Slim chance this will happen. There are addresses pointing everywhere outside of the stage file and it's a big file. It wouldn't be a problem if I knew what exactly each address points to and what it does, but not only is this a different stage it also reflects work from an earlier version. The best way as I've said is to import the stage to SADX and try to retain some of the objects. As I've said before I think, the LandTable references only four models - the fountain, the land, the pillars, and a platform. So the LandTable is definitely referencing all that's there for the field map. If you need some proof besides loading it in game (which is already not looking good which I'll explain later), I've come up with an explanation. The chao garden is literally cut out from the third Windy Valley stage minus a few other models. The garden stage file's texture name list consist of the same exact names for textures in Windy Valley's stage file (although not all of them are there). The small island on the left is the cut out. They removed the seperate models for the fallen pillars, second row of pillars, this weird tack like structure with land sticking out of the top of it, and everything else except the four models I've mentioned before. On the far left is a model that connects that island with a hill, if you remove that, you're left with a chunk of the island missing like in the Chao Garden. But back to the garden itself, it's not looking good because I can't find all these addresses. I'm sure they're referencing something in 1ST_READ but I don't know what. I can't find similar addresses in GARDEN00 either. Here's what I have so far: Spoiler Code (Text): ROM:0CA800C0 dword_CA800C0: .data.l h'C905060 ; DATA XREF: ROM:loc_CA8001Ar ROM:0CA800C0 ; Might have to be C905400 ROM:0CA800C4 TexHead: .data.l stru_CA87524 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80028r ROM:0CA800C4 ; ROM:0CA80048r ROM:0CA800C4 ; Shouldn't need to be changed ROM:0CA800C8 dword_CA800C8: .data.l h'8C5EC5C4 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80024r ROM:0CA800CC dword_CA800CC: .data.l h'8C596708 ; DATA XREF: ROM:loc_CA8002Er ROM:0CA800D0 dword_CA800D0: .data.l h'8C5A65B8 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80034r ROM:0CA800D4 dword_CA800D4: .data.l h'8C159770 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA8003Ar ROM:0CA800D8 dword_CA800D8: .data.l h'8C5A7140 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA8003Cr ROM:0CA800DC dword_CA800DC: .data.l h'8C5EC608 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80046r ROM:0CA800E0 off_CA800E0: .data.l Try_Object1 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80050r ROM:0CA800E0 ; Shouldn't need to be changed ROM:0CA800E4 dword_CA800E4: .data.l h'8C5A9572 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA8004Er ROM:0CA800E8 dword_CA800E8: .data.l h'8C5A64E0 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA80056r ROM:0CA800EC dword_CA800EC: .data.l h'8C59FC94 ; DATA XREF: ROM:0CA8005Cr ROM:0CA800F0 dword_CA800F0: .data.l h'8C02257E ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+6r ROM:0CA800F0 ; Guess: Might need to be 8C022766 ROM:0CA800F4 dword_CA800F4: .data.l h'FFFFFF ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+14r ROM:0CA800F4 ; Shouldn't need to be changed ROM:0CA800F8 dword_CA800F8: .data.l h'5555FF ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+12r ROM:0CA800F8 ; Shouldn't need to be changed ROM:0CA800FC dword_CA800FC: .data.l h'8C5E9C5A ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+10r ROM:0CA80100 dword_CA80100: .data.l h'8C0221C0 ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+1Ar ROM:0CA80100 ; Guess: Might need to be 8C022360 ROM:0CA80104 dword_CA80104: .data.l h'C90003E ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+20r ROM:0CA80104 ; Seems to be okay? Jumps to a branch in AL_MAIN ROM:0CA80108 dword_CA80108: .data.l h'8C0DCE40 ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+36r ROM:0CA80108 ; Should be 8C0DE1A0 ROM:0CA8010C dword_CA8010C: .data.l h'8C079660 ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C:loc_CA8009Er ROM:0CA8010C ; Should be 8C078F40 ROM:0CA80110 dword_CA80110: .data.l h'8C0DD03C ; DATA XREF: sub_CA8006C+3Cr ROM:0CA80110 ; Should be 8C0DE3DC I'm missing a few of the 8C5#####, whatever they point to. I was thinking that maybe the geometry was floating around somewhere, so I looked through the file and only found one other object struct that when I viewed with SAMDL gave me a model for a Chao Egg (the object struct I loaded is at 0CA88B6C).
ok, that works I guess. So maybe I'll just make a modification for what I want to do with it. Like just fill in the gap since I have an Obj copy from earlier in the topic.
Thanks for looking into this Jase. Jen and I see if we can test it out. Vahkiti, if you do manage to test it out in the meantime, let us know. Thanks for helping out as well. Thanks for the tutorial Glu. Jen and I will have a look at that at some point Meant to post this ages ago but here's the English bit of that pause menu. Here's the Chao Emoticons. We've seen those unused ones before. Interesting how the stress Emoticon was different from the final. The rest of course made it into the final. Sonic Adventure AutoDemo SEGA Logo Screen Sonic Adventure AutoDemo Coming Soon Screen You've seen those two images (above) before however, these are direct from off the PVM files. So they'll be in the correct dimensions and in the best quality. I've got some more I'll be uploading soon.
There's three parts of Beta Windy Valley? And they all seem huge (which is somewhat irritating considering how fairly short the first two parts of the final are).
Was the layout of the finals derived from elements of the beta? Are there models that were used directly from the beta? Because considering how developed the beta seems to be, it wouldn't be surprising to me in the least if Sonic Team yanked elements and slapped them together last-minute to cut down on space.
Actually, some ground textures and the recurring windmills are arguably the few major relations to the stage (at least from screenshots anyway). It's pretty creditable how elaborately they made the third stage of the final from scratch in so little time. The first two stages are more sparse, but still seem to feature a lot of unique twists and obstacles that don't seem related to what we've seen in the beta version. This is partly what leads me to wonder whether it actually was the original Windy Valley (or at least all of them, it's more blatant for the one with the tornado cutscene). It wouldn't surprise me if it was intended to be some level representing Angel Island.
Beta Windy Valley only has Parts 1 and 3, and when compared to the final there are some similar "style" parts of the level. In Part 1, you're going down hill (Exclude Gamma's beginning section for this) with a platform on the right. Then there's a little platforming section. It's all "vaguely" similar to be truthful. Part 3 Beta and Part 3 Final are only similar in they're both expansive. As for Part 2...unless we get an earlier build, we won't know. The only thing I can honestly say is this build was done both quickly and at some in-between state during development. It has texture glitches (Rhino Tank using the wrong PVM set as compared to TGS and Final), missing levels, and a handful of other things. Then there's the TGS elements like Beta At Dawn and Beta WV, but the spinball textures are the same as the final rather than those at TGS. I don't think it's using the assets that were all finished at this point, especially given the whole little over a month away from the Japanese release.
How long would you estimate this build took to develop? I know that demos take quite a bit of time and effort. Is it possible Sonic Team splintered off a segment of devs to work on various demos while the main group continued working on the final product? That would explain why it looks like it was done in-between. While the actual game was completing development, the demo was using old assets to assemble vertical slices of the confirmed completed locales, while the rest of the elements, still in development at the time of the demo teams splintering, would not be seen by the public. Thus, the demo would be out only a month before launch, while the actual game (while still somewhat rushed) was already completed.
Something like what you said there at the end. This demo, since it was "unplayable" and used cutscenes on top of some playable levels using pre-coded gameplay, likely took less time than a normal demo would to develop, and we see some very old assets in here too, from 1997 in particular. I would be willing to say this build may have been done in September to be shown off in stores for the hype during the month of October. I can't say for certain, and in all honesty, am likely talking out of my ass here. The rushed-ness and incomplete feeling of this is what strikes me as they just grabbed up the current assets they had, built a little auto running demo, and sent it off to be shown to the public to hype up the game. And as evilhamwizard (I think >.>) said, it seems that some stuff is using older versions of 1ST_READ and have to be edited to work in-game. Morph also noticed that one model in Beta WV seems to use point sampling, something not seen in any other level. So all in all, this build just seems like a garbled mess that was just built for hyping up the game and the Dreamcast. We're honestly pretty lucky it exists at all...
Well its in our hands now, safe and sound and being broken piece by piece for dissection, FOR SCIENCE RESEARCH! So windy valley only has parts 1 and 3 to it? so what are we talking about here the parts before and after the tornado?
Yup. Unfortunately as far as we (the people who bothered to check (e.g not me)) can tell, while it very well did exist, the tornado section doesn't exist in this build.
Wouldn't surprised me in the least if the tornado section didn't change much from the final aside from object placement or length.
Is anyone able to shoot me a PM describing how I can take this ISO and extract all these level geometry files like all of you are all doing? I'm completely clueless.
Actually, I am as well. Demul will play the 'game' fine, but I'm at a loss as to how folks are examining it like any ol' disc.
You can look at it with GD-ROM Explorer. As for putting modified files (such as the fixed test level) back into the ISO, I have no idea.
For those of you who would like to also do a bit research into this... I was able extract all the data from off track03.bin (that being the Sonic Adventure AutoDemo game itself of course) using this program: Gdi2Data v2.1 (Automatically extract data from GDI files) If you want to get some great hacking tools, best place to look is MainMemory's Page: MainMemory's Hacking Tools Page While it does say "SADX Hacking Tools", some of those tools can be used for the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure. MainMemory not long ago updated SA Tools. You can check it out [Here]. PVMEdit is another great tool to get if you want to check out the games images and textures. You'll need Prsdec auto if you're going to use PVMEdit as the PVM files will be located in PRS files. As for putting anything edited back into the rom, I've not gotten that far yet. I would assume it would require swapping hex data around however, I could be talking nonsense.
You could use CDmage to overwrite files in the iso, but only if they are the same size or smaller than the originals.
SA Tools has a wiki page, and that PRS decompressor is old and terrible, FraGag's is much better. For one thing, it actually compresses PRS instead of faking it.
It was likely covered elsewhere but I'll ask, what should I do if I want to open up the level models and export them as obj files? SADXLVL can't do it, can it? I tried opening stuff in SA1LVL but it kept saying errors occurred. Needless to say I don't know what I'm doing. Been curious to look at stuff like Mystic Ruins etc. since it doesn't appear like it's possible to load these levels in-game.
You have to use SALVL from SA Tools. You also need to make sure you're loading data from the right file at the right address with the right key in SA1 format.
