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SADX Lantern Engine

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by SF94, Dec 23, 2016.

  1. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Question: What files would one have to modify to change the color used by a stage's lighting?
     
  2. PkR

    PkR

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    SADX Dreamcast Conversion, The Emeralds' Awakening
    If you use my tool, it has a built-in level select menu that you can use if PLEdit.exe is run from the lighting mod's system folder. Stage, character and object palettes are all in one file.
     
  3. Fred

    Fred

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    Man, it bears repeating: it is positively bonkers that SADX can now be made to look like this. My undying gratitude to Morph, PkR, and everyone else in the Dream Team that allowed this to happen. You've provided this ol' fogie with some serious feels.
     
  4. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Reiterating this. It's amazing seeing a screenshot like this just knowing how garbage the base game looks. Great job team, this is SADX as we truly imagined it.
     
  5. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

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    I mean, I'm sure plenty of people imagined SADX would look better before it came out.
     
  6. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    To be fair, I still see a lot of people prefer the SADX models so long as the gloss is taken off. All the missing effects and botched lighting are a different story, though, and it's impossible to figure out why Sega was so lazy with its porting afterwards (besides trying to save money).
     
  7. Fred

    Fred

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    Mighty classy of you gents to take my compliment as pretext to bash SADX again
     
  8. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    I didn't mean to construe it as that, just moreso baffled. But the fact that in less than a year, some breakthroughs allowed people to restore so much is insane considering I remember lurking years ago and seeing some people resigned to stuff like this being impossible.
     
  9. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Thanks. I just wanted to get rid of the bizarre green tint that characters gain on Mystic Ruins, and your tool worked wonders for that purpose:
    [​IMG]
    And yes, I'm aware the green tint was present in the Dreamcast version's Mystic Ruins as well. But it still looks really out of place.

    Anyway, I uploaded my small edit here in case anyone would like to try it. Note that all this patch does is change the color used by characters' lighting in MR; the area's lighting is unaffected.

    Indeed. Morph, PkR and the others have done an amazing job restoring the Dreamcast content and addressing many of the SADX issues.
     
  10. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    Much appreciated. I'll never forget that Christmas of '99, on the note of feels. :v:

    I think the green bit was supposed to be a poor man's global illumination--i.e the grass "reflecting" green light. A little more intense than realistic, though. Looks great without it as well, but I suppose that's just a side effect of good lighting in general. :eng101:
     
  11. BlazeHedgehog

    BlazeHedgehog

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    What's interesting is that these mods seem to cut down on the fake global illumination a little bit. Then again, my testing environment isn't super robust:

    Sonic Adventure (Sonic's Story) being emulated on... I think Demul? Maybe NullDC? I took these five years ago, I forget what emulator
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Dreamcast Conversion + Lantern Engine + Dreamcast Character Pack (Knuckles' Story)
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    At least on Sonic, the fake GI seems to be a lot less pronounced. I should probably just replay Sonic's story again to get more definitive comparison shots, but I just did that like a month and a half ago and I am laaaazy (these were just screenshots I had lying around)
     
  12. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    Yeah, there are sometimes some discrepancies like that. It could be the light direction, or it could even be loading the wrong file(s). Looks more like it could be the former.
     
  13. ThePuzzledBoy

    ThePuzzledBoy

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    Motivation to work on something. ANYTHING.
    I've noticed a problem with running the mod in Windows XP. In that it doesn't run at all.

    When I try to start SADX with the mod, it starts with the typical white screen, but then shows the error "sonic.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

    It runs perfectly fine in a separate Windows 10 machine, just not on XP.


    Thanks,

    Hunter
     
  14. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    Thanks for letting me know. I'll have a look.
     
  15. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    I believe I've resolved the issue. If you could try out this build and let me know how it goes, it would be much appreciated.

    Edit: confirmed via IRC. Hotfix has been published.
     
  16. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    Interesting thing about this. The light direction (which is the issue) has been fixed in the Dreamcast mod suite. The reason it's not included in the Lantern Engine directly is because the light direction for the Mystic Ruins isn't cut-and-dried. More details on this here.
     
  17. redhotsonic

    redhotsonic

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    So, I've just come across this topic (shows how often I'm around) and saw in your very first post:

    This is probably why it failed and looked normal in the SHC17 trailer. Bugger. I'm kicking myself over this but mistakes happen I guess (I literally got given your mod and that was it so I did all the guess work).
     
  18. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    :v: