u/Itismrwonderful

While I just updated the community recently about the menu but now we are getting into the meat and potatoes of the project, actual 3d rendering.

The game kinda already knows where the button icons go (gray boxes), the player model is in dx12 by hooking into the PM4 Draw_index2 (yes 2) command. While I believed i hooked into it properly earlier, turns out some of the hooks need adjustments to show properly.

The city rendering shouldnt be too difficult, its finding the PM4 command/DX9 command that renders it and fixing it to show correctly.

So we got 2d rendering working (menu) and now 3d. Some of these issues can be attributed to shader issues or hooked incorrectly. Once I fix the skinning and the animations, the textures for the 3d model should appear and animations will work and not in tpose.

Nothing is recreated, its all pcc menus, reading from the game exe and game files to properly place the buttons where they should etc.

Once both the 3d city appears and things are properly textured, then I can press begin game and go to the first level lol.

The player creation screen has many of the game systems, unlike the menu that are being used for the first time and seeing the results. Once its fixed here, everything else should fall into place easier (because the 3d models arent suddenly going to be more difficult to render once the game progresses lol it uses all the same systems, might use different shaders which may prevent some things from working correctly until i fix the shader issue)

What you are seeing the PPC menu, not a recreated menu.

Fun fact: When you take a game in PPC and convert it to CPP, you end up breaking a few things lol.

This menu is one of the toughest parts of the project, just reaching it was difficult because everything that needed to be fixed to reach that point.

Just to reach the menu requires many PPC functions to work flawlessly because the game is there, it is complete, so no need to recreate anything. Let me explain
The game already has a BINK SDK (thats how the game shows bink videos duh), same with all the states the game is, like the game detects when a bink video done, etc and after all of that it loads the menu builder etc.

So there is no way for me to, lets say create my own bink video and texture decoder and go straight to sr_night because, first off, the game doesnt know what the hell you are doing so it wedges (Stops) at bootup.

You have to respect the original code, you have to listen to the code but at the same time, we all know how optimized Saint's row is and surely there are better ways to do stuff from twenty years ago (yes its been 20 years)

So the gameplan the last couple weeks have been as follows:
* If there are any broken or damaged or slow PPC functions, replace it with CPP equivalents that is faster. Easy way to do this is look at the assembly code and see what the function is supposed to do and just recreate it in cpp (the function).

*The bink SDK, obviously relies on things like the Xbox files API etc, so a easy way to have the bink sdk work naturally is by hooking into the Bink SDK and running FFMPEG as the main player, so once the video is done it will tell bink sdk its done and flag it etc.

*After all that, we got the sr_night video loaded but where is the menu? Well, this is where the broken PPC functions and we replace it with faster cpp and also doing deep RE by comparing the retail ppc trace to the RE and seeing what functions are not being fired correctly

Meaning that, SR has pumps, something the engine “pumps” once per tick so subsystems advance such as audio, loading screen, fade in of logos etc. Its critical that my recomp matches the retail pumps so the game progresses natually.

After that was done, after the pumps were working correctly, the bigger job was fixing the menu builder and finding the ppc code that places all the emblems (the white thingy at the middle of the black box at the top and bottom), the deco art at the bottom and top of the black box, the text, the gold bar, the sr logo properly cropped and trimmed.

You would think it would be easy in CPP to create a menu with new game etc, first off the game already has it completed and finished so why recreate it and also there is a REASON why the menu isnt showing so you skipping ahead and recreating it yourself doesnt change the fact that the game aint progressing. Using the PPC code for everything maintains all the internal wiring (with a few fixes of course) like the exact measurements of the menu placements, if I press new game, it automatically follows the retail flow of the loading screen and the player creation screen.

Nothing is "host" recreated, its all done by the retail code.

Q. Does anything happen when you press New Game?
A. I haven't trie- just kidding I have but again, when you press new game, there is a flow that it follows and there is couple functions that will likely need cpp replacements so it runs faster or correctly.

Q. The Menu is in PPC?
A. Its the retail menu, nothing is recreated or manually placed, it all works off the retail code, its placed by the coordinates in the ppc code and the sprite id and has all the trim etc done by the ppc code.

The game is like trying to teach a kid how to walk, you have to kinda prod it along, help it when its stumbles.

The gameplan is set, once I figured out to simply just recreate any broken or slow ppc functions instead of sit and fix it (plus its highly inefficient), the game runs alot better and making progress alot better.

The menu was the most difficult, it has multiple layers to it, art wise, and you have to find all the functions relating to those art layers to get everyone to play along nicely.

Making progress, I am still going to do some little bit of investigating on some of the art placements for the menu, but I am working on the wiring for the new game option and the menu options and making sure it pulls the correct screens and follows the right flow.

This is all running in DX12 btw, all rendered natively in DX12, the draw calls from the PPC/PM4/DX9 are being funneled correctly and shown in DX12, which is exciting in its own right.

Once I get to gameplay and make sure everything is at least working, I do plan to create a github etc.

I hear you. But progress is being made really fast.

gas is 5 dollars