Level turned into garden?

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ChrisOfChaos
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Level turned into garden?

Post by ChrisOfChaos »

Has anyone ever tried turning a game stage aka level into a Chao Garden? Personally I think it would be really cool. No doubt that with today's programming capabilities we could easily make a Chao Garden to fit more than eight Chao, but seeing a whole level turned into a garden would be amazing. Can anyone tell me exactly how hard this would be for a modder to do? I would imagine it wouldn't be too hard, since the modder wouldn't be implementing any new features and just building upon existing game material.

Reply if you have seen or would like to see a mod like this. I'm really just interested in if this has ever been done and/or how hard it would be for a modder to do. The current Chao gardens are cool, but they're really small for seven or eight Chao to spend lifetimes in.
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chaoadventures
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by chaoadventures »

We've gotten close, at least for SA2. If you didn't know, Darky's Chao World Extended mod lets you have 16 chao in a garden. But enough about that, more about level combining.

It's been done, but it's not very far. It's very... direct.

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The transporter (among many other things) is floating, as you can clearly see, and this is just the Lobby. As far as I'm concerned, you have to dig very deep (and tediously) to fix this mess.
Heck, I don't even know if it's functional or not. SA2 hacking isn't very far in terms of model and collision editing either, so I don't believe we can make bigger gardens ourselves just yet.

Can't say as much for SADX PC (2004), even though it's been hacked to death and back. Most people who hack that game don't give a care about the gardens, so I have no clue.

Also the levels seem way too big (and filled with pits and enemies) in both games to accommodate chao, but that's just me.
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ChrisOfChaos
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by ChrisOfChaos »

That's why the levels would make such great gardens, though. I mean they're huge. A garden would feel less confining and you could spend more time there. Plus you could feel like the Chao have more room. In this case I guess I'm looking at them like dogs or horses; they can't just be crammed into a tiny garden to spend a lifetime. Really the normal Chao garden in SA2 is so small, even compared to every other garden in the series it's almost like a broom closet. The Sonic Adventure DX gardens were much bigger. I'd say the biggest garden in SA2 is the Hero Garden, but it's still small compared to the DX ones.

As for enemies and pitfalls, I would think removing enemies and putting up invisible walls wouldn't be that hard. I was mainly thinking that this could be done with the Knuckles and Rouge levels. They would be AMAZING as Chao gardens, wouldn't they? Plus it would give people more incentive to teach Chao to fly, so the Chao themselves could explore the level and access other areas. I just think it would be really fun to have a big, level-size Chao garden that you could explore in. I mean it would be a lot more fun to stay in the garden if you had a little more legroom. You could keep certain Chao in sections of each level or let them roam so that it feels more farm-oriented, and update the Chao Transporter to teleport Chao to certain sections of the garden if you needed to find or move one.

I'd do this myself, but I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm no modder and this is probably well beyond any skill set I could learn off the Internet. If someone actually made a mod like this it would almost make my heart stop. A man can dream, though...
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by chaoadventures »

Fair enough. Now I actually want to mess around with Cheat Engine a bit to see if the game even keeps working after fusing and trying some 2P exclusive stages (since they reduce some of the problems).
I didn't even think about Knuckles and Rouge's exploration friendly stages either.
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Jeffery Mewtamer
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

Last I checked, the SA1 model format had been mostly, if not completely, reverse engineered, but the SA2 model format, despite being an extension of the SA1 format, was mostly still a black box except where it overlaps with the SA1 format. While I can't comment on it's progress, there is a level editor for SADXPC04, but no such tool for SA2, and while at least one SADX stage has a partial port to Generations, nothing of the sort has been achieved with SA2 or the PC version of Heroes to my knowledge.

As I understand it, even model and character swapping within SA2 tends to be fairly buggy, especially crossing gameplay styles.

That said, I'd love to have the Biolizard Arena as a garden. And perhaps a bit more realistic since SADX is more thoroughly cracked, being able to play in the Emerald Alter Garden from the distant past would be awesome.

Sadly, few hackers care about Chao period and most of the ones that care and have done anything of note are on this forum.
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by DarkyBenji »

i actually tried to turn some "Level" model into garden with the power Hex edit and Data_DLL.dll
(cheat engine mix the object files so it doesn't work well and cause some crash)

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it's fun, but weird, because of the floating tree/transporter, invisible exit, and sometime the level just don't work
(i tried to load the sonic vs shadow level jungle on garden and everything (me, my chao and the object) are floating on the middle and can't acces to the ground)
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windkirby
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by windkirby »

Just a thought--wouldn't the Chao race area (I'm mostly thinking of SA2's--I don't remember what SA1's was like) be ideal for an alternative Chao garden? Huge but not too huge and sort of designed to not let Chao get away. There'd probably be a ton of obstacles like everything that's been tried in this thread, but I wonder if anyone's tried it.
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Jeffery Mewtamer
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

Well, the race area is certainly Chao Friendly, at least the parts Chao interact with during races, but I have to wonder if it has fully modelled collision and would be compatible with player character models, or if most of it is just collision free scenery and only works without glitches because Chao are controlled by the game instead of the player and things would go haywire if you could control your Chao directly and went off the beaten path.

Still, taking a leisurely walk with one's chao through the race area would be way past cool to quote old school western versions of Sonic.
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by windkirby »

Yeah, that's one thought I had after posting... Even if one and one's Chaos could be dropped in it, it might actually not be as navigable by the character or maybe even the Chaos as it would appear. Would be cool though! Definitely a Chao friendly area with plenty of fun alcoves.
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SwifterTheDragon
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Re: Level turned into garden?

Post by SwifterTheDragon »

One can easily throw a Chao out of course in a race.
Using Fusions Chao Editor I gave a Chao 9000 stats of fly and he went everywhere..
Probably means that collision isn't a problem here.
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