Just passing through...
Sounds like you might have labyrinthitis Howard. Have you recently developed an aversion to any David Bowie films that also involve muppets? Seriously though, a friend of mine had it last year and they felt pretty bad for a good few months with it, but have made a full recovery now. Keep going with the meds mate, hope you feel better soon.
S0L, can I put the same question to you that I asked Howard awhile back? Would it be feasible to add into the the PC version of Outrun 2006 the extra end of game animations that are in the Japanese PS2 version? Likewise, would it be feasible to import the Scud Race and Daytona 2 bonus stages from the Xbox version of Outrun 2 into PC Outrun 2006? I've still got two original Xboxs and two copies of Outrun 2 to play on them via system link (and two copies of Coast 2 Coast). The bonus stages in Outrun 2 are pretty much the only reason I've kept a hold of the Xboxs, if it were possible to play them on PC I could finally get rid of them...
I agree, sounds like Labyrinthitis, my Dad had this and he was laid low for about 3 months. Infection in the ear, felt like he was constantly moving, even though he wasn't. It'd bugger me up as I ride a motorcycle!
On the end animations, it wouldn't be impossible but the animated textures (such as the space shuttle taking off and the volcano erupting) are actual MPEG movie files. The PC version has no support to play these back, whereas I think we converted them to UV texture animations for PS2. It might be possible to replace the PC levels with the PS2 ones with those animations (though it'd need some texture format wrangling), but you'd be taking a hit to the quality of the textures and the levels themselves (we had to reduce the poly count as the PS2 couldn't push as many polys as a PC!). Sort of an apples and pears choice that.
The Xbox specific Bonus Levels are likely easier, but the textures would need to be extracted, converted and repacked in a PC specific format.
In addition the start and end positions would need to be hacked into the PC executable, we have a bunch of 'magic numbers' which are used to determine the real start and ends of levels. That's why normally you can't rename one level to another and start in the right place. The other side of course is the levels were never meant to be in OutRun2006, meaning you'd have to either hack the stage tables for extra ones to be included or replace other stages with the Bonus ones. Not impossible, but again not straightforward.
Not that I want to detract in anyway from the excellent work done here, but bear in mind Howard is finding and enabling elements that existed but were disabled from the arcade machine (like the FFB), were development features or incomplete (like the debug cams) or is replacing assets the game expects to show (like the on-screen control help/Clarissa's cleavage!).
Adding new playable content that wasn't meant to be part of the game is a different kettle of fish. It's possible, but it likely would need a deeper understanding of the game from a source code level. For example adding extra levels or cars would be difficult as there is no art or text for the menus, the post race map, the scoring structures etc.
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The Japanese version of OutRun2SP on PS2 does support Force Feedback on certain Logitech Wheels. Off the top of my head we supported the Driving Force Pro and Logitech G25. It *may* work with other wheels that Logitech make as we used their driver software. You will need to play it on a retail PS2 though, it probably won't work on a PS3 or under emulation as it relied on the PS2 USB hardware libraries.
Bear in mind quite a bit of time has passed since then though, updates to the wheels firmware may break compatibilty with the wheel SDK we used, newer wheels (such as the G27) didn't even exist at the time, so they may not work either.
Note only the Japanese PS2 version supported FFB wheels, the EU/US versions most certainly didn't.
Hope that answers the question.
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S0L
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Thanks to all for answering... Just to finish this out of topic... There is one hypothesis which could explain everything
1 - When looking at the external cover of OR2 japanese, you can read "GT Force" and "GT Force Pro"...
2 - OR2J went out in 2004... Two years before the G25 from Logitech which started to be sold in 2006-2007.
3 - Boomslang confirms that FFB is working.... on emulator !
4 - And interesting post here When you use the emulator, there is a driver/plugin which make your wheel becomes a logitech....... Driving force / Generic Logitech wheel OR Driving Force pro.
5 - I tried myself the game (Japanese version) on original PS2 with a G25 wheel. The wheel is working but not FFB
So my conclusion is that OR2J supports FFB on the original PS2 with an old wheel like GT Force or Pro... And it does not work on the G25/G27 as they were out widely after the game.
When Logitech decided to sell the G25, which was extremely expensive for such kind of thing (and it was the first to sell a good wheel) they took a big risk. That's why I wouldn't be surprise that they delivered some prototypes of G25 to development studios like yours Sol...
And when they sold to public it they changed material or firmware revision... Breaking the compatibility you experienced few years before....
End of OT for me.
Howard, I want to try
Bear in mind I'm running from memory! It's not perfect, I've slept at least once since we did OutRun2006
I figured we supported the G25 as I know we have at least one, but from what you're saying it might be for something we did later though (we've done more than one driving game!). We actually did the game in 2005, so it's pretty much 9 years ago now. That's about 13 Developer years due to all the late nights and weekends we work
It's interesting it works with PS2 emulation though, that's got to be pretty decent emulation if it's also emulating the PS2 USB ports.
Thanks for the confirmation and sharing!
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S0L
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