Progress Report - R100

*To be updated

 

Room 100 or just r100, this is the first stage of the game, and the most challenging to modify by far. There's so many side effects and things that can go wrong here, that I don't know from where to start. This is the most hated room by modders and for a good reason... The models are split in 7 SMD files! Two inside r100.udas.lfs and the other ones in .dat files, so in total we have:

 

r100.udas.lfs

r100_04.smd

r100_05.smd

r100_00.dat.lfs

r100_00.smd

r100_01.dat.lfs

r100_01.smd 

r100_02.dat.lfs

r100_02.smd 

r100_03.dat.lfs

r100_03.smd  

r100_04.dat.lfs

r100_04.smd 

 

As far as I know this is the only room loaded in parts, probably due to some performance issues in the Gamecube old hardware. It makes use of the BLK file to set triggerzones of where the .dat SMDs will be loaded and unloaded. If the models are added to the main udas SMD it will be loaded even when Leon is far away, this may cause performance issues as this is a very big room.  

Not only that, but there are also limitations about size for these .dat files, if we add more geometry beyond the original size, side effects start to happen, and around 14,3 MB (considering only .dat files) a serious of bugs start to appear like failing to trigger EVDs, crashes, being unable to save or load a save in the area, etc. Leon can also be spawned in the middle of the map when reloading a checkpoint.

And keep in mind that these edits were made on top of HD Project, which already fixed a lot of things, if we get the original r100 to work on it, I believe it would be even worse, as it uses the r100_05.smd file. Fortunately there is only one SMX file which all these SMDs point to, so we can tweak models brightness and color easily. It also has 2 SAT files, which is probably related to before and after the Truck cutscene (not tested). A few AEVs are toggled ON and OFF depending of the death state of the first ganado.

In this post I'm going to share the changes, and the step by step thinking and troubleshooting process that I've gone through while editing this room. The first noticeable thing is that now the introduction passes during the night, instead of taking control of Leon during the morning, the game now has a tense intro and some build up before action really start happening. The old truck and its cutscene were completely wiped out, as I never liked that beginning to be honest.

Enough trucks for today!

 

Instead of the old truck blocking the way, now we have a proper wooden gate, which is locked by default but gets opened after defeating the first ganado. It has a message and a custom sound for interactions.

 

 

The wooden cart behind the house was replaced by a more detailed one, it was edited to be broken. I took the liberty of adding some straw back there. The cart was taken from another game but I've forgot which, thanks to Free3dModels for exporting the model and sharing.

In the police car, there's a small courtesy light added to the interior, which was not present in the original. Another detail is the new pedals that were added, only two as it uses an automatic gearbox, so one is throttle and the other brakes, no clutch is needed.

  

 

The wheels of the police car also receive some attention, because in the original it had a very weird elipsis shape. My true intention was to replace this fictional car with the real one, the Land Rover Range Rover P38A, but that would require a lot of work that I don't want for now. Even then the result is ok:

 

Another thing that is only featured during the night, are the ESE crickets sounds spread through the area. During the day I have an idea to use these ESE entries for some bird sounds, as it's just a quick .wav replacement in the room .xwb.

The silencer functionality already shown in my channel still present, we can now get the silencer at the beginning of the game, just walking to the house and coming back, then asking the police driver for it.

 

"Modding r100? Oh you are crazy american."

The first ganado now has10x its original health, it was increased from 500 hp to 5000 hp (Thanks to Duke for the offsets). After killing it and the cutscene that follows, a suspense background music is triggered using AEV-FSE. The texture of the face was also changed for the beta texture, which looks much scarier than the default one (Thanks to Glitch 5970).

 

Don Jose now has 5000 health points.

 

Inside the house that creepy skull area receive a nice touch with candles, the yellow light and the bloom EFF may be clipping a bit, but it's a small detail. The skeleton hands were removed due to their high poly count, it is quite subtle change. In place of the hands some low poly bones were added.  

Despite the first ganado, and the ones after the 2nd bridge who point and run away from Leon, no other enemies are spawned (they are actually spawned but far away, so the game doesn't trigger the fight music, or get in the range of the casted flashlight, disabling the entries can result in crashes). Some traces of blood appear during the path to the village, suggesting that a body was dragged. 

The redundant guideposts were removed, leaving only the second one.

So no enemies during this new introduction, and for two reasons, to avoid the "shadow cast" issues that can be caused by the new flashlight, and also to focus on the track being played in the background, this way increasing the suspense. This lack of action creates build up for subsequent areas. 

For purists what I can say is that this is a 20 year old game, and everyone knows it from start to finish. I'm trying to create something new, so changes are welcome and my creativity will flow freely. I'm aiming for a a different approach, focusing in the horror experience rather than action. That truck opening never made sense, it's too rushed and Hollywood!

Once we return from the first encounter, a second model of the police car is triggered. In this version the driver's door is opened and indicates that something happened, and that the police officers tried to fight and escape. 

Blood texutres were applied to the windows and the body of the car. The glass windows all broken except the windshield, as it is more resistant than the others. It receive a texture of broken glass mixed with blood. A custom camera can be triggered with comments by Leon about what just happened. The tire marks were also improved.

The wooden gate will be opened after defeating Don Jose, blood splashes and other blood marks were added to the model. Also those wooden windows in the exterior part of the house, that doesn't make sense were removed. Some light shafts were tweaked.

 

The Skull warning is no longer static, now it's dynamic moving with the wind, but due to the limitations, I've used only one skull to have less SMX entries, to have less chance of flashlight issues.

 

The HD Project bridges are good, the chains are fully 3d but honestly, this area was already too heavy on CPU so I've decide to bring back the original iron chains, which saved dozens of polygons. It can be easily restored with small effort in case someone wants it back. The vegetation in general, is also less detailed during the night when compared to the day version, some concessions had to be made. In the dark is actually hard to spot the difference.

The road that the police car uses to enter the area receive some attention, and now instead of a bunch of billboard trees blocking the way, what we have is a road with wooden fences and some trees. Before it was simply a dead end and a wall of 2d EFF trees.

Smoke was added to the house, coming from the chimney. The fire also receive tweaks and it's now more dynamic. It uses some of the flames from the battle in the cabin with big cheese (r11f). Some nice sparkles come from it and a heat effect was added.

 

The jar in the table was tweaked and now its handle is less blocky. It's now rendered both sides, before it had some invisible parts in the model. 

 

Walking a bit there's a new water stream before the second bridge, with proper ESE sounds (Directional sounds). Some vegetation was added to hide the start and end point of it. My guess is that the intention was to have some water there, but the devs dropped the idea at some point during development.

The second bridge that leads to r101 is now destroyed, and Leon has to go back to the shack, and open a passage to an underground area. This new area take us to the other side, in that other shack. Leon goes down, and when he's back to the surface the sun has already risen, and we have day time.

 

The shack with the dead woman ganado by the pitchfork received some clutter and a little hatch that will take Leon to the next area. This next area is still WIP. As the idea of a dynamic time cycle is not possible like I'll show later, this end up being a solution for the time transition.

New cameras shots were also added.

Time Transition 

But the real question is, how to make the transition between night and day? It would be possible to add various LIT Groups through the area, but the transition is always abrupt as it doesn't feature a nice fade effect. I've opted for a different idea due to a series of limitations, instead of making the transition in a single area, I've ported the s107 stage from RE5 which is a mine area.  This mine area is underground so when Leon comes back to the surface it is teleported to a day version of r100, supposing the time transition happened during the time he was underground.

Even if smooth LIT Group transitions were possible, with a nice fade-in and fade-out effect in place of the abrupt change when walking over the triggerzone, the night models would not be suited for a day time. As they were packed using just a few SMX entries, no granular control over lighting is possible.

Dynamic time would also bring too many side effects, unless we could load and unload SMD, SMX and LIT, but this level of modding is not possible as far as I know. The flashlight present during the night forced me to pack models this way, in just a few obj. so SMX tweaking is compromised during the day. The same good looking room at night would be a disaster during the day, without proper SMX entries that are used per model, for light switches, color and brightness customization.

The day variation of r100 uses a different setup when compared to the night version. The models are individually separated their own .obj files like in 99% of the rooms. On the other hand the night version had to feature them packed into a few .obj. This way we have less SMX entries and consequently less interactable objects on screen reducing the chance of overload. As the day version doesn't make use of a casted flashlight, it has no such SMX limitations. During the day models can have a much higher level of granularity and control compared to the night, as we aren't casting anything.

r300 flashlight testing

This was supposed to be the default r100 room for REvamped, before I decided for a night introduction. After the first cutscene the car would arrive in a morning time instead of this final version which is still dark. It happened after my tests in r300 with the new flashlight, when I saw it was possible to have such level of quality at a low performance cost, I've completely reconsider the morning version of r100. In the end I think it was the best decision anyway as it is much scarier and unique this way, I'm very happy with the result.

 

Troubleshooting 

The default fight music that is normally played (00000001.wav) was muted by FSE, a big triggerzone takes care of it, whenever the player is inside the boundaries, it stops the streamed .wav file from Bio4 BGM. But some side effects started to appear, like the music being successfully muted and once ESC was pressed it was coming back during the pause screen, very weird bug.

It was only happening after killing the first ganado and staying in the house area. However I was able to fix it apparently by dealing with the spawned enemies that are triggered after the Truck cutscene, or some AEV that was calling the music again, I don't really remember. 

Another issue was that I was unable to trigger my custom music after the Truck EVD, when the triggerzone was inside the house. It was like the AEV was triggered during the EVD shot, and after that it remained inactive. 

So to fix that I've used AEV to call an FSE .wav and it worked, it immediately triggers the suspense music after the truck EVD, the only downside is that, as it is an FSE it keeps playing. Is possible to add in the sound entry a second .wav with silence, but this causes the main music to not play after restarting a checkpoint, as it alternates with the .wav of silence which is undesired. 

Another way of doing it is to make the main .wav long enough, adding silence to it. But this will increase the file size of the xwb being used. Is not the perfect solution but I believe no one is going to stay in a room long enough to the point the music restarts, so I've gone for it.

During the fight with the first ganado, in case Leon tries to leave the house the door will automatically close. For some reason my game was not playing the sound of the door closing, but I end up fixing it somehow with AEV. Its always a good idea to not delete entries, using LO flag to 4 instead, or moving the triggerzone out of bounds.

This automatic close behavior depend of some factors, during the battle if the player tries to leave it closes, but only when under a certain distance, and after that, it keeps locked as originally three ganados are spawned. 

If it's not triggered during the fight, the door will close again after the truck EVD. I removed the ganados, but some triggerzone was locking it, the door was auto closing when trying to leave, after defeating the first ganado, so we got locked inside the house. Just moving the AEV solved the issue.

 

Original

Door is open by default.

Don Jose fight → The door remain opened, and closes when Leon approaches it.

If the door was triggered during the battle → The door remain closed until Leon jumps from one of the windows, or one of the ganados opens the door, after that it set unlocked, and stays that way.

If not triggered during the battle → The door remain opened and closes when Leon approaches it.

Leon jumps outside from one of the windows, or wait until one of the ganados opens the door → The door gets permanently unlocked. 

 

REvamped

Door is open by default.

Don Jose fight → The door gets closed immediatelly (not only when Leon gets close to it).

Don Jose killed → The door gets unlocked immediatelly, Leon can use it to leave the house normally without breaking any windows.

So I've made the lock to be only used during the fight, to not allow the player to leave the area. If Leon could walk outside that would add some inconsistency related to the EVD cutscene played next.

And talking about doors, this ETM door of the first house was modified to have two sides, calling different textures. The interior one is darker than the exterior one. 

Remaining issues

The absence of a moon is something players can notice, due to the type of fog used (Type 5) it gets occluded. With exponential fog, when Leon gets distance from a model it fades away. Using Type 2 fog is a way of keeping the moon always visible in the sky,  however the overall look is downgraded, pop-in start to be noticeable and we miss the dense fog.

Also the flashlight keeps strong in the distance when the fog is linear (Type 2), so it doesn't get dimmer like in a exponential fog type. I've tried to use the same EFF moon used during the introduction, but that's also not a choice, as it also disappear at a certain distance. 

Apparently the flashlight doesn't work during EVDs so it's a minor detail that persists for now. I was able to make it work during the introduction, but it's like Leon position was stuck, it doesn't move with it like in gameplay where it is actually attached to its waist.

When the player ignore the first three crows, proceeding to the ganado encounter and then leaving the house, the "shadow cast" issue is more likely to appear. What happen is that, by default the crows follows Leon through the map and depending on the position, we can hit the limit of objects on screen that can be lit by this custom flashlight. 

As ETM like boxes and doors also count for it, when the first three crows come in our direction plus the other two ones, and the bear traps, it can really cause some overload. Yeah bear traps somehow are recognized by the game as EM! But I don't know a LIT flag to filter it for now.