Sonic X-treme Textures and Defs

I haven't checked all the death egg maps yet, but the last two and galaxy.def all look the same to me.

 

Although Senn's website says that the two are the same, I don't know, Galaxy.def seems too different from the Death Egg Maps, possibly though because its textured and the Death Egg Maps generally aren't.
I was watching one of the new paths videos, the map that is in the video exists in the file, I believe its one of the STAR levels, but what I found amazing is the paths that expanded out and you could run across, is the data for that put into the level geometry and then modified by the engine, or is it the job of the engine solely to make it exist.
I did a little more looking at the Color1.DOc file and it specifies the Following as levels
Red Sands:
-Giza Speedway
-Pyro Pools
-Tombs 'n Traps
Crystal Frost:
-Prism Chorus
-Cryogenesis
-Icegates
Jade Gully
-Emerald Clouds
-Wolf Den
-Bamboo Transit
Metal Blade:
-Nightmare Bridge
-Sewer Shock
-Necropolis
Death Egg:
-Factory Robo
-Proving Grounds
-Megabase Control

I found it odd that blue ocean wasn't mentioned, possibly because not much was done on it, although if you look at one of the SXC pics, it seems that there was an underwater part of Crystal Frost. Again Speculation, but who really knows.

 

The Galaxy map has the same layout though, look at it. It has that same large multitiered level with the long tunnel at the back.

Very cool find with those level names though!

 

You know, I'm actually surprised at how well Chris Senn took this.

 

He's still pretty disappointed, or he's keeping his anger bottled. I doubt we'll see anything serious happen, but he may not be so lenient with future materials.

 

it's taking you guys way too long to make playable versions of these maps.

 

I guess he's just trying to be the bigger man. Besides, most of that stuff seems to be Ofer's work anyway, so he's the one who should be pissed.

 

I apologize profusely for people being unable to liberally pull game engines out of their asses.

 

First post as well, I'm a long time reader of the forum and site though. I'm very interested in the xtreme levels though, so it's pulled me in to register and get speaking. I did wonder if creating a seperate thread would be more apropriate, but who else is looking inside the .DEF files?

They obviously hold a lot more than the viewer shows, like previously mentioned, the paths etc. The files look simple enough, has anyone worked out how to read the hexdump data yet? The paths seem to work on radius and linking a set number of points together. The paths would probably be the easiest to work out first. I've started concentrating on JADE1.def (jade gully) as that seems the most complete level.

I've copied an example path below,

Code (Text):

1. //======
2. //FLOWER_path                                      
3. //======
4.  
5. NEW_PATH    "FLOWER_path"
6. {
7.     Value   001,3                               //Count
8.     Value   002,2048                            //dt
9.     Value   008,128                             //Radius
10.     Value   011,3276                            //ActorDt
11.     Value   014,65536
12.     HexDump "010003002e000000000001528008000880060000ffff00008008000b80060000ffff00008008
13. 000c80060000ffff00008008000c80060000ffff"
14. }

any ideas on reading the hexdump? The '01000300' seems to be on all the paths, so I'm guessing it's an identifier of some description. Should I create a new thread for the filetype? Or am I being thick! lol

 

I'm still working on my viewer, but I've got a sonic sprite pasted on the center of the screen at all times that reacts to your inputs. If you squint, it could almost look like gameplay :v:

EDIT: @ Above

I've been looking at those descriptions as well. Any clue what the ActorDt is?

 

My maths is soooo ropey atm, but wondering if it's something to help sonic stay on the path? That's what the comment seems to suggest and the dt is part of the maths behind making the line for the path surely... that's my guess anyway... :/

Have you got any geometery loading in your viewer yet?

 

Me and Xeniczone have been working on a Xtreme fan game for a few years now, its gone threw many changes, including adding sonic 1 sega Genesis play mechanics, like the loop.
we have level rotations a fish-eye and some other things already done. ( our fish-eye engine isn't the same as in the original game) in fact we developed 5 or more different fish-eye systems. most of which were scrapped.
seems a vertex shader may be the best way to go, this is the only fish-eye idea we haven't done yet.

although there bits and pieces of our game completed. they just have to be merged together and tweaked.
but the project has suffered from our inability to get time to work on it......
so it sits for months on end, than we work on it for like a week than months pass without anything happening.

old old video of the best fish-eye we could develop. so far at least. we've tried a few other ideas after this one , but this gets the best result,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN7ba7U7zEo
Personally I feel this fish-eye is far more realistic than what was used in the PC version of xtreme since it doesn't wrap the level so far into the background.
this fishey is based on a Fisheye Camera lenze.

 

I wrote a quick shader based on the info Tax posted earlier. It's quick and efficient.

Did you happen to try the method I linked earlier with the 6 rendered FOVs that are mathematically linked together ala that Fisheye Quake project I posted before?

 

We havn't tryed it , hey,,,Is it a vertex shader??
I'll have to take a look. thx

Edit: just took a look,,,,,, seems the Quake fisheye works similer to our fisheye in the above posted video.
so yeah I guess we tried it without knowing it lol

havnt tried Taxmans yet,,, I'll farward this info over to Xeniczone, again thx a bunch

 

I was saying it jokingly :P

 

Oh. :specialed:

Well, in that case, I am rather looking forward to a proper engine to play around with these in. I wonder if it'd be worth modding BlitzSonic to create a proper X-Treme engine lookalike? I remember it has a similar enough camera mode in terms of player perspective; all you'd have to do is turn the fisheye camera on and ignore that Sonic is a model instead of a sprite and you're pretty much set. Anyone here experienced with that engine?

 

Hello,
this is my first real post here, so, don't immediately start smacking me in the face for the question I wanna ask! ^^´ I know how a lot of Sonic Community's behave, so, I hope this one is different! ^^´

Uhm, is anyone working on or plans to build a engine for the maps ... in other words is anyone going to remake the game sort of? Or at least something like the Sanik viewer, where you can load in a level and run around in it, but ... I guess it's not as easy and simple as I might imagine it right now! :/ Then again, I'm no programer in any way, I cannot even write a Website, the biggest thing I did was to write a simple text adventure on a C64 back in 2003/04, and even that wasn't finished! :/

 

A lot of people are talking about it, it's not going to be an instant thing - so I'd suggest just sitting back and waiting to see what happens! Making a game engine isn't going to happen over night, and people have to understand the level files fully before they can do anything...

 

I'm glad to see some technical discussion finally :D Tweaker's comment about pulling an engine out of one's ass made me lol.

Man I wish I knew how to code, I'd love to see these a Quake3 based xtreme engine

 

Hey everyone, some pics.. maybe there to big ? lol
I've posted these over on Mr. Senn's forums as well.
In the process of modeling I've come across some Minor differences in the Jade Gully PC video and SaNik's viewer.

Some of the small differences worth pointing out... are...
A few streams are recessed into the ground.
Toward the end of the video there is a few blocks recessed as well.
The waterfalls (although hidden inside blocks within the viewer) are slanted and not cubes.



the bridges are not cubes as in the viewer.


But Hey!
everything been fixed perfectly down using pixel measurements!
all except......... the final room with the stream. its very hard to tell from the video whats going on in there,
I've spent hours trying to figure this out.
the central stream I've got down perfectly, but the small streams on the side are really hard to tell whats going on,
I've matched there right positions to the texture pixels on the brick walls, but its hard to see what the left positions are. they may or may not be slanted into the main stream.
also waterfall textures are .5 insted of 1 for tileing on the v axsis. of UV layout. (Video being .5)