53450812 - Sonic Unleashed (Preview Build)

[ActualMandM]

Marketplace
(There's obviously no marketplace link for beta versions of any game, so the final version is linked instead)

Tested on (xenia-project/xenia@e11ba02)

Issues:

• default.xex is meant for devkits, doesn't boot normally. Gotta use xextool to make it work with Xenia
• Audio doesn't play besides from SEGA Logo
• 3D graphics don't display at all
• 2D graphics on title screen flicker

Log:

Log file

Screenshot(s):

Labels:

audio-silent
gpu-missing-drawing
middleware-criware
state-menus

[ActualMandM]

Findings & Workarounds

OpenGL has no titlescreen flicker, and displays more graphics although corrupted. In-game is completely unplayable, as it's mostly white.

Modifying the game files allows us to actually see what's going on. (for those who have worked with gens, disable DepthOfField, HDR, MotionBlur, and ShadowMap in SceneEffect.prm.xml, which is inside the stage archive file) However, the game has a color swapping issue.

Not only that, it seems to love to crash. A lot. It appears to have some nasty physics bugs.

Using @AllanCat's Sonic 06 hacks those issues seem to have gone away. It's possible to get through most stages included in the preview.

It even allows it to display something in Vulkan, although very buggy.

Using reshade or editing a line about swap_channels allows the game to display normally, although HUD also gets affected. To avoid this, the HUD files must also be modified (they're all over the place in the files, good luck)

Beatz discovered that the normals in the models were the cause of stages and even enemies looking a little broken. Through fixing the model files, they show up correctly.
Before:

After:

It appears to be possible to port over stages from final over to preview, although it requires a bit of work to do. They can be easily accessed at their spot in the Install debug menu.

This is all that I've managed to find about this game. I deeply apologize for the massive wall of text and images.

[ActualMandM]

Even if it is the same game ID, it's still a very different build of the game.

[Razorak]

The game boots, but seems to have the same save issue as the final build of Sonic Unleashed. You can't make it past the first screen unless you have a save file already installed, or at least I think. I can't seem to find any existing Preview Build save files to test this, though. This is on the November 24th 2018 D3D12 build.

[ActualMandM]

Here's a save file generated from the preview build: SYS-DATA.zip

Using the latest d3d12 build, most of the issues mentioned in the first two comments are fixed. Unlike the final version of the game, it appears that (from when I was testing at least) there are no vertex explosions.

If you are accepting labels for d3d12 builds:
Replace gpu-missing-drawing with gpu-corrupt-drawing
Add state-gameplay (it functions, but still has random crashes from time to time)
Possibly add marketplace-unlisted? This beta build is obviously not on the marketplace.

[Resilixia]

How do you add/mod the Disc 2 missing stages back into the preview like you did with Empire City Act 1 ? Is there a tuto somewhere avaliable or a Discord sever maybe, thx.

[TorutheRedFox]

the game as of now is barely playable as it frequently sends you to a black limbo

[MilesTailsFan2005]

I recommend setting Xenia gpu to Vulkan it helps the game from breaking it self "this doesn't fix all the hedgehog engine games such as sonic generations due to that having a trace caching issue but it is still completable"

This let me to play the game with 0 crashes what so ever "tested on story mode option"

[MilesTailsFan2005]

How do you add/mod the Disc 2 missing stages back into the preview like you did with Empire City Act 1 ? Is there a tuto somewhere avaliable or a Discord sever maybe, thx.

The disc 2 is still lost according to what I found