[Morph]

CheatFreak, on 27 June 2015 - 01:12 AM, said:

Could these maybe be fixed in a future update?
I believe none of these count as an "enhancement" because they function properly in the GameCube port.

Creams cameos are broken in the PC port

If you can figure out what's wrong, sure - Cream is otherwise very low priority for me =P. It looks like it could be a simple texture issue, but if it's otherwise a mesh problem... I'm not sure I'd bother. From what I can remember, Cream is a horrible monster.

CheatFreak, on 27 June 2015 - 01:12 AM, said:

Missing water effects, missing transparency on various textures- as demonstrated by this video:

[ignore that he's showing the 2010 version, those issues are present in the original port as well.]
[note too that the transparency is not on the texture itself- but in the level somehow.]

The last comparison in this video is very different from the rest. Also re: last note there: materials can have transparency applied directly to them regardless of whether the texture it's using has an alpha channel.

CheatFreak, on 27 June 2015 - 01:12 AM, said:

Additionally, missing transparency on the water here:


I know these are really small things- but isn't that sort of fit with the mission statement here for SADXFE?
Lots of little fixes and changes to make the port as perfect as possible?

If I recall, you fixed them by modifying the textures' alpha channels, right? Honestly, the only reason I haven't used your fixes is because I first want to confirm that it's the texture's fault in the first place; I just haven't taken the time to do it yet. It could be a number of other issues, like differences in rendering behavior between PC and GC (which is most certainly different in fact, it's just not enough to affect everything), material mishaps (which are more frequent than one could probably tell), etc.

I'd also almost argue that the basically-completely-transparent water in the GameCube version is "wrong", but I'd certainly agree with you if you were to say that the PC's alternative looks terrible. And a bit of a nitpick, but the transparency isn't missing in that last case you posted, it's just not as aggressively transparent as the GameCube. If you can still see Sonic through it, it's transparent (translucent?).

So tl;dr I guess: don't get me wrong, I want to fix that stuff, I just want to make sure this is the best way to do it. That'll help prevent the need to re-do it later.

[CheatFreak]

Morph, on 27 June 2015 - 01:39 AM, said:

If I recall, you fixed them by modifying the textures' alpha channels, right? Honestly, the only reason I haven't used your fixes is because I first want to confirm that it's the texture's fault in the first place; I just haven't taken the time to do it yet. It could be a number of other issues, like differences in rendering behavior between PC and GC (which is most certainly different in fact, it's just not enough to affect everything), material mishaps (which are more frequent than one could probably tell), etc.

I'd also almost argue that the basically-completely-transparent water in the GameCube version is "wrong", but I'd certainly agree with you if you were to say that the PC's alternative looks terrible. And a bit of a nitpick, but the transparency isn't missing in that last case you posted, it's just not as aggressively transparent as the GameCube. If you can still see Sonic through it, it's transparent (translucent?).

So tl;dr I guess: don't get me wrong, I want to fix that stuff, I just want to make sure this is the best way to do it. That'll help prevent the need to re-do it later.

Actually I think it was IndyTheGreat that went out of his way to fix them- though in the case of Station Square's Chao Garden he flat out made his own higher res texture so it seemed more subtle- a bit like the subtle ripples.

I'm fairly certain that it in fact isn't the textures fault- just sonic team's laziness an error in porting the levels. The reason I was bringing it up again is actually because I'm pretty sure that the texture itself didn't have any transparency on them in the GameCube port- and that it was actually something else entirely. Editing the texture is sort of a hodgepodge way of fixing it- It's probably a material mishap or something along those lines like you were saying.

As for Cream- I think there probably is an issue with the mesh. The texture for her character seems to be identical to the one used in Sonic Heroes though. Not sure if that's helpful at all.

This post has been edited by CheatFreak: 27 June 2015 - 02:29 AM

[Morph]

CheatFreak, on 27 June 2015 - 02:29 AM, said:

Actually I think it was IndyTheGreat that went out of his way to fix them- though in the case of Station Square's Chao Garden he flat out made his own higher res texture so it seemed more subtle- a bit like the subtle ripples.

I'm fairly certain that it in fact isn't the textures fault- just sonic team's laziness an error in porting the levels. The reason I was bringing it up again is actually because I'm pretty sure that the texture itself didn't have any transparency on them in the GameCube port- and that it was actually something else entirely. Editing the texture is sort of a hodgepodge way of fixing it- It's probably a material mishap or something along those lines like you were saying.

As for Cream- I think there probably is an issue with the mesh. The texture for her character seems to be identical to the one used in Sonic Heroes though. Not sure if that's helpful at all.

Ah, I guess I mixed the two of you up somewhere down the line. I think I've seen both your usernames in the same place.

Not sure what I can do about Cream, but thanks for bringing that other stuff up again. I'll be sure to look into it... eventually. I've got a lot of other--albeit related--things to work on at the moment.

[IndyTheGreat]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the water shader effects couldn't be brought back. I feel like that's a completely different issue. But the Egg Carrier garden's water being completely stationary is unacceptable and I've been trying to figure out how to fix it for months now but I can't seem to figure it out. If the people who ported this game went out of their way to add places where existing textures were put (Mystic Ruins garden pond, Station Square garden pool) and animated those duplicates, why the hell couldn't the Egg Carrier garden ocean be animated? It boggles my mind.

The mystic ruins pond has the same texture in the GC and PC ports, but the GC port applies more transparency when its in the level itself and it looks a lot better. I already fixed that by editing the texture itself.

As for the Station Square chao garden, the water normally uses the same damn texture as the fountain water and it's extremely ugly, so I photographed my pool water, grayscaled it, made it really transparent and put it in. While it makes the fountain look somewhat worse, it still doesn't look bad and the water looks a LOT better.

This post has been edited by IndyTheGreat: 28 June 2015 - 12:41 AM

[MainMemory]

Morph, on 27 June 2015 - 01:39 AM, said:

If you can figure out what's wrong, sure - Cream is otherwise very low priority for me =P. It looks like it could be a simple texture issue, but if it's otherwise a mesh problem... I'm not sure I'd bother. From what I can remember, Cream is a horrible monster.

If 'separate model for each animation frame, in Chunk Model format' is a horrible monster, then yes. Editing anything would be difficult.

[Morph]

IndyTheGreat, on 28 June 2015 - 12:38 AM, said:

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the water shader effects couldn't be brought back. I feel like that's a completely different issue. But the Egg Carrier garden's water being completely stationary is unacceptable and I've been trying to figure out how to fix it for months now but I can't seem to figure it out. If the people who ported this game went out of their way to add places where existing textures were put (Mystic Ruins garden pond, Station Square garden pool) and animated those duplicates, why the hell couldn't the Egg Carrier garden ocean be animated? It boggles my mind.

For the same reason mesh got randomly and erroneously rotated, and why random faces on mesh went missing between two builds of the same game, maybe? But even that's still a mystery. =P
Either way, it's not really fixable right now; or at least, not cleanly. We don't have a standard method for texture animation set up yet.

IndyTheGreat, on 28 June 2015 - 12:38 AM, said:

The mystic ruins pond has the same texture in the GC and PC ports, but the GC port applies more transparency when its in the level itself and it looks a lot better. I already fixed that by editing the texture itself.

So that being the case, modifying the texture itself is probably the wrong approach strictly in terms of Fixed Edition. I'd need some way to confirm whether it's just the way it's rendered or if it's just a material thing before I implement something similar.

IndyTheGreat, on 28 June 2015 - 12:38 AM, said:

As for the Station Square chao garden, the water normally uses the same damn texture as the fountain water and it's extremely ugly, so I photographed my pool water, grayscaled it, made it really transparent and put it in. While it makes the fountain look somewhat worse, it still doesn't look bad and the water looks a LOT better.

I'd say you did a pretty nice job then! And you could always take that a step further by modifying the stage and giving the water its own separate texture.

MainMemory, on 28 June 2015 - 12:51 AM, said:

If 'separate model for each animation frame, in Chunk Model format' is a horrible monster, then yes. Editing anything would be difficult.

confirmed for horrible monster

[IndyTheGreat]

If I could modity the stage and give the water its own texture, I'd take the texture out of the shallow water in the fountain, put the old texture back on the water coming out of the fountain and keep my texture in the water itself. Sheesh, it's astonishing how many little corners were cut. With the oridinal SDK, doing this properly would have taken an extra 5 minutes or so.

[Elliot]

I think I have one more post here so let me just say thank you for this. I really appreciate it and all of the mods and fixes for these games.

Thank you for also making them easy to use.

[Lanzer]

Elliot, on 07 July 2015 - 06:22 PM, said:

I think I have one more post here so let me just say thank you for this. I really appreciate it and all of the mods and fixes for these games.

Thank you for also making them easy to use.

You have 20 more actually, trials are given a 21 post shot if you pass you get bumped to member status.

Good luck don't make any dumb posts.