Hacking Outrun 2006

[Howard_Casto]

Ok, let me let the time run out or something and see what options pop up.

[Howard_Casto]

Ah ok.... I've got some more stuff to replace then.... joy   

[FaithLes2425]

Will this hack work with Logitech G27 Wheels?

[zxthehedgehog]

Is there any more progress on this? When are you releasing the beta?

(not meaning to rush you, I know you're sick and everything...)

[Howard_Casto]

Family issues atm. 

I'll get back to this if/when I get the chance.  Right now I do good to find enough time to post a few things on the forums.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok just an update. 

I haven't really made in progress for obvious reasons. 

The exe itself, however is done, it's just the textures (only the foreign language textures to be specific) that need to be changed. 


Now these are a bunch of big IFs but if I can find time this coming week and if I feel well enough, I'll release what I've got done so far.  It'll at least get us preliminary force feedback. 

[MrThunderwing]

Awesomness. My wheel's rumble only, but still looking forward to giving this a try and testing the rumble out.

FWIW, I've had another thought recently about a possible cosmetic change for the better in the game. Again, I'm thinking about this from the perspective of someone with no coding knowledge, so if it's something that would be a massive pain in the arse to do then please ignore my semi-coherent ramblings.

I was playing a bit of LAN Outrun 2006 against a mate a few weekends ago, and I got to thinking about how much better it would be if there was an option to select your car, where you can actually see the car, like in the single player, like so:



Rather than the current option for a LAN game, that simply shows you the name of the car, as people who are unfamiliar with the game (or Ferraris) have no clue what they're selecting. Would it be possible to incorporate a change like this in a future revision of the Outrun hacking project?

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's improbable to say the least. 

First off the car is rendered in 3d so since the renderer isn't already running, that bit is impossible.  Now snaps of the various cars could be taken and used BUT.....Right now the best I can do is replace textures.  I can't resize them though.  So needless to say it'd be hard to implement what you mean. 

Someone wanted the "loading" message changed and I looked into it but ran into the same problem.  The text in the game is smaller than it was in the arcade, so there's no way to replace it... at least in a fashion that would match the arcade. 

[BadMouth]

I just want ffb and cleavage.

[charlieram]

I just want ffb and cleavage.

What he said! 

[Giddygoon]

Someone wanted the "loading" message changed and I looked into it but ran into the same problem.  The text in the game is smaller than it was in the arcade, so there's no way to replace it... at least in a fashion that would match the arcade.

Hi Howard, that was me..... Thanks for looking into it.... Is it not possible then how about rearranging the font that already used to spell "Please stand-by"  or is it not possible to copy it from the arcade resize it and paste it over the loading msg?

I'm sure you tried this already, it's just that these details give it away that it's not the arcade....

Keep up the good work Howard

[MrThunderwing]

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's improbable to say the least. 

First off the car is rendered in 3d so since the renderer isn't already running, that bit is impossible.  Now snaps of the various cars could be taken and used BUT.....Right now the best I can do is replace textures.  I can't resize them though.  So needless to say it'd be hard to implement what you mean. 

Someone wanted the "loading" message changed and I looked into it but ran into the same problem.  The text in the game is smaller than it was in the arcade, so there's no way to replace it... at least in a fashion that would match the arcade.

Thanks for the clarification Howard.

[FaithLes2425]

Looking forward to this very much Howard and im sure others like me check this post in silence for updates daily.

[lolomc2]

Howard president !!! Howard president !!! Howard President !!!

I promise that I'll vote for you when you'll publish your work 

[MrThunderwing]

FWIW, I've made quite a few Outrun related videos over the years, I thought I might as well post a few of them here...

















I do loves myself a nice bit of Outrun.

[Malenko]

any chance of you redoing the challenge course video so that the cars are taking the same turns at the same time?

[MrThunderwing]

any chance of you redoing the challenge course video so that the cars are taking the same turns at the same time?

The idea was to try and keep the two games as synced up as possible for comparison purposes, but Outrun 2 is actually faster than Daytona 2. This mean even if they're synced up perfectly at the start of the course, Outrun 2 will always keep getting further ahead. I've tried as much as possible to keep them in sync by editing out some of the course linking bunki sections in Outrun 2, but this is further complicated by the fact that the second part of the Challenge course (Daytona 2's Expert track) starts at a different part of the track in the two games (something that was later altered in the Japanese version of Outrun 2).

[VirtuaIceMan]

MrThunderwing, your PS2 (emulated?) version of OutRun is really dark, is it an emulation bug?

Also, here's a random fact, OutRun on PS2 was ported by Sims, who also made OutRun 2019 back on the MegaDrive/Genesis! I think the final stages of the diamond shaped PS2 Arrange exclusive version of OutRun, where you drive over a raised bridge, was sort of a nod to 2019 with it's raised carriageways!

[MrThunderwing]

MrThunderwing, your PS2 (emulated?) version of OutRun is really dark, is it an emulation bug?

You mean the Sega Ages one, right? Yeah, it's an emulation bug. Too much shadow. This was an older build of Pcsx2 with all the default graphics options unchanged, so I'm not sure if that's been sorted now or whether tweaking the options would correct it.

Also, here's a random fact, OutRun on PS2 was ported by Sims, who also made OutRun 2019 back on the MegaDrive/Genesis! I think the final stages of the diamond shaped PS2 Arrange exclusive version of OutRun, where you drive over a raised bridge, was sort of a nod to 2019 with it's raised carriageways!

Cool, I love finding out random stuff like this! I'll have to give the arranged version a bit more of a thorough playthrough. I never did get into Outrun 2019 back in the day though, it just felt too much like a random futuristic racer with the 'Outrun' brand slapped on it. Now, if it'd had hover Ferraris in it however...

[Howard_Casto]

That's because 2019 WAS a random futuristic racer with "Outrun" attached to it.  It didn't become an Outrun game until late in the development cycle. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok so I'm rained in today.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to get this package out the door, but in the mean time I've got the pc I'm going to use on my cab so I thought "let's do a fresh install to see if the users will face any problems"  .... be glad I did. 

The dx8vb.dll that I use to communicate with directX was apparently removed in win 7 service pack 1 and is completely absent from win 8.  Why I'm not sure... up until recently it was included with your direct X install but apparently they've removed it.  (This will cause issues with mamehooker as well btw). 

Since a lot of my programs depend on this dll, I'm going to make a little batch file to install it for you and put it on my site.  I might be able to install it automatically, but I wouldn't be 100% certain it installs, so it's better to draw the user's attention to it. 

Anyway, I'll probably finish up the textures today since I have nothing better to do.  I think I'm going to make diff files out of the modded textures and install it that way.  This will make the download significantly smaller as well as keeping everything on the legal up and up... all included files will be original and not part of the stock game. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok so I've started work again. 

First off I've changed the way the music toggle works.  Now the wrapper simply looks for any track named after the original with the ".alt" extension.  It means if you downloaded my previous songs you'll have to change the extension BUT, it also means that you can add as many of your own tracks as you like.  The only catch is you can't change a track you currently have selected or it'll cause an error.  I'll probably choose a single track that you have to select before music swap will work for safeties sake. 

Also now that my pc is in, I could look for some of the Lan memory values by starting a multiplayer game.  I found the current race position fairly quickly, so I can add a "race leader" lamp as well as a position lamp. 

I couldn't bare to deal with the textures.  The rain slacked off so I cut some grass and it screwed up my back something awful apparently.  (Didn't hurt until later.)  I'm having to type in a weird position to keep it from hurting, which means for graphic editing tonight. 

We are almost there though.  I got the Force feedback working on my donor pc which means I've made an installer that'll work on a "virgin" pc.  It's just minor things at this point and I may release one more alpha tomorrow before I put this into beta and officially release it on my site. 

[SegaOutrun]

i cant wait to test it 

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry guys, it was a fairly decent day today so I decided to work on my cab instead. 

I did a little bit tonight though.  I hooked up the multiplayer lamp.  Basically the "race leader" lamp is on all the time, until you start a multiplayer game... I figured that was just easiest.  I don't really know if it should blink or not.. outrun 2 didn't have a race leader lamp unless you count the fancy Lindbergh ride on units and they used a fancy crt screen instead. 

Like the Lindbergh units, I also have a Race Position output that essentially tells you what place you are in.  I hope it works properly, but as you can imagine, it's a tad hard to test.  It appears to be zero-based (1st place = 0, 2nd = 1, ect) but with only two cars to test it makes it hard to confirm.  I guess I could install the game on a few net books. 

Anyway, it's just cleanup stuff at this point.  Expect some kind of release soon barring any more weird medical issues. 

[Howard_Casto]

So I implemented the new song swapping system. 

Now you've got two playlists, the original and your alt.  You can swap the names in the playlist2 and they'll be reflected in mamehooker with the now playing buffer.  You can swap any song now, as long as you leave at least one song un-molested so that you'll have a position to put the cursor during the song swap.  The wrapper intelligently checks now and if the cursor is on a song with an alt version or you don't have any songs to swap, you won't hear a "beep" and nothing will happen. 

I really need to replace that beep eventually.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok just a tad more work on the song swapping stuff.  I've gotten sick of the system beep so I converted over the menu navigation sounds.  When you switch to the alt tracks you'll hear the sound the plays when you select something in the menu... when you switch to the original tracks you'll hear the sound that plays when you de-select/back out. 

It seemed appropriate but of course you can always roll your own sounds. 

[Howard_Casto]

So for whatever reason I feel like playing around with code tonight. 

Many of the advanced features I've mentioned an interest in adding, like Outrun Radio really require me to do an overlay on the screen, which is a bit tricky.  I tried manipulating the game in windowed mode and have had much better luck. 

If I put the game in windowed mode (I can remove the borders btw, so it looks identical.) I can put another window on top of the gameplay area so long as I use a "topmost" flag and don't actually give the overlaid window focus.  The game never seems to slow down, nor does the window flicker or anything, so I think this might be a viable solution. 

Although they won't make it this version (unless you guys want to wait forever) this means in future versions I can:

Force the window back to 4:3 aspect when in menus.  This would eliminate distortion and allow you to navigate the menus in crazy 3 monitor setups. 

Overlay the alt song title when using alt tracks in the song selection menu.

Overlay the playing song in-game in the hud allow outrun radio to show the tracks so you can change songs on the fly.

Add a bezel if you prefer to play the game in 4:3.

Remake most of the menus in hd and display those over top of the current ones (unlikely... too much work to re-create all the animations and track all the data). 

[Howard_Casto]

So I was looking at the Outrun SP menus....  All of the status buttons appear below the white stripe.  The fact that we are stuck with such puny, unanimated, icons has annoyed me.  I was thinking... with the method above I could overlay a brand new set of icons that more closely match the arcade.  Now it can't be exact because some of the buttons have changed, but it should be more authentic. 

For that matter I could also do something with the 2006 menus, likewise with them there is a stripe on the screen and all icons appear below it. 

[Howard_Casto]

So I couldn't resist....... 

I implemented an overlay system into fxt.  Nothing super fancy atm... it just overlays custom track titles over the radio graphic, but it works!  At least on my system it does... this sort of technique is kind of dodgy and I'm guessing depends a lot upon your video card.  I severely doubt it would work on xp either as the desktop and therefore form compositing, isn't hardware accelerated. 

Anyway here's a pic:

[SegaOutrun]

looks good!

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks. 


Because 2SP mode is so standardized I went ahead and started playing around with adding better buttons.  Below is the result and yes, they are animated.  The text is wrong because I just pulled off a screen grab of my photoshop doc to make the textures.  I can also fight the ws distortion... I'm displaying them in 4:3 even though the game is in 16:9. 

[baritonomarchetto]

Wow, keep this up Howard! 

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks... I really dug my own grave with this one.  I want to re-do a lot of the menus now. 

MrThunderwing: 

After messing with LAN some I agree, we need some pics of the cars.  I'm not promising anything but...  If you or some of the guys want to take some 1080p screenshots off all the cars I'll trying adding them to that little blank area next to the pop-up menu in overlay mode. 

[MrThunderwing]

Awesome  . I should be able to get some decent screen grabs that I can upload here using Fraps.

[MrThunderwing]

Ok, first batch. Hope these are good enough quality wise - I recorded a video of the cars rotating and then got the screen grabs by playing it back using Windows Media player so I could stop the video with the car at the correct angle to get a clear image. I've also airbrushed out the tab option to change class.

[MrThunderwing]

The final 7 of the standard class. If this is the sort of thing that works for you Howard I'll get more screen grabs of the next class of cars above these ones.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah those are fantastic man.  I'm glad we are on the same page. 

What I'll do is resize/crop those and put a little red border around em.... I've got to find the memory value for the car first though so I can detect them. 

[Howard_Casto]

I'm thinking something along the lines of this might look best.

I'm not sure... there isn't a lot of screen real-estate to work with, I'll keep playing around. 

[Howard_Casto]

Depending upon how the menu locations work... I also might be able to do it this way.....

I'd have to put an arrow or something indicating that there are more menu options if you go down. 

[Nuexzz]

well here I can run 2 instances of the game on the same pc (sandbox) .. but it is obvious that the network protocol does not work, it would be great if someone here slightly modifies the connection for twins cabs single pc.