http://i.imgur.com/XWta03g.jpg
This is a tutorial on how to remove the area collision data of any area of Shenmue, or, how to swap that data between two areas.
Video demonstration (of the collision removal) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zkTar6CDBE
Steps:
- Open with a hex-editor the MAPINFO.BIN file of the area you want. In our case, we will work with the file of Dobuita, found in folder "SCENE/0X/D000" (0X = 01 or 02 or 03 ...).
- Search (CTRL+F) for "COLS" and find the first reference. Start highlighting from COLS and go all the way down ...
http://i.imgur.com/3sFf0AZ.png
- ... until you find the first reference of "REGD". Stop exactly before REGD (that is not select any part from REGD or after it).
http://i.imgur.com/kx7SOuo.png
- ... With all these lines being highlighted, press the Delete (DEL) button in your keyboard.
http://i.imgur.com/5YtNXT4.gif
- Save the modified file. [Proceed to the necessary steps to create a self-bootable image file.]
About Swapping the clipping information between two MAPINFO.BIN files of two different areas:
- The only difference from the above steps, is to not Delete the highlighted part of the file, but Cut (CTRL+X) it and move it to the other file that you want to swap the clipping information with.
- That means you have to replace the "COLS ... (until before REGD)" lines of the one file, with the "COLS ... (until before REGD)" lines of the other file.
===
Things to improve/fix:
- Programmable camera movements and angles of a specific area has been removed. That is, for example, when you go to a parking lot to practice or to a vending machine to buy a drink, you will not see the usual camera movements and angles. FIXED!
- Wrap points has been removed. You will not be able to enter another area (unless, for example, if you open the door to enter the Hazuki Residence), or enter the Tomato Convenience Store, the You Arcade et cetera. FIXED!
- The vertical collision data is also removed, thus gravity is off and, in areas like Yamanose, the height of the player (Ryo) is not consistent with the height of the ground. FIXED!
- You can still not pass through some objects/models, like: humans, bikes, shutters (when the shops close) et cetera.
Notes:
- Even as a "young'n", newbie to Shenmue modding/hacking, while working on that I learned some things: go for the *crazy* way, try different (crazy, all and any) ways, trust your hunches, pay really close attention to details, think like the programmer (how they could have put things in a file et cetera).
- My thought process (wall-of-text): First, I thought to use the MAPINFO.BIN file of the folder 0000. That file doesn't contain any clipping information. I compared it visually with other mapinfo files and noticed some parts look similar (like the one from REGD and below). First I replaced in the mapinfo of Dobuita (D000, that was the area to make all my experiments) all the lines from the top until before REGD, with the ones from the mapinfo of 0000 folder, that is the lines from the top until before REGD. The end result was this . As you can see, a lot of textures, models et cetera has been removed. Then I thought about mapinfo swapping, like when you do it to access the beta versions of some areas (like Yamanose's and Sakuragaoka's). There you have to copy from after the ECAM part until the end. And thus I thought that before the ECAM part, there is all the information about textures, models et cetera. Combined with the thought that the part from REGD until the end remains the same (like with the case when I swapped D000's with 0000's), I end up removing the part from ECAM (including ECAM) until before REGD. [I removed ECAM, too, because I thought it is a command and so when it is triggered it tries to load something from the memory, which it can't find, when it has been removed from the file...] But end up doing that after several tries; first I removed the part after ECAM until before COLS, then from COLS util before REGD, and other tries. Also, I just removed the COLS, COLI et cetera parts, to see if that will do the job, too, but with no success. So, after several tries, I figured that you need to remove the lines only from COLS until before REGD (and so the part from ECAM until before COLS can remain intact). And, here's the general story of how it happened...