Playstation Waving Inventory algorithm is published!

[Dustie]

Mesmerising... Being able to decipher all this stuff from a compiled program code, one must be genius... Clearly I will never be a game programmer, I sucked at trigonometry!

Originally Posted by Arsunt

Several people even accused me of not sharing the technical details of my work with the community.

We wholeheartedly apologise for that. There are some community members who expect everything to be given away freely, even others' hard work. Most of us here are not like that and understand that it is special to see talents like you dedicate their free time to bringing such treats to fans. Please don't get discouraged.

[Arsunt]

Thank you all for your kind words!

Originally Posted by Dustie

Mesmerising... Being able to decipher all this stuff from a compiled program code, one must be genius...

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Dustie

We wholeheartedly apologise for that. There are some community members who expect everything to be given away freely, even others' hard work. Most of us here are not like that and understand that it is special to see talents like you dedicate their free time to bringing such treats to fans. Please don't get discouraged.

No problem. All people are different, and not everyone realizes how many mechanisms are hidden behind a "simple animated picture". I'm just glad that I will give them the opportunity to fully plunge into it.

Originally Posted by Teeth

Do you plan to release this to the public?

Of course! Otherwise what would be the sense in this whole multi-year project?

Originally Posted by Teeth

What else do you hope to bring to PC players? I'm thinking of the reflective save crystals and gold Lara from TR1.

TR1

These reflective textures are extremely curious, I have not yet examined them in detail, but I understand approximately what the essence of the implementation is. And it seems for gold and crystals, the game uses the same algorithm, but with different color filters (blue/yellow). So yeah, someday I can recreate these effects. I also plan to add a hardmode to the game. When you select the "New Game" option, you will be offered a difficulty level. At hardmode, the ability to save anytime is turned off, but crystals will appear in the levels, as in the PSX.

The TR1 project will be launched after our TR2 and TR3 releases. Now there is too much competition among the projects concerning the first game of the series. Mainly, it's TombATI and not yet published official remastered one from realtech VR. I know that TombATI is quite limited, despite it seems to be a solution to all problems, and Realtech VR is lazy enough to create a product that at least extends beyond the source code they have - it's visible on a pile of minor issues, which remained in their implementations. I fixed them right in assembler, and they do not want to change anything for several years, having the source code! Last year, we published the patch for the original DOSBox version, but it was useful to a small number of people. Not because the patch is bad, but because there are more interesting and convenient alternatives. The main idea is to make a really decent product, you need much more time to develop. But don't worry I still have aces in the hole to surprise everyone.

TR2

• Waving inventory wallpaper (as you see, it's done)
• Gradient HP/Air Bars, exactly the same as PSX version has (almost done)
• Half transparent water surface textures, gunshots, etc. (work in progress)
• Barefoot step sound FX (someday, I don't know when. This thing is related to the content, not the code)

TR3

• Gradient HP/Air Bars
• Better weather effects, more visible laser beams
• Spinning picked up item, like in the Demo
• Difficulty levels:
  1. Anytime save enabled, green HP Crystals available
  2. Anytime save enabled, there is no HP/Save Crystals
  3. Anytime save disabled, blue Save Crystals available
• Echoed sound effects
• Footprints feature.

For all games there are bugfixes, draw/fog distance settings, native FMV HD support, native HD Image files support, native support of external texture packs, language packs. I could just post here our TR2 changelog, but probably this should be done as a separate topic, because the size of the changes list is quite large.

[Caesum]

I must say, this is incredibly interesting. I always wanted to have these PSX-exclusive features in the PC version. To hear that it finally gonna be possible... Wow! Maybe finally PC version of TR will really be the best one..?

Btw, do you plan on moving to TR4 or TRLE at later stage? Especially TRLE/TRNG needs some serious tweaking these days.

[Arsunt]

Originally Posted by Caesum

I must say, this is incredibly interesting. I always wanted to have these PSX-exclusive features in the PC version. To hear that it finally gonna be possible... Wow! Maybe finally PC version of TR will really be the best one..?

And it will be!

Originally Posted by Caesum

Btw, do you plan on moving to TR4 or TRLE at later stage? Especially TRLE/TRNG needs some serious tweaking these days.

Not before I finish with TR1-3.

[Alain19]

Really COOL! I have to work to understand it by reading your code (and I like your coding style!) and to imagine finding this out from looking at a binary is amazing
Now I wonder, do you think you will have a general method to reintroduce this into the existing binaries, or do you use specific patches in them to call the dll, or (dare I hope ) you just rebuild a binary?

[Kirishima]

Originally Posted by Arsunt

TR3

• Gradient HP/Air Bars
• Better weather effects, more visible laser beams
• Spinning picked up item, like in the Demo
• Difficulty levels:
  1. Anytime save enabled, green HP Crystals available
  2. Anytime save enabled, there is no HP/Save Crystals
  3. Anytime save disabled, blue Save Crystals available
• Echoed sound effects
• Footprints feature.

About the reverb, I did a bit of searching around some time ago and found Tomb Raider 3 was originally going to support Aureal 3d. The feature ended up being cut due to time constraints, but ended up supposedly being fully implemented in Tomb Raider The Last Revelation. Whether the Aureal 3d support was just 3d positional audio or audio effects like the ps1 version, I don't know. I've been thinking about asking if people remember playing TLR with one of those compatible sound cards to see if people remember what it added to the game, but just haven't yet.

[Dustie]

Originally Posted by Arsunt

TR2

• Waving inventory wallpaper (as you see, it's done)
• Gradient HP/Air Bars, exactly the same as PSX version has (almost done)
• Half transparent water surface textures, gunshots, etc. (work in progress)
• Barefoot step sound FX (someday, I don't know when. This thing is related to the content, not the code)

TR3

• Gradient HP/Air Bars
• Better weather effects, more visible laser beams
• Spinning picked up item, like in the Demo
• Difficulty levels:
  1. Anytime save enabled, green HP Crystals available
  2. Anytime save enabled, there is no HP/Save Crystals
  3. Anytime save disabled, blue Save Crystals available
• Echoed sound effects
• Footprints feature.

For all games there are bugfixes, draw/fog distance settings, native FMV HD support, native HD Image files support, native support of external texture packs, language packs. I could just post here our TR2 changelog, but probably this should be done as a separate topic, because the size of the changes list is quite large.

OMG external texture packs! Will they support HD textures?


And, is this coming on Christmas?

[Arsunt]

Originally Posted by Alain19

Really COOL! I have to work to understand it by reading your code (and I like your coding style!) and to imagine finding this out from looking at a binary is amazing

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Alain19

Now I wonder, do you think you will have a general method to reintroduce this into the existing binaries, or do you use specific patches in them to call the dll, or (dare I hope ) you just rebuild a binary?

I've already heavily modifed the game EXE with the help of assembler and hex editor. For me it's like a LEGO. Most of my work with EXE does not require compilation, because I'm the compiler myself. The library linkage implemented as follows:

1. Add to the EXE Import Table TR2Draw.dll name, table of names of DLL exported functions and table of pointers to get this functions. Game fills function pointer table at its Initialization step.
2. Add settings checkboxes, few global variables and some logic to control the feature. Some people may want original PC wallpaper or for example TR1 (darken) or TR3 (grayed) style wallpaper.
3. Prepare "Context" struct that consists of pointers to the important game variables .
4. In the wallpaper render function we just call DLL wallpaper function using its pointer from the Import table and pass to it parameters: "Context" struct pointer, texture data, wallpaper type, row count, framerate factor.
5. DLL does its work like if it is part of the EXE and successfully returns to the EXE.

Child's play compared to what had to be done before. Everyone will get this patched EXE, which uses TR2Draw.dll, TR2Sound.dll, TR2UI.dll, ffplay.dll. Every single OpenSource DLL to solve different tasks. The game code itself will stay in EXE (just yet). Compatibility issues will gone forever.

Originally Posted by Kirishima

About the reverb, I did a bit of searching around some time ago and found Tomb Raider 3 was originally going to support Aureal 3d. The feature ended up being cut due to time constraints, but ended up supposedly being fully implemented in Tomb Raider The Last Revelation. Whether the Aureal 3d support was just 3d positional audio or audio effects like the ps1 version, I don't know. I've been thinking about asking if people remember playing TLR with one of those compatible sound cards to see if people remember what it added to the game, but just haven't yet.

Thank you for information! I'll check this out when I start developing a sound library.

Originally Posted by Dustie

OMG external texture packs! Will they support HD textures?

Yes

Originally Posted by Dustie

And, is this coming on Christmas?

I hope earlier

[VictorXD]

This is so freaking awesome OMG I can't believe that after all these years we'll finally have the PS1 features!

[Dustie]

I hope they will not attempt to buy you out to put your improvements in the Steam or GOG versions which then would have to be paid for...