Post by Kneesnap on Aug 17, 2020 12:32:16 GMT -8
There is a (formerly) lost PC port of Frogger Ancient Shadow.
This port was released on a USB controller which would download an installer from online servers when plugged in to the computer.
The game would then stream game assets from the servers while you play it. (It would download the files from Konami's servers when you reached a point where you needed those files.)
This was a pretty neat concept, however because the servers went down, it meant people who had the game are now unable to play it, and anyone who wanted to get the game could not.
The game was thought to be lost for years, since it's very difficult to find people who have even played the game, not even considering still have their hard-drive from 15 years ago.
Luckily, Flairieve found a hard-drive backup, and because of that, we managed to recover only some of the files.
We've already managed to make the game to boot, through the help of TOMYSSHADOW removing the DRM.
Our goal is to make the game completely playable, and release a playable version.
There are still some challenges (both technical and logistical) which we need to overcome to make this work, but we're confident we can make it happen.
1. We need to patch the executable:
- The game came on a controller, and only works using that controller, but we want to add keyboard support so you don't need the controller to play the game.
- The game runs way too fast when run at over 60FPS. We're going to fix this by using a frame cap at first, but I want to patch it to not limit the framerate at all.
- The game needs to stop trying to download assets from remote servers, and just use local assets.
2. We're missing most of the game assets:
Because the game would download assets like levels/music/data from Konami's servers as they become needed, it means that we only have the game data for as far as Flairieve played, which unfortunately was only to area 2 (the third area in the game).
There are eight total areas in the game, meaning we only have 3/8 of the original game assets, which is less than 50%.
We're going to try to port the assets from other versions of the game (Xbox, GC, PS2), however the best case scenario would be to recover them from someone who has the real files. So we're still looking for someone. If you played this game on PC, and think you might still have the hard-drive (or any other backup) which could contain these files, please let us know ASAP. Either join the discord and mention it there, or post on this thread. We can walk you through recovering the missing files step-by-step, if you have them.
Updates will be posted here and in discord. The final goal will be to make available for download a working game installation.
This port was released on a USB controller which would download an installer from online servers when plugged in to the computer.
The game would then stream game assets from the servers while you play it. (It would download the files from Konami's servers when you reached a point where you needed those files.)
This was a pretty neat concept, however because the servers went down, it meant people who had the game are now unable to play it, and anyone who wanted to get the game could not.
The game was thought to be lost for years, since it's very difficult to find people who have even played the game, not even considering still have their hard-drive from 15 years ago.
Luckily, Flairieve found a hard-drive backup, and because of that, we managed to recover only some of the files.
We've already managed to make the game to boot, through the help of TOMYSSHADOW removing the DRM.
Our goal is to make the game completely playable, and release a playable version.
There are still some challenges (both technical and logistical) which we need to overcome to make this work, but we're confident we can make it happen.
1. We need to patch the executable:
- The game came on a controller, and only works using that controller, but we want to add keyboard support so you don't need the controller to play the game.
- The game runs way too fast when run at over 60FPS. We're going to fix this by using a frame cap at first, but I want to patch it to not limit the framerate at all.
- The game needs to stop trying to download assets from remote servers, and just use local assets.
2. We're missing most of the game assets:
Because the game would download assets like levels/music/data from Konami's servers as they become needed, it means that we only have the game data for as far as Flairieve played, which unfortunately was only to area 2 (the third area in the game).
There are eight total areas in the game, meaning we only have 3/8 of the original game assets, which is less than 50%.
We're going to try to port the assets from other versions of the game (Xbox, GC, PS2), however the best case scenario would be to recover them from someone who has the real files. So we're still looking for someone. If you played this game on PC, and think you might still have the hard-drive (or any other backup) which could contain these files, please let us know ASAP. Either join the discord and mention it there, or post on this thread. We can walk you through recovering the missing files step-by-step, if you have them.
Updates will be posted here and in discord. The final goal will be to make available for download a working game installation.