Following the complete SADXPC split, here’s my attempt at a near-full level/model/animation rip of SA1 Dreamcast. It includes all levels, almost all object models, the majority of motions and some data from the older split such as level object lists for most levels. When the SA Tools update is complete, it should be possible to copy this over the SADXPC split (except the object lists) and be able to load SA1 levels and objects in SADXLVL2.

This split is less complete than the SADXPC one. Here’s a list of things missing from it:
-Individual landtable items are not ripped as separate files.
-Various miscellaneous data, such as texlists, dialogue text etc. are not ripped.
-Some levels are missing object lists.
-EV files are not ripped (maybe I’ll get to that someday).
-All shape motions are missing.
-Some other motions may be missing.
-Some object models may be missing (shouldn’t be a lot).
-We don’t have source filenames for SA1 Chao assets so I created the file structure from scratch.
-Some Chao animal parts may be missing or have wrong filenames.
-There is some minor inconsistency with character upgrades which have Adventure Field versions. Some of those are placed in the respective Adventure Field objects folder rather than the character’s folder.
-Some models and animations don’t have proper labels because I couldn’t match them with SADX assets.
-Some character animations may have wrong labels.

Other than the above, it’s a complete rip of levels, models and animations that follows the structure of the new SADXPC split. To try it, extract SA1 1.005 (US, animated title screen) ISO to SA Tools\SA1\data and run SA Tools\SA1\splitSA1.bat. The output will be in SA Tools\SA1\output.

A few days ago I also added support for SA1 Gamecube .REL files that use special compression (thanks Exant for the decompression code!). The tools should now be able to work with these files, and I will likely make a split configuration for SADX Gamecube as well. It will be less complete than SA1 or SADXPC but it will focus on the assets that are different between Gamecube and PC versions. A similar split configuration may also be made for SADX Preview eventually.

Last month I wrote about a new split configuration I made for SADXPC split that ripped models from sonic.exe with a file/folder structure resembling the original source files. Recently this new configuration was expanded to include models from all SADXPC binary files, including DLL and NB files. This means we now have a 100% complete rip of all models in the entire game. And not just models, but also motions and shape motions (most of which are properly mapped to their respective models), camera actions, fog data and texture lists.

I didn’t think it was possible but we were able to identify source filenames even for models in the DLLs, for which we don’t even have labels! It turns out that most models are arranged in an alphabetical order. There were some exceptions to that, which required manual editing with some guesswork, but overall it wasn’t as unrealistic as I originally thought. I’d like to thank ItsEasyActually for identifying character-related models and motions in CHRMODELS, as well as Past objects and animations in ADV03MODELS.DLL. Also, NB files are included in this. We don’t have source filenames for them, but based on the labels used in the X360 version I was able to a at least find or guess the names for all of the objects and animations.

ItsEasyActually has been working on migrating the currently known data from the old SADXPC split to this new system. If it works out, we will be able to rebase SA Tools and its project system around the new folder structure, and the new split configuration will become the main one. I’m still not sure if this means much for mods that don’t use code. At least I’d like to help make SADXLVL2 display more object models, and I also want to make some kind of wiki for the source filenames to help people find assets easier. A long-term goal is to make DC Conversion use this system, and create a more complete split for the Dreamcast version that uses a similar folder structure.

Some statistics: there are about 12500~13000 models in the entire game (approximate number because of duplicate models), about 3450 if you don’t count level pieces. The largest models (in terms of data size) are the Egg Carrier (Sky Chase and the transformation cutscene), Sonic and Tails on the Tornado, Perfect Chaos and Chaos 6. The high poly SA1 title screen model, which is one of the biggest models in the X360 version, is not present in the 2004 PC port. Some unreferenced models are also included in this split, such as an unused Adventure Field version of Amy’s Long Hammer, the SA1 DLC Christmas tree, the cowgirl, various unused Chao toys and the unused Chao flower I wrote about some time ago.

For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a project related to SA Tools and the split tool, which I recently brought back in its original command line form, and today it’s finally ready for the public. This is a complete rip of levels, models and animations included in SADXPC’s sonic.exe that mimics the filenames and folder structure of the original source files.

This was done in multiple steps. First, Exant got me a list of source filenames from the PDB file that came with the leaked X360 prototype. The list was filtered to only include models (.NJA, .NAD and sometimes .DUP files) and animations (.NAM, DUM), and I also added levels (.c files).

Then I exported all SonicApp.exe labels using IDA and wrote a program that made lists of labels that were similar to source filenames. With some manual tweaking I was able to match all source models and animations with their labels in the database. I made the lists resemble the Dreamcast version’s file structure. For example, all Emerald Coast stuff would go in “STG01”, Station Square would be in “ADV00” etc. Both PC 2004 and the X360 prototype have most of the stuff stored in the main executable (for which we have symbols), but there’s a lot of models and animations in separate libraries too, so lists for characters and the Adventure Fields were pretty short.

Then I made it generate .INI files based on those lists and the addresses associated with the labels. Basically a bunch of split .INI files for SonicApp.exe that extracted the models and animations from it with a structure resembling the matched source assets. Now it was the time to get something similar out of the PC version.

This is the part where it got a bit more challenging. Since we didn’t have a complete split of sonic.exe, I decided to update my object scanner and make it more precise, as well as add support for motions. Motions were particularly challenging because there is no reliable way to detect the number of model parts they’re supposed to use if the model using them is unknown, which was the case with a lot of motions. But I was happy with the results since the scanner found almost all motions that I needed. Of course the models also had to be found, and to make it easier for myself I also made the scanner detect levels.

After that I had to come up with a solution to match those with the source filenames I got from the X360 version. My idea was to rely on the fact that the data should be identical between the two versions as long as it’s ripped correctly. I made some adjustments to SA Tools to make it possible to output 100% identical files from both versions as long as the model and animation data was the same, mostly by removing labels that used addresses, which were obviously different between the games. I added a bunch of undocumented command line switches to the split tool and programmed several new modes for it, including one that compared files byte by byte and made a list of file matches between two folders, and another mode that created split .INI files using lists of addresses and filename matches. This took a while but finally I was able to produce a big .INI file that contained a rough version of the file/folder structure I was looking for.

Then I split it into separate files again, and went through each file to confirm the contents. I checked for duplicates and false matches, added model part counts to all motions and assigned motions to models where possible. There were many animations that required manual editing because the models were named differently (so the tool couldn’t detect the model part count) or were missing altogether because they were supposed to be loaded from a DLL while the motion was in the EXE. For example, a lot of cutscene animations had situations like this with characters. Fixing this all was the most tedious part of the whole process, which I only finished today.

I think it was worth it. We now have a full split of all models and animations in sonic.exe (over 13000 items), including about 2720 non-level models. And, since most animations are now assigned to their models, you can preview them straight in SAMDL. Including shape motions (implemented by MainMemory earlier in the SA2 Event Viewer), which you can now also view in SAMDL.

You can try the new split configuration by downloading the latest version of SA Tools, putting sonic.exe in SATools\SADXPC\data and running splitnew.bat in the SADXPC folder.