Main > Driving & Racing Cabinets
Hacking Outrun 2006
Howard_Casto:
I don't have a lot of time for this stuff right now, but I was playing around with rad tools to see what we can do about the 4:3 title screen.
The game uses a standard bik file for the title screen which is a good thing... with rad tools we can convert nearly anything, even a series of images, into a bik movie.
I took a jpg of the title screen for online arcade just as proof of concept and it seems to work pretty well.
The question of course is what to replace it with. I had assumed I could find the hd attract sequence to online arcade somewhere on the net, swap out the title sequence bit and be done with it, but the title sequence doesn't seem to be out there. Anybody know where I can find it? Regardless for the little looping flag title screen it should be possible to replicate it in hd. Not sure about all the cheesy cg racing sequences afterwards.
Howard_Casto:
Forgot to mention something.
I extracted the xbox 360 version of the game for reference and while some parts of the game have been altered, the sprites folder has the same files in it. If these have been upscaled then I should be able to just drop them in and boom.. hd sprites. Currently replacing the sprites crashes the game, but I think they are getting corrupted with the extraction process as they just look weird in the hex editor compared to the other ones.
The problem is the tool I used seems to be busted... or at least I'm guessing it is as some of the files on the 360 version are actually smaller.
I'm currently using wxPirs.exe to do the extraction. If any 360 hackerz out there want to chime in I'd sure appreciate it.
Howard_Casto:
Well this is an interesting development.
Had some more time tonight so I thought I'd try it again. While I haven't had any luck with the sprites, the assets in the "common" folder DO seem to work on the pc version. This includes the shaders that add the lens flair among other things. So the engines assests do seem to work together. I think I'll have to add them in one at a time to see which ones work and which ones don't.
Howard_Casto:
Ok Envalgelion is off so I finished up a bit with my experiments.
Interesting stuff. The models on the 360 version are in another format, so they don't transfer over. Ditto with the sound. We really don't want the 360 sounds anyway as the major different is they've been compressed a lot to make the xbla title smaller.
Shaders and similar effects files transferred over just fine. They add a subtle yet noticeable improvement to the graphics. The game now has a sun, lens flares, improved water and weather effects and most notably the traffic has shaders applied so it doesn't look so out of place with the highly detailed player cars.
Scripts, stages and other misc files transferred as well. I'm not sure what difference they make really, but my install is now running the 360 versions. What surprised me is how much they cut out of the 360 version. It's really bare bones compared to 2006.
I'm still having trouble with sprite replacement, which is what I was really after. I need to determine if the reason the game crashes is because of the files themselves or because it is expecting certain dimensions ect... I can do that by shuffling around some of the pc version's sprites.
The sprani folder is interesting. Apparently it controls sprite placement and animation. When I installed the 360 versions all the sprites were in the wrong place, coming on at the wrong time ect... Makes me think if the graphics format was ever figured out we could completely re-do the hud.
Also in the scripts folder are various "load stage x" scripts. Alongside that is a omnious "test stage" script. Perhaps a stage select script? Perhaps a prototype level? I'm off to find out!
Anyway, this version of the game is much more similar to the classic xbox interations of the game than the 360/ps3 ports, so it may be possible to swap out the bonus stage on outrun 2 afterall.
Howard_Casto:
Wow these scripts are pretty interesting.
I misunderstood and thought they were named "request" because they were used for loading the stages (aka requesting them) but I guess I should have thought more literally. They are actually the request lists for the tracks. You know, all the pointless crap your gf asks you to do? The "test" script I found can replace the script for any stage and all the requests will be turned off. You'll get an E rank (sorry no cheaters) but you will be able to run the stage without the game crashing. As for the other scripts in general they can be swapped out, offering different challenges for different tracks, but the donor script needs to have the same number of challenges as the original or the game will lock up.
My guess would be that the positions on the track where a request event happens is hardcoded, but which event happens isn't. Also the PSP and PS2 request scripts are included for some reason. You can swap the outrun 2 and outrun 2sp scripts with either of these and they will play just fine.
Anyway this explains why the game would sometimes crash if you swapped the stages around... the scripts need to be swapped with them.
I'm going to try to track down a version of outrun 2 and pull the bonus stages off of it. You never know.
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