Reverse engineering of Wipeout 3 SE

[aybe]

PM sent, also there used to be a patch 1.3 but I can't get hold of it. If by chance you find it, beware that StuffIt Expander for PC will not decompress it, I remember only being able to unzip from an old Mac ... If only we could get those structs ! IDA found the names but maybe it can find their signature...

This approach kind of alleviates the need to peek into files, it will probably fun to do though there might still be a few things we can figure from these unknown fields ... for the rest I'm pretty certain that there are things we won't be able to figure. IMO the things that are a must to find would be these animations such as the ones of the rescue ship but we'll see over time. The Unity approach is really cool but I guess at some point I should share that base code to write the viewer/picker I've talked about (I've simply copied classes and fixed them for Unity in like 2 hours)

BTW just found this : http://www.gamekult.com/blog/panda/3...d-edition.html It pretends to run WOXL in HD and at the right speed, still need to test though ....

[tigrou]

@aybe : thanks

I checked quickly in the exe file you sent me (using that tool), and it does not seems to contain any data structure information detail (unfortunately)

What we could do is try to find as much versions as possible of that game (eg : Saturn, Amiga) and check if it might contains some relevant stuff (eg : using utility I mention above).

[aybe]

Are you sure that an executable would contain literal names of struct members ? (cool website btw )

I couldn't look at the Saturn version at all since it's an 65Mb ELF file, there should be some unpacker for it on the web I guess...

PM-d you.

[tigrou]

Are you sure that an executable would contain literal names of struct members ? (cool website btw )

Yes, unless the executable is compressed in some form (data sections are unpacked in memory while running), but this is unlikely.
Take the exe file you send me and open it in notepad or use string2 tool. You will find all methods names and all parameters you extracted using IDA.

So in some structures you should find names stuff like "nextsection" "radius" "junction", "x", "y", "z", i expect to find these but did not see anything like this (and also nothing that would looks like structure members)

What is in MacOSX version is probably to debug (step by step) or to produce a stack trace if i something goes wrong at runtime (so you can easily find what goes wrong)

I think they forget to do a strip (not enabled by default): http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_strip.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_table

[aybe]

I will give it a try !

Unfortunately I don't have the Mac anymore so I can hardly test, maybe through these VM emulation hacks ?

While they forgot to strip things out they probably haven't forgot to set Release mode ... that would have been too good to be true!

[tigrou]

What do you want to test using the Mac?

I have access to a recent IMac with OSX (not at home but close), so i can try some stuff as well if needed.

[aybe]

What you've said : debugging it with something like IDA.

If you want to give it a try, feel free ... I can also get hold of my old Mac but it's quite a pain to use : 800Mhz Ibook ...

Btw, didn't they drop the PPC emulation layer in today's macs ?

[miljoneir]

BTW just found this : http://www.gamekult.com/blog/panda/3...d-edition.html It pretends to run WOXL in HD and at the right speed, still need to test though ....

They don't run it at full speed. The person just explains how to do it with other software (like MSI Afterburner OSD).
And sadly, all of the link are down. So no Wipeout @ 1080p for us The reg file can still be seen though, so it allows for installation of the game under a 64 bit os.
PS I'll post a comment in french down there and hope we'll get the downloads again.

[aybe]

yes just seen the links were broken, it'd be interesting to get hold of one EXE to understand how they are HD patched !

[twenty90seven]

I've re-enabled the link to the Amiga version

https://drive.google.com/folderview?...zg&usp=sharing

The assets are just the same as the PC version. But the Amiga version outputted at a higher resolution.

I used to have the Mac version but can't find it....I had it running on a Mac back in 2009. The Amiga version was better than the Mac...the Mac version had some effects missing - the blue light trail behind the ship did not look as good - it seemed to be missing some elements.

[aybe]

Thanks, thus far it hasn't yielded anything useful as the decompilation fails at some point, we should give it another try in the future !

[Sausehuhn]

Just so you know: You won’t be able to play WO2097 on any recent Mac, as it’s a legacy program that only runs on PowerMacs and these featuring Rosetta. OSX 10.6 was the last OS to feature Rosetta and newer Macs cannot run it at all – virtual machines being the only possible solution here.

[Cipher]

Up to a certain version of mac OSX you could still run in classic mode (was it tiger? Or panther? Or maybe even earlier?) which allowed you to run oldschool mac applications, if you don't have that, you can always dust of an old G3 or G4 (loved those machines) otherwise indeed, emulation is the way to go, and it's not easy, but definitely possible, SheepShaver is what i use, it's kind of complex to set up, but once it's running it works pretty much flawlessly

Cipher

[miljoneir]

also there used to be a patch 1.3 but I can't get hold of it. If by chance you find it,

I have got it. I don't remember anything about the contents of the patch though (which files exactly), so I only send you the .app itself for now.

[aybe]

thanks !!!

EDIT : VirtualBox seems to emulate 10.6, going to try that,

[JABBERJAW]

The Mac version is no good. It skips the first 10 degrees of movement when using analog control, making it impossible to turn smoothly like the other versions

[aybe]

I don't really remember how it was ... anyway the emulation itself within VirtualBox seems doomed as the only usable version would be 10.6 but it simply panics ... seems like it's the unsupported processor (Core I7) driver doing this

[Sausehuhn]

I had 1.6.8 running on an i7 Machine (from 2010, that is) and still have it on an old 2007 MacBook, if that helps. But I have no clue about the wizardry you guys do with those games

[aybe]

It's for looking at it using a debugger to see whether we can understand/discover a bit more about the game's formats ... ultimately the most needed things are figured out but it'd be a bonus to unveil other things. The most interesting things are the scenery animations.

Just seen that patched iAtkos distribution thing but as you've laid out it's not really essential.

[UnleashSonic]

EDIT: Are the models for the ships easy enough to extricate from the game? I really want to 3D print some WipEout ships to test out my local 3D printing facilities but can't find any models of any of the ships from the WO games.

Sorry guys, hadn't discovered the other thread before posting that.