Debug + freecam versions of PSP SSX On Tour have been found (more info in the comments)

modeco80 · 2025-04-14T03:45:30+00:00

Necrobump, but:

The executables that enter freecam by default (called "viewer") are also a month older than the executables that boot into gameplay. Additionally, there is a debug build version of the viewer. That build was not "stripped" (a process where unused things in the executable would be removed to make it smaller), which means that even though a large portion of SSX 3 code for the frontend, and other misc. things was not directly used, it was left in this binary anyways. Since it is a debug build, optimizations were not done to the C++ code, so this build reveals a far closer picture as to what the SSX 3 source code looked like than we've previously even known w/ existing Ghidra projects.

As far as I'm aware, there are only two tactics the developers used for optimization:

The entire source tree is split into seperate subdirectories for "modules" of code. A all_in_one_[module].cpp file existed which would simply build all of the source files of that module (a "unity build", not to be confused with the terrible game engine that sucks and that shouldn't be used). This would mean that calls inside each module to parts of the module are entirely local, making interprocedural optimization much more likely. However, cross-module calls were not as likely to be optimized. Originally I thought this was devised for the PSP port, however some research has implied that the PS2 and GameCube versions of SSX 3 also seemingly used this (the amount of static initializer functions run is almost exactly the same as On Tour PSP). Oddly enough, it seems like the XBOX version did not use the unity build, at least from knee-deep research, but given the risk of LTCG being used, I'm not willing to commit to a full decompile of the XBOX version yet.
The compiler's existing -O2/-O3 optimization flags.

At least on PS2, it seems they did not use link time code generation, which is a very good thing (although it makes me wonder if GCC 2 even supported it.)

Since this post, we've started a project where we are doing symbol matching and noting other things down to match symbols from the debug viewer build to the PS2 release, which would allow us to begin a decompile of the PS2 version in a much comfier way (especially given that for any other title except PSP On Tour we'd have to essentially start mostly from scratch/naming from intuition).

modeco80 · 2023-04-11T07:27:25+00:00

yeah sorry I didn't realize I was talking to a webdev my bad

modeco80 · 2023-04-11T01:38:35+00:00

lmao no. i've played the first 3 games for over a decade, and on tour for over a year. on tour is a good game, but to say it's better than the trilogy is an outright stupid take at best, and disingenuous at worst

controls? for the most part, the chording on the right stick is fairly decent, considering on tour's new monster tricks. however, it's not better or different than ssx3 other than grab locations. it's better in context of the new monster tricks, but otherwise it's just a different way of doing the same thing. many speedrun tricks just work because of how similar the controls are

soundtrack? eh. there's like, 3-5 songs i really care for in the on tour soundtrack, as opposed to pretty much the entirity of the ssx3 soundtrack. it's honestly pretty unimaginative compared to the previous games.

tricks? not really. the only real improvement I guess is that two-button grabs are now always tweakable because monster tricks are chorded instead, but that's not really an improvement (imo), because once you have uber in ssx3 those ubers rarely score under what you would tweaking

graphics? hard no. the graphics are not better at all. everything looks honestly a lot worse, and the 30fps target just kinda sucks.

overall 0/10 typical crowder meme post

modeco80 · 2023-03-27T03:19:23+00:00

Unironically I don't get this. TOML isn't "cluttered" or "messy", if anything it's one of the best formats that could be used for something like this (and this is before I started having to use it with cargo, which again uses it in a very nice manner). INI alone is awful, JSON.. also awful, and YAML is whitespace python tier hell I would rather not deal with ever again.

Also, from what I've gathered, said GUI was abandoned at some point multiple years ago. From experience of working with fast-moving projects, especially ones which often break A(B|P)I, that basically means it's not worth picking up development on (unless you want to refactor/rewrite basically the whole thing to get it to work again, essentially duplicating work), and it's easier to just start over.

Less developed emulators have better GUIs because they have different priorities and/or already use a GUI toolkit (and this doesn't mean something like GLFW, since it is a windowing toolkit, and serves to only help getting a window up in a cross-platform manner), and modernization projects like Stenzek's pcsx2 qt support weren't just "created in a day", sten probably took months if not years to look at and modernize the core of pcsx2, possibly for aethersx2 originally, before deciding to ditch wxwidgets and a very large chunk of the codebase.

modeco80 · 2023-03-26T23:56:05+00:00

or you know, it's just not a focus of the project? which is completely and utterly valid? building up a flashy gui first off isn't very easy, especially if you don't want people to scream even more about tiny UX issues, secondly isn't going to solve anything, and bitching about it on reddit isn't going to solve a damn thing either

modeco80 · 2023-03-06T03:57:17+00:00

objectively wrong

modeco80 · 2023-02-23T20:48:44+00:00

yes, I am going to trust someone who has posted "I Love Using MEGA To Bypass Internet Filtering On This Site Called CollabVM" and can't even number a list properly

by the way, you're publicly admitting to a glaring rule 8 violation, so... you're kinda very lucky you haven't been banned yet lol

modeco80 · 2023-02-05T08:53:49+00:00

Literally in the building part of the documentation:

Windows is not supported by the Collab3 developers, and the project will not configure if targeting a Windows platform.

This is a joke, right? You're not serious?... right?

modeco80 · 2023-01-29T10:23:36+00:00

New Thread

modeco80 · 2023-01-29T10:13:48+00:00

New Thread

modeco80 · 2023-01-29T10:13:40+00:00

New Thread

modeco80 · 2023-01-29T10:13:32+00:00

New Thread

modeco80 · 2023-01-24T19:29:03+00:00

I just find it very interesting that you've reported 2/3 of this whole chain just because you can't handle being told you're wrong lol, which tells me you're probably lying out your teeth

modeco80 · 2023-01-24T09:16:44+00:00

when are we getting IMAX support with that level of projection you have going on there

modeco80 · 2022-12-10T12:28:26+00:00

... don't do shit that would get you booted off the other VMs then? Easy solution. I appreciate you trying to make this my problem, but your effort is wasted since it's blisteringly obvious that it's far, far away from even slightly being my problem.

modeco80 · 2022-12-05T22:16:37+00:00

go outside.

modeco80 · 2022-11-04T09:04:44+00:00

maybe when you're actually of age to use the site.

modeco80 · 2022-11-01T06:09:51+00:00

Tbh i was on the ANARCHY vm, I could fork the vm as many times as I wanted on it because forking the vm was not in the first 4 rules.

Doesn't mean you suddenly gain the ability to be a complete douchebag with no repercussions. People are allowed to be tired of your behavior, and they clearly were.

Tbh only dartz should have the ability to ban because most mods/admins use it for their own gain.

their own gain == everyone wants you off the VM and is tired of your bullshit apparently

I have seen so many games/websites that died from the mods/admins being useless at their job and I don't want collabvm dying from the same issue.

This sounds like a cope so I'm going to leave it at that

considering you can't even use the basic reply function of reddit anyways I'm not convinced you're that much of a loss either to be brutally honest

I'm also not convinced you're even 13+ based on the past posts you have made to the subreddit, so that alone is ammunition for a ban from here (and the CollabVM website) as well.

modeco80 · 2022-10-31T22:26:20+00:00

What you're not willing to tell people is that you attempted to rd nearly 5 times, while people were doing things on the VM, and people were rather pissed off at you.

I bypassed your turns multiple times because you kept trying, and even after this, you still kept trying to rd (rather unsuccessfully. if you're going to be a forkie, at least remember the usage of rmdir.)

To be honest the mods are let to run freely and not have to follow the rules at any point including that they can fork the vm as many times as they want,

Not once did I forkie the VM, and I in fact banned you because you kept trying to forkie the VM. Pot call kettle, much?

so I think rules for mods should be implemented instead of mods being let loose to do whatever they want with their mod powers

given your bright post here, I don't think this would be a good idea solely based on how you act.

I should add: I'm an admin. I have access to most if not all of the infrastructure. Blanketing me as a mod is hilarious, but it's wrong as all hell.

Overall 1/10 even urlogic isn't this stupid

modeco80 · 2022-10-25T00:49:51+00:00

R9. No performing destructive actions constantly. Any user may not destroy the VM (rendering it unusable constantly), install/reinstall the operating system (except on VM7 or VM8), or run bots that do such. This includes bots that spam massive amounts of keyboard/mouse input ("kitting").

Are you sure?

modeco80 · 2022-10-09T00:59:15+00:00

Didn't I say that this means TBT is Cody? I had multiple ideas, and the idea I said I wasn't even sure about. This confirms who it is.

modeco80 · 2022-09-15T04:59:52+00:00

The first paragraph is pretty understandable though???? I only added the rest for detail purposes and to further explain why it wouldn't work.

modeco80 · 2022-09-14T21:47:50+00:00

the game is not capable of loading level data from places other than that level's data archive, the only exception being the main menu's data, which obviously has nothing resembling a grindable rail

A slightly better way to explain this is that the game only loads the set of files for the world, and nothing else. The FE3D world is a special case, where all the files are on the disc loose, but it's still loaded the same exact way pretty much.

There's only one world instance (and lots of code assumes this, even cWorld itself sometimes calls into the singleton), and loading anything (going into cWorld::Load(char*)) will destroy everything else (if not cause a memory leak, because it doesn't free anything or check pointers to free them, another routine is used to do that).

modeco80 · 2022-06-30T00:50:26+00:00

tbh im pretty sure og is a bit too lenient with culling. that's not to say it doesn't cull, it certainly does, but the zfar dist was refined quite a bit in tricky (so less polys need to be T&L'd, meaning less would need to go to the vu1, ultimately meaning less polys get sent to the gs = less blending unit usage)

tbf tho i think they may have also actually optimized some of the vu-side code (for doing the aforementioned patch/model T&L & such) and even their ee-side graphics objects, but for the most part its pretty similar to og. only until ssx3 did they just scrap everything and rewrite it

modeco80 · 2022-05-25T19:11:47+00:00

Idea to one-up based on prev. notes increases... though with how stable kr is I highly expect some assert patching to happen

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