Beyond: Two Souls - Reversing | Porting (THAT'S ALL FOLKS?)

[HugoPeters]

Er..what you say?

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I hope it was semi-understandable

[Mr.Mouse]

I'm very proud to announce I passed my finals exams! This means I will be moving to Breda (The Netherlands) and will start a bachelor on Indie Game Development!

Fun fact: did you know that in the time I was supposed to prepare for my finals I did most of the work on reversing Beyond? This lead to the fact that I didn't... quite... prepare well for the finals...
But I'm so fucking happy right now!

Can't believe I missed this. Congrats...belatedly... but nevertheless!



So you moved to Breda now huh! Great! I live in Emmen nowadays for about 4 years, after having lived for 14 years in Groningen and then 3 years in Elst (near Arnhem). Job's still in Arnhem though.

Keep up this port work, looking to be amazing.

[d875j]

Just shocked i just heard about this today looks awesome.

[michalss]

Hugo --> Very great progress, im actually looking forward to see textures on scene in action

Question : can you say on 100%, that you are now able to replicate that Game on PC?

Thx

[HugoPeters]

I'm very proud to announce I passed my finals exams! This means I will be moving to Breda (The Netherlands) and will start a bachelor on Indie Game Development!

Fun fact: did you know that in the time I was supposed to prepare for my finals I did most of the work on reversing Beyond? This lead to the fact that I didn't... quite... prepare well for the finals...
But I'm so fucking happy right now!

Can't believe I missed this. Congrats...belatedly... but nevertheless!



So you moved to Breda now huh! Great! I live in Emmen nowadays for about 4 years, after having lived for 14 years in Groningen and then 3 years in Elst (near Arnhem). Job's still in Arnhem though.

Keep up this port work, looking to be amazing.

Thanks!!! I really love Breda, and also living separately from my parents is pretty fun actually! I still go to my parents' home in the weekends, which is more in the western area, but that's only for the first few months.

Hugo --> Very great progress, im actually looking forward to see textures on scene in action

Question : can you say on 100%, that you are now able to replicate that Game on PC?

Thx

Not for a 100%. We're still missing important things such as animation, and chapter-specific gameplay such as a bike, submarine and horse. But, I'm currently working on triggers, and the basics are already working thanks to the amazing Paradox!!!

Triggers are looking really good

[KaoruKasuga]

So I discovered this topic a few minutes ago, I was getting more and more excited, and then:

Made a super simple mesh exporter to do some research on normals. Unfortunately I am probably not going to share the models (legal reasons)

Anyway this is an awesome project you're doing here and I wish you the best !
And good luck for the uv mapping :'D

Last question: What will you do when the game will be fully ported ? Are you going to sell it ?

[Mr.Mouse]

So you moved to Breda now huh! Great! I live in Emmen nowadays for about 4 years, after having lived for 14 years in Groningen and then 3 years in Elst (near Arnhem). Job's still in Arnhem though.

Keep up this port work, looking to be amazing.

Thanks!!! I really love Breda, and also living separately from my parents is pretty fun actually! I still go to my parents' home in the weekends, which is more in the western area, but that's only for the first few months.

Yeah, I know I wanted to leave my parents' home as soon as I could. No offence to them, but I had to be on my own. 'Course that was in 1993 when I started to study in Groningen.

[zaykho]

Very nice dude !!
Its exactly what my project was (porting some xbox classic games to pc [like DOA, project gotham, midtown madness etc..]) and even re-mastering some old psx games ([ff, saga frontier, front mission etc...]).
Too bad, never get any help, and I'm too busy right now with my own game to continue.......
But, like I said in a pm to Mr.Mouse, it will be a good idea to make a subforum for porting/remastering games, I know a lot of people who try to port maps/gameplay or free dlc to PC (like some sonic unleashed maps [only on console] to sonic generation in PC]...)

Thanks! To be honest though, this isn't the same as porting console-specific maps to PC versions, this is about getting the whole game on there!

Yeah I know, this is what I was doing, I was porting the whole game, physics, models, sound, etc....
I wanted to play on pc those "exclusive console game", and more, I wanted to them being playable directly in the web browser without some OS dependencies.....

Right now, even a game like BEYOND two souls can be ported to Three.js. :p

[HugoPeters]

So I discovered this topic a few minutes ago, I was getting more and more excited, and then:

Made a super simple mesh exporter to do some research on normals. Unfortunately I am probably not going to share the models (legal reasons)

Anyway this is an awesome project you're doing here and I wish you the best !
And good luck for the uv mapping :'D

Last question: What will you do when the game will be fully ported ? Are you going to sell it ?

UV mapping is already done!

What I will do with it.. well I've already gotten tons of requests for a model exporter, so that's what I'm probably NOT going to release XD (just for the plain reason that there are many perverts out there and I think it's illegal)

It really depends on what's legal and what's not. I want to avoid trouble with Sony and Quantic Dream as much as I can, so I'm keeping it at video updates for now... but who knows what the future will bring

So you moved to Breda now huh! Great! I live in Emmen nowadays for about 4 years, after having lived for 14 years in Groningen and then 3 years in Elst (near Arnhem). Job's still in Arnhem though.

Keep up this port work, looking to be amazing.

Thanks!!! I really love Breda, and also living separately from my parents is pretty fun actually! I still go to my parents' home in the weekends, which is more in the western area, but that's only for the first few months.

Yeah, I know I wanted to leave my parents' home as soon as I could. No offence to them, but I had to be on my own. 'Course that was in 1993 when I started to study in Groningen.

wow, I wasn't even born back then XD

But yeah it's the same for me, even though I'm still 17 so it's only half-legal to live on my own, which causes tons of troubles registering everywhere
I must say I don't know if I would have left if I didn't find the NHTV @ Breda, I didn't have a real "urge" to leave, but it did seem like a good option from the beginning.


Small Update
You might have noticed the weird vertices from the wireframe video's, there were ones exceeding 10000 in on the XYZ axises. I finally figured out the problem: some are HALF FLOATS instead of singles / floats. Oh Quantic Dream... I love how they're literally wasting data at one point, and at another being careful with it (even though it's probably a standard Edge SDK thing).

So here's a tree that consists entirely from half-floats!


And here are some flowers (don't mind the green thing)!


MORE TREES.


And high poly GRASS.


Soon... integrated in the area's.

[Mr.Mouse]

What I will do with it.. well I've already gotten tons of requests for a model exporter, so that's what I'm probably NOT going to release XD (just for the plain reason that there are many perverts out there and I think it's illegal)

Of course, there's no point in creating a conversion if nobody can play it. I'm sure XeNTaX will be able to host some alpha or beta demo versions of it at some point somewhere. Meanwhile, by the time it reaches advanced beta stage you may want to contact Sony directly to see if they are willing to publish it / endorse it. As for the model exporter, there would be no harm if there was one, or for instance in the form of support for Noesis. Talk to Rich Whitehouse about that (MrAdults).

[lion589]

What I will do with it.. well I've already gotten tons of requests for a model exporter, so that's what I'm probably NOT going to release XD (just for the plain reason that there are many perverts out there and I think it's illegal)

Of course, there's no point in creating a conversion if nobody can play it. I'm sure XeNTaX will be able to host some alpha or beta demo versions of it at some point somewhere. Meanwhile, by the time it reaches advanced beta stage you may want to contact Sony directly to see if they are willing to publish it / endorse it. As for the model exporter, there would be no harm if there was one, or for instance in the form of support for Noesis. Talk to Rich Whitehouse about that (MrAdults).

Contacting Sony about this project it's really a bad idea because they'll stop this work immediately, and as for the model I really wish if he could release it.

[Mr.Mouse]

That is why I said contacting Sony when there's a version that is playable only (like a beta version). Not before. And also making sure a lot of people have already tested it. (it is public).

[HugoPeters]

That is why I said contacting Sony when there's a version that is playable only (like a beta version). Not before. And also making sure a lot of people have already tested it. (it is public).

Hmm, no, Sony would probably not like it for a couple of reasons...
1) They own copyright to Beyond (in fact, they own the IP and trademark by a 100%)
2) They're very serious about their exclusives (and haven't released a single exclusive on any non-PS platform)
3) Quantic Dream probably has a "build for PC" button somewhere, so why take a non-official version?
4) There's a PS4 version coming out with new scenes, this could heavily impact sales
5) Windows is owned by Microsoft... Microsoft & Sony aren't exactly friends...

Nah, contacting Sony would probably be the worst idea honestly, I'd rather send a direct email to David Cage (CEO & Writer of Quantic Dream).
But even he could easily sue me.

I need to give it some thought.
Currently I do not like the idea of releasing a separate model exporter, making it Noesis compatible would be like rewriting my whole project (currently the whole thing consists of over 500 C# files (partly auto generated so I can fill them in later on), and three core files with a total of over 20,000 lines of code.)
The models are split up into pieces, those are split up into pieces, and the contents for those piece-pieces aren't even in the main file, and sometimes pieces from another mesh are found in the same file as another piece, and so forth.... To get to models in the first place requires kind of a set up.
And another reason: I've seen what can happen with game models... and especially because there are naked models in Beyond, I know I will see them back at some places where I'd rather not see them.

And another issue is decompilers.
C# is easily decompilable, even obfuscated. I could add that only the non-naked models can be exported, but it would take only minutes for people to remove the restriction.

I dunno, I do not want to sound selfish, but I gotta make sure I don't end up in prison... XD that being said, I love releasing stuff like this. I think the decisions on what to release and what not to release should be given more time until there's an actual thing that can largely play the game.

[Mr.Mouse]

Well, you can see this as an assignment for yourself, certainly, and not release anything. But dismissing Sony is assuming too much up front based on no knowledge. It's about taking leadership of the project and bringing it to another level. It all depends on the way communication with a party like that is happening. Release a port in hiding, or release it in public. Alternatively, don't release it at all. Nobody goes to prison just like that, and as said, it is what you communicate is what is important. Be authentic with your intentions. Be that is it may, it is your call. Not mine. Sometimes you simply must look beyond that which you think you know. Go bold, because frankly people mostly know nothing at all. And still don't even know that they don't know. And the part they don't know they don't know is by far the largest of all.

[figuresculptor]

Well, you can see this as an assignment for yourself, certainly, and not release anything. But dismissing Sony is assuming too much up front based on no knowledge. It's about taking leadership of the project and bringing it to another level. It all depends on the way communication with a party like that is happening.

He's not making this decision with "no knowledge". Sony has a long history of being antagonistic toward hackers of the PlayStation platform. They have, more than once, sued hacking projects targeting different generations of the PlayStation. Even when the law's not on their side, they are still known to sue because they have enormous financial resources and they know most of the peole they sue won't have the money to defend themselves.

In reality, they probably wouldn't go after Hugo in court over a game that's a few years old on a console that's not the current generation… but it's definitely a possibility based on their past behavior, especially if his work can be applied to decompile games on the PS4. At very least, Sony is likely to issue a takedown notice if they become aware of the project.

Go bold, because frankly people mostly know nothing at all. And still don't even know that they don't know.

"Go bold" is easy advice to give when you're not the one facing the risk.

That being said, I hope Hugo decides to release. This is some stellar work and I would love access to his work. I love looking through game assets and seeing how they were built.