[JaxTH]

TheKazeblade, on 06 November 2012 - 01:55 PM, said:

Honestly, I never minded the Flickies in this game. Taking them out would make for a pretty boring game, because really, there's not a lot of challenge in the existing level design that would give a problem to the player if they weren't afraid of losing the Flickies that they had at the time. The Flickies are the only thing that offer challenge. You probably could make a decent isometric platformer from this, if you did, like you said, develop more level, but removing the Flickies would make the game cease to be S3DB, which would be kind of besides the point.

3D Blast: No Flickies is actually pretty damn fun to play.

[Andrew75]

Kharen, on 06 November 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

If anybody could recommend a good Saturn emulator, and explain the process to me in simple terms on what to do, I could possibly help get the textures from that.

(Also, I've been wanting to find a Saturn emulator anyways and didn't know what to look for... 2 birds, I guess.)

EDIT: Didn't notice the comment about "Yabause". I'll take a look and see if I can run it. Still need explanation, though.

Its simple really,
Use 3 emulators, one for each job.
I use usually use Satourne to rip the larger VDP2 textures,( although it can rip the small ones as well, but its slower process than Yabause)
However, when I try to boot 3D blast with that, It always says disk incompatible. ( no VDP2 texture access fro 3D bast sigh)

Yabause does not seem to display the VDP2 textures for some reason on my computer, but its good for ripping the VDP1 textures( smaller ones).
and
SSF is good for capturing map layouts for 3D blast , it does not allow for saving textures out, you'd need to save screens 1 than stitch them together in photoshop,
you can also disable graphics layers in SSF which is useful. ( remove all the sprites like sonic rings and badnicks)

for texture ripping.
I prefer Yabause instead of Satourne, which has a few useful features like save stats for going back to capture animations that are one timers,
Also Satourne does not seem to offer a save texture feature so u need to do a print screen key screen capture.

for animations, sprites, and textures its a little tricky as timing is very important,
you cant just rip the animations all at once , you've gata click on the top menu bar to trick the game to pause on the correct frame you'd like to rip.

heres how I do it, in Yabause:
Quickly click on any of the drop down menus File (threw help) choosing one so that the drop down does not block the sprite view.
(So I can see the frames of animation that the emulator pauses on.)
You will need to be very quick using bursts of 2 rapid fire clicks at a time.
Start with the menu is in the down position,, than quickly click again to unfreeze than ever faster second click to refreeze the game.
You can than scroll down to the Debug menu and VDP1 or VDP2 options to go into the texture saving tools.
than you will need to scroll down to the texture u want to save and save it, this is an annoying long process which takes much patients.

basically thats it.
have fun ! lol
Oh yeah and one more thing all textures are not always rip-able, it depends on what the Saturn is currently displaying on screen,
even with that you cant get everything shown on screen.

Anyhow I really would not prefer getting the assets in this manner as we wont be able to capture things that are hidden on disk ,
It would take days to do just a few levels.
Normally I would just go ahead and do this the long way as shown above, but I have so many things going on at the moment to take the time.
to many projects to little time.

I think It would be best to get ahold of the Genesis maps just for layouts sake, and the Saturn stuff for background, props and texture style reproduction.
Or just 100% Saturn, so that it can be available for anyone who may need it in the future.

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 07 November 2012 - 09:23 AM

[Overlord]

JaxTH, on 07 November 2012 - 04:07 AM, said:

TheKazeblade, on 06 November 2012 - 01:55 PM, said:

Honestly, I never minded the Flickies in this game. Taking them out would make for a pretty boring game, because really, there's not a lot of challenge in the existing level design that would give a problem to the player if they weren't afraid of losing the Flickies that they had at the time. The Flickies are the only thing that offer challenge. You probably could make a decent isometric platformer from this, if you did, like you said, develop more level, but removing the Flickies would make the game cease to be S3DB, which would be kind of besides the point.

3D Blast: No Flickies is actually pretty damn fun to play.

For the record, here's a link to it, try it out: Sonic_3D:_No_Flickies

[Andrew75]

I've started Act one just in case anyone else is attempting the slow emu way.
Man this is going to take forever !

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 07 November 2012 - 11:31 AM

[TheKazeblade]

Overlord, on 07 November 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

JaxTH, on 07 November 2012 - 04:07 AM, said:

TheKazeblade, on 06 November 2012 - 01:55 PM, said:

Honestly, I never minded the Flickies in this game. Taking them out would make for a pretty boring game, because really, there's not a lot of challenge in the existing level design that would give a problem to the player if they weren't afraid of losing the Flickies that they had at the time. The Flickies are the only thing that offer challenge. You probably could make a decent isometric platformer from this, if you did, like you said, develop more level, but removing the Flickies would make the game cease to be S3DB, which would be kind of besides the point.

3D Blast: No Flickies is actually pretty damn fun to play.

For the record, here's a link to it, try it out: Sonic_3D:_No_Flickies

Thanks, I'll give it a go

[Andrew75]

OK guys ! after 14 hours worth of work,,,, heres something to show your kids.
Took 100s of screenshots with the emu , and aligned them manually by eye in a painting program.
Seriously, What a pain in the ass. :P

Its not quite finished.
There seems to be some blank spots on the map, since sonic cant see the areas.
I've already started dividing tiles into 32 x 32 so that the missing areas can be filled.
I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the map rip anytime soon.
Have lots of other things to deal with for the next few days.

TGA and Png inside!
DOWNLOAD NOW!


Enjoy !

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 07 November 2012 - 10:42 PM

[MainMemory]

I give up. I cannot figure out either the sprite graphics file or the level graphics file.

[Andrew75]

MainMemory, on 07 November 2012 - 10:58 PM, said:

I give up. I cannot figure out either the sprite graphics file or the level graphics file.

Hey man ! , how were you able to extract the graphic files from the bin. ( this is where I get stuck)
Also what format are they in. I may have a few saturn texture converters laying around somewhere that may be of use.

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 08 November 2012 - 07:59 AM

[8-Bit Dragon]

Andrew, I did something similar long ago in Gens with Panic Puppet zone. It may need to be tweaked to align with the tiles, though. Use it as you wish. Sorry for the shitty download link:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/j3nuho

The other thing I wanted to mention is someone created a 32x32 tile viewer for the Genesis version of 3D Blast a while back. I can't remember who the author was, but if hes reading this I would encourage him to please re-post it. I still have the software, but I'm not going to share it without more info as I completely forgot who created it/where it came from.

[Andrew75]

8-Bit Dragon, on 08 November 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

Andrew, I did something similar long ago in Gens with Panic Puppet zone. It may need to be tweaked to align with the tiles, though. Use it as you wish. Sorry for the shitty download link:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/j3nuho

The other thing I wanted to mention is someone created a 32x32 tile viewer for the Genesis version of 3D Blast a while back. I can't remember who the author was, but if hes reading this I would encourage him to please re-post it. I still have the software, but I'm not going to share it without more info as I completely forgot who created it/where it came from.

Nice level rip ! I bet it was fun tossing that one together!
also thanks.

[MainMemory]

Andrew75, on 08 November 2012 - 07:35 AM, said:

MainMemory, on 07 November 2012 - 10:58 PM, said:

I give up. I cannot figure out either the sprite graphics file or the level graphics file.

Hey man ! , how were you able to extract the graphic files from the bin. ( this is where I get stuck)
Also what format are they in. I may have a few saturn texture converters laying around somewhere that may be of use.

I am looking at the PC version, not the Saturn version which I do not have.

[Andrew75]

Ahh, I see. >__< maybe the PC version files are the same as the Saturn ?
Hey,similar question to the above, do you have any tools for extracting assets from Saturn games( from the small bin files found within many sat games) ?
as I really need something like that, not just for this game but for a few others.

Anyways A friend of mine, DaGuAr has introduced me to a program that takes video and paints using that video to do overlays automatically with pixel matching.
I ran threw act 1 again while using Fraps in less than 10 minutes.
The program than took the video and generated the map in about 4 minutes automatically,
My mind is serously blown !

oh yeah and I double checked the new map that was automatically generated with the one I put together by hand and its a 100% pixel perfect match! ( checked via photoshop layers)
there are no artifacts and or color distortions anywhere from what I can see,
This really beat doing it manually by hand in 14 hours...
I'll post more on this later,

Anyone know how to hack in an invincibility mode for 3D blast sat or PC?

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 08 November 2012 - 11:50 AM

[Andrew75]

All 3 Acts from Green Grove Zone are done.
These are crisp, clean 2D Sega Saturn Graphics at there finest.

Make sure to enjoy them at the 1 to 1 pixel aspect ratio as god had intended.

TGA and PNG inside
http://www.mediafire...u6wvtbsd37v6np4

Jpeg Sample image.

[muteKi]

JaxTH, on 07 November 2012 - 04:07 AM, said:

TheKazeblade, on 06 November 2012 - 01:55 PM, said:

Honestly, I never minded the Flickies in this game. Taking them out would make for a pretty boring game, because really, there's not a lot of challenge in the existing level design that would give a problem to the player if they weren't afraid of losing the Flickies that they had at the time. The Flickies are the only thing that offer challenge. You probably could make a decent isometric platformer from this, if you did, like you said, develop more level, but removing the Flickies would make the game cease to be S3DB, which would be kind of besides the point.

3D Blast: No Flickies is actually pretty damn fun to play.

That's just, like, your opinion man.

The game gets way too short when you take out the Flickies; the level design does not work as a single-route start-to-end sort of game. As the maps reveal the levels are pretty goddamn sparse, and if you have even a basic idea of where to go you can cut off more than half the map of some levels. Most of the game is an absolute joke, especially because it means there's almost no reason to put yourself in harms way to accomplish anything, as, especially in the later levels, obstacles are mostly only around to mess up you collecting flickies and defeating enemies, rather than trying to outright kill you; in Spring Stadium the only reason you're likely to get hit more than once in a specific area is because you're dodging spikes coming out of the ground trying to collect your lost flickies; if you just run straight through the level you can just regrab one ring and screw the birds.

[Billy]

Andrew75, on 08 November 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

Ahh, I see. >__< maybe the PC version files are the same as the Saturn ?

Most likely. I own both versions, so I did a hex compare of \PCSONIC\CDDATA\LEV4\GFX4C.BIN from the PC version and \LEV4\GFX4C.BIN from the Saturn version, and they were 100% identical. If you need me to check any more files I can do that too, of course.