The config tool is written in .NET, but the game itself is C++. It uses the boost libraries (fitting, isn't it?). I have disassembled parts of it for my work on CPKREDIR. That's also how I discovered that the Unleashed renderer is still in there. But SonicGenerations.exe is huge and very complex. You can't just drop it into IDA Pro or some other disassembler/decompiler and expect to get readable results.
The quality issue is pretty normal on shadows, especially in a Sonic game you wouldn't be expected to stay still for too long in whatever, so high quality shadows are a bit unnecessary. Also the materiais help to make it even less noticeable, with their normal maps and colorfull assets. I remeber watching some tutorials on UDK talking about shadows, the guy setted-up three different "shadow rooms" with a few lights. One had Low Quality shadows, the middle one Mid-Quality and the last one High Quality. On a white BG (just like the shaders you're showing up) usually the difference is very... veeeery noticiable between all three. But when the dude made the background materials visible you couldn't tell the difference between the HQ and MQ, at least not right away... Even the LQ shadows were looking good with the materials on. So... Honestly, if you're shoting for HQ shadows, all you're going to get different from LQ or MQ is the baking time. No one will actually notice a thing. Oh shit, it looks waaaay better this way... I mean, besides from Sonic's shadow which is breaking the flow a bit... But it actually looks like night time... Instead of what SH looks in Generation, which is daytime with a "night" skybox.
While directional shadows look nice, they highlight a problem present in the shadow rendering on vanilla Generations too, namely shadows can render through the terrain into any floor or object that is below it but shouldn't receive a shadow, eg: Notice how at the far right Sonic's shadow is being rendered, despite that logically it should've been stopped by the terrain he's standing on. This glitch is much more unnoticeable in vanilla Generations because the shadows are always perpendicular to Sonic, the only place I can think of where you can see this bug is the Hub World.
That's actually how shadows are handled normally IIRC; the problem is that the current use of directional shadows has the dynamically casted shadows tint everything pitch black, whereas the shadowmaps only tint the terrain somewhat. If the directional shadows had the same bias as the shadowmaps, this bug wouldn't happen. This happens in the HUB because Sonic's shadow cuts directly down, but the terrain's shadows don't. :P EDIT: fucking new page man :UI
In another episode of Chimera doesn't actually read what he quotes, he'll find out that he actually said the same DustArma did! :v: This renderer is more like a mid-point between Unleashed and Generations apparently... they were probably going to adapt it completely, but it seems they decided to go for something different altogether. It's the only explanation as to why they would leave the old shaders in, as a backup in case they screwed up. I have no idea why the shadows sometimes DO blend with the shadowmaps of the stage(particularly in some sloped surfaces, but not in ALL of them).
That actually gives the game a sort of interesting comic book-ish aesthetic. Obviously it's unintended and undesirable, but it is kind of interesting if you think of it that way. Huh. I never noticed that before. It'll probably bother me every time I stand on a platform in the hub world from now on.
I'unno, little things like character swaps, physics mods, these shader modifications you guys are posting. Simple, small things that are fun to mess with.
Well I made this as my first effort for Sonic modding. It's not something I haven't seen in a bunch of other mods on Youtube but I can upload it if you like:
Some of you guys might remember that I've had "Hyper Sonic" as a part of that "Super Sonic over Sonic" modset I'd been working on. Well, I've now FINALLY fixed his fur's color changing aspect. No more of that "white fur with barely noticeable color tint" BS! Also, I made his jump effect look better... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWiAwHpjjwc
That's freaking nice Joe. Although, it appears the colors shoot to the next color while some of the other colors blend to the next color, like the pink blends to the blue then shoots to green.
Thanks. The abrupt color changes seem to always happen (even when the colors were all randomly placed before this fix.) It's as if the game automatically does that after every X-number of frames (and the specific colors seen in the jumps always seem to come up at those exact frames.)
Your wish is granted. (About 1 minute in for how it looks with Cool Edge and ice shaders) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEQLjC9jBGY
So I was messing with the renderer and changing materials and I had it force 3d mode on me right when it entered the level at the loading screen yet it showed me two completely different things. Then I noticed that with the renderer that Crisis City works near perfect though for me. I'm not sure whats up with it, since I tried changing other levels to have the same shaders as in Crisis City but nothing really happened, unless I'm not changing the right ones.
Something similar happened when I was watching the lfinal cutscene with the Eggmen. It suddenly went all 3D like in your screen, and the right side just had floating mustaches. It was hilarious.
