Unofficial Sonic Unleashed Port

Just played it for a couple of hours and yeah this is incredible. I feel like a kid again back in 2008 getting Unleashed for the first time (although what I got back then was the PS2 version lol).

I'm very impressed and grateful to the team, I didn't think this was even possible.

Playing with a PS4 controller, the lightbar changes from blue to purple when you turn into the werehog (and vice-versa). This might be peak.

 

Well done to all involved. I played the PS2 version of Unleashed (it's what I originally had back in the day) recently after a very long time and had the 360 version on the list to get around to. I didn't have a 360 until 2018 and whilst I eventually did get a copy of Unleashed, I couldn't get the hang of particular QTEs and just forgot about it as I had other games to go through at that point in time anyway. If only they released it for PC...

This becoming available certainly does make me want to get around to playing it more. Like SEGA's inability to not provide PC ports of the RSDK games for many years, it is the community's gain.

 

protip: you can pause the game to cheese your way through the QTEs, that's a method that served me well back in the day :-P

 

I've long maintained that the biggest problem with the Werehog sections was the atrocious performance, and that they would be a lot more fun if they actually ran smoothly and certain things were a bit faster like the button puzzles. I'm excited to do another playthrough and finally put that theory to the test!

Genuinely really grateful to share this community with such talented and driven people.

 

This is amazing as someone who has only ever really played the original on PS3. Just being able to turn off the Werehog jazz music is an amazing start.

Though if there are any modders or musically inclined individuals want to make battle remixes for each continent, similar to how the Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door remake made remixes for each chapter, that would be an amazing feat. Conceptually I don't mind the battle music, but it was the constant repetition of it made it ear cancer.

 

Citing a blogpost of your own where you talk about how you ported someone else's decompilation therefore you "actually" know what a port is does not make you an intellectual authority. Pretty ironic you're deriding other people being on their "high horses."


You are correct that the line between emulation and native code is getting blurred, but your hard-line stance that "it must directly use the apis of the target platform to be a port" breaks down when you consider game engines and frameworks that run under a "build once run anywhere" paradigm. Is the entire Java ecosystem emulation? Are you arguing there's never been a true PC "port" of Minecraft before Bedrock edition? That feels like an entirely unserious claim.

I'd rather make a distinction based on goals: general-purpose vs. specailization. Emulation provides an environment that prioritizes accuracy over performance while implementing hacks when available to achieve both as reasonably as possible. Recompilation strips out everything about a console that isn't required to run your one target application. In fact XenonRecomp omits a shitload of the xbox's instructions that are not *exclusively* implemented to get Unleashed running, because the goal was only to get Unleashed on PC. Even if N64Recomps' use of Rabbitizer is more feature-complete, the end product will only include what's necessary to run Mario, Zelda, whatever you're building.

If we want to make an argument of "it needs to be the original code" then arguably recomp is closer than RSDK decomps; your example with the Mania decomp falls short when you consider that reimplementations of Mania's methods that aren't explicitly tagged as "original code" (i.e. unreadable guff that can't easily be modified) do not result in identical binary code when compiled under the same conditions. Some simple common functions will, but unless byte-for-byte accuracy under the same conditions with the same compiler as the original is the goal (something achieved by some n64 decomps like Mario64 decomp--again UNLESS YOU DO THAT) then the argument doesn't work. But that's still a bad argument because ports have source changes to facilitate different platforms all the time. Pretty dramatic ones depending on the platform. So what's the difference between a "port" and a "version" then?


You are arguing against the validity of N64 recomp and similar work like this based on the misunderstandings of the crowd. What sucks is you seem to lump Wiseguy and Skyth into that in your second statement:

"Being a programmer has its downsides: [you're] horribly aware of just how dumb people can be when they talk about programming-related things without being programmers themselves."

I'm sorry, what in the world is the implication here? Are you saying you are more aware of what this actually is than the people who developed it? Are you capable of doing the same thing? Are you saying these developers are lying about their work for a publicity stunt? I don't like any of those options.


We are arguing semantics over nothing because these terms were used to describe common software patterns with clear goals in mind. "Emulation" as a catchall term is used fucking everywhere in production software, like in, again, Java. Or the .NET framework. Wow, I guess Unity games aren't actually PC software because they aren't built to C++ baremetal. Is that the case for all enterprise software? How about every python program ever written? You can see how this becomes a bad argument incredibly quickly when we step outside the gaming bubble and consider the breadth of what's out there. Acting like only C, C++, Rust or w/e low-level language programs are the only "native" programs out there is wild and a myopic view of what native code actually is.




To cap it off though, nothing about Unleashed Recomp or even N64 recomp's VISUALS are anything close to emulation. Doubly so the case for Unleashed Recomp. Go ahead and compare the code for this thing's rendering with Generations Raytracing's DX12 implementation. Beyond the use of Dario's Plume RHI, this is largely the same. Skyth did not "emulate" xbox graphics, he implemented missing instructions from the 360's shader architecture (as we can see with ShaderRecomp) and hooked into the game's rendering functions to create correct equivalents in DX12 and Vulkan. If he did not do that, you could bet your ass the performance would slow to a crawl. To imply he "emulated" the 360's graphics or even just redid what xenia did is actually grossly disrespectful to the work and analysis put into this, and linking a tirade you made about a different recomp effort entirely to handwave this is shockingly flippant.

Not to mention throwing in remarks about how you are also an emulator dev and not-so-subtly calling the people behind N64 recomp "pretend programmer" when the end result of Majora's Mask is far and away a better end user experience than anything that came before it, especially the sound quality. This is derailing from Sonic but this actually sounds like you read a blogpost about what N64 recomp is without actually trying it yourself and you concluded you already knew everything about it. This would track considering all of your talk about "overhead" (to which I'd like to know if you actually profiled MMRecomp vs. Mars).
I hope I'm wrong about that because that's highly unserious behavior, and if you ACTUALLY intended to call Wiseguy and Dario "pretend programmers" then I'm afraid you can't be reasoned with. Shameful. Hopefully SU Recomp changes your tune, at least a little bit.




This is a PC port, in every way. I'm not interested in arguing this further with n64 and whatnot but this runs circles around Xenia in every metric for good reason; it is unignorably better, and it's not "just" because of a lot of patches or because they made a "better emulator" than xenia or whatever you want to call it. It is Sonic Unleashed on PC. End of story.

Well we can agree on that at least.

 

I'll be honest, I don't think Clownacy had any ill intentions, no less to deserve a wall of crushing text. Right or not, I think you're reading too much into it, and honestly, maybe you should let it go, rather than letting it wind you up into an outburst of a massive post...

...on topic, this is certainly a nice surprise! I had been meaning to play this at some point decade(s) ago, but real life never permitted, now I just need to accuired a legal copy

 

Very impressive how well this port runs.
I was running it at 1440p 144Hz with max settings and only had some minor stuttering in Jungle Joyride.
Also, it’s very stable, in the following video I would’ve crashed the game on consoles without fail. Of course I had to try it here.

Spoiler

 

I mean you're right but you don't need to be so aggressive about it

 

The devs said they've put a lot of work into making this steamdeck ready, and in fact it runs at a mostly locked 60fps (possibly with overclocking?) the whole way through. AND for some reason Linux's thread scheduler seems to have an inherent performance boost for this game!

Considering Xenia already has a few inherent issues with it that go beyond visual bugs, especially for deck I'm pretty confident in saying this is a strict upgrade.

 

This is pretty groovy. Nice to have all the boost games playable natively in peak form on PC now!

 

I'm just really happy this is out.

Hopefully, Sega won’t sike us out with a Sonic Unleashed Ultimate or Deluxe edition.

 

That's badass. I'm busy/out of town for the next few days, but after that I should get on putting this onto my Deck; I've been wanting to give the game a fair shot since I really disliked it (the hi-def version anyways) at launch for some reason, but the Xenia version on Deck was, uh, not pretty. Ran okay with some sacrifices, but Unleashed is a goddamn beaut visually; am I even experiencing the game if I'm gutting its best aspect in order to play it at a decent FPS?

Looking forward to this in a few days when I can do the requisite tinkering with my Deck.

 

Good god, getting this running on Steam Deck was ridiculously painless, and my early impressions are that this is everything I would have wanted from the fantastical official Unleashed remaster that I've never had much hope would actually happen.

Insane. Absolutely insane.

 

yep, granted I've only made it into the first werehog stage but I was playing at 60fps and it's been smooth as hell the entire time.

I have no idea how the Xenia version runs but this one has been great so far and the extra options alone make it more worthwhile than a straight emulation imho.

 

It is by far, you can run it at fully native 1280x720 instead of 882x720 and performs far better than it does with Xenia, nevermind that you don't have any of the instability and graphical issues that plague it.

 

Installed it this morning and played all the way to Shamar Night in one sitting. Game runs at 60fps the entire way, with no visual compromises made, and incredibly fast loading times.

This is a fantastic port. Cannot praise the team behind this enough.

 

just saw that apparently if you play with a PS5 dualsense the light changes colour depending on what form Sonic is in and you can use the touchpad to rotate the world map
https://x.com/PTKay__/status/1896206833347612986
this is actually next level, it's so well put together lol

 

The icon on the title bar also changes depending on whether you're in the daytime or nighttime. It's so lovingly crafted.