Showing posts with label pokemon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pokemon. Show all posts

2009-06-21

Pokemon Battle Revolution - h4x

Interesting theoretical question;

Let's say you make a video game with monsters such as Lizardon (Charizard for some);

And you want it to have different textures so you can make different colored versions.

The logical thing to do is to add the textures as references, or make a named texture set so your model can just quickly request a texture set switch, right?

Apparently, someone at nintendo didn't get the memo, and instead, they JUST MAKE AN ENTIRE NEW FILE which has the additional textures in it, ignoring the fact that the entire model set is identical and only the textures change...

For example,

Mr. Lizardon is ~ 800 kB, compressed.

When you decompress him, you get:

lizardon_0 ~ 1024 kB
lizardon_1 ~ 1024kB

So, the funny part, is the textures take up maybe 200 kB of each file.
If they would have just added the textures in, it would have saved nearly 800 kB, and who knows what that translates to in the compressed format!

Weird enough. Also, it explains why some of the colorings I had were dead wrong (is it?)



Oh well. Once I figure out where it tells me how many vertex arrays / vertex objects there are, I'll have it nearly 100% exported.

Peace!

-Z

2009-06-20

Pokemon Battle Revolution - h4x

The first thing you probably said was "Pokemon!?? @#$%%(&!?" with more expletives.

On a side note; It was useful to decode the LZSS varient used in these games; It offers a serial form of compression that is very good at packed redundant data, and is byte driven instead of bitwise like a huffman. It seems to get pretty decent compression ratios for sparse or repetitive data; and is general & lossless. Also, learning more block compression schemes for pixel data is useful, PVRTC is the only one I care about at the moment, but STC3 and some others are handy for my own projects. Do they have a normal map compression scheme yet? hm.

On the actual note; I'm not sure if finding out how pokemon are made is useful; But it does show me just how crappy textures can be if you use shaders properly.

And, why would they use vertex keyframe animation? Makes it really really hard to integrate into any other system; Might explain the lack of Digimon/Monster Rancher type games. Oh well. Only theories.

Here's some random pokemon in Blender; No credence given since I never played the games:



-Z

2009-04-24

Dream; Stupid pokemon movie

'A Pokemon Movie'

Already this isn't good.

But anyhow, apparently a grand tournament of pokemon masters was to commence on this island, inviting all of the worlds best and most skilled trainers to compete against eachother for a sort of 'black' prize; This was not a legitimate sponsored tournament, this was a underground one, allowing dirty tricks and darker tactics to be used, pokemon may even be killed for that matter.
So, I was not a trainer at all, however, Kelly was a master-trainer in training, and the rest of the GH crew were either support characters or friends of Kelly for light sparring. Turns out, since I know not a lot about pokemon except their data formats, there was a school for animal training in general, which was somewhat like a night school, since it did not replace primary education, but instead augmented development of this pokemon fad hobby thing. I do remember that Kelly seemed to have the same team from brawl, which doesn't make sense, but oh well.
On the side, Etna, my favorite videogame heroine, was also deciding to enter the contest. However, there was this hilarious Disgaea style cutscene with her arguing with her Prinny's about getting items so she could create the ultimate demon pokemon, and well, she did, but as we all know she's not the type of person to spend the time and effort to properly train an animal, and rather assumes it'll act correctly or train it by force.
So, after some conversations at school, and a few classes, GH team banded and we took a boat out to this island so we could watch the competition. Kelly was too smart to enter this tournament, especially when all bets were off about the safety of your monsters. But it'd be kickass to see some of the toughest pokemon out there battling it out. We arrived, watched a few fights, which involved some weird pokemons I hadn't seen before, then decided to go to the concession stand to get some foodulons.
Well, when we left, it was Etna's turn soon, and she was walking her pokemon on a leash to the side of the arena for waiting, but, well, the food storage was visible to this monster, and it began yanking on it's leash, Etna scolded it, but, well, it's not trained properly, so it yanks on the leash till it breaks (it was comically thin) and starts gobbling all the food. Etna goes over and starts hitting it, then gets a shocked look, says 'Ugh' and leaves promptly. Well, apparently this demon pokemon just starts growing as it continued to eat, and everyone immediately took notice, as it had gotten nearly arena sized in no time at all.
We were all at the snack bar, and we hear the commotion and go to check it out, but not really rush in, more like peeking.
Well, this giant monster thing looked a lot like one of those generic godzilla shapes, but longer arms and more sleek build, kinda brown and tan two-tone type colorings with some black markings here and there. It's eyes were yellow-reddish, but it also had claws on it's hands and feet, and some spines on it's tail. It did look like yet another pokemon, but, well, since it was THIS big, it immediately began eating as many of the entrants and pokemon as possible! Which was essentially fanservice to me, but that's besides the point. The thing runs around, smashes the exit so everyone is trapped, and basically spends the next few minutes making sure it had eaten everyone in glorious cartoon style. Well, the Generic professor oak character was standing there, and tried to run but it got him, cue main-character death scream.
So we were deciding what to do, and some other trainer with the same pokemon as kelly rushes out and declares it can beat this monster, and the movie stops and I mentally said 'Hold it. This arena was supposedly filled with the worlds best pokemon and trainers, this thing wipes em ALL out easily, and some punk kid with the original set characters thinks he can do something? Yeah. whatever.'
So we cut to a interior shot of the professor, who looked like he was floating in some sort of dark amber liquid, trying to hold his breath but fails, and it cuts to a monologue 'huh? Strange, I'm not dead... wait... Neither are any of the others! Oh no...' As it pans out, showing this large dark-colored liquid filled chamber, with a ton of these amber bubbles each containing one of the eaten people/monsters, most of them asleep or knocked out. Apparently, this monster was a generic anime 'container' monster, it's purpose is to contain and restrain, without harming it's victims. These kind of things are everywhere in cartoons.
So, GH team decides to leave. Not our problem. After all, if it was Etna, she'll get her Prinny's to beat the f*** out of it until she get's what she wants.

The really funny thing about this dream, was the entire thing was drawn animated; It did look exactly like those super shitty pokemon cartoons, and all of us were drawn in that style, which was hilarity. It worked surprisingly well, and honestly, this movie had just about the same quality as the actual pokemon movies, but with much less fanservice to additional fetish groups, instead focusing only on one. Which is no surprise to anyone.
Other curious details, the school for training looked a lot like my high school, the arena was in a mountain, and kept very dark, that pokemon Etna brought was called 'Gizzardon', and all of it's internal scenes were in high detail, but still had animated parts if need be. The in-dream kelly really liked that squirtle though, he even had it trained to do homework and talk some, which was pretty badass. However, the ivysaur just sat next to the window and made noises, and the charizard was just sleeping all the time. Was kinda a funny dorm room shot I guess.
Nothing too crazy actually happened it seems. I'm disappointed Raesir didn't show up, this seems like his kinda event.