medievil, posted Fri May 18, 2018 3:06 am (35001)

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ok looks like this is gonna be REAL fun...lol..comparing XB indy and pc indy, you'd be really, really surprised how similar the code is, at least things like the loading tables for mesh names and such for example
PC:

Code:

.text:10001C80 sub_10001C80    proc near               ; CODE XREF: sub_10001060 127p
.text:10001C80                 push    ebx
.text:10001C81                 push    ebp
.text:10001C82                 push    esi
.text:10001C83                 push    edi
.text:10001C84                 mov     esi, ecx
.text:10001C86                 call    sub_1019A5B0
.text:10001C8B                 mov     eax, [esi 1510h]
.text:10001C91                 mov     dword ptr [esi], offset aBHuman ; "b_human"
.text:10001C97                 mov     dword ptr [esi 8], offset aRHuman ; "r_human"
.text:10001C9E                 mov     dword ptr [esi 0Ch], offset aAIndy ; "a_indy"
.text:10001CA5                 mov     dword ptr [esi 10h], offset aAWeapon ; "a_weapon"
.text:10001CAC                 mov     dword ptr [esi 24h], offset aHuman ; "Human"
.text:10001CB3                 mov     dword ptr [esi 28h], offset aIndy ; "Indy"
.text:10001CBA                 mov     dword ptr [esi 1Ch], offset aIndy_0 ; "indy"
.text:10001CC1                 mov     dword ptr [esi 20h], offset aNazi ; "nazi"
.text:10001CC8                 mov     dword ptr [esi eax*4 1450h], offset aIndianaJones ; "Indiana Jones"

and
XB:

Code:

.text:00344F89 sub_344F89      proc near               ; CODE XREF: .text:0034770Ep
.text:00344F89
.text:00344F89 var_4           = dword ptr -4
.text:00344F89
.text:00344F89                 push    ebp
.text:00344F8A                 mov     ebp, esp
.text:00344F8C                 push    ecx
.text:00344F8D                 push    ebx
.text:00344F8E                 push    esi
.text:00344F8F                 push    edi
.text:00344F90                 mov     edi, ecx
.text:00344F92                 call    sub_3156F0
.text:00344F97                 lea     eax, [ebp var_4]
.text:00344F9A                 push    eax
.text:00344F9B                 mov     ecx, edi
.text:00344F9D                 mov     dword ptr [edi], offset aBHuman ; "b_human"
.text:00344FA3                 mov     dword ptr [edi 4], offset aRHuman ; "r_human"
.text:00344FAA                 mov     dword ptr [edi 8], offset aAIndy ; "a_indy"
.text:00344FB1                 mov     dword ptr [edi 0Ch], offset aAWeapon ; "a_weapon"
.text:00344FB8                 mov     dword ptr [edi 20h], offset aHuman ; "Human"
.text:00344FBF                 mov     dword ptr [edi 24h], offset aIndy ; "Indy"
.text:00344FC6                 mov     dword ptr [edi 18h], offset aIndy_0 ; "indy"
.text:00344FCD                 mov     dword ptr [edi 1Ch], offset aNazi ; "nazi"
.text:00344FD4                 mov     [ebp var_4], offset aIndianaJones ; "Indiana Jones"

PRP1986, posted Sun May 20, 2018 8:33 am (35070)

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Great work so far - thanks for everything you've done this far

medievil, posted Thu May 24, 2018 4:58 am (35227)

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uuugh, getting more than a little frustrated.. not with the hacking stuff, but with IDA...It doesn't allow direct altering of files, it creates a little image of the file, you make changes and it can adjust offsets, etc...normally you make your changes, create a dif file and patch the binary... BUT, it isn't letting me create a dif file... or more correctly it produces a blank one..had all the menu and manager functions and exports all renamed and ready to go and lost all of it cause it would not directly patch nor create a dif file...if I can't get this lined out, next option (pretty huge undertaking) is recreating 3 dll's....I can copy the assembly code from them on the pc side and just replace all the game functions... thats a lot of work for no reason though.. much of the code is already ready on the pc side...it more a matter of adding functions and altering those that are equivalent... all the sound code, for example, is good to go, the xbox sound stuff is tailored for xbox and would have to be rewritten anyway so it make more sense to use the PC code, same for 3d access... and the XBE, is ONE file, everything is packed into it, so no exports or imports... all that has to be figured out, on PC it is already there, more or less. I can see some benefit to MAYBE creating a new script sgl file, since it is most of the main functions (NPC animations/behaviors ..items/props....etc) while the other 2 main dll's are more engine (handling sound, 3d, movement/controls, etc..) and they just pass info between them via the imports and exports... anyway, still plucking away.....

medievil, posted Mon May 28, 2018 3:22 am (35345)

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ahhh ran into a pretty significant problem... the boneanim files... the indy engine won't use them (says they are misaligned) and there is no way to redo them since they are built with the engine version...so now I am gonna go a different route, looking at taking the xbe and hacking the crap out of it, change the kernel thunk to actual ntdll calls(table list is already there, just have to change the functions)... take the dsound and d3d sections and change their calls to compatible d3d8 exports(hard part cause it is less well commented/documented in the xbe)...basically rebuild the thing into it's own exe

PRP1986, posted Fri Jun 01, 2018 11:28 am (35483)

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Wow sounds like a huge undertaking, good luck on your progress!

On a side note how viable do you think it would be to extract the models and/or animations?

medievil, posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 2:23 am (35527)

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the models work in the pc engine so I have not looked at them, the animations though are completely code blocks...and I would imagine both are proprietary (unless they used 3d max or something similar back them to create them)

Teancum, posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 5:37 am (35533)

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I'll have to follow this topic. Seeing Indy/Buffy crossover stuff makes me wonder if this would apply to the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith since it's the same developer and same platform.

medievil, posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:21 am (35535)

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Teancum wrote:

I'll have to follow this topic. Seeing Indy/Buffy crossover stuff makes me wonder if this would apply to the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith since it's the same developer and same platform.

did it use the slayer engine?


****EDIT****
nevermind, just checked it DOES use the same format

pak files have changed though/// buffy pak extractor bms won't read them

and seems to do things a little different, doesn't store temp files to the HD so nothing in cxbx is stored in the emulated HD partition

medievil, posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:37 am (35536)

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also Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure pc game is the slayer engine

PRP1986, posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:14 pm (35538)

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medievil wrote:

also Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure pc game is the slayer engine

I believe that Silent Hill Homecoming is also based on a modified version of the Slayer Engine - i think it was one of the later games developed by The Collective before they became Double Helix Games.

medievil, posted Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:59 pm (35614)

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the Contents Under Pressure pc engine is a no go, they changed the texture formats (st instead of mtx) so they are complete unknowns...some of the st's look like simple header files without any textures in them...and the texture names are no longer listed inside (likely they are now compressed or encrypted)

PRP1986, posted Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:21 am (37663)

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Hi Medievil, I was just wondering if you managed to make any progress on this project, or is it on the back burner for now?

medievil, posted Fri Sep 07, 2018 6:35 am (38172)

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PRP1986 wrote:

Hi Medievil, I was just wondering if you managed to make any progress on this project, or is it on the back burner for now?

DOA.. there is simply no way to get the buffy animations to work on the indy engine, it won't take them because they were made with a different version of the engine, and without the original source, no way to convert them...
there is other hope though.. cxbx-r is getting further along, you can actually play the game (missing character's at the moment, but the shadow is there so you can see where you are)
they are currently working on a number of things, like proper cpu emulation which will greatly increase compatibility and help with speed.. and they just moved form dx8 to dx9 (xbox and pc dx8 were pretty different, pc dx8 lacked many things..dx9 has more stuff and much better shader support).. it has been stated that even in it's current state, once they add a proper vertex cache system, speed will jump way up as thats currently the biggest thing slowing it down

medievil, posted Tue Nov 12, 2019 12:47 pm (52041)

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small update, not so much getting it converted to pc, BUT cxbx-r is getting pretty close to running it pretty well

PRP1986, posted Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:45 am (52138)

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medievil wrote:

small update, not so much getting it converted to pc, BUT cxbx-r is getting pretty close to running it pretty well

Its getting there! Funnily enough without having read your latest message, I tested the game a few days ago with the latest cxbx-r and I too was pleasantly surprised. Good to see

medievil, posted Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:56 am (52627)

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PRP1986 wrote:

medievil wrote:

small update, not so much getting it converted to pc, BUT cxbx-r is getting pretty close to running it pretty well

Its getting there! Funnily enough without having read your latest message, I tested the game a few days ago with the latest cxbx-r and I too was pleasantly surprised. Good to see

it is playable now, with a not currently public/merged into main build...it has a few slowdowns (Will disappear as the emulation gets better) but overall plays pretty nice(I get, besides the occasional slowdowns, 29-30 fps [30fps game])

medievil, posted Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:19 am (52640)

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and just like that a public PR, likely to be merged in a day or 2

Decemberius, posted Tue Oct 27, 2020 1:31 pm (59805)

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I'm not sure if this helps, but i think that some old games, might be using / reusing the same stuff as Buffy, in one form or another, whether it's texture, or sound effect, or animation.

1. Xena Warrior Princess [PSX 1999]

2. American Mc Gee - Alice [PC 2000]

3. Clive Barker's Undying [PC 2001]

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone [PC 2001]

5. Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets [PC 2002]

Each game was released by EA games.

There are many similarities in all of those games, not on first glance, but i've replayed them all, many times, so i know what i'm talking about.

I believe that Xena game engine could be the early blueprint for the Slayer engine.
I might be wrong though, but if anyone here is interested in my theories, i can share my ideas.

I'm writing this, because, maybe, just maybe this could help in one way or another, in porting Buffy The Vampire Slayer to the PC.