#nohud

[curb-the-pain]

FLAWLESS VICTORY!

I'll beat Mohg every day till the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC - Day 6

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of LEGO Racers 2

This sequel builds upon the childlike simplicity of its predecessor with large, organic environments and an emphasis on physics and RPG elements. Also, its painterly visual style scales pretty well to modern displays.

Custom resolutions

To run LR2 at higher resolutions, we can use command-line arguments. Create a shortcut with a target like:

"LEGO Racers 2.exe" /width 1920 /height 1080

Field-of-vision

There's instructions for this on PCGamingWiki. Open the game executable in a hex editor, and then

Press Ctrl+F and search for 0000B4428B. At offset 0004A100, replace the B4 value with:

AC for 5:4 screens

C6 for 25:16 screens

C8 for 16:10 screens

CC for 15:9 screens

D2 for 16:9 screens

F0 for ~21:9 screens

Extracting game files

Use UNGTC to dump the game's archive (related forum topic).

Once successful, we can configure the EXE to refer to our dumped file tree, rather than the archive. To enable that, check out this forum topic:

Open the EXE in a hex editor

Search for 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 B8 03 00 00 00 C3

Replace "03" with "00" and save

From here, we can modify the game's HUD textures and onscreen guide arrow to prevent them from appearing.

Hiding the HUD

Hiding the green arrow is simple. Instructions from Xir:

Go to \GAME DATA\CAR CRAZE\OBJECTS\MODELS\ And grab the model (.md2) that says OLITIM_INVISIBLE.MD2 use this to REPLACE the arrow located at: GAME DATA\HUD\3D ARROW\3D ARROW.MD2

Eliminating HUD texture elements is trickier. To make working with the relevant MIP textures easier, you can install a Windows explorer extension called SageThumbs (forum topic). But we can get by with Paint.NET - or any other competent TGA editor, as MIPs much like TGAs in practice.

We'll need to replace HUD GRAPHICS 1.MIP, NUMBERS1.MIP, NUMBERS2.MIP, NUMBERS3.MIP, and PA GOLD BRICK ICON.MIP with transparent versions of themselves. To do this:

Move or rename the original MIP

Create a blank TGA with the same name (example: NUMBERS3.TGA). Be sure to disable compression when exporting

Start the game. You'll notice that LR2 automatically converts your TGA into a MIP (forum topic)!

Observe "removed" HUD elements in-game

You'll want to modify NORMAL_FONT and SMALL_FONT to hide any onscreen text as well.

Camera control

Pressing "4" at any time will activate a rear-view camera. This allows us to view the world without a player-character - unless your car has a lot of protrusions, which might be visible even in rear-view.

For complete control over camera rotation and position, we can use Xir's Cheat Engine table. Be sure to enable the "lock" options otherwise the game will just revert the camera back to its default position. This table also exposes an overhead camera angles not normally accessible in the game. Note: LR2 crashed frequently when I employed this technique.

Capturing sounds

After extracting with UNGTC, LR2's sounds can be found in the LEGO Racers 2\game data\SOUNDS directory for creating custom ambience mixes.

If you want to capture sounds in-game instead, you'll need to mute your car's engine sounds. To achieve this, create a silent WAV file, export it an to AIFF using a tool like Audacity (File -> Export -> Export Audio), and override the relevant assets (LEGO Racers 2\game data\SOUNDS\ENGINES\LOOPED\SMALDIDL.AIF and SMALDREV.AIF). Note: it seems AIFFs need at least one sample to be valid; LR2 will crash on invalid AIFFs.

Capturing (or not) music

Turning down the game's music volume in the menu doesn't quite mute it. Employ the technique above to completely silence music, except use a WAV rather than an AIF.

That said, LR2's music tracks occasionally mix in ambient effects (e.g. listen for crickets in Sandy Bay track). Because of this, you may decide to leave the music for completeness.

[xyzkingi]

No HUD make it look more cinematic.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (2010)

Dog Days’s gameplay is infamous for its over-the-top violence and numbing pacing. It’s  much easier to recommend the title’s mollifying attract mode.

Hiding the menu UI

I found a Reshade add-on that hides the game’s HUD. You can download it or build a similar mod yourself.

Alternatively, we can accomplish this even more quickly by loading Heebo’s free camera table into Cheat Engine and pressing F6. Be careful, however, as this toggle also hides certain 2D effects, like smoke plumes.

We can also do it ourselves, by modifying the files which define K&L2′s menus. Inside the root directory, there's an item called Patch01.zip whose contents will override any identically-named base game files found. You need to modify the UI configuration file inside:

Extract frontend.xml from the game’s Patch01.zip archive

Inside frontend.xml, delete tags as necessary for each menu UI element. Hint: search for "AttractMode"

Add the modified frontend.xml to Patch01.zip/menu/frontend.xml. For this, you can use common archive tools like WinRAR or simply drag + drop with Windows Explorer.

Capturing footage

I recommend enabling Sharpen from the game’s graphical settings. This counteracts the vertical stretching performed by one of K&L2's many post-processing effects. Compare Enabled vs Disabled below:

You should also enable anti-aliasing, but note that it’s only available from the in-game graphics menu (not the dedicated K&L2 Setup utility).

Extracting sounds

QuickBMS scripts for the Glacier engine should work with the game’s archives. As a last resort, you can use Dragon UnPACKer’s HyperRipper tool on the PC_Def.str archive, which contains the OGG sound files you’re looking for. For example PC_Def_0x313F7200_00007A18 is the “Slums” background track.

I couldn't determine where two of the game's longest ambient assets (PC_Def_0x4716D500_0000144F and PC_Def_0x207AA700_00002CE7) are used. Perhaps they only play in multiplayer modes.

Putting it all together

Once you’ve located the sound files you need, render them alongside your captured menu footage. Be careful to align the sounds with any relevant graphical cues - especially for the “airport” mode.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3

Marking the peak of this series’s “classic” era, THPS3′s outstanding game design minted many iconic levels from mundane settings. THPS3 was released on several different platforms; this guide will consider the Windows, Gamecube, PS1, and PS2 versions for creating ideal audiovisual captures.

Capturing footage

On PC, you can press Ollie + Change Camera at the same time to toggle free-camera mode. I recommend bringing your skater to a complete stop on flat ground before triggering this. Once activated:

Shift + arrow keys to rotate

Ctrl + arrow keys to pan

Console versions have freecam as well, but it’s activated differently. On the loading screen, press and hold Start once the rotating eyeball stops for the third time. If successful:

Left and right analog sticks to pan and rotate

R1/R2 moves camera up/down

The final option I’ll mention is Dolphin emulator, which offers freecam control for any Gamecube  game. Presumably, this could be combined with a Dolphin custom texture mod to hide HUD elements.

If this is all too tricky, the unlockable first-person cheat in THPS3 is a decent tool for capturing screenshots.

I recommend using the PC version due to the availability of widescreen patches. This particular patch also offers easy HUD removal. However, beware of certain broken effects on PC, like the Demoness’s flames or certain animated textures (for example the cycling lights on Roswell rails).

Other notable PC mods for capturing footage

LevelMod offers additional HUD options and graphical fixes for the PC version. There’s also PARTYMOD for aspect ratio fixes. If you’d rather, you can hide the HUD by building a transparent version via FNT Tool.

Extracting audio

For whatever reason (perhaps CD-ROM space constraints) the PC version only includes positional sound effects - it lacks the stereo ambient streams found on consoles. We’ll need to extract those - but from which version?

Let’s eliminate Xbox and PS1 as their streams are of lower quality compared to GC/PS2. Quality-wise, GC and PS2 streams are seemingly tied at 438kbps/48000hz.

Gamecube’s DTK files are easy to find (use Dolphin’s ROM explorer) and convert (use vgmstream). However, GC lacks ambient assets for THPS3′s unlockable levels.

To extract PS2 streams, you can scan for Sony ADPCM streams inside the game ROM with vgmtoolbox. From there, you can run VGMStream’s converter with the following TXTH:

codec = PSX interleave = 0x18000 channels = 2 sample_rate = 48000 num_samples = data_size

Burnside issues

There are some odd audio bugs in the PS2 version - there's some duplicated data in the Burnside track around 2:25. Also, a gap towards the end of Foundry.

As mentioned above, Burnside doesn’t have a stream on GC, and Xbox offers one of poor quality. We can do some careful editing of the PS2 stream in Audacity to fix the duplicated chunk.

Skater Island

For this level, PS2 reuses the Skate Street / Tampa ambience from previous THPS games. GC and Xbox, meanwhile, include a new beach soundscape.

Putting it all together

Splice your captured footage with your converted GC/PS2 streams and positional sound effects (if applicable) for a result with the best possible graphics and sound.

Appendix 1: Other notable mods

THPS3-Update

Appendix 2: Capturing THPS3 via reTHAWed

This total-conversion mod for American Wasteland includes lots of faithfully-ported levels from earlier games. As of version 4.4, this includes THPS3. reTHAWed offers a robust free-camera suite for capturing footage, in high-resolution widescreen.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Diddy Kong Racing

Even as an earlier title for the N64, DKR showcases its developer’s penchant for delivering rich experiences on the system.

The game’s ambient tracks, one such example, were designed to use the N64’s sequenced audio framework. This approach allowed for lengthy soundtracks while saving on precious cartridge space.

Rendering to WAV

It’s pretty easy to find a USF rip of Diddy Kong Racing which includes the game’s ambience tracks. USF sequences are ideal as they allow us to create offline, high-quality WAV renderings. Unfortunately though, this USF rip is not perfect - for example the dinosaur-themed ambience track is far too short, and the central field one loops imperfectly.

Instead we’ll try ripping and rendering MIDI representations of the ambient tracks ourselves. First, let’s run N64 Sound Tool to extract a paired MIDI track and DLS soundfont.

For whatever reason DLS is now quite an obscure format; SF2 soundfonts are much more widely supported. Therefore we’ll convert our DLS to SF2 - a task supported by multiple soundfont editors, such as Viena or Awave Studio.

From there, after placing the MIDI/SF2 pairs in the same directory, Foobar2000  or XMPlay can render the sequences using their respective MIDI plugins.

Problems with our MIDIs

There are some glaring problems with the results. The echoing wind of mountaintop doesn’t play correctly, central field’s SFX are overly loud, only one channel of the dinosaur track renders, and so on.

Trying different rendering tools reproduces the same errors, suggesting issues with the MIDI/DLS pair we extracted. And sadly, it seems N64 Sound Tool is no longer maintained.

I also tried playing DKR’s MIDIs inside GoldenEye Setup Editor (inside the Game Configuration window), but heard similar problems with the results.

Solution: Sound Test

To get high-fidelity versions we can record DKR’s isolated ambience tracks in-game, within the hidden Sound Test menu. It’s accessible from Sound Options after entering the “JUKEBOX” cheat.

There are four background tracks to find and record: beach, mountaintop, central field, and finally a dinosaur-themed one. Amazingly for an N64 release, the latter is over 5 minutes long! You also record in-game by disabling DKR’s music from the main menu or via the practice ROM.

Updated Solution: Nintendo-Synthy-4

This C++ program creates highly accurate offline renders of sequenced N64 sounds: https://github.com/L-Spiro/Nintendo-Synthy-4. Rendered results are available for download from their YouTube channel. You can also render them yourself.

Experimenting with the Setup Editor

With our collection of satisfying sound recordings on hand, it’s time to capture high-quality DKR footage. On the native Windows side, there is a decompilation effort under way for DKR, plus some time-tested editor tools e.g. GoldenEye Setup Editor with its Visual Editor.

GoldenEye Setup Editor offers a per-level Camera Zoom field. But this can’t be used to put the camera into a place where our character isn’t visible as I had hoped. The game doesn’t seem to respect values above 3C, and low ones result in an absurdly zoomed FoV.

Widescreen and framerate

If we decide to record in-game, there are some essential mods to apply, in order to reach higher framerates and FoVs. For 60fps in v1.0: 80079A2B 0003. For v1.1: 80079E7B 0003. For widescreen we can also use a cheat, or more robustly, a binary patch developed against the DKR’s reverse-engineered source code. There are more refined versions of the above cheats here and here.

There are also attempts to improve the performance of the game so that it runs closer to 60fps on N64 hardware. To remove the game’s HUD, we can use texture-replacement features of our chosen emulator.

Experimenting with speedrunner tools

I explored the ScriptHawk project as a potential way to position the player-character and camera in desired locations, but I could only get it to perform the former. Maxing out levitation by holding L may be a good way to get footage, if we could hide the racer player-character. 

ScriptHawk has a camera_zoom variable in the Lua script, but it’s not referenced anywhere in the code - could we use this?

Experimenting with GLIntercept

I don’t know of a way to achieve noclip / freecam within an emulator. Using Gameshark-style cheats to maneuver the camera inside an emulator may work - but on the other hand, I’ve heard there are anti-tamper measures against this built into DKR.

I did attempt applying GLIntercept‘s free camera plugin to RetroArch, but it wasn’t compatible, even against legacy OpenGL backends.

Noclip web viewer

I was content to record scenes inside noclip.website instead. This is a museum of sorts for video game environments which just so happened to have recently added support for DKR. I noticed some shading flaws (i.e. Wizpig’s mountain lacks lighting) that I was able to edit away via Photoshop’s burn tools. Other flaws, like missing weather, aren’t easily addressed.

Positional sounds

DKR’s ambient soundscapes also include contextual sound effects. For example, the main hub has a few waterfalls and a bubbling stream. We can experiment with N64 Sound Tool‘s import/export to determine which assets are played at a specific location.

Nintendo DS version

From what I could tell, this release lacks the background sound sequences of the original. For capturing footage, however, it features a couple of very accessible free-camera options in the forms of A.) the Taj minigame and B.) the free cam built into the most popular DS emulator.

Appendix: MIDI dead-ends

These tools promise to render MIDI/DLS/SF2 pairs, but I couldn’t get them working:

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Warcraft 3′s Menus

It is possible to modify WC3′s menus such that UI elements are drawn offscreen, transparently, or not at all.

Note: this guide was written for older releases (v1.29 and below) and may require changes for newer versions, especially those available through the Activision launcher.

Modifying MPQ archives

As a patching mechanism, WC3 first searches for a file called War3Patch.MPQ  when loading content. You’ll inject your edited files there.

Step 1: Overriding FDFs

To hide the remaining UI elements, we’ll need to modify the game’s FDF files. This format defines a menu’s components and/or layout in plain text.

Use Ladiks MPQ Editor to export UI/FrameDef/Glue/StandardTemplates.fdf as well as those specific to the menu screens you are targeting. You’ll need to modify menu elements’ coordinates so that they are positioned offscreen. For example: SetPoint TOPLEFT,"LoadSavedBackdrop",TOPLEFT,-10, -10.

Re-import your modified FDFs into a patch MPQ, with a folder structure that matches the original files, and launch the game to verify.

While editing, you may have noticed that many FDF components define a BLP skin. We’ll learn how to hide those elements in Step 2.

Allow Local Files shortcut

Whereas modified FDF files must be tediously imported/exported from the game’s MPQ archives, there’s an easier method for overriding WC3′s BLP skins.

A hidden developer setting tells WC3 to first try loading assets from the Windows file structure instead of MPQ archives. Create a registry script (example name: AllowLocalFiles.reg), paste the following text inside, and run it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III] "Allow Local Files"=dword:00000001

With that setting in place, we can now override any BLP with a local file, so long as we match the directory structure and filename of the asset as it is found inside the MPQ.

Step 2: Overriding BLPs

We’ll use an approach of providing a “blank” asset as a replacement for those texture s used to draw menu UI.

First, create a transparent 1x1 pixel PNG in the image-editing program of your choice. Then, use BLP Lab to convert this to a BLP skin.

Finally, make several copies of this outputted BLP. Rename each to match one of WC3′s existing menu textures. For example, (paths are relative to your WC3 root directory):

UI\Widgets\Glues\GlueScreen-Button1-BackdropBorder.blp

UI\Widgets\EscMenu\Human\editbox-border.blp

If you launch Warcraft 3 at this point, you should notice some missing menu graphics.

Step 3: Overriding campaign strings

By editing a file called CampaignStrings.txt, we can make the text on WC3′s campaign menus disappear. Simply replace the header and name strings inside with blank strings. Interestingly I found the associated buttons were still clickable, but only within a tiny area.

Guess and check

Repeat Steps 1 and 2 as necessary until all UI elements either draw with “blank” textures, or offscreen altogether.

Consider that each menu screen has multiple states, and some of which have more complex UI that will be tricky to hide. Also consider that navigating menus with your mouse may become impossible as you gradually remove elements, so you’ll need to use hotkeys to get around.

Animated sprites

Some menu elements, like the chains and gears on the main menu, are seemingly hardware-accelerated 2D sprites. To override these we’ll need to override the relevant BLPs which found inside Textures rather than UI\Widgets.

Alternate camera angles

Some of WC3′s menu dioramas are designed to be viewed from multiple angles. For example, the main menus of RoC and TFT both transition skyward when players navigate to the Battle.net lobby.

To execute these animations, one can simply delete all sequences other than the desired one by using the Sequence Manager inside War3ModelEditor. Then, import the modified MDX file back into the MPQ archive.

Widescreen display

Although WC3′s “glue” dioramas were designed to be viewed in 4:3, we can nonetheless render them in 16:9, revealing the variously finished geometry at the edges. The easiest way to do this is the RenderEdge MIX file. 

We can also render widescreen menus through Warsmash. Just add the following to your active INI file:

FullScreenMenuBackdrop=1

Additionally, Retera added a UI toggle to menus, activated via Alt + Z. However I found this clashed with Nvidia Shadowplay's hotkey, so I changed it:

if ((character == 'f') && Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Input.Keys.ALT_LEFT)) { .. }

Extracting sounds

Use the Sound Browser panel of WC3′s World Editor to export the desired assets. You can also use MPQ editor to do this - you’ll find a few files which World Editor doesn’t list e.g. MIDI sequenced ambient tracks.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Hitman Go (2014)

This mobile entry brilliantly distills the spirit of its franchise into a simplified puzzle game. Beyond the gameplay, a polished tabletop aesthetic and detailed soundscapes help provide a Hitman level of immersion and scope.

Debug menu

We can reenable Hitman's debug menu by setting the m_IsActive property of DebugStuff to true. We can use Unity Asset Bundle Extractor's Export Dump/Import Dump functionality and a basic text editor to accomplish this. Some options, like the FPS display, still work. Others, such as disabling the in-game UI, do not.

Capturing footage

Hitman Go's minimalist approach makes captures pretty simple - we just need to hide the UI and (optionally) rotate the camera.

Hiding UI

To hide the menu UI without any mods, we can toggle the settings pane in-game and capture a screenshot during those frames when it has slid out of view. We can then copy the relevant pixels into a static overlay to place over our footage, effectively hiding the HUD in "post". Be sure there aren't any animated level elements in the area of your overlay.

If you're technically savvy, you can replace (read: remove) the HUD textures using Unity Asset Bundle Extractor. Be sure to use one of the stable versions. I recommend working with TGA to avoid transparency discrepancies that are possible with PNG toolchains. See below for a trivial example of a modified MainAtlasLarge4X Textured2D, which serves as Hitman's UI sprite sheet.

Speaking of, I also tried modding the MainAtlasLarge4X TextAsset, which seems to define sprite coordinates, but this didn't have any effect. In fact, the game doesn't seem to use the file at all.

This just leaves the various lines and circles drawn on the board. We need to replace Texture2D assets: Line 125, Circle 120, Triangle 114, CircleExtraction 13, Crosshair 18.

To hide the "hint" path arrows, simply delete the SwipeIndicator GameObject and SwipeIndicatorAnimation MonoScript.

Camera position

We can use the triggers on a connected controller, or the mouse scroll wheel, to toggle between two preconfigured angles.

You can also use a controller's right stick, or drag your mouse while holding down the right button, to fine-tune your angle. For some reason, you can lock a custom angle by switching input methods. For example: drag to the desired angle using your mouse, and then press a controller face button.

Presumably it's possible to get complete camera control using CinematicUnityExplorer, but I didn't try this.

Extracting sounds

Hitman Go is built with Unity, so we can use any of the plethora of extraction tools e.g. Asset Bundle Extractor to obtain its AudioClips.

Putting it all together

Splice the extracted ambient sounds with your captured footage.