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Sonic X-treme Textures and Defs

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Scarred Sun, Dec 6, 2009.

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  1. Tobibrocki

    Tobibrocki

    Member
    Jodel Jodel Jodel di hihuuuuuuuuuuuu...! *No Echo*

    So, lets bring this topic back to the front since Senn is going to release something soon.

    So, uhm, might aswell ask while I'm at it, ...any news about the project?
     
  2. Ben2k9

    Ben2k9

    We stand to Fight Oldbie
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    none at the mo
    I wonder if the Knuckles, Tails and Tiala sprites will ever be released?
     
  3. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    [​IMG]
    Hey guys,
    I'm desperately hoping someone has the bigger version of this texture, this was found in the Def and textures release,
    its only 64x64, but I know there is at least a 128 x 128 version of the texture out there somewhere,
     
  4. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    So, I'm trying to make a little engine that can at least view the levels (I know, it's been done already, but it's a learning experience) and let you run around in them (and possibly edit them). So I've got to the point of loading the level structure from the PCX files with only a few small glitches, at okay speeds.

    For a little look at my progress click on the picture below:
    [​IMG]
    (there's a comparison picture in the link if you can't tell what that is)

    However, I've gotten a little stuck on how the engine is meant assign the block types from the DEFs to the pixel colours in the PCXs (loading the data and textures for each block is easy enough, it really is just assigning that I'm stuck with). I've been stuck for about 2 weeks now and it's getting a bit annoying so I thought that I'd ask for help.

    PS Once I've gotten a viewer going, I'll probably put the source code up on Google Code or something, maybe get a small team up and running.
    PPS My first post. Hope this isn't considered bumping up an old thread, I figured making a new topic was alittle OTT for something this early on, especially for a new member.
     
  5. Mad Echidna

    Mad Echidna

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    Nice work, I'm glad to see that someone is still researching this stuff. It blows my mind continuousness that we had a HUGE release like this and so little has come of it.
     
  6. hxc

    hxc

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    Suprised me. I thought when I failed at leaking this anon there would be some real fanfare; this is the barebones of xtreme...
     
  7. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    Hey now this looks neat!
    You planing on making some kind of model exporter for that ?
    Now that would really Help us out on our project (AXSX PC level version)
    Right now were modeling everything by hand using screen grabs from SaniK's DEF Viewer.

    Our project thread.
    http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?sho...90&start=90
     
  8. Urban Flow

    Urban Flow

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    Excellent Find!!!! :)
     
  9. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    Heh, thanks. I might end up putting a video on youtube or something, I've been trying to get the attention of people who might've researched this, but it seems like those people may have stopped paying attention to this leak a while back, which seems completely insane to me. I mean, if the community had a proper open source viewer, I don't see a working engine being that far behind.

    I could probably make an exporter in the engines current state. The exported levels would probably look a bit silly at the moment though. Since, I don't yet have textures or block scaling being applied but I suppose I could see it being fairly useful for recreating the levels, being able to see the exact placement and everything.

    The levels were built in a really weird way, they're really just made out of a ton of cubes. So, the exported levels would be... odd, it would just be a bunch of cubes in one mesh file, because I've not done a realtime conversion to a single mesh or anything, which would be much more efficient. But yeah, I bet it wouldn't be too difficult. If I got the DEF stuff working, I'd probably be able to spit out fairly usable (looking) levels.

    I'll add "mesh exporting" to my current list of stuff I wanna try out.
     
  10. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    Hey yeah! thatd be great!
    think we could probably wait for block scales.
    I was planing on manually merging all the cubes into 1 mesh, and deleting polygonal faces that arnt visible for the players,
    than welding into a solid mesh without leaks or holes.
    Curently our levels don't consist of cubes anyways. built by merging Cube faces.
     
  11. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    Heh, surprisingly easy so far. Gotten the blocks exporting (the files are 25MB O_o), and Blender seems to be fine loading them.
    [​IMG]
    (It's the waterfall again btw)

    I'm probably going to release the program (and source) once I've dealt with my last 3 problems:

    1.) A few memory leaks (should be easy enough).
    2.) Crashes when trying to export block materials, which is why the picture is grey (not sure why that's happening).
    3.) I still don't have textures, exporting those would probably be really easy aswell. Unfortunately, I've not yet figured out how the block assignment works.

    And depending on how hard it seems:

    4.) Get animated textures working.
     
  12. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    Can't wait to dig into them there models ! Great progress!!
    Wondering what's the supported export format?

    Really don't mind the 25 MB Files, Probably going to shave alot of MB off as the models get optimized by hand.
    After the release, and When I get a chance,( sometime after my Redsands level gets further along)
    I'll repost the optimized models back here for use in fan games.
     
  13. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    At the moment, I'm saving as .x, just because DirectX has built in functions for doing that. Annoyingly, there isn't '.x' importer for 3DS Max, which is why I was using Blender (I believe Blender can save as most formats, so while an inconvenience, it's not too annoying), though there appears to be a program called 3DWin that can convert from '.x' to '.obj' but it looks a bit dodgy...

    Edit: Still trying to figure out block assignments. Anyone know anything about ACT files? There's a file called MAINPLT.ACT which seems to hold 256 different palette colors, maybe it has something to do with the assignment, or maybe it's just something left over from somebody editing a file in that directory. I dunno, I wouldn't even know how to load an ACT file in C++...
     
  14. Shadow Hog

    Shadow Hog

    "I'm a superdog!" Member
    My understanding of ACT files is that they're basically the number of palette entries as the first byte, followed by (that value * 3) bytes representing all the colors, one byte per R, G and B per color. At least, that's how I made an ACT generator in C# a few months ago - my memory's a bit fuzzy on whether that's specifically it, but it's something around that in format.
     
  15. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    Ah, that actually doesn't sound too difficult. Unfortunately, I got a bit bored of trying to figure this thing out and was a bit bad... I tried reverse engineering the viewer that's already out there. I still have no idea how that thing works but it doesn't seem to try to load any ACT files.

    PS Rendering stuff is cool.
     
  16. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    I'm not too far along with my viewer yet, but I figured a few people might be interested in the level export feature even at this point. In the future, I want this engine to be able to view everything in the levels, along with being able to run around the levels as sonic and once I've gotten a good viewer going, I don't see that being too hard.

    Current Bugs:
    1. Grey bar at the top of levels, this is caused by a problem in PCX file format loading, I'll get it fixed at some point...
    2. Level export doesn't support materials, not sure how to get that working, I thought I figured it out a few minutes ago... I was incorrect.
    3. Generally, not loading stuff yet... well, it loads the stuff, the engine just doesn't do anything with it. I'll really get on that this weekend.

    Video:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txYZMsP2Wks

    Download:
    http://cid-9cd27aa5d866d5fc.office.live.co...ngine%20r22.zip

    What to do if it doesn't work:
    I'm using the very very latest DirectX, so if the program isn't working, there's a fairly good chance that some part of your DX install is outdated. So, run the DX web installer:

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/deta...;displaylang=en

    Just so you know, DirectX updates every couple of months without updating the version number, so if in doubt run the updater.

    Edit: Oh, and I wrote this post for a different forum and pasted it here, so it'll probably read alittle weird.
    Edit 2: Download link updated. Fixed the release build issues, should definitely work on all computers now.
     
  17. So is it not far-fetched to say that you may be able to recreate X-treme in its whole?
     
  18. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    I mean, the gameplay wouldn't be exact, but I can look at the movement in old videos and try to use that as a basis. The rest though, I don't see why not.

    PS I've got 3 ongoing projects at the moment, so I'm putting as much time into this as possible, but I'm not gonna be working on it every day... I say 3 projects, I should be working on 3 projects (I just got added to the Dolphin Emu project and I should really do something for that so I don't get kicked out) but this and a networked game I'm doing with a friend has gotten me hooked.
     
  19. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    Sonic xtreme never was a whole complete game in the first place,
    besides the PC levels ( which are the levels that Uhyve is ripping)
    There were boss stages as well as other areas of the game which haven't been shown to the public in complete form, and are not included with SaniK's DEF viewer release.
    For the unreleased stuff,,,,all we have to go by are glimpses of what has been shown in Magazines and videos, ( which isn't much)
    We,ve recreated some of that from scratch, including textures and level geometry, while not perfect, they are pretty close.

    Way to go ! it's looking very good ! :specialed:
    Hey, I wouldn't worry to much about working on a Sonic Xtreme game engine, ( not to discourage or anything)
    But we've gotten quite a bit of one done already, including The Fisheye camera, level rotations, sonic's movement, and even part of a Level editor!
    Seems it would be a wast of time on your end, especially with the 3 projects you have going down already.

    However I think a combined effort with finishing up on your exporter, and using the models for our engine, we could get the fan game put out much faster. (I was modeling everything from scratch before)
    Besides worrying about textures, it seems block scales are off, some blocks are different scales, not all cubes,.
    for example ( tossing out random numbers here) some blocks may be 75% of the cube,while others 50% and 25%

    May be a good idea to contact SANiK for info on what block scales refer to what pixels,
    as well as what blocks should be ramps. and objects such a rings, enemies, ect
    he may have it documented somewhere.
     
  20. Uhyve

    Uhyve

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    Yeah, I'm definitely just working on getting level viewing/exporting going at the moment, I'm trying not to think about a game too much at this point. Plus, if it ever comes down to it, comparing what our two projects are aiming for, you've got a bit of a different endgame than me. I'm just going for interpreting the leaked levels, which are kinda broken, whereas you seem to be trying to recreate the Xtreme experience, which would probably be much cooler (which I'm fine with btw, best way to get stuff done on the Internet is through collaboration).

    But yeah, while I've not got the cube scaling in yet (which I'm betting makes the exporting kinda useless at the moment), I actually just had a huge facepalm/breakthrough moment. I was looking at the layout PCX files in photoshop (they use indexed colour instead of the normal RGB) and I just realised that the first colour in the index is the one that means that there is no block on that pixel (at the moment, my engine is just using a hacky way of figuring that out). But now, because of that tiny detail, I'm certain that the index is how blocks are assigned. I'm going to bed soon though so I probably won't have an update tonight, but still, finally some progress.

    PS Ibbod0 (on Senntient) pointed it out to me that the PCX files were indexed a while ago, but I tried using that knowledge and failed, then totally forgot about it.
     
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