d3t Debug Save Games

LemonHaze

Banned
Joined
Dec 25, 2018
So a long time ago I was able to view the contents of the re-releases on the PS4 platform and found some interesting discoveries, which admittedly, I sort of neglected to post on here, due to a couple of things but mainly not really having the time to come and make a dedicated thread for it.

d3t seem to have left a substantial part of their savegame debug assets on the PS4 version of the game and are rather extensive. There's a JSON formatted text file which contains a listing of all of the debug save files which are available along with a description of the save game, for each game. Quite a lot of these save games also feature README files which detail the process of using them and their intended results and some of them even contain screenshots, but these are pretty much only seen in the Shenmue II save assets.

There are a couple of interesting things to note which I already noticed from my brief research into the files: d3t either compiled an existing Vertical slice (presumably made by AM2) or created them themselves, likely to show to SEGA.. in which we now have full access to (detals about this later), d3t had access to an 'easy mode' triggered by the use of a debug menu which is toggled with F8 and the Shipping build of the game still features some assertion strings and function names, which is now explained away by the prescence of a 'Release_Logging' build configuration.

Example README:
1) Boot the game using Release_Logging. 2) Press F8 and activate easy mode from the debug menu 3) Walk out onto the balcony and begin the cutscene to take you to the roof 4) Dou Niu will appear shortly

The screenshots also show some interesting issues, like fonts and lighting not appearing correctly.


5.png

The vertical slice save games are nice to have. To those that don't know, during the initial research into the re-releases, possibly either PhilYeahz, derplayer or myself even (I honestly can't remember) we found that the PC files contained extra compiled "Shenmue Scripts" which we had no idea what they were used for, until we came across these save files which specifically state that these extra Shenmue Scripts are to be used in conjunction with. So now it's possible to load into that, by using Forklift or invalidating the hash in the disk TAD/TAC to make use of the script and the save game. Not a lot really happens from my research but these are most definitely from a rather early-ish time in development of either the re-releases or the original development.


Enjoy!

Shenmue II d3t save games
 

Attachments

  • sm1_saves.zip
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Nice find! These are definitely great to have, even just as a means to jump through game events without the use of mods.
 
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