rac1-native 0.4.0: bug fixes, and almost all of the code ported

Bug fixes, and almost all of the game's code ported

Thanks to everyone who played 0.3.0 and reported what broke: this release works through those reports. On top of that, a full inventory of the game's code found what was still left to port, and it's now ported: of the code the game runs, one function is left (see the port inventory).

The whole game has been played through to the end on this version, from Veldin to the final fight with Drek, the credits and the end menu, and the start of a New Game+ checked too. The planets after Orxon have had one full playthrough so far, and everything is still tested on Linux only (Windows is experimental): please keep the reports coming!

Crashes fixed

• Quartu: the crash under water when the air meter runs low.
• Kalebo III: the crash during the landing scene in widescreen with a raised level of detail.

Gameplay

• Modern aiming now aims up and down with every weapon that fires in a direction (Devastator, R.Y.N.O., Visibomb, Pyrocitor, Tesla Claw, Morph-o-Ray, Suck Cannon), and the gloves' throws land nearer or farther with the aim.
• RAC 3 movement: you can jump during a standing wrench throw.
• The camera no longer locks for a second after a strafe (thanks @MJorink!).
• Quit Game now goes back to the title screen, like the original, instead of closing the game.
• Giant Clank's triangle attack no longer leaves streaks behind, and the lasers on Drek's fleet no longer hang frozen.
• The Metal Detector's display shows on every planet; Kerwan's hanging cables are caught like in the original.
• After finishing the game, the pause menu's Goodies pages work: Cheats, In-Level Movies, the Sketchbook, the Epilogue and the Skill Points.

Graphics

• Widescreen: water, lava and sand no longer get cut at the sides, and thin far objects (antennas, spires, far plants) no longer go missing.
• Force fields, Quartu's Hologuise gates and Orxon's O2 barriers are see-through instead of black.
• The Vendor's screens on Aridia, Eudora, Umbris and Oltanis; Hoven's ice cube around Ratchet.
• A high Field of View no longer clips the sky; the ship menu's planets are no longer squares.
• The starry sky in the loading flight after loading a save from the title.
• Modern lighting on the later planets: rooms and corridors no longer go dark under the roof's shadow.
• A new Monitor option on the Graphics page, to pick the screen for fullscreen (thanks @CDCast!).

Windows and the updater

• Update now works without git installed: it downloads the source zip instead, keeping your own files. If you're on 0.3.0 without git, you'll need to update by hand this one time.
• A click in the console no longer freezes the game, frame timing is more precise, and alt-tab from fullscreen no longer breaks the picture.
• Window sizes down to 640x480.

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Source only, as always: you need your own disc of the game (NTSC-U SCUS-97199 or PAL SCES-50916). To update from a git clone: git pull, then ./setup.sh (or setup.cmd on Windows); or use Update now from the in-game notice. Full list of changes: CHANGELOG.md.

rac1-native 0.3.0: the whole game ported

Every planet is now ported!

This is a big one: the whole game is now ported, from Veldin to the final fight with Drek, the credits and the end menu.

Heads up: the planets after Orxon are brand new and have not been fully tested yet, and so far everything has been tested on Linux only. Expect bugs and glitches, and some polishing work still to do. Please report anything you find!

Eight new planets

• Pokitaru (now complete) and Hoven
• Gemlik Base, with Qwark's space fight
• Oltanis
• Quartu, with Giant Clank
• Kalebo III, with Gadgetron's headquarters and the hoverboard race
• Drek's fleet
• The Veldin finale: the fight with Drek, the credits, the last movie and the end menu (start a new game keeping your weapons and bolts, or timewarp back to before the fight)

Each planet runs its own code, ported from the original game and checked against it. The PDA now opens the Vendor on every planet.

Performance update

• Faster vector math, a faster dispatch of the game's callbacks and lighter rendering passes; the experimental lighting is faster too. The game itself behaves exactly the same.
• The levels are now read straight from your disc image: the setup doesn't copy them anymore (335 MB less on disk).

The updater

• Update now from the update notice: the game closes, updates itself (git, or the release's source zip), runs the setup again and restarts. Still source only, and your local changes are never overwritten.
• A new Updates page on the main menu: turn the check on or off, pick the channel (Stable / Development), or Check now.

Also new

• Strafing movement (Options > Advanced): the original movement, with the strafe and the strafe flips.

Bug fixes

• Batalia's cutscenes out of sync: the pause menu now pauses the dialogue and the music, like on the PS2.
• Particles that froze in place on several planets (smoke, debris, effects).
• Kalebo III's race HUD text in the wrong colour.
• Experimental lighting: the sun's shadow no longer flips when you enter a building.
• The black bars of the 4:3 view were missing.

Please test and report!

With so much new content, every playthrough helps. If something breaks, looks wrong or plays differently from the original, open an issue with your system and where it happened. If you're on Windows or have an NVIDIA card, your reports are especially welcome: those are the setups I can test the least.

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Source only, as always: you need your own disc of the game (NTSC-U SCUS-97199 or PAL SCES-50916). If you're on 0.2.x, the in-game update notice will point you here; to update from a git clone: git pull, then ./setup.sh (or setup.cmd on Windows). Full list of changes: CHANGELOG.md.

rac1-native 0.2.1: Windows fixes

A small patch with Windows fixes, tested and confirmed by a player on a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU (thanks @MrFrikki0!).

Windows fixes

• The dedicated GPU on laptops: on laptops with two GPUs, the game now starts on the dedicated one (NVIDIA or AMD) instead of the integrated one. If you picked a GPU yourself in Windows' settings or in the driver's panel, that choice still wins.
• No more flickering: the title screen's scene drawn in a wrong view and the menus' frames disappearing for a frame. That happened when a frame came sooner than the game's next one and was drawn again.
• play.cmd checks the setup: after you download a new version, or if a setup didn't finish, it offers to run the setup again before playing. The setup also no longer redoes everything when run from a different Windows shell.

Updating

• From a git clone: git pull, then setup.cmd (Windows) or ./setup.sh (Linux).
• From a download: get the new source zip, then run the setup again with your disc.

Windows support is still experimental, so please keep testing and reporting issues, especially if you're on Windows and/or have an NVIDIA card!

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Source only, as always: you need your own disc of the game (NTSC-U SCUS-97199 or PAL SCES-50916). Full list of changes: CHANGELOG.md.

rac1-native 0.2.0: Batalia, Gaspar and Orxon

Three new planets: Batalia, Gaspar and Orxon

The game is now playable up to Orxon:

• Batalia: the rain, the turret and its challenge, the Trespasser puzzle, the Commando and the deserter.
• Gaspar: the animated lava, and the Pilot's Helmet, which before couldn't be picked up on any level.
• Orxon: Clank's section with the Gadgebots, the toxic goo, and Ratchet's part with the O2 mask.

Also new: the Drone Device and the Morph-o-Ray (the chickens!) now work.

Windows (experimental, needs testing!)

Windows support is still experimental: it has only been tried on a couple of machines.

• setup.cmd downloads everything it needs by itself (a private MSYS2 toolchain in the repository's folder), then builds the game from your disc. Double-click it, or drop your disc image on it.
• The new play.cmd starts the game with a double click.
• Fixed: the setup failing when the disc image's path contains &.

The European PAL disc

The PAL release (SCES-50916) now works on its own, without the North American disc. It runs in the PAL game's own 60 Hz mode. Ten functions that the PAL release changed are still temporary versions, not yet proved against the original: see Setup.

Bug fixes

• Controllers missing from the controller database (for example the GameSir G7 SE) were ignored: on Linux, Xbox-style controllers now work automatically.
• The language you choose in the game is now kept for the next start.
• Below 60 fps (the 30 FPS cap, V-Sync at 75 Hz, heavy scenes) the game was losing frames: it ran slower and the movies' sound fluttered.
• On Aridia, on NVIDIA cards, effects turned black or invisible after a while and the game could crash at the ship. Fixed in theory, but not yet confirmed on an NVIDIA card.
• The Vendor showed a chicken icon and 0/0 ammo for the weapon in the centre.
• Kerwan's helicopters' bullets froze in mid-air.
• The air meter left a line at the edge of the screen after diving.

An update checker (prototype)

At start the game now checks if there's a newer release and tells you at the main menu. It doesn't download anything by itself, and you can turn it off in Options > Advanced. It's a first prototype: one-click updates will come later.

Please test and report!

This release changed a lot, so every test helps. If you're on Windows, and especially if you have an NVIDIA card, please give it a try: those are the setups I can test the least. If something breaks, looks wrong or plays differently from the original, open an issue with your specs and, if you can, where it happens.

Thanks to everyone who already tested 0.1.0 and reported bugs: many of the fixes above come from your reports!

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As always, this release is source only: you need your own disc of the game (NTSC-U SCUS-97199 or PAL SCES-50916), and the setup builds everything from it. The full list of changes is in CHANGELOG.md.

rac1-native 0.1.0: playable up to Umbris

First milestone of rac1-native: Ratchet & Clank (PS2, NTSC-U SCUS-97199) is playable on Linux from the start up to Umbris (included).

What works

• The planets: Veldin, Novalis, Aridia, Kerwan, Eudora, Rilgar, Blarg's station (Nebula G34) and Umbris have been played through, apart from a few small bugs and glitches.
• The game's own flow: boot, intro movie, title screen, menus, saves and loads on a virtual memory card, the ship's planet menu, and the flight between planets.
• Rendering: the native OpenGL renderer, with widescreen, high resolutions, full-detail textures and adjustable level of detail.
• Options: Graphics, Controls (keyboard, mouse and gamepads, remappable) and Advanced (optional enhancements such as R&C 3 movement and modern aiming, off by default).
• New Game modes: Original, Modern and Experimental. Experimental turns on the optional modern lighting, which is still experimental.
• Cutscene subtitles, in every language on the disc.

Known limits

• Batalia and the planets after it load and may be partly playable, but they are only partly ported: expect missing effects or sections that can't be finished.
• Linux x86-64 only. Windows is planned (see docs/platforms.md).
• Only the North American disc is supported. PAL support is in progress.
• Saves work, but their format and location may still change.

How to play

This release is source only: there is no prebuilt binary. You need your own copy of the game as an ISO image of the North American disc.

git clone https://github.com/daino-selvatico/rac1-native-game.git
cd rac1-native-game
./setup.sh --iso /path/to/your/ratchet-and-clank.iso

The setup checks your system and your disc, generates the game's code and data from your disc, builds the game and starts it. See docs/setup.md.

No game code or assets are included in this repository: everything derived from the game is generated on your machine from your own disc.

Ratchet & Clank is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This is a non-commercial fan project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony or Insomniac Games.