Unleashed Project Development Blog

General blog for research and development related to Unleashed Project, a conversion mod of Sonic Generations featuring stages and content from Sonic Unleashed.

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What happened to Unleashed Project?

So, it's been around four months since the last update on Unleashed Project's channel. What's going on? Is it dead? Has it been delayed? A lot's been going on in my personal life for a while and I want to shed some light on why no updates have been released in a long while. Before you go panicking (first of all, I'm flattered, but second of all) the release isn't cancelled. It's not even seriously delayed, all things considered.

I'd been working on the project on-and-off for a long while, since 2014 even. Since I didn't want it to become my own personal Duke Nuken Forever, I resolved to put my personal projects on hold starting 2016 until Unleashed Project 2.0 was done. After all, I'm doing 90% of the dev work on this update; it probably wouldn't exist without me. I didn't want to let people down, and with the Sonic Hacking Contest being held in October/November (the general deadline I had wanted to set for the release) it seemed like the best idea was to buckle down and dedicate as much time as possible to getting work done.

That... didn't go well. Due to the pressure of having to port, iron out, and thoroughly test over 30 stages in less than a year (a decent chunk of work had already been done going into 2016, but a lot of that old work needed fixing up too) and only being one person doing all of said work, took a huge toll on my emotional state. I was already not in the best of places emotionally, but the added pressure turned me into an anxious wreck nearly every day. Friends can attest to me constantly talking about the looming deadline I'd set in determination to get the work done; they can also attest to my refusal to change the deadline or give myself any sort of extended break.

Unfortunately, it's not all as easy as it might sound. Sometimes I spent literally my entire day's development cycle just trying to get a camera right or something of the sort; it may sound trivial, but I pour as much time as I can trying to get every detail either accurate or enjoyably translated. Other days I couldn't get anything done because some glaring problem refused to be fixed without tons of time dedicated to debugging (I can only bug Dario so often, he's busy most of the time). Development just isn't a smooth process no matter how you look at it, especially when you're working mostly solo.

So, what happened? I was determined to make my deadline, nothing was going to stop me. Well, so I thought, anyway. It was late April that something really serious unfolded in my life; something I can't go into detail about, but that essentially forced my attention away from the project until it could be dealt with. Unfortunately, before even that situation was resolved, I was sent to the hospital due to my Crohn's getting concerningly bad. I had been tolerating the physical pain of it for a long while, but it was beginning to seem potentially fatal, so getting me treated was very necessary.

I spent around a week or more in the hospital before being discharged, before almost immediately heading off to TMG, as it was something I had been looking forward to. It was a great time, but once I returned home, stress hit like a truck once again. I was becoming physically unstable in addition to my emotional state, so after talking it over with my girlfriend, we decided to fly me out to visit her and a friend for a few weeks. It was upon spending time there that I realized where I had been living was a large contributor to the stress I was facing; our rather impromptu solution was for me to stay with my girlfriend and move in permanently, flying out to pack the rest of my things and take care of a few appointments.

So that's where I am now. I haven't flown out yet, but I'm living in a new place which I just moved into, without any access to my files for Unleashed Project. I fully intend to get almost straight back to work once I have my computer back, but you probably realize by now this means the release is being delayed; I don't know exactly when to, but I imagine somewhere early in 2017. I'm really sorry to have to announce this, but I wouldn't have stopped working for even a moment if my personal life hadn't seriously demanded it. I didn't want to have to push the release back to 2017 at all, because that's hitting four years since the 1.0 release, and it makes me worry that interest in this release will be diminished. Nothing's worse than dedicating years and tons of stress to something only to find out no one really cares about it.

Of course, I don't intend to let that worry stop me. I know there are people who still want to see the release through and enjoy it when it's out, and I won't disappoint those people. If you've been following the project and my work on it this long, I want you to know that I really appreciate your patience. I'm working as hard as I can so that you can enjoy the finished product, and I hope you will when it's out. Please forgive me for the delay and the things in my personal life that have kept me busy, but I hope you look forward to more updates coming very soon.

~S0LV0

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I’ve been terrible about updating this blog along with everywhere else, so please follow the Twitter (http://twitter.com/UP_Mod) if you want quicker updates.

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Forgot to post this one, sorry!

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First stage video up! Yes, it’s Windmill Isle Act 1-2, which I showed off and even released as a demo in 2014, but it’s been entirely remade and a lot of problems fixed. Fresh content is coming very soon.

Also, I suggest you follow the new Twitter account for small updates here and there. I’m more likely to post there often since I use Twitter more, but updates will still happen here too. https://twitter.com/UP_Mod

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The Unleashed Project channel is launched! Why a new channel and not my own? Well, it’s a self-contained project, so I want it to be in its own space so that my personal channel doesn’t get cluttered after everything’s done. That said, updates will be there and frequent throughout 2016. I don’t know how much I’ll update this blog in light of that, but we’ll see. Check it out!

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Presented without commentary.

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Update

Sorry things have been so quiet lately. I have a small update, starting with what I posted on Sonic Retro.

Hey guys. I just wanted to let you know that my Unleashed Project work isn't going to be showing up in this year's SHC after all. I've been caught up in a huge maelstrom of personal problems and conflicts, and sort of put my development on hold to deal with them. Some part of me even wanted to drop the project entirely, what with feigning interest in Gens mods as a whole, but I don't think I'm going to. I want to see Unleashed Project to completion because I know there's potential for it to be a highly rewarding and full gameplay experience, as well as for it to provide me valuable design experience, as it already somewhat has. What this more or less means is that progress may be sketchy for a while, especially with Win10 not entirely wanting to cooperate with Glvl, but ideally, progress will happen. With how much is on my plate for this, I really shouldn't be procrastinating as much as I am, but I'm in a difficult spot in life and working through it to provide what I can, the best I can. As for what I have done, I can at least confidently say there's good progress on the table so far. A majority of the main "hard mode" stages are almost fully polished, as well as a decent number of the smaller ones being fully complete. I'm definitely not even halfway there, so I need to kick it into full gear soon, but... it's something. I know I haven't shown a lot yet, but that's not because there's been no progress.

That concludes what I posted to Retro. Now, I want to say that I’m working on the mod regularly again, and am hoping to start posting proper updates to this blog along with that. I apologize to anyone who was worried the project died out, or for bothering those of you who may not have cared. Either way, stuff is happening, so look forward to it!

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Hey everyone, sorry for the silence surrounding the project for so long. It’s been a long year for me so far, and I haven’t been able to dedicate as constant time to it as I’ve wanted to. That said, I do have some good announcements. First of all, the first stage since Unleashed Project’s continuation of development is done! Windmill Isle Act 2-2 is a personal favorite of mine, not only due to the additional challenge, but the various shortcuts added in the layout to make the stage feel faster. You can see it in action by playing the video.

The other announcement is that Unleashed Project will be making another appearance in the Sonic Hacking Contest next month, in demo form. This stage will be included, along with hopefully a couple others (it depends on what I have time to polish). I hope it to be a good showcase of the “hard mode” layouts of the main stages, while the rest of them, as well as the additional new acts, will be saved for final release. I will be making a video for each completed stage, still.

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Here at the Unleashed Team Headquarters (or UTH for short), we're constantly looking for ways to to improve your Unleashed Project experience. These last few years we've been running polls and focus tests to figure out what would capture the Ultimate Unleashed Experience™ (or UUE™). After all that hard work, we had a collective epiphany (yes, those are possible): FOVs. We had foolishly neglected the FOVs in the mod's original release, and the UUE™ suffered because of it. As we all know, the FOVs were the best and most tolerable gameplay feature of Sonic Unleashed™. When the fish-eye lense was tight, so were Sonic fans' collective pants (girls don't play Sonic obviously). It enhanced gameplay by making things really easy to see and avoid. With that in mind, we've imported the FOVs from Unleashed and at the same time taken them to the next level. We hope you enjoy our new version of the game and your suddenly-uncomfortable lower attire.

NOTE: We've also enhanced the HUD, physics, and voice of Sonic for the UUE™. The other most wonderfully enjoyable aspect of Sonic Unleashed™ is obviously Jason Griffith's in-stage delivery. I don't think I've experienced a more ear-pleasing and non-grating voice direction.

please come back griffith we miss you

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Unleashed Project DLC #2: ThornPress Fun Facts

Yeah, remember the crusher I mentioned in my first post? Trust me, we'll be seeing plenty of those. I figured this as good a time as any to enlighten you on some fun facts revolving around this adorable wall of death.

First of all, trying to use this (or any) object outside of the stage it was designed for requires a good deal of extra labor. First, and most importantly, all of the object's resources have to be ported to the resource list of the stage you're working with; in this case, I'm porting the ThornPress (crusher) object from "euc" (Rooftop Run) to Arid Sands (which goes over the "ssh" or Seaside Hill slot). 

Now, in any stage's files, the resources are stored in three major categories: 100, 200, and cmn. 100 pertains to the main Classic Sonic stage, 200 to the Modern Sonic stage, and cmn for resources that are shared between the two of them. From there you have two subcategories, hashtagged files and non-hashtagged files. The resources contained in the hashtagged files usually pertain to stage, lighting, object info (basically all of the stage's XMLs), and Havok-related physics files. The non-hashtagged files contain basically everything else; materials, textures, models, animations, etc.

Now, since the ThornPress object is used in both Classic and Modern Sonic's Rooftop Run stages, I'm going to find the necessary resources in euc's cmn files. In this case, the hashtagged file (#euc_cmn) contains the model's physics files, as expected, while the non-hashtagged file (euc_cmn) contains... everything else. In this case, everything else is mostly materials, textures, and the models themselves. (Note: I say "models" in plural because the ThornPress object has three different sizes, necessitating a different model for each.)

I make that process sound easier than it is, since knowing exactly the right necessary resources is a lot of trial-and-error, but you've got the gist of that step. The next is moving those files to the hashtagged and non-hashtagged cmn files of the stage in question, respectively; no real trouble there. After that, the game needs to be told to load this object as part of the stage's object tree. This part can be considered relatively easy, and the file needed for this stage is called StageObject.sto.xml; being an xml, of course, you'll find it in the hashtagged file. All you need to do is add the internal object name to the tree in the file with the same format of the others, and repack it into the main #cmn file.

If all goes right (and assuming I didn't miss any steps) the object should now be perfectly usable in your stage. If something like a crash occurs, or the object doesn't appear, it's most likely an issue of missing resources. The best way to target this issue is to mass-copy the source stage's resources into yours (which should guarantee the object appears) and delete whatever resources look unneeded until you've slimmed down the list into exactly What U Need. (heehee)

That's all for now. I'm hoping you guys enjoy this (admittedly rather technical) insight into the development process. Until next time!

~S0LV0