[Rainbow Dash]

Oh my god I can't wait to play Rooftop Run, Skyscraper Scamper, and Savannah Citadel in Generations, and on PC.. New drift in those levels.. <3

I don't care how long it takes man, take your time, it's going to be amazing when it's done (Hell, it's already amazing xD)

[bolt7]

Replace missions with MORE levels?! Yes, Do that I very much want that. But after your done with your IRL stuff. Good luck with the studying and we will be here when you get back. =)

This post has been edited by bolt7: 01 February 2012 - 10:43 PM

[Dark Sonic]

With Eggmanland would it be possible to cut out the werehog parts of the level? Like change the level geometry so that it goes straight from Sonic's 1st section to Sonic's 2nd section? Or would that screw with the lighting.

[Dario FF]

Just wanted to clarify that the reason some of the levels might be looking a bit empty is because we're missing Instancing as well. Last time I tried to import it over it just crashed on me, but I think that's related that they may be using HKX to animate themselves. Instancing handles stuff like little patches of grass here and there, and it's used a lot on most of the game. I don't think recreating animations for them should be really hard though.

I'd also like to take a stab later at figuring out how to recreate the breakable objects. The models are there, so I might just need to look over some Generations' ones(hint, the city escape breakable box) to see how it's done.

Also, if there are any Havok specialists out there, I'd like to know if there's any way to apply that custom "properties" tag that rigid bodies have in 3ds max using their content tools and plugins. I think that's what they mostly use for setting stuff like the walkable walls in speed highway, or the water at Seaside Hill, or even the basic floor properties like grass or stone so it plays the footstep sound and Sonic also aligns himself properly to the ground(which is mostly the reason he seems a little slow at Windmill Isle Act 2, because he's walking uphill most of the time ). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, since it might just be custom materials.

Seriously, there's nothing over-technical in this process to hide here. Anyone with a good 3D editor and the Havok tools for PC can make their own collision, it's just that Zoney is the only one with an early test of the Stage geometry exporter that Link created. This lets us create the collision for floors and stuff in the most accurate way as possible... but some stuff has to be recreated with simple collisions and lots of invisible walls.

As another question, I recall seeing someone here looking into creating and adding custom objects of our own, even if it's just IDs. Was it Portalboat? Did you get any information on that?

This post has been edited by Dario FF: 02 February 2012 - 08:14 AM

[Twilightzoney]

Dario FF, on 02 February 2012 - 08:13 AM, said:

Just wanted to clarify that the reason some of the levels might be looking a bit empty is because we're missing Instancing as well. Last time I tried to import it over it just crashed on me, but I think that's related that they may be using HKX to animate themselves. Instancing handles stuff like little patches of grass here and there, and it's used a lot on most of the game. I don't think recreating animations for them should be really hard though.

I'd also like to take a stab later at figuring out how to recreate the breakable objects. The models are there, so I might just need to look over some Generations' ones(hint, the city escape breakable box) to see how it's done.

Also, if there are any Havok specialists out there, I'd like to know if there's any way to apply that custom "properties" tag that rigid bodies have in 3ds max using their content tools and plugins. I think that's what they mostly use for setting stuff like the walkable walls in speed highway, or the water at Seaside Hill, or even the basic floor properties like grass or stone so it plays the footstep sound and Sonic also aligns himself properly to the ground(which is mostly the reason he seems a little slow at Windmill Isle Act 2, because he's walking uphill most of the time ). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, since it might just be custom materials.

Seriously, there's nothing over-technical in this process to hide here. Anyone with a good 3D editor and the Havok tools for PC can make their own collision, it's just that Zoney is the only one with an early test of the Stage geometry exporter that Link created. This lets us create the collision for floors and stuff in the most accurate way as possible... but some stuff has to be recreated with simple collisions and lots of invisible walls.

As another question, I recall seeing someone here looking into creating and adding custom objects of our own, even if it's just IDs. Was it Portalboat? Did you get any information on that?

In the setdata stuff, why did you blank the whole file? When it talks about all the objects and terrain with having it cast shadows? Sorry that this isn't what your talking about, I just ran across this last night.

[Falk]

BlazeHedgehog, on 01 February 2012 - 02:07 PM, said:

Generating real GI data from scratch is going to be the hard part. That typically requires networked render farms because it's so process intensive, and can take days. For guys like us, generating the kind of GI data used by Unleashed and Generations would probably take weeks, if not months.

Depends how you look at it; Generations/Unleashed quality, yeah, render farms. Considering Colors was on a Wii though, I don't think people's standards aren't going to be as picky (I.e. comparing the current Apotos lightmaps to Unleashed footage and going "omfg it's not contrasty/yellow enough waaah). Considering we actually do know the lightmap formatting that Generations PC expects, nothing is preventing some prodigy from coming up with a quick and dirty lighting algorithm that simply e.g. goes by angle and casts simple shadows - anything that looks better than r_fullbright 1 would make the levels playable.

I'm not saying it's easy or very quickly doable; I'm just putting it in perspective. Would it be awesome to have Pixar-quality visuals on custom levels? Hell yeah. Is it absolutely necessary? Not really.

edit: And obviously this is in the case of whatever lighting methodology Colors/Wii uses not being compatible/convertable to the Generations format, I.e. re-generating it from scratch the way Blitzsonic does in real time for example.

This post has been edited by Falk: 02 February 2012 - 10:08 AM

[Portalboat]

Dario FF, on 02 February 2012 - 08:13 AM, said:

As another question, I recall seeing someone here looking into creating and adding custom objects of our own, even if it's just IDs. Was it Portalboat? Did you get any information on that?

I was mostly looking into the stage gates. The only thing I found out was that it doesn't have any kind of value to set the model, so it's probably determined by the may-or-may-not-be hardcoded stageID.

On the other hand, I found out that the object names - the things that you use in the stage .xmls - are NOT hardcoded, it's set in ObjectDefine.xml in #SystemCommon.ar.00 in the BB package. But it's kinda redundant, because an object definition file just consists of this:

<Object>
  <ID>DashPanel</ID>
  <ObjName>ジェネリックダッシュパネル</ObjName>
  <DataPath>object/common/DashPanel</DataPath>
</Object>

So if we need to add/edit objects, we should figure out where that data path is referencing.

@Falk: My opinion on the whole lighting thing is that maybe we can use the simple Wii system of lighting for when custom levels are first made, and if they're good enough we can submit them to be rendered through that folding@retro system.

This post has been edited by Portalboat: 02 February 2012 - 10:15 AM

[Dario FF]

I might be wrong but last time I tried to disable a shadow map in a Generations' stage, well, shadows were disabled but the terrain pretty much looked the same. It seems that different than Unleashed, they baked their shadows on the global illumination as well...

I can't say this is the case though, since I just tried disabling a flag on an XML. But still though, the shadows are kinda there, just gotta enable the terrain in SOME way to receive them. Look for example at this:


While the shadow might not be projecting on the side of the platform, doesn't it look pretty much the same as on the Unleashed shot? (and pretty much in the same direction)

EDIT: I think it's also possible to enable shadows for rings, they have a flag as well.

This post has been edited by Dario FF: 02 February 2012 - 10:42 AM

[Master Emerald]

Hey guys, awesome work so far. The vids/pics are looking very enjoyable even unfinished! Congratulations, srsly!

[Eduardo Knuckles]

Since Megaupload isn't working anymore, from where could I get the posted stuff now?

[BlazeHedgehog]

Something that's not a priority, but I have to wonder: Is it possible to restore Sonic's drift animation from Unleashed? I really don't like the weird spindash thing they have him do in Generations.

[Lobotomy]

I've been wondering something similar. How possible is it to restore the stomp as it was in unleashed? I am not a fan of the dead stop stomp.

[Twilightzoney]

Found out that, I have to fix some stuff with the level objects or else it crashes.

Someone whos good at disassembling things should try to do that to the exe so it wouldn't have to always load from the .cpk files instead just load the files from a folder.

Also I've only figured how to disable shadows for objects and enemies so far.

This post has been edited by Twilightzoney: 03 February 2012 - 01:00 PM

[Arique]

Eduardo Knuckles, on 02 February 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

Since Megaupload isn't working anymore, from where could I get the posted stuff now?

Well, there's two choices of where it can be upload now:
1) Fileserve, since they allow downloading again.
2) My Dropbox Account, which I'm avoiding. I already reuploaded Ashram's upload of the Sonic Generations OST onto my account for Retro, so I really don't want to upload anymore giant files onto there at the moment.

Anyways... How's that Eggman hack going? Have they managed to get him running around Modern City Escape yet?

[Lanzer]

ArtFenix, The person whos getting the info from the russian hacker whos doing the character hacking, has an account here but he can't post because he is stuck in "pending" mode for over a year now. he says that his validation request was denied for some strange reason.

Hopefully an Admin or Mod can take another look into it but until then he is stuck posting over at SSMB.

This post has been edited by Lanzer: 03 February 2012 - 12:38 PM