDDATA/LEV*/ It appears that the .BIN and .PC files are mostly the same, except a few bytes' difference here and there. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, so I just looked at the .BINs, specifically for levels 1A and 1C. Also note that all graphics were viewed in linear 8bpp unless otherwise stated, and the palette is most likely wrong. The GFX*.BIN files appear to just be enemies, explosions, monitors, and anything that reacts to the player. Interestingly, however, is a 16-bpp isometric minimap toward the end of the file. What this is for I really don't know, but it's quite cool. The MAP*.BIN files consist of a top-down minimap (the one used in the pause screen, infact), 8x8 terrain tiles, and the pause screen itself. There's probably the actual map data in there too, but I couldn't give you a definite yes or no on that one. Lastly, the OVL*.BIN is just background scenery like trees, flowers, etc. Also, to Master Emerald, what did you do to make that? It looks interesting.
Sorry for bumping this, but is there any new ways of extracting the assets now? It seems weird that this game has been out for 21 years and we still don't even have Sonic's general sprites.
I believe that the Genesis version is perfectly capable of having sprites ripped (I've seen the final fight and first Robotnik boss ripped, as well as Sonic's general sprites) I just don't think anyone can be bothered since not many people remember/care about this game. IMO once you get past the rather tedious controls and get the hang of it, it becomes a solid game. Considering it's a Saturn to Mega Drive port they did a pretty good job.
