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DJGrenola
2015-05-10 03:30:00 pm
No, I'm someone who occasionally tries to make useful suggestions, unlike some other users.
Aruki
Aruki
Edit history:
Aruki: 2015-05-10 03:56:31 pm
2015-05-10 03:54:39 pm
That's an interesting concept, Grenola. I guess that would best be used when replacing assets where the original file size matches the new file size. I could definitely see that working well in cases where small modifications are made like with my HUD mod.

As far as rebuilding the ISOs I should really look at your code at some point. I know Dolphin has the ability to unpack ISOs as well so there should be at least two good sources of info to use as reference. I could see it potentially getting complicated where Trilogy is concerned, though, because Trilogy's disc has several partitions on it IIRC. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be a big deal.

(also, I'm assuming Baby Sheegoth meant you're a saint for making an ISO tool that doesn't require Windows)
Baby Sheegoth
2015-05-10 05:11:01 pm
Quote from Parax:
(also, I'm assuming Baby Sheegoth meant you're a saint for making an ISO tool that doesn't require Windows)

Correct
DJGrenola
2015-05-10 06:44:24 pm
Oh, OK, sorry. Am slightly irritable atm.

The hashing thing is a fairly minor point, I'm just always looking to do things in the most legal way possible. But yeah it's one way of doing find and replace without incorporating copyrighted material in patches, in practice I doubt anyone else is going to care enormously.

I forgot Dolphin also had ISO handling code. It's not a terribly complicated format and again it's sort of a side issue since it doesn't actually impact on the process of patching files which as has been mentioned can be performed on a directory instead of an ISO. The ISO stuff is like an independent layer on top of that. I know nothing about Wii ISOs but wit is another reference for those (another reason to treat the ISO part as a separate problem).
DJGrenola
2015-05-10 07:02:54 pm
Now I think about it, if you're patching assets rather than ISOs you could probably just use the offset within the file and not need to search at all. Might not work so well for stacked mods though, I dunno.
Aruki
2015-05-15 09:27:41 pm
Oh hey this thread is a year old now! Quite a lot has been accomplished over the last year. To celebrate I'm gonna show off what I'm working on currently. I'm implementing support for Metroid Prime 3 models/materials right now. Since there's no map files for MP3 and since shader dumps from Dolphin haven't proven particularly useful, there's a lot of guesswork involved here, but comparing with how things were done in MP1/2 is proving to be useful (I think MP1/2 had the same kind of pipeline for material creation as MP3 - there's patterns in the data, it's just not as explicit as in MP3). While there are still bugs and some parts of the format I haven't supported yet, this is how things look so far:











When this is done I'm going to work on doing the same for DKCR (mostly the same material format as MP3), and then hopefully some script object stuff - the idea is that PWE's first release will support basic editing for MP1, MP2, MP3, and DKCR. Hopefully not too much longer!
Lord Fredrik
2015-05-15 09:43:30 pm
Dang. You are a freaking god, Parax.
Aruki
2015-05-15 09:44:38 pm
Antidote's already got MP3 support in RetroView so I'm kinda just catching up/building on what he found, not like I'm working completely from scratch here.
Lord Fredrik
2015-05-15 09:51:30 pm
I'm serious mate, looks like it would right in the game! I'm looking at the reflections on the floor especially.
Aruki
2015-05-15 09:59:01 pm
Well, thanks. The reflections are fake, haha. The floor is transparent and there's a blurry upside-down version of the geometry underneath it.

The main issue I'm trying to track down right now is that some lightmaps have these random dark splotches that look really bad. You can see it in the background of the first Norion shot. It looks really bad in Bryyo's landing site as well:



The weird thing is it's the same lightmap texture as the lighter portions and it's clearly mapped correctly because the shadows are coming out correctly, so that means that some parts of the lightmap are just legitimately darker than the rest, even though it doesn't look like this ingame. I sorta have some leads on this (I've gotten the dark splotches to show up ingame), but I'm still not really sure what it is yet.

Also the Elysia skybox looks absolutely horrible right now. I'm not sure what I need to do to fix it just yet, there's probably some parts of the format I'm missing...

Lord Fredrik
2015-05-15 10:01:27 pm
I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed at the use of repeated geometry. But... maybe the GameCube can't handle stuff like reflective floors? :s
Aruki
2015-05-15 10:02:04 pm
Real reflections are very performance-intensive. Using techniques like that to fake it is pretty common in games.
Lord Fredrik
2015-05-15 10:12:35 pm
Ah, well thanks for clearing that up. (lol and I want to be a game programmer :P )
Aruki
Aruki
Edit history:
Aruki: 2015-05-16 04:47:44 pm
Aruki: 2015-05-16 04:46:58 pm
Aruki: 2015-05-16 04:40:55 pm
2015-05-16 04:24:59 pm
Before/after



still working on the lightmaps issue and this is where I'm up to now. It's an improvement - it certainly blends a lot better, but it's still not correct, because the bright parts are too bright and they look bad when the rest of the passes are applied (if an area is too bright then it's essentially unlit). What I've noticed is that the lightmaps that do not have those dark splotches have a CLR DIFB present, while the lightmaps that do have them don't. So I got this by taking the materials that don't have CLR DIFB and applying a tevscale of 2.0. I guess this is a step closer to fixing it at least.



Going the other way and halving the lightmaps with CLR DIFB seems to be more correct (especially considering CLR DIFB is usually set to 0x7E7E7EFF, which would make it a multipler color for the lightmap), but then the lightmaps are a lot darker than the game.



Applying a hack to make the lightmap brighter after applying CLR DIFB has gotten decent results. I guess this is acceptable for now though I'd really like to improve this when I understand more.

The problem is since MP3 makes such heavy use of bloom, it's hard to tell whether something's actually wrong or if it just looks off because there's no bloom, lol.
puelo
2015-05-17 03:42:29 pm
Wow! Awesome work Parax aiwebs_016
Aruki
Aruki
Edit history:
Aruki: 2015-05-19 01:29:19 pm
Aruki: 2015-05-19 12:53:45 pm
Aruki: 2015-05-19 12:53:37 pm
2015-05-19 12:50:16 pm


Turns out the correct way to do this is to multiply the color pass by 2, not the lightmap pass. I'm just doing that multiplication on every material that has a lightmap currently, I don't know if there might be another value I should be checking for. In any case, lightmaps look exactly like the game now. Main differences are due to lack of fog and bloom. Main thing left to do is figure out what I'm doing wrong with RFLD and fix it so the Elysia skybox will look nice. (It might be hard to see the difference between this screenshot and the one I posted above, but there is a subtle difference! Plus this isn't a hack)

edit: For comparison, this is what the game looks like with no fog/bloom
jackoalan
2015-05-20 03:20:59 am
Damn, well done Parax!!

Those shader formulas are spot on!!
MrSpEeDrUn
MrSpEeDrUn
Edit history:
MrSpEeDrUn: 2015-05-20 10:18:11 am
2015-05-20 10:13:20 am
MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning
Why don't you guys like... Make your own metroid prime-like game and put it on steam greenlight or something. Would be interesting.

Also those pictures are Kreygasm as hell.
MLSTRM
2015-05-20 02:01:38 pm
Quote from MrSpEeDrUn:
Why don't you guys like... Make your own metroid prime-like game and put it on steam greenlight or something. Would be interesting.

Also those pictures are Kreygasm as hell.


Because what the gaming industry really needs right now is more indie clone games ;p
Baby Sheegoth
2015-05-20 06:07:16 pm
Also litigation from using assets from a Retro game
MrSpEeDrUn
2015-05-20 06:48:16 pm
MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning
Quote from Baby Sheegoth:
Also litigation from using assets from a Retro game

That depends on how similar you'd really make it.

And yeah, i would enjoy playing a proper game having similarities to metroid prime.
Baby Sheegoth
2015-05-20 11:11:12 pm
Quote from MrSpEeDrUn:
Quote from Baby Sheegoth:
Also litigation from using assets from a Retro game

That depends on how similar you'd really make it.

And yeah, i would enjoy playing a proper game having similarities to metroid prime.

...? If you use elements from a prime game, it doesn't matter how similar you make it. You're using assets they own.
Aruki
Aruki
Edit history:
Aruki: 2015-05-20 11:15:53 pm
2015-05-20 11:14:50 pm
Because modding a game is easier than making one from scratch. Personally because I'm still new to a lot of this for me it's about learning, and I'm learning a hell of a lot both from the challenge of trying to figure out how to put together tools you could actually use to make something, as well as studying how Retro does things. Maybe it will lead to making a game in the future but I personally am not there yet.

Also we're not really even modding anything yet since none of the tools are done, so...
MrSpEeDrUn
2015-05-21 07:28:17 am
MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning
Quote from Baby Sheegoth:
Quote from MrSpEeDrUn:
Quote from Baby Sheegoth:
Also litigation from using assets from a Retro game

That depends on how similar you'd really make it.

And yeah, i would enjoy playing a proper game having similarities to metroid prime.

...? If you use elements from a prime game, it doesn't matter how similar you make it. You're using assets they own.


You dont have to use elements from the game to make it similar >_>
Nisco
2015-05-21 04:11:10 pm
The code itself is an element and asset.

It would of course be okay to make a similar game with your own code or a licenced engine, but that isn't what is going on here!

Just wanted to say it's been really cool following your progress, you have all done some really interesting work.