Coming soon, to a spirit forge near you...

[Vampmaster]

Extended debug menu:

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Sound debug info:

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The possession code converted for PC:

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Ben's full fing menu converted for PC:

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Top secret (not any more, I guess) project to finish off the deleted elemental reavers:

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The key to achieving such a unique resurrection and replacement for WinHack:

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Trade you secrets for the blood of the dead, I will!

[wrace]

hm, posession, glyphs and Kain's Reaver... Looks great!
"Coming soon" - I hope that in this summer?

[Vampmaster]

I might have to release it in stages. I might need Ben to help with some parts, like using Soul Spiral to insert new textures into the bigfile and I was hoping to host the trainer on tlw again. You might be able to help with other parts like the deleted reavers.

The red reaver in the picture it just a recoloured material reaver. I think I can edit the textures used for it's particles as well, but the difficult part is analysing the structure to see what else I can change and then making room in the array to insert the new ones. The array is part of the soul reavers object file and the code always expects it at the same offset from the start, so the best I can do is to move everything after it downward and fix up the pointers so nothing breaks.

[wrace]

Originally Posted by Vampmaster

using Soul Spiral to insert new textures into the bigfile

Does this mean: to insert into bigfile.dat some file with the same name but with greater size? If so then I could help you - our localizators created some small utility (BigFile Packer) for replacing files in bigfile.dat of SR2 and I - by analyzing output of Soul Spiral and the appropriate BigFile DePacker - created the appropriate accordance between the names of these two utilities.
But if you need to add new files into bigfile.dat, this utility can not help you - for that it is needed to add additional fields in the header of bigfile.dat (and do something with sr2.exe also, I think).

Originally Posted by Vampmaster

The red reaver in the picture it just a recoloured material reaver.

hm, in SR1, as I remember, Ariel Reaver and Kain Reaver - it is also just recoloured material reaver.

Originally Posted by Vampmaster

You might be able to help with other parts like the deleted reavers.

How?

[Vampmaster]

You're right about bigfile.dat and SoulSpiral. That is what I'm trying to do, hovever the last time I spoke to Ben, he wanted to do things a bit different than you suggested. He said something about leaving the original file where it was and just adding the replacement on the end. The address would just be changed to point at the new file.

I suppose if you did it that way he might want to incorporate your changes into the official version, but I haven't been able to contact him recently.

The soul reaver works differently in SR2. It uses different particle effects depending on what element it's imbued with and how charged up it is. It's more complicated than just the colour. I'll let you know what I need help with the next time I'm working on that part.

[Paradoks]

This may not be the best place to ask this, but since you are already ripping the game code apart...
Would it be possible to make a widescreen hack for the game, so that aspect ratio remains correct?
And would it be possible to make a patch for mouse and keyboard controls? They work fine for the most part but are buggy once you redefine the movement keys, which makes WSAD configuration unusable.

Originally Posted by wrace

Does this mean: to insert into bigfile.dat some file with the same name but with greater size? If so then I could help you - our localizators created some small utility (BigFile Packer) for replacing files in bigfile.dat of SR2 and I - by analyzing output of Soul Spiral and the appropriate BigFile DePacker - created the appropriate accordance between the names of these two utilities.

Does the game handle higher resolution textures? Because that would open a whole new possibilities for high resolution mods.

[Vampmaster]

I might be able to make a widescreen patch as it's probably the same type of change as was made for SR1. As for higher resolution textures, I'm not sure. Replacing existing textures and inserting additional ones is a big enough challenge for now.

[Raina Audron]

good job, Vampmaster! Cant wait to try the ring menu and other things

[Vampmaster]

I'm not sure what to do next with the ring menu. I was working on adding the glyph icons which aren't currently in the game, but there are also no actual spells for them either. I believe I know enough to manufacture some, like I did with the SR1 water reaver damage effect, but would have to decide what they should be. I think I can trigger certain death animations and particle effects provided they already exist in the game and make enemies glow in different colours.

Raziel's spell animations might be limited to the wavey thing he does with his hands when shifting realms, however the "I got a new reaver" thing might be cool if I can figure out how to trigger that.

The spells are one of many difficult features I want to add, so they might take some time. In the mean time you guys can be thinking of suggestions.

[Paradoks]

I forgot about the most important part: Great job!

But I'm still wondering wether there is anything that can be done about controls? Like at least a look up/down keys?
Let me explain what is wrong with M&K controls. After redefining, the movement keys work in walk mode and sneak mode but for some reason forward key does not work in fight and look around modes. The undefinable arrow keys work fine though. Besides, someone had a "great" idea to make mouse control the movement instead of camera in combat mode.
These issues are not present in keyboard only and gamepad controls, but these lack a free camera option (no y-axis control outside of look around\aim mode).

[Kaizainiel]

Is there any remnants of the old glyphs left, you couldn't convert SR1's?

Where did you get the "Prime mover" application?

[Vampmaster]

There's nothing left of the old glyph menu. I might be able to adapt the files from the air forge demo force new data into the existing files. A few different projects would need to coincide for that to happen though.

Soul Spiral needs to be able to insert files into bigfile, not just replace existing ones.
Only Skin Deep needs an import feature for replacing/inserting textures.
Only Skin Deep also needs to be able to talk to Soul Spiral to figure out texture guids.
ModelEx needs to recompress extracted data and fix up pointers that would move around if I were to try to make extra space inside a file.

Only when all that comes to pass can these features be fully restored.

As for where I got PrimeMover. I built it myself or at least I'm in the middle of doing so.

[Pillar of Balance]

I am really looking forward to seeing the final result. Its great that the community are working to fix and improve the existing games