Long Forgotten Sonic Heroes Tech

At this point I can semi-safely say that I got a bit too carried away with the mipmap stuff -- after trying edits to the common-objects-file, it's becoming more apparent that it isn't as relatively easy as I initially described. Disregarding the fact that G-TXD adds transparencies at seemingly random to a few files that neither need nor should have transparency (and it does so without an alpha-channel, to boot ), adding mipmaps to custom texture packs generally seems to make the game crash anyway. Why it didn't crash with the common effects textures is beyond me, though.

EDIT: Hm, upon closer inspection, there's three major differences between the Common effects and common objects archives :
The effects one is full of textures with alphas.
According to ViceTXD, in the effects one's header, Flags 2 and 8 are on for every texture -- whereas in the objects one, it only lists flag 2 (and flag 1 for files with alphas).
And third, for the Alpha check (true/false), it lists them all else false in the Effects archive, despite there being Alphas present -- additionally, a very long number is listed after it as opposed to a 0 or a 1. (the number is randomly 861615636 or 827611204 on the files -- I cannot decipher a pattern to the placement of those numbers) I have no explanation for that last change but somehow, it makes the game read the file perfectly fine. Gonna try to recreate my steps more accurately, I suppose…

'NOTHER EDIT:
FINALLY figured out where I went wrong. All this time I was assuming Vice City's was the format to go with, since just about every software I used identified the game's files as being Vice City Format. Saving the TXD with mipmaps in G-TXD in San Andreas format, however, that did the trick and apparently, that's what I musta been doin' with the effects textures as well. Finally this whole thing is making sense. Sorta.

The only problem that remains is that G-TXD (at least for me) imports some files with transparency without giving me an alpha-channel to work with -- as if there was a bunch of colors that are inherently transparent. That causes stuff to be transluscent of course, and when not intended, that looks shitty in games -- case in point.
I have the theory that saving this in Vice City Format first without mipmaps allows for such faulty textures to be replaced with their real counterparts in Vice TXD -- then, it should still be possible to create Mipmaps and make the whole thing an SA file usable by Heroes. Gonna test that tomorrow, 'tis 5 am and I wanna sleep.

 

I'd love to see a level editor for this. Also, if the DFF format is the same for GTA, would KAM Max Scripts work?

 

We've been there like a million times, it only partially works. If you use the tool RwAnalyse you can convert the Sonic Heroes models into GTA ones and import them, but it doesn't keep the bone names, nor does it rig them.

 

Sorry for derailing the point again, but maybe someone can explain this to me while we're sorta on the subject of Seaside Hill -- I made a shitty looking texture pack for trial and error purposes (after finally having figured out it was GIMP's primary setting for saving bitmaps that caused the transparency problems :v: Need to save them as 24 bit R8 G8 B8 ). Essentially, at seemingly random, the game makes some textures look like they're stretched from the first line/column on each edge -- and then those same textures look perfectly normal on the exact same wall at a different camera angle.

Example of textures lookin' fine.
In the same room, the floor looks stretched from the edges of the texture, as described.

 

I'mma gonna check this out. Uhh, does this editor view SA:DX levels? 'Cause that's the only PC Sonic game I have.

 

Far as I am aware, SA:DX doesn't run on any version of the Renderware engine, so, no.

 

No, you can use SADXLVL for that.

 

And I finally fuckin' did it, the mipmapping thing -- for real, this time. The textures themselves are shittily placed here, but mip mapping finally works. Not sure if any interest ever was there on here, but I'll write up a guide on it tomorrow.

 

Ah, thanks.

 

This is probably a shitpost, but I have to wonder: If porting Sonic Heroes levels to SA:DX is possible, could you do the opposite?

 

Short answer should be that, considering the SDK has been released onto the data highways and allows to create new BSPs with it's plugins in THEORY at least, it should be possible. Not sure what the status is on them there collision maps, however. Plus, Heroes is extremely sensitive to changes it appears.

 

Have you tried doing it without the SDK? I originally tried to take the reverse engineering approach when I started doing the first widescreen codes for Dreamcast games, and found it was actually quicker to follow the brute-force approach.

There are a few different things you can search for with the brute force method, the easiest to start with is just search memory for all instances of floating point 1.0. Then try updating maybe 20 of those at a time to something like 0.75 until you see the resolution get crushed or the camera zoom out. At that point, you can narrow it down to the address that messed it up and look nearby for the appropriate values you want to change in the same struct. (On Dreamcast, a lot of games used 320.0 internally which became a useful value to search for as well, but I doubt that would be the case on Gamecube.)

 

How much proof do you have that Shadow uses Renderware? I only ask because this came up on my... Twitter? Tumblr? Something social-media-y a few months ago

My memory on the matter is that Sonic Team at the time claimed Shadow was an all-new engine, which matches with the fact that Sonic Heroes includes the RenderWare logo on the back of the game box, but Shadow does not. I think RenderWare is mentioned in the Sonic Heroes credits, too, and is absent from Shadow's

 

I can't find the original file on my PC yet, but I found what I believe to be the contents of it. Might include some extra files, I believe I tried to use it to get models from Heroes for a friend and I'm not sure what is meant to be there and what I added, but it might help for now.

 

I recall back when I was messing with Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog files (man, has it been years already?) I found that the stage lighting data at least is somewhat compatible from Shadow to Heroes, so I do believe there's at least some correlation between the two engines. DFF files seem notably absent, though? Might be worth investigating the BSP format in Shadow, though, to see if there's any file-format-similarities.

 

Thanks, this should come in handy with the PC version of Heroes at least. Do post if you find the original though, and I'll mirror it as well.

 

I wonder if that's properly licensed or if they did that in secret :v:

 

I wonder if it would be possible to use this to "fix" the pc release. Or is the community waiting for a new port?