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Dreamcast mods for SADX

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by TheArcadeStriker, Jul 30, 2016.

  1. PkR

    PkR

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    SADX Dreamcast Conversion, The Emeralds' Awakening
    It is possible, but it requires a lot of code and asset reorganization between several mods, which I'm not interested in doing at this point.
     
  2. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Fair enough.
     
  3. PkR

    PkR

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    SADX Dreamcast Conversion, The Emeralds' Awakening
    I finally managed to make Eggman's Mystic Ruins base look almost identical to the Dreamcast version. Here's a comparison, left: old fix, right: new fix.
    Here you can also check what it looks like on the Gamecube/in vanilla SADXPC, and if you scroll down you'll find screenshots of an earlier version of the fix.
    The fix is now integrated into Dreamcast Mystic Ruins, but if you don't play with Dreamcast mods you can get a standalone version here.

    Also, I've released a massive update for my installer, which you can use to install Dreamcast Conversion and other mods easily on any version of SADX. It can be entirely web-based and download mods on demand, or you can use the offline version that has everything. The new version of the installer includes an automatic update system that lets you check for updates for any offline packages, including the Mod Loader and the installer itself. It also includes several profiles with minimal user input for quick and easy installation, as well as a Custom mode for advanced users.

    A bit of shameless self-promotion, but if you like my mods, I'd really appreciate it if you voted for Dreamcast Conversion in ModDB's Mod of the Year. You can vote from the installer's page linked above.
     
  4. PkR

    PkR

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    SADX Dreamcast Conversion, The Emeralds' Awakening
    I was messing with some of this stuff today and managed to restore a couple of effects:
    Sonic's "rainbow" spindash trail effect. Turns out the game just wasn't setting the correct texture - it's supposed to be alternating between the first two textures in SON_EFF.PVM, but in SADX it's always set to 7.
    Knuckles' Maximum Heat Attack - this isn't an exact restoration of the SA1 effect, but I tried to imitate it as close as possible. I added a few transparency workarounds, made the effect scale differently and recreated the blue circle effect with sprites. I had to recreate the sprites because the SADX version of the effect uses the same model as the red aura so it's set up a bit differently.
    Transparency on Knuckles' punch effect - I had no idea about this but I accidentally saw it when testing the Maximum Heat Attack effect. It's very brief but the punch effect is supposed to fade in, while in SADX it just abruptly shows up. The game calculates an alpha value but it isn't applied because of transparency shenanigans. I fixed it by adding a model specifically for this effect, changing its material's alpha value to the calculated one and rendering this model instead of what was there. By the way, this thing also uses the Maximum Heat aura model.
    I've also made some progress with the Light Speed Dash aura, it's certainly fixable but I need to understand how the glow works. I can get very similar results but something's always slightly off.
     
  5. Dissident

    Dissident

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    Sick dude I didn't think the spindash trail would ever get fixed! Thanks
     
  6. Dissident

    Dissident

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    PkR, would it be possible to restore the blur effect on Sonic's run animation from the original Japanese release? The stretching on his shoe looks a bit odd without it. Just curious.
     
  7. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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  8. Dissident

    Dissident

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  9. ezodagrom

    ezodagrom

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    I don't know which, but one of these updates is causing the last room of Lost World (Sonic) to crash:

    [​IMG]
     
  10. PkR

    PkR

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    SADX Dreamcast Conversion, The Emeralds' Awakening
    This may have been the experimental mirror room fix for Twinkle Park. Should be fixed now.
     
  11. ezodagrom

    ezodagrom

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    Yep, confirming that it's fixed now. ^^
     
  12. Deep Dive Devin

    Deep Dive Devin

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    Out of curiosity, why specifically Lost World 3?
     
  13. Rlan

    Rlan

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    The Dreamcast updates are so nice to see on the PC version.

    The one mod I'd be keen to get for SADX is a camera control. I've previously used Dolphin with it's General camera control tool to make GIFs for Sonicthehedgeblog.com of locations in the game, but I'd prefer to do it with the original, classic textures and models. Any chance of something like this being possible on the PC version?
     
  14. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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    I'd love to make a camera control mod like they do for Boundary Break, but I have no idea how.
     
  15. Speeps

    Speeps

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    I'm not familiar with SADX but I've played with the camera plenty of times in the DC version before.
    The easiest way to freeze the camera is to use free move and first person to get the right position/angle then crashing the camera object or whatever it is (set the 2 to like, 9 or something).

    Another way you can do it is by getting the address that changes whether you're in first person view or not (It's 2 if you're not and 3 if you are) and freezing that to 0. It tends to drag around a bit sometimes (I think it has something to do with the game trying to write to the frozen address) but you should be able to manually move the camera around yourself by changing coordinates/rotation values. (It hates looking up, but it's not too hard to override it with a script or something)
     
  16. Dissident

    Dissident

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    I would also love to mess around with a camera mod. The game looks beautiful again thanks to the effort you guys put in and I'd love to have more freedom of movement when taking screenshots.

    Here's a few shots I've taken in the meantime, posted on ResetEra:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    A no HUD mod and black eyes mod would also be fun to play with, I'm actually surprised neither exist yet (or if they do are hard to find). I don't want to pester you guys about it though. Keep up the good work. :)
     
  17. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    Gonna post it here since it works in conjunction with the DC mods.
    I've been working on some higher resolution textures for Sonic Adventure.
    I will continue the project if people are actually interested in this,
    so please let me know.
    All the textures have been recreated from scratch, some are not 100% accurate but that's as close as I could get.

    Here are some examples (sorry for the crappy JPG compression in these screenshots):
    Old
    [​IMG]
    New
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  18. Dissident

    Dissident

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    I dig it, good work!
     
  19. Liliam

    Liliam

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    Looks great! Please don't use tired old Verdana for the Twinkle Park welcome sign, though.
     
  20. BlazeHedgehog

    BlazeHedgehog

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    Not to get all Sonic 2 HD in here, but I'd also like to make a suggestion about the Twinkle Park sign: to me, it looks more like a very small drop shadow rather than a thick black outline.

    A quick and dirty example:

    [​IMG]

    Same kind of goes for the "Welcome" text. It's got kind of a pop-out/embossed effect, again, with a drop shadow (a much more obvious one!)

    [​IMG]