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Sonic Mania: Hacking Discussion

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Chimera, Aug 29, 2017.

  1. So, I just downloaded my Collector's Edition copy of Mania for PC, and I cannot seem to get my USB Saturn Controller to be sensed in the game at all!

    Does the game really need to be hacked to allow my Saturn controller to be sensed in this game?! I can use Joy2Key but that is cumbersome for a Steam Game!!
     
  2. Has anyone figured out why level cutscenes don't work file debug mode is enabled, and how to disable that so they do work?
     
  3. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    I believe a little cross-post from the Sonic Hacking Contest thread would be interesting for people who frequent this thread, for those who would have interest in submitting this year.
    If you have any comments on the matter or would like to suggest alterations to our stance on Sonic Mania mods in the contest, give us your feedback in the SHC thread.
     
  4. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    has anyone seen this video?
     
  5. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    I believe a developer had said that the old level maps were imported and that Lava Reef was unusable so had to be remade from scratch. I think that video should explain that.

    The start of the level may have been a scrapped transition from OOZ to LRZ.
     
  6. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    well we could try to fix up the beta map, provided we save it for when we can. (just in case it gets deleted in an update)

    The old layout of GHZ was also found by this guy


    and a few bluesphere test stages
     
  7. LukyHRE

    LukyHRE

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    A pain to watch that guy dressed as Sonic, but man, how insightful is to just look at the RSDK, and the code. I drool at that development kit, makes me kinda sad that there is no level DLC.

    I played around a bit trying to load Sonic 2's data into Sonic Mania, but it obviously crashes everytime. I do hope we sometime get a release on PC, I mean, the game is THERE, only the devs can play it on a PC :(
     
  8. Josh

    Josh

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    Great find on that OG Lava Reef and early Green Hill stages. Nice of 'em to leave those in the final build, haha. I guess Lava Reef might be an indication of how robust their stage importing tool was, and some of the pitfalls that had to be fixed with it.
     
  9. LukyHRE

    LukyHRE

    The only one who has a Portal-themed avatar Member
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    Bitching and complaining about my country -.-'
    While making the original pitch for Sonic 3 remastered, Stealth used a modified version of SonED2 to convert Angel Island and import it into RSDK. However it is completely possible (and predictable) they had another workflow in place for Sonic Mania.
     
  10. Joy2Key seems to be the best way at the moment. It's not to bad though.
     
  11. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRMMAIZ5JOE

    Oh wow look at that, the love tester actually works. It awards points.
     
  12. bookman the stinky

    bookman the stinky

    literal trash Member
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    I propose we start a project to recreate the entire soundtrack in an XM format with those low-quality console samples SEGA had a boner for around that time :v:/>

    On another note, now that the newest version of Retro Engine has been released for all the current platforms, what do you think the chances of seeing the remasters appear on this generation of consoles are?
    I'd love to see Sonic CD in this version, it seems the bumper behavior is a million times more accurate to the original compared to in CD '11.
     
  13. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    So, question. I'm working on a little palette mod that gives Knuckles Mighty's red palette and gives Sonic Metal Sonic's blue palette from Chaotix. It works for the most part, but for some reason the & Knuckles that goes along with Knuckles uses Knuckles' original palette, and turning Super and then turning back to normal causes both Sonic and Knuckles to revert to their original palettes, although they reset at the beginning of the following act. Does anyone know how to fix this?

    Another question:

    I guess this one isn't 100% related to Mania. I'm trying to make a Generations mod that adds Mania music into the game, but I'm not 100% sure how to loop music properly in Audacity. Is there any way I can use these values to find the loop points in the program?

    EDIT: Fuck all if I have any idea how to loop a track in Audacity. I'm really bad with that program it seems.
     
  14. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    The Super fade out seems to work exactly like Sonic 2/S3K, where the last set of colors in the fade out are copies of the normal colors. I guess you need to find where those palettes are stored and figure out how to edit them.

    You don't loop a track in Audacity. You can use Audacity to cut the track into intro and loop sections at that specific sample number, and then whatever AAX converter you use will handle the looping. Or maybe the AAX converter takes a loop sample number and splits the track automatically, I don't know. I know ADX converters take a track and a sample number, but AAX is two ADXs duct-taped together, so maybe it works differently.
     
  15. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDBOxoP8m-U

    It's unfortunate that it doesn't actually work, but to have a reference to the SP-500 is pretty special.


    Sorry, wait, that's the Sports Pad. You meant SP-400 :v:/>
     
  16. Dario FF

    Dario FF

    Tech Support Hotline Tech Member
    I think converting Sonic 3&K levels properly would be a nice goal for early Mania hacking if possible. There's some clear benefits of the engine like widescreen, the extra moves, the lack of lag, etc.

    Getting custom objects working would be a bigger undertaking, but it could be a nice milestone for the more technical folks considering all the level design and art is already done.
     
  17. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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    Again I will say, we probably shouldn't be jumping into custom objects this early, as the game has been updated twice already, and is likely to be updated again. And then we'll have to re-do all of our research and update all of the code and data references.

    That, or we all agree to work with a single version of the game until it stops being updated, but then we have to make sure that everyone has access to that particular version of the game.
     
  18. EyeKey

    EyeKey

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    We don't have to lock our-self to a specific version. There is an unused code (because of a check before it), that loads Game.dll and call LinkGameLogicDLL with all the required pointer to implement an object. Like a pointer to a list of all the RSDK API functions. But there still A LOT of research to do. (for example right now I know what about 30 functions do out of 155, but I am not working right now on figuring out the rest).
    It depends of course of small number of internal structures (like entity header), but I think that there is a big chance that they won't change between patches (hopefully including the API list).
    But this way may limit us, because there are some objects for example that access things of other objects, which will be more problematic to do in that way.
    So the reason that we shouldn't jump to custom objects yet is because we don't know enough yet.


    Also I had an idea to make a generic LUA object that will get as an attribute a path to a lua script, so we could just add new objects by adding lua scripts. (So one dll will be enough for all the mods, and if we use hardcoded addresses and structures we could only update the dll for new version and all the modes will still work). But it would take time until we can get to that point.
     
  19. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    I wouldn't be opposed to implementing some kind of scripting into the Mod Loader itself, if people had a use for it. But yeah, we're not at a point where we can do that yet.
     
  20. How bout some maps though...