[Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

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RythusOmega
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von RythusOmega »

Also a additional note about the pre-releases/beta versions of AC3.
DragonSpikeXIII hat geschrieben:to clear any lingering doubts, I don't have any clue about the Japanese press kit or pre-release versions of AC3E.
Krishty hat geschrieben:Thank you for the clarification! One more problem in finding leaks: Even if Namco or some employee stored pre-release AC3 data on CDs, they are likely to rot after 20 and more years. Hard drives start to demagnetize after such a long time. The arcade leaks RythusOmega mentioned have often been found on floppy disks and I doubt anyone used them for long-time storage in 1999.
reading Krishty last post made me remind of a story i have seen long time ago. which Namco unfortunately have lost all the AC3 files from their hard drives, i remember that in 2007/8/9 i was looking into internet, then i have found a post on twitter which a fan has asked to a namco dev about if a AC3 remake was possible, and his reply was it´s was not possible due by their lost all the data about it. the source about this i can´t find it anymore because that´s was very long time ago and for founding it´s gonna been a hard task along that i don´t know if is true or not. but one of the almost "proofs" that they lost AC3 data was on the Famitsu interview of the Update 2.07 of Ace Combat Infinity, which when they asked Kono and the Devs about of R-101, one of the Devs in the interview said that other dev of the team needed to brought his PS1 and his AC3 copy to using as a reference for the recreation.


https://www.reddit.com/r/acecombat/comm ... erdue_but/
Famitsu: I see. What was the most difficult update so far, dev-wise?

河野 デルフィナス(R-101 Delphinus。『エースコンバット3 エレクトロスフィア』が元ネタの架空機体)を導入するとき、HUD表示を原作風に作り直し始めたのを見て、「本当に大丈夫?」ってなりました。『インフィニティ』と『3』では仕組みが違うため、スケジュール通りに仕上げることが難しいだろうと。シリーズのファンに喜んでいただけるならと、現場を信用して任せましたが。

Kono: When we put the Delphinus (R-101 Delphinus from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere is an original fictional aircraft) in, we wanted to recreate the HUD from the game it originated from. When work on it started, we all felt “Would this be alright?” Because the makeup of Infinity and 3 is quite different, it was really difficult to get it finished on schedule. We wanted the fans to be able to fly it, and so we had faith in the dev team.

小柳 デルフィナスのHUDは、プログラマーが自宅からPS oneを持ってきて、『3』のゲーム画面を見ながら作成していたんですよ。

Koyanagi: The dev responsible for the Delphinus’ HUD actually brought a PS One and played Ace Combat 3, and made the HUD while looking at the game.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

I read the interview differently – the dev looked at AC3, but he wasn’t forced to.
  1. HUDs move, switch modes, and have many symbols. You cannot re-create them from looking at their source textures, you really need to observe them in action to understand them.
  2. Actually, a few paragraphs later, they state that the developer started re-creating the R-101 without help from management:
    We were looking at production estimate costs when the dev already went ahead and making it. […] That particular dev was such a huge Ace Combat fanboy he really couldn’t be restrained (laugh).
However, I believe you when you say a staff member tweeted that the data is lost. I have an authorization from a major video game publisher here to write a patch for one of their abandoned games but work never started because they cannot find the source code any more. „Ask developer XYZ, maybe he knows someone who has a copy of the code.“
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

RythusOmega asked me for help regarding Ace Combat 5’s ULZ files. Specifically, he needed an ULZ unpacker.

I quickly wrote one:

[Die Dateierweiterung exe wurde deaktiviert und kann nicht länger angezeigt werden.]

Here’s a recap on what I did:
  1. I downloaded Arthur Richard’s acanalysis (the entire bin folder).
  2. Sadly it doesn’t run well (hangs/crashes). I tried to build it myself, but it doesn’t compile well and I had no time fixing it. So I applied some compatibility settings to AC4Analysis.exe and retried a few times until it finally worked.
  3. I opened DATA.TBL from the Ace Combat 5 disk:
    step1.png
  4. I double-clicked the first data entry “00000000” (single-clicking doesn’t work) and exported the file:
    step2.png

    step3.png
    step3.png (3.28 KiB) 26099 mal betrachtet
  5. These files are clearly ULZ-compressed:
    step4.png
    step4.png (9.28 KiB) 26099 mal betrachtet
  6. After running unpack_ULZ 00000000 00000000.xtracted, I got a cleanly decompressed archive which starts with text in Japanese Shift-JIS encoding:
    step5.png
I suspect the archive format is similar to AC2’s or AC3’s, but someone else has to figure that out … my weekend is over :(
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

By the way, I uploaded all my snapshots to https://papas-best.com/acecombat_en … many of those were intended for use in this thread, but I didn’t have the time to write the explanations yet.
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Infrid
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Infrid »

so much progress since my last visit, your work is astonishing. I am still working on translating the game, make it better, did you bump into subtitles timing by chance?

We know how to edit the text, but we cannot control yet how long a line of text is show. I think there is some file containing the timecodes a command for cleaning the screen.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Interesting problem. No, I haven’t bumped into those yet – to be honest, I haven’t even understood yet how individual levels are connected to missions!
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Infrid
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Infrid »

thanks, I think I'll take a look to the BPB for a while and then check out ACE.SPB, they have the same structure more or less. Maybe in few years we could write a game editor :D
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

From my understanding, levels are in the first 60 or so subfolders. Then planes in the next 20. Finally, missions start somewhere at folder 100 or so … I always thought you & DragonSpike were the experts on this :)
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

I just want to note that the Open Horizon authors reversed the data formats of AC5, AC6, and AC Zero. Some pretty impressive stuff there. Rythus, if you want to search through AC5’s data, you better get in touch with them …

Bild
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RythusOmega
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von RythusOmega »

Oh, Open Horizon, i was following the project those times when it was active. the owner of the project "Razgriz" it´s making a nice job on him. i even already entered in contact with him long time ago on the comments section, even him has pointed out the compression list of each game´s containers(from AC4 to ACI, still incomplete yet).
https://github.com/undefined-darkness/o ... h-progress

Well i could even try to talk about this to him, ̶h̶o̶w̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶R̶a̶z̶g̶r̶i̶z̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶b̶s̶i̶t̶e̶.̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶´̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶v̶e̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶i̶n̶n̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶o̶m̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶c̶h̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶P̶A̶/̶B̶a̶n̶d̶a̶i̶ ̶N̶a̶m̶c̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶y̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ :
"As long as I will not provide original AH resources in my releases and will not use disassembly to get original algorithms, I hope it will not violate original game creator’s license."

http://zxstudio.org/blog/author/razgriz/page/4/
̶A̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶h̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶c̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶A̶H̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶(̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶Q̶D̶F̶_̶t̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶o̶m̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶A̶C̶A̶H̶ ̶P̶C̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶i̶n̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶s̶t̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶)̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶.̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶c̶u̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶i̶t̶´̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶o̶m̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶i̶t̶´̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶c̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶e̶x̶t̶e̶r̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶j̶e̶c̶t̶i̶n̶g̶/̶l̶o̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶´̶s̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶i̶n̶g̶(̶N̶y̶a̶ ̶E̶n̶g̶i̶n̶e̶)̶.̶ but yeah, we have at least the code research of the files already reversed on the .h files, those can be useful soon.

EDIT : "yeah, i made a reading error, Razgriz had said that it would NOT include decompressed AH assets/code on the Open Horizon builds. thus why he made a separate tool(QDF_tool) for people decompressing the AH files by their own.

(PS : also about the GIM research, i gonna bring some details about here soon. unfortunately i had some problems with my computer those days with hard drive question, which the SSD i was using as the system partition has stopped working[glad that my main/important files are on separate HHD´s], yesterday i already had installed the new SSD i brought, so i will need to reinstall some programs and some drivers/API for getting everything back to work)

(PS² : also yeah i recently i had seen your blog for the AC3 research, as always nice work and nice idea of reuniting everything from ZFX into the website with some exclusive details too, and thanks for the mention too. glad that i helped too on making the image catalog of the AC3 models)
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

RythusOmega hat geschrieben:Oh, Open Horizon, i was following the project those times when it was active. the owner of the project "Razgriz" it´s making a nice job on him. i even already entered in contact with him long time ago on the comments section, even him has pointed out the compression list of each game´s containers(from AC4 to ACI, still incomplete yet).
https://github.com/undefined-darkness/o ... h-progress
Thanks for the explanation, and also thanks for that resource format list – this greatly helps me prioritize things!
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

(This had to be said last year already, but I forgot it.)

It occurred to me that some of Ace Combat 2’s levels are modelled with a much higher level of detail that Ace Combat 3’s, even though their polygon count is lower. This doesn’t apply to all of them, but some really stand out. Just look at the fractal geometric detail of Rising High (colors enhanced due to some technical problems here):

rising_high_notex_enh.png
rising_high_tex_enh.png


Here’s Cuckoo’s Nest:

cuckoos_nest_notex_enh.png
cuckoos_nest_tex_enh.png
For comparison, the same terrain in AC3:
ac3_jointmaneuvrs_tex_enc.png


Disappointing, isn’t it? It’s not that all of AC2’s levels would be better, just that a few of AC2’s levels exceed all levels of AC3. On the downside, there are lots of huge gaps in AC2’s terrain (seen as bright pixels in the screenshots).
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

RauuruKun keeps drawing amazing fan art wallpapers: https://rauurukun.deviantart.com/
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

A bunch of updates:

1. Ultra HD overview maps

I was updating the screenshot function in my model viewer and I wondered how high I could turn up the resolution. I want to keep the original rendering’s transparency – not the gray background of the window – so screenshotting is realized with D3D 11 render-to-texture, not with GDI. This allows to specifiy arbitrary resolutions. Copying the data to the Windows clipboard was a major hassle, and maybe I’ll dedicate a future thread to it.

I was eventually limited by the five-second GPU driver timeout at 10k pixels sidelength. Overview maps turned out pretty impressive at that resolution.

Here are some Ace Combat 3 maps in 10,240 × 5,760 pixels with 8× multisampling. Be warned – the JPG files have sizes of 16–25 MiB each and they can slow down your browser considerably!More screenshots (Ace Combat 2 etc.): https://papas-best.com/acecombat_en


2. fixes to plane models

When I first released the extracted Ace Combat 3 plane models in 2016, my code contained a bug in the normal processing. The PlayStation can natively render triangles as well as quads (a leftover from the sprite era), but my code did not correctly copy all normals. This affected only quads. I released an updated package with fixed normals:
2018-09-29 normal fixes.png
Furthermore, I decided to correct the annoying nose tip artifacts. Namco didn’t get those right, and indeed it’s pretty complicated. Here’s a StackOverflow thread on the problem. I solved it by assigning the foremost vertex on the Z axis a collapsed (zero) normal. Not all planes were affected (some don’t have sharp nose tips), so I had to special-case my code. Duh, whatever.
2018-09-29 nose tip fixes.png
You can grab the new package here. It comes with a new version of the viewer, which allows you copy a snapshot to the clipboard via CTRL+C. I only tested it with Gimp, though. (There’s a few dozen bug fixes as well.)
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von scheichs »

Love, that you always optimize your stuff, keeping it simple and easy to use, as well as ironing out bugs that most people wouldn't even notice. That shows really dedication and it always makes me happy/motivates me to see people with such characteristics! Thank you Krishty!
Apart from that I really need to write a VRML importer to get those models into Unity and use them for one of the next ZFX Actions... Maybe an Ace Combat - Battle Royale? :lol:
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

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Thank you! I really just want to live up to Ace Combat’s standards. It’s just so well done in many aspects …

————

Going back to Ace Combat 2’s planes.

This is the Model Display, a showcase for all planes in the game (forward to 3:30):
[youtube]mOrEJdt-E7A[/youtube]

Looking at the extracted AC2 data, we can see that directories 179–225 contain the exact background images we see in the video:
2018-12-21 1 directories.png

Besides the backgrounds, there are several sub-folders, one for each version of the model. They all contain two binary files and a plane texture:
2018-12-21 2 model directory.png

The first binary file is pretty small. It starts with the plane’s name (up to seven characters plus terminating zero) and further text to be displayed. Pretty useful to me!
2018-12-21 3 name.png

The second file is more complex:
2018-12-21 4 binary.png

But with the correct formatting, we can see that it basically contains two sections. The first section looks like vertex coordinates (just like in the terrain models!); the second section looks like triangle/quad data (but a little shorter than in the terrain):
2018-12-21 5 structured.png
2018-12-21 5 structured.png (7.04 KiB) 15655 mal betrachtet

Looking closely, the first three bytes are never identical and they are equidistributed between zero and the length of the first section – it’s cleary vertex indices. This gives us a first glance at the file:
2018-12-21 6 first try.png
You need lots of fantasy to see an A-4 here. I guess the vertex coordinates are okay, but the triangle indices are wrong. I’ll try and work it out …
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Okay, I got it – the model header is 8 bytes, not 16. My bad. Geometry is fine now …
2018-12-21 7 polys okay.png
… and here’s all models in one view:
2018-12-21 8 many polys.png

Pretty sweet for 20 minutes of work!

Looks like the polygons are Gouraud-shaded. That’ll need some polishing of my exporter to work. Textures would be nice as well …
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

We can take another shortcut by comparing the triangle structures to those from the terrain. They are spookily similar. This gives us the following layout:

  // A texture coordinate, relative to a specific texture page.
  struct UVInPage {
    UInt1B u;
    UInt1B v;
  };

  // The location and layout of a texture in the frame buffer.
  struct DrawAttribute_Texture {
    UInt2B_LE data; // according to “Nocash PSX Specifications” › “GPU” › “GPU Rendering Attributes” › “Texpage Attribute”
  };

  // The location of a color palette in the frame buffer.
  struct DrawAttribute_Palette {
    UInt2B_LE data; // according to “Nocash PSX Specifications” › “GPU” › “GPU Rendering Attributes” › “Clut Attribute”
  };

  struct ModelDisplayTriangle {
    UInt1B                indices[3];
    UInt1B                zero0;
    RGBC_8888             commandAndColors[3]; // draw command in alpha channel
    UVInPage              uv_a;
    DrawAttribute_Palette palette;
    UVInPage              uv_b;
    DrawAttribute_Texture unk_texPage;
    UVInPage              uv_c;
    UInt2B_LE             zero2;
  };


Visualizing:
2018-12-21 9 textured.png
The canopy is broken, and so are some parts of the model’s underside. That’s because I got the quad structure wrong. More to follow.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

The problem was not in the quads but in the special layout of color palettes in the VRAM. This finally fixes texture problems in some levels as well! I need to extend my PSX VRAM tutorial for that.

Enjoy the fully-textured, Gouraud-shaded ADF-01:
2018-12-21 10 ADF-01 okay.png
So much to see here. I’d love to stop and take more snapshots, but there’s so many other formats waiting to be extracted …
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

I proudly present the unfinished alpha version of the XFA-27 (without canards, with fixed wings, and with different intakes):
2018-12-21 XFA-27 1 beta.png
2018-12-21 XFA-27 2 beta.png

2018-12-21 XFA-27 3 beta.png

For reference, this is the final version:
2018-12-21 XFA-27 1 final.png

In directories 54–77, Ace Combat 2 contains models of all playable planes (three LODs plus one texture, in the same Model Display format I described earlier). These seem to be leftovers from the development phase – they have some texture errors and are not used in the final game. The XFA-27 is in the final folder.

Unfortunately, the texture coordinates are completely fubar. There is, however, an unused texture file that suggests a gray-blue paint scheme:
2018-12-21 XFA-27 4 beta.png
2018-12-21 XFA-27 4 beta.png (2.62 KiB) 15501 mal betrachtet


This is quite a surprise :) I guess it’ll take a few days for me to document everything, take snapshots, and update my galleries.
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joeydee
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von joeydee »

Gerade entdeckt, vom XFA-27 hat kürzlich jemand einen Modellbausatz vorgestellt: http://www.phoxim.de/forum/index.php?to ... #msg275959
Damit schließt sich der Kreis zu meinem Modellbauhobby in beide Richtungen: den Link zu deiner STL-Viewer-Seite habe ich dort bei den 3D-Druckern auch schon vorgestellt.
Ich dachte ich mach mal noch was ganz anderes außer Proggen, aber die beiden Hobbys verschmelzen immer mehr LOL
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Tatsache! Den Bausatz habe ich schonmal auf Twitter gesehen, aber ich hätte mir nie vorstellen können, über jemanden von ZFX davon zu hören :D Es ist echt eine kleine Welt. Und vielen Dank für den Link auf meinen Viewer!
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DragonSpikeXIII
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von DragonSpikeXIII »

Krishty, eine frage von RythusOmega: weißt du wenn wir die Alpha/Beta versionen des Expo City und Megafloat können spielen? Gibt es innerhalb des Missionen, jede Spur?
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Question to or from Rythus?

I’m not currently modding the game to make the levels playable, and I doubt that it is possible without huge effort. The geometry and texture format is different from the final version (that’s, for example, the reason for color problems in this image). If we cannot identify old beta code in the final game engine, a conversion of the data is necessary.

I do work on a port to my flight simulator, but this will take a very long time as well.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

RythusOmega hat einige Modelle aus Ace Combat 7 extrahiert (allerdings aus dem RAM, nicht aus dem on-Disk-Format).

Das ist interessant, weil AC7 auf der Unreal Engine aufbaut. Der Content ist zum einen verschlüsselt (AES?) und die UE nutzt anti-Debugging-Technik, damit man die Assets nicht einfach via PIX & Co. aus dem Speicher extrahiert.

Das wäre hier natürlich besonders interessant zu wissen, welche Technik das ist – vielleicht schaue ich’s mir irgendwann an, wenn ich mal ganz viel Zeit habe.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Another fix to the levels and models on my website: They seemed overly dark all the time, and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. It probably has to do with the PSX gamma ramp, which is known to be very steep (giving PSX games their unique dark look).

In order to solve this once and for all, I’d probably have to look at the source code of emulators, but I don’t have time for that. Instead, I applied a gamma value of 0.5 like suggested on http://problemkaputt.de/psx-spx.htm#gpuvideomemoryvram :
RGB Intensity Notes
The Playstations RGB values aren't linear to normal RGB values (as used on PCs). The min/max values are of course the same, but the medium values differ:

Code: Alles auswählen

Intensity        PC      PSX
Minimum          0       0
Medium (circa)   16      8
Maximum          31      31
Ie. on the PSX, the intensity increases steeply from 0 to 15, and less steeply from 16 to 31.
This indeed looks much better.

By the way, I moved the website to http://krishty.com/acecombat_en a while ago to seperate my hacking stuff from my 3D tools.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

A few days ago, this video was quite popular. It shows a player breaking out of a canyon mission – which normally fails as soon as the player exceeds a certain altitude. He finds mysterious geometry in the no man’s land:



As tl;dr, DragonSpike commented correctly: This geometry is used for the mirroring on the water surface.

But there is an exctracted version of the level on my website, so let’s look at the details!

This is an overview of the level:
gotp_overview.png
We see the actual canyon in the center, the mirroring on the right, and the cutscene’s landscape on the left. This is consistent with the player flying towards East to find the hidden geometry.

Here’s both canyons combined via Gimp:
gotp_mirroring.png
You can see the mirroing nicely here. Also notice the distortion in the mirrored texture maps.

Here’s the cutscene terrain. According to our overview map, it should be reachable by flying West. However, nothing is there. Just a few textured quads.
gotp_sequ.png
One very strange thing is the underside of the level, which is not normally accessable:
gotp_underside.png
I have no idea what these colors mean. They could be leftover data from the level editor, because the Geofront tunnel mission has similar quads. We’ll probably never find out.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

death_the_dogs HD-Panoramaaufnahmen und Übersichts-Renderings aus Ace Combat 4, 5, und Zero.

Er hat dafür die Spiele im PlayStation-2-Emulator PCSX2 geladen, mit einer Cheat Engine herumgespielt, zahllose Screenshots gemacht, und diese mit Photoshop zusammengefügt.
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argonbolt
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von argonbolt »

Hello, first off thanks for all the work Krishty in regards to code diving and extracting everything.
I am some one who has made a series of videos reviewing the series. While searching for images i came across your project and was very impressed by some of the renders.
I and some other AC fans i know were wondering, would it be possible for you to create some renders of Port Edwards and St Ark from Ace Combat 2? Your renders of the AC3 maps are fantastic and very cool to see the whole level in full without render distance limitations.
Once again thanks a ton for your dive into the files for AC3 and AC2, as a newer AC fan discovering these games, i was always blown away by how little their many qualities were discussed relative to the newer titles.
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Krishty
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Re: [Projekt] Extracting Ace Combat

Beitrag von Krishty »

Cool, I like your videos!

Yes, I have extracted copies of Port Edwards and Saint Ark here. Do you prefer Saint Ark at day or at night, or both? Please mind that I have yet to decode some model positions, so a few parts of the cities will be missing – most notably some bridges …
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