This mod is an attempt at re-implementing the palette-based lighting--also known as the Lantern Engine--from the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure in SADX PC. It uses HLSL Shader Model 3 to achieve the effect, and requires d3d8to9, a Direct3D 8 to 9 shim (provided below). This was developed in collaboration with all the regulars in #x-hax (including these guys (PkR, TheArcadeStriker, ItsEasyActually, MainMemory)), and they were a huge help in improving accuracy, and unravelling the palette lighting mystery. More screenshots can be found in this imgur album. Prerequisites: Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 (x86!) Latest version of the SADX Mod Loader A reasonably modern video card Downloads: d3d8to9. sadx-dc-lighting (source code: here) Installation: Download d3d8to9 linked above. Place d3d8.dll in the root of your SADX folder (where sonic.exe is). Download sadx-dc-lighting, open the archive, and place the sadx-dc-lighting folder in your SADX mods folder. BUG REPORTS & KNOWN ISSUES: Please report bugs! You can do so on the issue tracker HERE, as well as see known issues, and even planned future features. It might suck to sign up for a GitHub account just to report them, but it's the easiest way for me to track them and the most likely way for those bugs to get fixed. What the critics are saying about sadx-dc-lighting: I have absolutely zero interest in this mod. - MainMemory WTF THIS GAME SUCKS - PkR GOD DAMN IT THE TEXTURES BROKE AGAIN I HATE VIDEO GAMES - me You've been working on this for how long??? - TheArcadeStriker <SF94> so ItsEasyActually what should your forged review quote be <ItsEasyActually> uh, uhhhh... hm... I'll get back to on that in a moment [sic] - ItsEasyActually why yes, yes I did time this with the release of sa1 in japan
Holy mother of fuck, you've restored it. It's honestly incredible how fucked up even the 2004 PC port was, and it's amazing that you people have been able to do so much to restore it to its rightful, Dreamcast-y glory :specialed:
This is definitely one of the best mods for this game, it makes such a big difference /> It crashes at the character select screen if you have the character select mod on though.
Holy balls, this is a thing of beauty. Get the Dreamcast character models in there and fuck if I wouldn't pay real life money.
Thanks guys! Figured I should provide some comparison screenshots. I took the screenshots using the standard SADX landtables to illustrate how much of an effect it has on...well, everything. Also included are Dreamcast shots for comparison, although the fog is so different it's a little difficult to compare some aspects.
Yaaas. I feel the lighting in SADX is singlehandedly the biggest downgrade it suffered compared to the original. Places like Final Egg completely lost their atmosphere with the transition. This mod makes such a big difference even without any other mods in place.
Wow, I must be blind, I honestly didn't realise there were lighting differences between the Dreamcast and PC versions... Fantastic work guys! Am I to assume rightly you're going to apply modifications to all of the levels/maps?
I played a level with it and it seemed good. I've honestly never played the original Sonic Adventure all the way through, so I didn't even realize the lighting was different in DX. Anyway, it ran fine. Nvidia Geoforce GTX 850M. An intel i7 processor.
The lighting applies to just about everything automatically. As for replacing levels with their original Dreamcast counterparts though, that's a different story. (And thanks!)
I'm very impressed by the palette-based lighting. The lighting looks so much better overall and the character models don't look overly shiny. I've been using this mod along with the Dreamcast SADX mods.
With this and the DC landtables/textures mod, things are so close to being right... Is there a way to emulate or re-implement the sorting so things like Chaos' flickering polys, etc. are fixed? Also, a proper DC models port would be nice, but I realize that's difficult due to how the mod loader works.
I've been waiting years for this mod to be made. Great job! Some stages still have a considerable difference but I assume that's more to do with the stages themselves rather than the palette lighting. Regardless though, SADX is a lot god damn closer to being the port it should've been all along.
Lordy, I have an actual reason to boot up the PC version again. The lighting is one of the many, MANY baffling choices they made in the transition from SA to SADX. Now I just gotta combine this with Better SADX, the Dreamcast conversion and the no-gloss models and I think I'll have a pretty merry christmas. Great work man.
Most of the difference is just fog stuff. SADX fog is really awful in many levels. It can be tweaked to resemble the Dreamcast version (and is part of the upcoming update for the DC mods). It won't look exactly the same, but the visuals definitely improve. The Dreamcast version is still going to look brighter because brightness index calculation is still a mystery, so palette lighting isn't very accurate. It may also have to do with the Dreamcast renderer, which afaik works in a different way when it comes to texture brightness.
Oh yeah. For those of you who are into it, dev builds can be found here. Being a build bot, it archives builds and always has the latest pre-release version available for download.
Update! I managed to vastly improve the vibrancy and brightness, so it looks much closer to the Dreamcast version now. Here's some new screenshots with direct comparison to the (mostly) vanilla lighting: http://imgur.com/a/J7fZx To compare with the old version: Final Egg v1.0 vs Final Egg v1.1 - the (for some reason) different FOVs make it hard to compare, but you can see for example that v1.1 is notably brighter, particularly on Sonic and the enemy just in front of him. Full changelog and download here.
The guy who did the comparison videos for version 1.0 is also doing this for version 1.1. You can definitely tell it's getting closer to the DC version now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItFSSzt18d0&list=PLJ-LB0mzuOPWe2fZoqMaaoHCAWF5wHS98&index=6 And he's also using my mod which makes me happy lol (although they replaced the new 1 up icons I made with the originals, I'll probably make another version that retains the original heads since people seem to like those)
Holy shit, this looks better than sex. Screw being productive, I'm going to spend the weekend messing around with this. Please do, o' mighty warlock. I'm certain I'll gouge my eyes out if I have to look at another flat-colored GUN Beetle.
