Ballermachine

First thing I did after figuring out how to mod the game was go ham with an air + ground normal Pilebunker. If I have this much success with all the other data structures (currently I can only mod audio + character scripts) then a fully functional modkit isn't out of the picture at all.

The input bar also flashes white to blue in #R. (On PC at least.) Chipp's Alpha Blade doesn't have a FRC point in GGXX#R if I recall correctly though, so that might explain why you're having difficulty performing it. Just the jumping grab (HCF+K) and the kick followup to his QCF+S are FRC-able, maybe some other moves also..

My main gripe with this iteration of the game is the low bitrate of the sound effects and VO. (Extracted some sound effects and saw they had 52kbps bitrate, eww.) The crackling and distortion really hurts to listen to at times and if I recall correctly it was bad on the XBL release as well, but that was understandable since they need to optimize wherever they can to even release it on XBL. You don't really need to optimize for space for PC nowadays, so I don't see why they couldn't just up the bitrate. The Wii port (AC+, not AC+R) had a lot higher quality sound effects, so it definitely should be possible. I'm currently assembling a video to showcase the difference in audio quality between the PC and Wii versions, but that'll take a while. The music is perfectly fine on the other hand, since it uses an entirely different encoding method apparently. Online vs. players in my own country and neighbouring countries was fine. No issues there. You shouldn't have problems with any sort of netcode if both connections are basically just fast enough. No doubt it's a lot worse for countries where average internet speed is more of an issue. (ex. USA) Online will always be a problem until internet gets a lot better or someone develops a networking library that's not sub-optimal. I'm 100% sure they used XNA Game Studio for these ports (PC/XBL), so it *should* be really easy to at least sound mod it. Gameplay modding is the biggest question mark here, because I'm not sure how the file format they use, for saving everything other than the sound data, is supposed to be read. Edit: Youtube audio quality comparison video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZW5e0tPj3Q

When I finish installing my scanner I'll add an edit to this post. EDIT: Alright my scanner literally exploded, so you get a crappy phone camera shot instead.

Yay, my XRD OST just arrived! Needless to say it has amazing sound quality, but they didn't include the theme I really wanted. Sad and happy at the same time..

Is K Pile confirmed to be 70% proration like in location test 1 or is it the 90% from the 2nd location test?

The official PS3 vs. PS4 comparison, the one in the commercial where they showcased Sol's cinematic super and compared visual fidelity, was pretty misleading by the way. Most of the really intricate special effects in cinematic supers and IKs are video overlays that are hand-animated (the fire that erupts from Sol's hand in TR, weapon glow in Branding Breach, Potemkin/Axl's whirling tornado effects in their IKs, basically I-no's entire IK, etc. etc.), so they look amazing regardless of what post-processing magic you use (or don't use) to render your game. All in all I'm pretty sure they just optimized their game a tad too aggressively and in some places where you shouldn't (usually) be optimizing. Probably because they're relatively new with the engine and support for UE3 is very limited at the moment. They also had to make it run on potato hardware, as said before, so there's that. As nyyyyy said it doesn't look bad or anything, but if you want crisp graphics and a good sound you're going to want to buy the PS4 version.

I'm in the dark online-wise, since you can't really deduce what the quality of the online multiplayer modes are in a video game like you can with texture quality/render techniques and stuff, unless you specifically know what type of netcode they use, how they implemented it, what extra libraries they use to smooth the online experience and how the overall algorithm differs from PS3 to PS4 due to hardware. Unfortunately I'm not an Arcsys insider, so you'll have to go by the expert opinions of the online warriors here on the subforum who actively play online to make that judgement. Ky's seals also look pretty bad on PS4 iirc (low texture size for a relatively big "3D" model = blown up textures = pixelated/blurry look) and I reckon it'd look worse on PS3 performance mode if it doesn't have all the extra glow. (With vs without) Not near a PS4 so I can't compare them at the moment, so this is my best guess. I am sure about the character textures, but not so sure about stage textures. I've seen some strange things involving the shadows on Villa Vampir on the PS3 version near the table behind the fenced part where the shadows are a bit low resolution and some background characters not having outlines. If you could post an image of Faust's stage on PS3 I might be able to explain what's going on. I'm guessing it looks close to this?

PS3 version has relatively low bitrate, compressed, mono channel sound files while PS4 seems to have higher quality + stereo channel. (Could upload a sample of the PS3 OST but I think that's against the rules.) Texture quality is literally the same, but the PS3 version lacks some of the special effects (pretty sure only in performance mode) that make the models and particles look pretty. (Bloom on glowing parts/glowing effects and outlines on some effect models seem to be missing e.g. on Zato's drill) On both versions some particle effects look medium-res, for example some smoke effects (Slayer's Pilebunker), embers and some energy particles (DI Branding Breach, Undertow). They are lowres because every frame of animation is saved on one texture which sacrifices quality for a low texture memory footprint. On the other hand most (partially) 3D effects look gorgeous like Gunflame and Ky's huge blue lightning sword that comes from a seal. (Forgot the name..) It really varies depending on the techniques used to compose the different particle types. Sorry for the technical yadda yadda, I love this kinda stuff. Source: I own both PS3 and PS4 versions and have several years of experience of working with UE3/UDK.

On the disc.

Gotta say I like Sol and Slayer's system voices the most. Joji's shit talking and Iemasa screaming "DANDYYY" always make me happy.

Do black/gold daredevils even appear anywhere? (MOM?) The skins are in the gamefiles last time I checked, but I haven't encountered any in actual gameplay yet.

Rendered them in 3dsmax real quick. They don't really export *that* nicely, since Arcsys uses a secondary model to calculate simple shadows for use on the complex character model and that gets stuck in the actual character. Hence some glitches on Gabriel. Short-term this stuff means that people can extract literally anything (music, sound effects, voice-over work, 2D images, backgrounds, 3D models, yadda yadda..) from the game's files. Long-term, if I'm able to decypher ArcSys' file-structures, this means a fully fledged hitbox viewer (or at least a website with every frame's hitboxes) with fully 3d (correctly) rendered characters as if they were in the game.

Alright, I thought maybe the models were more detailed or something on the PS4, but if that's not the case then I can do enough with the files you provided. Small question, though, that could change the entire shader writing process to a shader porting process: Do you happen to have the UE3 material files? They look like the image in the url below and probably follow the same naming convention: http://www.4gamer.net/games/216/G021678/20140703095/SS/009.jpg If I have this I can simply dump it in the UE3-license code I use at work, look at how everything works (precisely) and convert it by hand to a viewport shader for a 100% accurate shader. Otherwise, this will take a bit longer. Thank you for figuring this stuff out, I was about to start digging into how PS4 archives worked just this week, but writing file headers for a (probably compiled) file format you don't know just is the most infuriating thing ever. (I don't have access to PS4 dev kits and I don't really feel like trying to reverse engineer Unity Pro's PS4 packaging extension to see if they have something related to those packaging files..)

Are there tools available for PS4 that extract data in a similar fashion? I'm kinda interested in ripping basically everything (animations, models, particle effects) and writing a (viewport) shader for it based on the GGXrd art-style publications that were released a few months ago.