Sonic Adventure DX: Fixed Edition

I have actually effectively started over using the mod loader, but it's nearly done. I've re-implemented most of the fixes from the original release either the same way or better (that weren't rendered invalidated or incredibly questionable), and I've also fixed some other things on top of that. There's a few regressions (read: Super Sonic mod support, things I haven't bothered doing yet), but it's getting there slowly!

If you really wanted to though, you could make a placeholder mod and extract the current version there instead for the time being =P

 

Well, here it is! The first release of Sonic Adventure Deluxe Edition Director's Cut Fixed Edition Mod Edition™ Version 1.0.0! It's got a version number system too. It is as follows: Major.Minor.Hotfix - you can view the list of changes unique to this version here, as well as the old/re-implemented changes. Check the first post for downloads.

Make sure you have the LATEST version of the SADX Mod Loader/Manager. A bug has been fixed to enable me to use subdirectories to keep all of the sub-mods of SADX:FE tidy in one folder.

For those of you who don't want to sift through two giant badly formatted text files, there's a particular enhancement I'd like to talk about: rotatable item capsules.

This functionality is present in SA2 and not SA1, but there's something interesting about the capsules in SA1. Quite a few of them have (or had, in cases where they weren't necessary and I fixed them) proper rotation values so that they're flush with the surface they're on. Particular notable cases would be Red Mountain and Ice Cap. I have a hunch that Red Mountain is one of the oldest and least changed stages of them all, so the fact that it had nearly perfect values for all of those indicates to me that this may have been a feature ingame at one point in time, but it got removed later down the line. I could be wrong, of course; it could have never been in the game, but it's certainly surprising that the even bothered rotating them at all given that it doesn't display ingame.

There's also two more minor enhancements included with the mod. One of those would be texture filtering for the GUI in particular. I posted this in the SA1 general hax thread, but here's an imgur album with comparison screenshots. It makes the menus much nicer looking if you ask me. This might end up making its way into the mod loader though, so if you don't like SADX:FE for whatever reason (and I'd love to hear why if you don't!), you'd get your fancy texture filtering without it. The other enhancement is texture mipmapping. I wrote a tool using Puyo Tools to scan the GameCube GVMs for textures with mipmaps, and then apply those same mipmaps to the PC's PVMs. I'm pretty sure they're incomplete though, so it might get updated in the future.

Speaking of textures, I discovered that the PC version (whichever version you have) of SADX has the worst texture quality of all versions of Sonic Adventure, second only to the GameCube version. I don't know why Sonic Team compressed them so heavily, but they look really bad compared to the Dreamcast counterparts. SA2GC/PC also suffers from this problem. Here's an example:

From left to right: Dreamcast, GameCube, PC.

In this particular case, the difference between the GC and PC texture is very subtle, but it's much more visible in other cases. That is seriously horrible looking. I plan to eventually either A: re-convert the GC GVMs into PC PVMs at a higher fidelity than Sonic Team did themselves, or B: A + take Dreamcast textures where applicable as they're much higher quality, so look out for that.

 

Oops, updated first post but not this one :v:

Edit: I am pro at making new pages. Go back for interesting things.

 

Thanks!

Can't blame you for that. Porting the Dreamcast assets is something I've wanted to do for a while as well. Aside from time of course, there's only two things stopping, well, anyone from doing it: finding the rest of the mesh, since not all of it is documented (for both games, although more so on the Dreamcast side), and proper handling of animated textures. A good example of that would be the tiny little basically nonexistent waves in Emerald Coast which inexplicably turn into stone when you modify the mesh. Any mesh changes in FE made to Emerald Coast are done in code as a result. It'll get fixed eventually!

If you're crazy enough to do it though, all the SET files are compatible with the Dreamcast version, so you could play SA1 with the item layout fixes if you reeeally wanted to. =P Maybe I should try that again too. It's been a long time since I last tested it on the Dreamcast version =P

 

Make sure your mod loader is the absolute latest version, and also make sure you have the MSVC++ redist from the first post. Previous versions of the mod loader didn't work with mods in subfolders, and SADX:FE uses that extensively. It will also fail to load the code changes (which is a DLL) if you don't have the redistributable.

And also, compare the modifications highlighted in the first post with what you see ingame. They're not the most noticeable changes :v:

 

I have actually done some tests and was successful in converting all of the GameCube GVMs to PC PVMs, but there are a few mishaps when it comes to texture order that causes some weird stuff like the lens flare being replaced with an explosion. Once I can find a solution (I.e bother to implement a solution) to retain texture order, it'll work just fine. "Dreamcast textures where applicable" on the other hand is a totally separate beast and will probably require some sort of comparison utility.