Sonic Generations Hacking (and More!)

You're going to have to open the files up manually and guide yourself with this spec to convert it. I remember DinnerSonic made a converter once for the text parts, but there's no real editor yet for the .fco files.

All it is is indices for the definition of the actual font file, that's why it isn't just chars. Either do it manually, or someone has to dig deeper and make a usable editor out of it.

 

It does it for all the classic levels in Generations from the Genesis era. If you want to play cloned layouts of GHZ or Casino Night or Mushroom Hill, play that game.

Plus, they combined elements of Emerald hill into Green Hill for generations in order to have as much throwback as possible. It's why the spinning tops were added into sky sanctuary and why water slides were added into Chemical Plant. They weren't apart of those levels either but they work with them regardless, so they can't hurt.

 

okay I think I understand that, but Where do I find the .fco files? I unpacked bb, bb2, and bb3, but I can't find any fco files. is there something else I have to extract too?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnZcejIgjI

 

Okay, I'd been really busy lately being lazy and accomplishing nothing, but a friend wanted a tree from City Escape to have a nice tree model for something... and I suddenly realize I can't load level geometry at all in Sonic Glvl. Invalid instance info file errors up the wazoo any time I try to load any of the levels. Further investigation indicates it didn't even unpack said files, the directories don't exist! I've heard of an issue like this before, but I've already got the VC redistributables installed, updated etc!

Also after this I really should get about finding where I was supposed to upload the updated template things, assuming nobody got to the ones I had done, I see listings for most of the extra things I added to the White World put in the latest update's template file but maybe that was my own doing and I forgot.

 

I hope I'm not posting this in the wrong spot, but I had a couple questions:

1. Are there any tutorials on how to use SonicGLvl yet? I had looked around on Sonic Retro, but couldn't seem to find anything. Specifically, I've had no luck figuring out how to use cameras, and how to mess with 2D sections. I spent about a half a day messing around inside Sky Sanctuary, but kept running into all sorts of issues. Also, it seems you can't edit tags that are inside other tags for some reason in SonicGLvl? Is this a bug?

2. What are those x,y,z,w rotations? I've never really seen those before, but it seems that Generations/SonicGLvl uses that format, and I can't really do something I was attempting to do without figuring out how those work.

Also, I apologize if last time I was here, I sounded like I was bashing SonicGLvl, because that wasn't my intention at all. I just felt I was doing something wrong, and I hadn't gotten much sleep.

 

Open up the command line and type expand. If you don't have that SonicGLvl won't work, and I can't distribute it either! It's a Microsoft utility.

The The SCHG has some guides, but not much object-related stuff. If people are willing to document it, it obviously helps others. The best way to research on your own is to just open the game's stages and explore, it's what we all do for now.

Yes, but you don't need to. It's not much of a bug because it's actually going to be scrapped pretty soon, as the game doesn't use attribute trees at all. You need to update your template properly with the types(vector3, list, id) to use it.

They're quaternions, you can read up some more on the math online. It's probably going to get replaced with Euler angles later on.

 

You can distribute mscompress though.

 

Mel' made another video update:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeQQEL7pKsc

Stage is coming along great, hopefully we see the others hes working on soon.

 

Oh sweet, thanks. I was also relying on makecab for repackaging, so this saves me a lot of trouble in ensuring compatibility with both utilities.

 

Oh ok, thanks. I guess I'll just need to keep experimenting to figure that sort of stuff out. Speaking of people willing to document things, is there some place we can do something like that? I think it would be really nice if we could all document what the different variables do inside things such as Sonic's physics files. I'm sure everyone has played around with different things, and it would help the really skilled people to make interesting physics.

What do you mean by "you don't need to"? If you try editing the launch angle of the Seaside Hill cannon, it doesn't let you do anything... Unless I need to update the template in a different way than downloading the latest version of SonicGLvl?...

Ahh... I looked this up and it seems way beyond my understanding of mathematical equations... I'll try to keep working with it though and see if I can figure it out.

 

Here, just use my updated templates: http://www.mediafire...15h5rlldctxbbxh

These modified templates changes some attributes into using vector3, id, and list. I've also added presets in the classic item box to help out those that are making Classic Sonic stages.

 

Oh thank you! I think I misunderstood, sorry.

EDIT:

Spoiler

I'm still hoping someone has an answer for this though . I'd like to help out with that if I could... if it exists. Since I honestly only know a little about hex editing, so I can't really help out with much else...

 

That guy who is porting that desert Sonic Adventure 2 level for Classic Sonic could use some gimmicks from Lost World.

It would be awesome if you could have the snake in the water section like in Lost World, and Classic Sonic has to press buttons while the water rises.

For that, you can use the Chemical Plant Zone water rising thing.

Water in a pyramid sounds weird. Ok maybe in a seperate port.

 

Who, me? I'm designing it the way the stage was originally intended, but thanks for the idea. Besides, I don't even know how to port gimmicks like that yet.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9aJfW0L9L0
Yup.

 

TimmiT, you win. Everything. That was hilarious XD

 

Here's the latest update on Kingdom Valley, for anyone interested.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_lPsS8932s[/video]