[MainMemory]

Hendricks 266, on 11 July 2014 - 07:28 PM, said:

Does this supplant "SADX360Patch.exe"?

Yes, if you look on my website now, I have marked that one as obsolete.

Basically, the old patch Dude made that my patcher program is based on just disables the first-person view, which can still lead to camera spinning under certain conditions. This mod disables the right analog stick's horizontal movement entirely. In the future it might be possible to determine exactly why SADX behaves the way it does and correct it with an update to the mod, but don't hold your breath.

[Commando Beta]

Just out of curiosity, I've tried to use the SADX mod loader to apply the goal ring patch but capsules still appear at the end of a level. I must be doing something wrong.

[MainMemory]

If you enable one of the debug message logging methods, does it show the mod being loaded?

[Commando Beta]

I got it working: clicking "Install loader" seems to have made it work properly.

Out of curiosity, can I use this to make a sound mod without overwriting the original files?

This post has been edited by Commando Beta: 12 July 2014 - 11:52 AM

[MainMemory]

Yes, all you need is a folder with a mod.ini file with Name, Author and Description entries, and a system folder with the files you want to replace in it (system\sounddata\bgm\wma for music, system\sounddata\voice_us\wma for english voices, system\sounddata\se for sound effects).

[MainMemory]

You might remember how long ago, Crystallize made a texture pack for SADX with mipmaps. It turns out, the old version of Puyo Tools at the time wasn't so good at properly formatting PVMs, so I hacked PVMEditSharp a bit to make it loop through every PVM and give mipmaps to all non-paletted square textures.
Before:

After:


You can download a mod for the mod loader here.

[winterhell]

Can you enable Anisotropic Filtering as well? Its especially noticeable on the yellow jet engines.

[MainMemory]

I can't, but your graphics card may have an option to force it.

[Dude]

MainMemory and I have been trying to work towards 2 goals:

- Optimize SADX model output significantly (it is pretty bad right now)
- Be able to generate SA2 meshes at all

Now this requires a Triangle Strip Generator, and I had limited success implementing one of my own (it garbled the mesh in some places, but worked in others) but unfortunately being a noob at git, I destroyed my only copy. Anyways, we're both pretty bad at C, and this program called STRIPE generates excellent triangle strips - but it also completely screws up the rest of the mesh data sent to it. We both tried looking into fixing it, but this program is above our level. What we need is someone who can either fix all of the problems with the program (you'll need to add vertex normal, uv and vcolor support). OR, someone (or a group of someones) to port it to C# so we can directly integrate it into SA Tools (this is probably the better option). Another solution would be for someone to write their own triangle strip generator into SA Tools (if you think you know how to do this and don't want to port STRIPE, contact me)

Once this is done, you should be able to import models with double or triple the polycount you can now. And not to mention this will make it so we can even *do* custom models in sa2. You know you want to!

[Dude]

Here's abit more of a demonstration as to why STRIP isn't quite up to snuff. Before proceeding it might be a good idea to brush up on Alias-Wavefront format. We've got some minor custom extensions going on in our files, but for the most part it's the same.

Here's our base model. It has no UVs, no Vertex Normals, and no Vertex Colors. It looks like this:


Un-stripified OBJ file
stripified version

This, predictably, works just fine with our current importer.

However, when we move onto something a little more complicated, like this model with UV coordinates (aka texture verts) and Vertex Normals:


Un-stripified OBJ file
stripified version

STRIPE makes a fatal assumption. The number of UVs in a model is not guaranteed to be the same as the number of verts in a model. In fact, for that to happen is very rare. Each vertex can have an infinite number of UV coordinates, since the number of uv coordinates should be faces * 3 (before stripifying). I think I know why they made this assumption though, and that is so that they could keep their strip vertex references as a single value, unlike how wavefront's face vertex references can have multiple values (one for each kind of vertex - you'll see them separated by slashes like so: v/vt/vn). Because of this improper handling of UV coordinates, textured models don't work properly. STRIPE even went so far as to include the vertex normals (although, it never references them properly to do the issue mentioned previously) The solution to this would be to add the ability to add the slashes for extra references into the strip and strip continuation entries (t and q respectively).


There's one more case: A model with faces, vertex normals, UV coordinates, and vertex colors. This requires uses of our format extension (we added vc indeces right after the vn indeces in the face definition).
However, when we move onto something a little more complicated, like this model with UV coordinates (aka texture verts):


Un-stripified OBJ file
stripified version

STRIPE tries with this model and doesn't crash. I'm not sure if it imports into sadxlvl2 without crashing the program, but either way, it ignored our vcolors (obviously), and didn't reference the included data properly.

[IndyTheGreat]

I have a question. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Sonic Adventure have the base game and DX DLC, but the PC version from 2010 is just the DX version. Is there a way to put the regular Sonic Adventure branding into the PC version (title screen, etc) in the same manner as the No Battle mod for SA2B (changes branding to SA2 but keeps SA2B features) on the PC? Would it just be easier to somehow turn the "DX DLC" off for the PC version cause it's a port of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions? I just love the regular Sonic Adventure title screen with the ripple effect.

[MainMemory]

The short answer: yes, but you won't be able to play it like that.

The long answer: it could be possible with some in-depth hacking like I did for the SA2 No Battle mod, but I'm not willing to do any in-depth hacking on the Steam version.

This post has been edited by MainMemory: 11 September 2014 - 01:12 PM

[IndyTheGreat]

Well that kinda sucks. I wonder why it doesn't work wih the DX branding removed?

[MainMemory]

New mods:
The Gravity Control mod allows you to change the angle of gravity using the D-Pad in 512 increments. Press L+R to reset gravity to normal.

The Simple Gravity Control mod allows you to change gravity to one of six directions with the D-Pad and Y button.

[Lanzer]

Dude, on 22 July 2014 - 10:56 PM, said:

MainMemory and I have been trying to work towards 2 goals:

- Optimize SADX model output significantly (it is pretty bad right now)
- Be able to generate SA2 meshes at all

Now this requires a Triangle Strip Generator, and I had limited success implementing one of my own (it garbled the mesh in some places, but worked in others) but unfortunately being a noob at git, I destroyed my only copy. Anyways, we're both pretty bad at C, and this program called STRIPE generates excellent triangle strips - but it also completely screws up the rest of the mesh data sent to it. We both tried looking into fixing it, but this program is above our level. What we need is someone who can either fix all of the problems with the program (you'll need to add vertex normal, uv and vcolor support). OR, someone (or a group of someones) to port it to C# so we can directly integrate it into SA Tools (this is probably the better option). Another solution would be for someone to write their own triangle strip generator into SA Tools (if you think you know how to do this and don't want to port STRIPE, contact me)

Once this is done, you should be able to import models with double or triple the polycount you can now. And not to mention this will make it so we can even *do* custom models in sa2. You know you want to!

You know I want to! :D

Wow man this sounds tight, so if you guys breakthrough with this what kind of models can we import?