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Is anyone still interested in Heroes?

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by igorseabra4, Mar 5, 2016.

  1. igorseabra4

    igorseabra4

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    In case the answer to the question in the topic title is yes, I have contributed to the wiki by adding a page with a description of what I know about the Sonic Heroes object placement file format:

    http://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG:Sonic_Heroes/Object_Editing

    Yeah, I'm the same guy who posted what I initially had of that on this forum around 6 years ago. I've been busy with some other stuff since then, but decided to show up :v
    From what I've seen around the internet, at least one person has released a mod with object layout edits on Heroes, so someone has carried that on. Maybe if some anyone else is interested, we can continue work on that. Otherwise I guess it wouldn't have much point.
     
  2. Atendega

    Atendega

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    Even if no one was interested (which I assure you isn't the case), excellent work! This place could always use more good documentation. I'm sure if when someone gets proper geometry importing working, this will be very useful!
     
  3. total

    total

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    I honestly wouldn't say there was any real interest to begin with.

    well, if that matters, I do remember your thread:
    https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=18728&st=0&p=386776&#entry386776

    and I tried to figure this out too:
    [​IMG]
    but never really came up with anything.


    I'm mostly interested in Shadow, but maybe I'll take a look at Heroes again.
    (having ONERedir (similar to CPKRedir) would definitely help to arouse my interest again)

    No guarantees though, and you should not expect any help here (I guess Polygon Jim was the last person who gave a damn about the game).
     
  4. Turbohog

    Turbohog

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    My main interest in heroes would be porting the levels to Adventure 1 or 2 or some other engine. I thought the levels in Heroes were designed pretty well...it's just that the engine the game was running off of wasn't the best.
     
  5. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    I still have a lot of interest in Heroes hacking, I just haven't had the time and motivation to do much myself. Level design is the major point of interest for me, so this is great to see.
     
  6. Herm the Germ

    Herm the Germ

    Hmm, not bad. Well done, doctor! Member
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    MIDI-to-SMPS-conversions, mostly. Takin' requests, too.
    So you hope the levels of a game that was never even designed around this engine would work better? :psyduck:/>

    Man, I wish I had kept better notes on what I did with the TXD-files to get them to work properly and with Mipmaps. I know it had something to do with using TXD Workshop, ViceTXD and G-TXD, as almost all of them seemed to generate different kinds of flags that the Heroes Engine was using, but not all at once; you had to, like, go in order. :psyduck:/>²
     
  7. igorseabra4

    igorseabra4

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    TXD Workshop can import textures into Heroes with mipmaps, but I think it can only work with some of the files and textures. I don't have it here right now but I remember you had to change the game format so it wouldn't corrupt the files.

    This thread has a tutorial on exporting the level geometry. I managed to do it a couple of times, but I was too lazy to export an entire level as they're split into a lot of files.

    I'm pretty sure someone has managed to import models into Heroes already, though the collision format has probably never been looked into.

    Shadow most likely uses the same file formats as Heroes. I've never taken a look at them though, all I have is the PS2 iso.

    About the object layout format, I'm gonna try and get somewhere with the misc. settings, maybe see if there is any debug info left about them or the object lists
     
  8. total

    total

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    I'll say it again: HeroesPC txds are just DDSes with slightly different headers. Solving that mipmaps issue takes just as much as setting one byte in a header. I know what I'm talking about, I made a working converter years ago (which was not publicly released, so of course it is lost).
    So please stop with all that gta tools related bullshit already.

    I figured out about 40% of it. I know how to extract collision meshes, but that's it. The rest is somehow related to surface properties ("solid", "visible" etc) and probably grinding paths.

    not at all. Some of them are very similar, but they are not compatible between each other.
     
  9. total

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    ----
    by the way:


    getting it done is easier than you think. The most annoying part is skinning info.
    Personally, I never did a complete model replacement, but there is nothing special about Heroes DFFs (I.e. there are no custom chunks), . Even RW SDK viewers are able to load them with animations.
    [​IMG]

    In other words: all the necessary info (and tools) was there all these years, it's just that nobody really gives a shit.
     
  10. I'm still interested in this. It would be awesome to give this game some attention. We've seen how creative our fanbase is with SADX/Generations/Lost World mods, I'm sure we'd see some awesome stuff for Heroes if the ball got rolling.
     
  11. Herm the Germ

    Herm the Germ

    Hmm, not bad. Well done, doctor! Member
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    MIDI-to-SMPS-conversions, mostly. Takin' requests, too.
    I wasn't talking about importing but exporting. :v Most TXD-tools I am familiar with export either with no Mipmaps or in a way that Heroes does not recognize unless you're "total" and fiddling with the header. :v
     
  12. igorseabra4

    igorseabra4

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    So I did some work on the object lists.

    [​IMG]
    They're all in the wiki. I still need to do some of the lists though.

    On the topic of texture editing, most if not all of the game's TXDs can be opened in ViceTXD. It can edit and save them but it only changes the first texture and doesn't touch the mipmaps, which produces textures that only appear when you get close to them. But from there, you can export all the images as BMPs and rebuild the archive using TXDBuilder. TXDs built from there can be loaded in TXD Workshop, can be edited and work ingame, as long as you remember to set the format to GTA VC. It still gets rid of all mipmaps though.

    [​IMG]

    Yeah, that is Sweet Mountain and I suck with textures.
     
  13. igorseabra4

    igorseabra4

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    So apparently multiplayer Seaside Hill originally covered the entire level.

    [​IMG]

    The objects are unique (not a copy of any team's level) and are still there, you just can't get to them. I managed this by loading the single player Seaside Hill level geometry and collision but keeping the object layouts in 2P Mode.

    EDIT: 2P Grand Metropolis also has more stuff, but it's clearly unfinished and unplayable (it has a random goal ring in the middle of the path). Rail Canyon doesn't even need a model replace, it has everything past the goal already. Bingo Highway, Frog Forest and Egg Fleet don't seem to have anything.

    Also, by replacing geometry I tried exploring the 2P bobsled race courses in single player. They load but they don't have any collision models, as I guess collision in the bobsled is handled by different flags.
     
  14. igorseabra4

    igorseabra4

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    Third post in a row because it deserves it

    [​IMG]

    Dude, this made me so happy. All we need now is proper model and collision importing and we can start making some levels for this thing!