Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - halkun

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 ... 73
26
Last thing, this is a known issue I will be working on: if the cache has been full and you've been playing for some time without seeing any text (dialog, menus, etc), the cache will dispose of the high resolution font textures and you will start to see text with mixed high-res/low-res characters. This is because, unintuitively, the process that loads the textures is called very rarely for the most common textures, and if they're not actually seen in game they will fall to the back of the cache and eventually be removed. I will be working on a way to keep the most essential textures in the cache no matter what.

That's because it's using the PSX's cache management system. The menu module's graphics that have the font/menu stuff are loaded into VRAM perminatly and never swapped out. Things like backgrounds and battle scenes are overwritten at a drop of a hat, (Most often during a module swap)

27
General Discussion / Re: Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-04-01 12:33:25 »
Blender

28
General Discussion / Re: Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-29 21:29:34 »
Probably this: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130310211733/finalfantasy/images/8/89/Balamb_Garden_FFVIII_Artwork_3.jpg

This is problematic however. After Balamb become mobile you can still access training zone, quad and etc. However, the 3D model of worldmap Balamb is only the core thing with class rooms, without other places. Maybe someone understand this? Because I can't imagine how does Balamb really look.

When Balamb "Converts" into the ship the following things happen...
The ring increases in size and moves to the bottom
The spire angles out to be the "tail"
The "cupcake" extends higher and changes shape
The domes are retracted into the ship

This is why you don't go down halls anymore when Balamb is in Ship mode. The quad isn't an external dome, it's inside the Balamb building proper  (On the left side).

However, it's not a 1:1 transformation. The transformation is a bit "fluid" and things change by disappearing/dissolving. It's why the transformation sequence is so obscured.

29
General Discussion / Re: Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-29 06:24:02 »
Those are what I've been using for reference...

Oh, the model is going into "Cities: Skylines" as a university. I'll post the workshop link when I'm done.




Textureing is next!

30
General Discussion / Re: Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-29 03:02:54 »
Update!


31
General Discussion / Re: Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-27 04:45:29 »
Update
 

32
General Discussion / Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-25 02:32:20 »
I don't know.. It looks like a cupcake :)


33
Is it just in the experiment phase right now? I'm asking because I would like to use that as a basis for import into the Cities: Skyline game. (I'm modeling my own Balamb garden, but that model would be an excellent base shape to model from. I saw a screenshot of a wireframe before. I don't even need the textures or anything. Better yet if you can capture a wireframe shot with the map triangles around it, (for perspective), that can work too.

34
Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform
« on: 2015-03-21 18:27:59 »
Models look great wolfman. I'm just glad ANYONE is interested in reviving the graphics of this game honestly. Do you have any recommendations for someone looking to learn 3d modeling? I just downloaded blender and I'm wondering where I should start.

Good choice on Blender. The awesome thing is not only is Blender free, but so is the manual/lessons for that
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

you can get the PDF at the top of the page

35
Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform
« on: 2015-03-19 03:26:36 »
Well I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion. Lol. I don't recall seeing any of your work halkun. I use zbrush to create high poly work. Then reduce 2 million polys to this 10k. 3d art is about nothing but detail. Wait till you see my next project. And yea if you have some negative criticism just pm me. No need to be rude in public.

Sorry, I was a little rough on the feedback. I have linked here something I made that clocks in 4854 polygons (When tessellated, 9428 Triangles) I marked the count with the red arrow in case you don't know Blender. I have one picture showing the untextured model and another with the mesh outlined.  I included finger details showing were my ring loops are for bone flexing, I also got a close-up of the face,  and other areas where I could get away with huge polys with little loss of fidelity.




The red lines are where my UV map seams are, you can get away with a lot when you texture. Also the seams are split so I can mirror the texture and save video memory.

I love her shoes <3

36
Graphical / Re: [WIP] Hojo Lifeform
« on: 2015-03-12 04:56:21 »
Did you really need 10K polygons for that? I probably could of make one with about 800-1000 tops. 3D art isn't about getting the most detailed. It's about getting the most out of your triangles. It's kind of like golf, the lower, the better.

37
If I remember correctly the PC version does some wacky vsync stuff along with an internal timer that was impossible to decouple. Look back in the 60fps thread near the beginning and some info may be there if I remember.

38
PS1 bases it's timing on root counters which are timers that fire very pixel clock, Hsync, and Vsync (Every dot, line and frame). We've tripped up on root counter code before that caused us grief.

39
Remember to check out the PS1 GPU opcodes. Most of the time when programmer made models for the PS1, they usually used a format that could easily be placed into a linked list (Called an Ordering Table or "OT") so the DMA could chain the list from memory directly into the GPU (Having the GTE fill in the 3D blanks)

This means the OT looked something like this (GROSS GENERALAZATION!!! See GPU Opcode list)

GPUOpcode [arguments] [coordinates]
GPUOpcode [arguments] [coordinates]
GPUOpcode [arguments] [coordinates]
GPUOpcode [arguments] [coordinates]
GPUOpcode [arguments] [coordinates]

Keep in mind that the PS1 GPU only could draw dots, lines, triangles, and quads. The tris and quads could be flat, vertex shaded, or textured with a set kind of transparency.  The GPU could not do 3D so the 2D draw coordinates was normally calculated by the GTE (3d to 2d conversion) and patched into the OT. Then the ordering table was reorganized by Z depth and chained via DMA to the GPU to be drawn on the screen.

I was going to say that most often the 3D vertexes were "pooled" together so they could be calculated one right after another by the GTE, but it looks like you already found the vertex pools.

I hope that makes sense....

40
Just as a reminder for the Kanji in the rooms...

1. Kitase's Room(北)
2. Kyounen's Room(京)
3. Nojima's Room(野)
4. Kichioka's Room(吉)
5. Toyana's Room(鳥)
6. Akiyama's Room(秋)
7. Maysuhara's Room(松)
8. Chiba's Room(千)
9. Tokita's Room
10. Kato's Room

41
General Discussion / Re: Midgar recreated in Minecraft
« on: 2014-10-15 06:58:30 »
Just seen this on Facebook and was going to post it here.
I think this is more awesome than the USS ENTERPRISE from a few years ago

Thanks! It nice to know some people remember that thing I did...

42
The big model in the debug room tests exactly this function

43
I parsed out the format of CDPOS.DAT. It's probably similar to FF7's file indexer. (YAMADA.BIN)? Things of note: It looks like the sector index is "off by one". I was able to suss it out.

44
See my post here over why the frame counters are a mess.

45
The PSX version uses a universal hardware "Root Counter" from the GPU to keep track of the framerates. (root counters can be attached to the pixel clock, Hsync, and Vsync, so it can fire every pixel, every scanline, or every frame) This probably didn't translate well to PC as the only real thing we have is Vsync trigger. Also credits was a separate overly executable in the PSX so it probably used root counters differently then the battle modulel/field module/minigame

46
Ok, I'm pulling this out of hibernation and can use some help, and also have a moral dilemma.

Another Mind is a neat FMV visual novel made by Square back in 1998. It uses a pretty quirky Dialog system where you input full sentences into the game and it parses them.

I just put up the file formats on the Wiki. There are only 12 of them. The good news is that I found the sector look-up table for the files. (After literally seconds of searching. It's called CDPOS.DAT and it's in the root directory. It only looks up the files in a single folder (where all the Game data is located) and at the end of the list is a big DUMMY file which fills out the outed edge of the CD-ROM. This means file insert/removal is pretty much a breeze.

If I can get a text dump of the dictionaries/game dialog, I will be so happy. Even better. There is tutorial at the beginning I'm assuming called "DEMO" that exercises much of the game core functions. Also, the scripting commands are plain text in the executable.

Anyone what to help?

47
neato burrito!

Aww, It's not working right :/

I can't do the following...

Code: [Select]
unlzs -p 2 --no-header-test *.tiz

...to mass decompress. Also the output data is not correct. I'm investigating.

48
myst6re, Can you add a command-line switch to qt-lzs so I can decompress "Another Mind" style LZS files. (The ones with the "CC FF" in the header)

Better yet, if it detects "C3 FF" at the beginning of the file to ignore them and decompress the rest. It's a pain to edit several hundred files one at a time to remove those two bytes.

49
myst6re, Can you add a command-line switch to qt-lzs so I can decompress "Another Mind" style LZS files. (The ones with the "CC FF" in the header)

Better yet, if it detects "C3 FF" at the beginning of the file to ignore them and decompress the rest. It's a pain to edit several hundred files one at a time to remove those two bytes.

50
Yea, I've been here for a while :P

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 ... 73