Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

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Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Hibiki Rush » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:38 am

I was wondering if anyone ever got around to archiving any/all of the Shenmue Passport textual content? I along with some other GameFAQs members attempted this feat back in 2002. I was just going through some of my old files and noticed I have a lot of that data in text format, including character profiles (which I see some are available on the Dojo but I believe those were in some of the guides), descriptions of places, and things like Nozomi's Messages.

Does anyone know if this data is out there at all? If not I would love to contribute it to make it available somewhere. I originally started a website called Yokosuka City many years ago and originally planned to publish the data there but I stopped updating it eventually.

It was fascinating how much backstory was created for the series, and unfortunate to see it all disappear with the closing of the Passport.


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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby amiga1200 » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:53 am

you could put together a package and upload to an HTTP file locker, or do a torrent?
if you have own site, FTP server with user specific criteria met for them to access server and files.
there's a subject, a user asking for the possibility of a wiki on specific content:
Code: Select all
http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48863
but it seems, ALL contributions are welcomed.
anyway, do as you will...
and hello btw! :mrgreen:
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Bambi » Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:37 pm

If you search YouTube you'll find a few videos of people accessing the content on there through various means.
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Ziming » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:41 pm

phpBB [video]
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby johnvivant » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:10 pm

i was going to make a suggestion in the community project forum whether it was possible for someone to create a modded version of the passport disc that bypassed the need for an internet connection and where we could reinstate all the information for the characters and area profiles by putting the text on the actual disc.

I think it might be too difficult to do, but i really have no idea. it would be one hell of an amazing release if anyone could pull it off.
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Hibiki Rush » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:18 pm

The problem with the linked video is that it seems to have been taken after the servers were actually taken down, since a lot of the profile text states that the data cannot be retrieved. Nearly all of the written text for the Passport content was stored server-side, and was never on the disc. Thus it's not available now.

The project I along with some other GameFAQs users took on was to transcribe all of that information. I believe we ended up getting all of the Places descriptions finalized, some of the scroll information, the people (although this information was in the guide already), and Nozomi's Messages but not sure if that's complete since it was always randomized.

I guess if the owner of the site is interested in putting this data up I would be more than happy to pass it along.

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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Ziming » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:28 pm

There is also a Shenmue Wiki site you could add this data to.

http://shenmue.wikia.com/wiki/Shenmue_Wiki
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby amiga1200 » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:29 pm

^^ considering the last line, it maybe better if you go RIGHT over the public heads, and take it to the staffs DIRECT (you know the score, running sites n' that?!) and it's possible you may get some correspondence and better handle on the joint?
...
aye! :mrgreen:
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Ziming » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:34 pm

Here are unfinished galleries of the VMU characters you can obtain from the Shenmue Passport. As I recall you can obtain these by getting those winning cans from soda machines.

VMU Characters
http://shenmuedojo.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=127

VMU Animations
http://shenmuedojo.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=88

Thanks to the Dreamcast VMU explorer were able to acquire most of them. It's still incomplete...

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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby johnvivant » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:41 pm

it would be nice to have all the passport info up on the dojo main site, but the dojo doesn't seem to have been updated in ages (apart from the gallery). i would also love to have Miles's full shenmue 2 character profiles up on there. i suppose everyone who has the necessary privileges is just too busy at the moment.
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby amiga1200 » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:42 pm

Ziming wrote:*YOINK!*

Thanks to the Dreamcast VMU explorer were able to acquire most of them. It's still incomplete...
^^ SPEUD shows up again! :mrgreen:
...
outside building disks with own libraries, not found a viable way to interface with vmu on a user level.
a direct connection to a computer, as is the case for a few types of console memory card. (using friends dc-to-usb-converter, but it doesn't signal the vmu channel, just blindly powers it. computer doesn't acknowledge vmu through usb converter either/no vibrators catered for.) :P
[edit]
the fuck?!
who 'edited' my junk?!
i don't recall wrapping my earlier in a collapse tag... :?: :???:
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby ShinChuck » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:11 pm

Didn't someone briefly "restore" the Passport about a decade ago? I don't recall if it was when Sega let the Shenmue domain relapse or what, but they quickly took it back.

Anyway, I'd love to see a restored Passport of some type. Obviously, we couldn't do leaderboards, but everything else should be able to work offline, eh? (I kind of wondered why so much of it was online anyway!)
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Falco Girgis » Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:26 am

Heya guys, Falco Girgis here. I'm the lead developer of the Elysian Shadows RPG on Kickstarter and I'm the dude from Adventures in Game Development on YouTube.

I've been in contact with an admin here using the Shenmue Dojo YouTube username about this icon restoration endeavor. You might not know, but as part of developing Elysian Shadows and our cross-platform SDK, I've developed a massively-cross platform VMU emulator (ElysianVMU) that will allow people to enjoy Dreamcast-specific VMU content on any device... For example, if you bought ES for steam, you can connect remotely to your iPhone running our EVMU app and it will be used as an additional screen with full filesystem support and even the little beeps, haha.

I've made it my personal mission to make EVMU THE number one emulator for the platform and have gone all-out OCD with implementing a billion features, emulating everything perfectly, and supporting every platform ever. Right now it's in open beta, but it pretty much supports everything and does a WHOLE lot of stuff I've never seen other emulators do.
  • Supports the Japanese BIOS packaged with the Katana SDK, so you can emulate the whole system including clock and filesystem mode.
  • Insanely accurate LCD emulation, including emulated refresh rate to accurately reproduce pixel ghosting effects and also the grayscale effect that a lot of very advanced VMU games used to create the illusion of multiple shades of black.
  • Variable resolution, shitloads of resolution modes.
  • 100% accurate buzzer support. Every emulator I've ever seen has half-assed the square wave generation. EVMU is so accurate it even reproduces the VOLUME of the wave, because the VMU does not output every wave at the same volume.
    [*}Export feature for VMS icons and eyecatch graphics.
  • Save/load state
  • .LCD File support for playing animations made with the DC Animator tool
  • .DCI Nexus support
  • FULL filesystem support, meaning you can load raw .VMU flash dumps of an entire VMU image with game AND save data.
  • VMU-to-VMU connection emulated over IP (mate chaos over the internet, lmfao) and even serial, because we're planning on releasing an adapter for connecting physical VMU devices to EVMU.
  • Built-in assembler/disassembler and instruction-set reference for developers and disassembling VMU game code to reverse engineer it.
  • External USB controller support. Even support for the analog stick. Haha.
  • Emulates the "Low battery" signal of the VMU, which can be toggled on and off. Certain games actually give you special screens and notification when your batteries are dying.
  • Turbo Buttons
  • Speed Up/Slow Down Buttons
  • VMI/VMS Header file dumps

The only other big thing that I still need to do is represent the filesystem in a GUI similar to what DreamExplorer is doing. The filesystem itself is already fully emulated and allows for access even remotely. I'm hoping to convince some Dreamcast emulator authors to integrate with EVMU over IP for the full DC/VMU experience.

We're working on a project home page right now, but we have a thread with Dropbox links to downloads and feature requests and bug report discussion here:
http://forums.elysianshadows.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&p=91659#p91659

In the Dropbox folder, there should be builds of the latest commit available for Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu, and the Raspberry Pi (because why not?) with more coming soon.

Any way, the point is that I've invested a bunch of time into loading and displaying the VMU save file icons in EVMU. I want to help with this endeavor, and I can add any kind of feature that can help facilitate this process or make your lives easier.

The "dump-to-PNG" feature does fully work for icons, but it's only dumping it as separate PNG images for each frame. I am actually internally constructing the full animation with proper timing for my display... Is it the animated GIF format you guys are hoping to use? Are they animated? What can I do to help?

Also does it use the "eyecatch" extra graphic? Apparently some games have a higher resolution special "eyecatch" in the VMS header that is displayed in the detail view in the Dreamcast BIOS file manager... I have implemented the ability to dump these eyecatches, but I don't know of a SINGLE Dreamcast game that uses them, so it has never been tested... the image output could be garbage, and need a little debugging... Anybody know of a game that uses them?

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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Ziming » Thu Apr 27, 2017 12:36 pm

Welcome to the dojo Falco! I'm the one that responded to your video comments. I'll just paste what I wrote just now on YouTube:

Yeah if the VMU emulator can somehow export to a animated gif with the correct animation timings it will be so much easier to get this all done. My current method was first desktop capture with OBS, then capture each individual frame as single image files, load each frame of animation into Jasc Animation shop. Once that is all ready I proceed to turn on the VMU by itself with a working battery to view the correct order and timing of the animation. Constantly going back and forth, back and forth between VMU and the animation software. What makes it worse is I can't fit all the VMU characters into one VMU. Each time I am done with one set of characters I have to manually remove them and add the next batch into the VMU using Dream Explorer Software. It's a absurdly tedious process to load saves both to the DeMUL emulator and the VMU. Which is why I haven't gotten many done...


I'm afraid to say I know next to nothing about eyecatch graphics... :sad:
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Re: Archive of Shenmue Passport content?

Postby Falco Girgis » Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:14 pm

Ziming wrote: Welcome to the dojo Falco! I'm the one that responded to your video comments. I'll just paste what I wrote just now on YouTube:

Yeah if the VMU emulator can somehow export to a animated gif with the correct animation timings it will be so much easier to get this all done. My current method was first desktop capture with OBS, then capture each individual frame as single image files, load each frame of animation into Jasc Animation shop. Once that is all ready I proceed to turn on the VMU by itself with a working battery to view the correct order and timing of the animation. Constantly going back and forth, back and forth between VMU and the animation software. What makes it worse is I can't fit all the VMU characters into one VMU. Each time I am done with one set of characters I have to manually remove them and add the next batch into the VMU using Dream Explorer Software. It's a absurdly tedious process to load saves both to the DeMUL emulator and the VMU. Which is why I haven't gotten many done...


I'm afraid to say I know next to nothing about eyecatch graphics... :sad:
:shock:

HOOOOOLY SHIT, dude. That's INSANE! We have to do something about that workflow. I can DEFINITELY automate everything in EVMU once you actually load the file.

I just need a little clarification. I'm actually confused now as to how the animations work or where they're coming from. I thought they were just the file browser icons associated with the save file, but it looks like they're actually images that show up on the VMU itself? And they play when the VMU is used standalone? How the hell is that working? Are the animations actually being saved as a VMU "game" and then the animation plays when you use the VMU standalone in game mode?

So can you give me a description of how the file works and exactly what you're doing with it along with a sample file itself that I can test with?

If it's not actually the save file icon animation, that's fine too. EVMU already supports a dumping the raw framebuffer, and if that's actually how it works, I can generate the animation with perfect, clock-cycle accurate timing if I'm actually handling it in the emulator itself.

Also I haven't used DEmul or any of those emulators, but I just posted a request to integrate EVMU with their DC emulator on their site:
http://www.emutalk.net/threads/56614-El ... 7e0543fe9c

So you actually have to change file formats to use a VMU save file in DEmul? Why the hell is it not just using a VMI/VMS or raw flash image? If there's a spec for their VMU file format, or their project is open source, or someone is willing to work with me, I can totally make EVMU support directly importing DEmul VMU formats and exporting to them too.
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