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Sonic Adventure 2 Hacking

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Turbohog, Feb 20, 2012.

  1. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    So, it's been a while. We've all been working hard over in the X-hax Discord server, and today, we see the results of our work.
    [​IMG]
    The first custom character model for SA2 with functioning weights/skinning! Justin113D wrote the import/export plugin for Blender (with help from Exant and myself) which you can find here, and also made the model. This is hopefully only the first of many mods for SA2 like this.
    You can download the mod from GameBanana.

    If you're wondering about SA Tools, we have been working on new import/export options as well as support for the GameCube model format, but it's not quite ready for prime time yet. Hopefully soon.
     
  2. DaveDave

    DaveDave

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    Thank you MainMemory, you're a massive asset to this community. Keep up the good work.
     
  3. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Hey, so, the scene has kind of exploded since Justin finished his exporter and SA Tools finally got that importer.





    If you are interested in creating custom models for SA2, there is a (slightly outdated) guide here, or you can join our Discord to get more direct guidance.
     
  4. Turbohog

    Turbohog

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    Great to see this. I'm mostly excited for custom levels - especially since SA2 has the only competent multiplayer mode in all the 3D Sonic games. Hopefully I'll join in when life slows down a bit.
     
  5. BlazeHedgehog

    BlazeHedgehog

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    Very excited by that Sonic Heroes port. I've wanted to play those levels solo and in a better engine for absolutely ages. With some clean up on the camera, splines and enemy placement that could end up something very special.
     
  6. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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  7. TheInvisibleSun

    TheInvisibleSun

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    The Water
    Cool mod! It looks like he still moves like Eggman, though; how difficult would it be to make Gamma a bit more nimble like he was in Adventure 1? (Unless I have no idea what I am talking about and they don't actually control differently.)
     
  8. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    I'm gonna go ahead and say very difficult.
     
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  9. flarn2006

    flarn2006

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    Does anyone know where this came from?
    https://pastebin.com/mzbaURpE
    It contains the same kind of text that I pointed out on page 40 of this thread. Looks like more model data in the same format, which I can't find anything about on Google.
     
  10. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    That's NJA, Ninja ASCII, a set of preprocessor macros that allow you to represent Ninja models in a more human-readable format. It's in the Dreamcast Katana SDK. SAMDL can export to it (maybe for Basic models only?).
     
  11. Pexs

    Pexs

    Otherwise known as Spex Member
    I wanted to ask. I was searching around and I couldn't quite find anything about this. Can animations be replaced in SA2 as well, or just models now?
     
  12. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Animations can be replaced. You can use AnimJSONConverter to convert .saanim files to JSON, where you can edit them by hand, or you can use this tool with 3DS Max.
     
  13. Pexs

    Pexs

    Otherwise known as Spex Member
    Oh! Awesome! I've only got access to Maya Lt and Blender at the moment, but maybe when the time comes I can collab with some people to do a total character conversion. Between doing the modeling and animation myself, it honestly sounds pretty fun.

    Is everything replaceable in the game? Cutscenes and dialogue too? If so I'm surprised no one's given it a complete overhaul a shot yet.
     
  14. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Cutscene models are complicated. We have no tools to edit the shape motions used for the faces and hands, unless you want to do it manually in JSON, but that sounds like a nightmare.
     
  15. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    I just have a question for y'all hackers: do you think realistic shaders mods (like this Minecraft mod) will ever exist for this game? I've noticed from my own playthroughs that shadows do act sorta realistically when, for instance, you're running sideways. I know it's easy in Generations because the Unleashed shaders are still in the game, I was just curious if it was possible in SA2.
     
  16. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Update for Amy Adventure 2 adds alternate costumes for Sonic and Shadow, hopefully the first in a full set where Amy wears everyone else's clothes.

    Download
    Sonic Amy modeled by Sui, based on Sonic's "favorite clothes" from the OVA, Shadow Amy modeled by Shadowth117, based on this art by Wizaria.
     
  17. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    For anyone who has used the "Retranslated" mod for SA2, is there any way to display subtitles during the pre-rendered cutscene dialogue? In particular the "Eggman's Announcement" scene, where I realized I don't understand Japanese. :p
     
  18. Speeps

    Speeps

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    Not as far as I know, unless they get baked into the video itself or something.

    Funny thing about all that though, all of those FMVs have unused copies of their voice clips in the AFS file, as well as subtitles. If you change the ID for a playing event (8C51A444 in the DC version) to one that gets skipped over for the videos you'll start hearing the characters use the lines. It explains what the second set of unused President dialogue is (it was intended to play during the FMV after Finalhazard).
     
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  19. Liliam

    Liliam

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    If the timing information for these lines is still intact, and lines up well enough with the final FMV scene, then mixing the former into the latter might be a good video idea. :thumbsup:
     
  20. Speeps

    Speeps

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    The FMVs don't use this ID system and there's no timing data at all for them, as they have no E0XXX_1 file. That said, it's not like they're hard to create manually.

    The only way I can think of doing it would be to create a custom cutscene with a movie player (Think Gerald's video) over the camera and putting in the audio as BGM. This would still present a problem with the Day X scenes though, as they don't leave a gap in the list. All of Eggman's subs and voices for that are hidden in the scenes that take place after them (Eg. "Half the moon is gone?").