Todo as of July 1

Got a few things done in June:

• updated an old Lua script for the SNES version of SimCity
• cleaned up and improved a bunch of old cheat codes for SF2 and other games
• engaged in some pointless combo research regarding SF2 Blanka
• developed a way to get the exact damage formulas for SF2
• improved on the frame data collector script to the point that it's actually usable

I wanted to do some more hitbox and Macrolua work but it'll have to wait till July. In particular I want to get MotW working and show throwboxes for the CPS2 games. It should be pretty obvious now how I intend to do that.

In related news, it's good to see that someone else has been working on hitbox Lua, for samsh5sp. Mauve, however, is no newcomer to hitboxes, [1] [2] [3] and has been at this for years.

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This month's banner was from Red Faction II, a 2002 FPS developed by Volition and published by THQ. It was designed for PS2 and later ported to Xbox, Gamecube and Windows PC. The RF series was hyped for its "Geo-Mod" feature, by which you can blow holes in the landscape with explosive weapons, but in practice it was limited to specific terrain features. For the most part the path is tightly scripted, with geo-modding used to find hidden caches of weapons and such.

Red Faction II greatly improved on the single player experience of the first game, with story and character design that was less lame: it's about super soldiers hellbent on revenge, rather than wimpy space miners rebelling against evil overlords. The voice acting was also better, with the character of Molov standing out in particular. (The nameless NPCs still have hopelessly clownish lines though.) In fact, the game is built entirely around single player. The Windows port of RF2 suffers from console-itis and doesn't even have multiplayer, so you'll have to play something else if you need to virtually kill strangers over the internet.

The first weapon you get is a grenade launcher and there's never any need to use rinky dink pistols. An explosive headshot on an armored opponent can gib everything but the legs, which is a thoughtful detail. The railgun that can penetrate walls and multiple bodies makes a return from the first game with some small modifications. There's also a number of stages spent riding around in exotic vehicles and blowing stuff up.

You can't save at will, but the checkpoints are frequent enough that this is never really a problem. The game itself isn't that hard or long, but getting some of the "bonus objectives" to unlock stuff can be annoying, since they aren't revealed until getting them and nobody seems to have studied the PC version in detail. For what it's worth, the only unlockables are worthless gallery items. Overall it's a short, enjoyable shooter that doesn't pretend to take over your life.

Comments

[papasi]

Hello dammit,

I search everywhere for your email address but I couldn't find it.
I have a few questions regarding sf2 that I wanted to ask you.

Do you mind send me a email (i put my email in the info box)?

> developed a way to get the exact damage formulas for SF2

Wow, that seems awesome. I hope you can figure this out and that will solve a big mystery of sf2

> improved on the frame data collector script to the point that it's actually usable

double awesome. can't wait!

Thanks

[dammit]

My email is dammit 9x at hotmail.

[Aerendir]

Looking forward to the MotW Hitboxes, thank you for the effort !

[dammit]

It's gonna happen. Only a matter of time.

[dammit]

Update: currently working on throwboxes in the CPS2 script. It's a massive job but mostly done. Should be finished within a few days.

[ESN]

Maybe a stupid/obvious Q : do you know/think throwboxes also exists in 3s?

[dammit]

If you make the definition of "box" loose enough, absolutely.

See, some games like SFA2 don't check heights for ground throws. So it's more of a "throwline" and in order to draw a box you have to assume a height. But this is just for visibility, since generally ground throws have no chance of connecting on air opponents.

As for air throws, they must always have boxes. It's only a question of whether they grab at the opp's throw vulnerability box or the position axis.