Tenchu x360

[Sn34k]

So Anyone familiar with me , knows i'm a huge pundit of the Tenchu Series.

For quite some time now i've been working on mod support for the title Tenchu Z / Senran (Jpn) on the x360. Based off alot of feedback & people within various communities,

I've made alot of progress on bringing it more to light and hoping for further more support. It is ,i'll admit a bit ambitious project. Only for the reasons that some

if not alot of people could care less for the series, but for me it's another story. But basically it was always a personal fav during the haydays of XBL when the 360

was a thing. I met alot of people on its leaderboards, clans, co-ops. etc etc. Nowadays its' a crimson barron wasteland. Only people on there are usually people that

missed out on the game during primetime, or people just showing up to revisit (such as myself) to remiss there times spent.

 

Moving on ~

Anyone who actually spent time well into the game knows it's nothing short of imperfect. The game was a great game to practically pick up and play wiether albeit new player

or veteran Tenchu player. It's considered a spin off of the main story but still involving the Main Charater "Rikimaru" & you being the pupil being brought in as a student. 

The game only having had 1 total whole ass month in development time. And for what that month was, i'd say it's impressive for that , but if you search closely at specific

points, you'll find the roughness around the edges. Here lies the preface of where the project i started comes in. Of course xD...right?!

 

The game's pro's & con's are about equal to a new user, however, having been playing it since 2007 (2 months after it's release) I've become akin to all it's short comings

& things that appeared to be a oversight or just not having the needed time during development to address the issues it most commonly had among the player base,

which was about 62K(last i checked in 2018,idk what it is as of now).

 

The Multiplayer Netcode was spotty at best. FromSoftware could have done a much better implementation of it. But it is what it is. Please consider K2 was the licensed dev for this

release as it wasn't a direct FS release, so its just a exclusive licensed release for x360 only. There was always desync and lag issues online. Two players could have the best LAN connection

and there still would be issues. We've tested syslink with mixed results. Most of the maps are just mirrors after 25, and there was 51 maps in total. Certain parts of the maps had issues of

being able to glitch through walls or gaps to be able to get outside the maps geometery or jump into the stars, literally! Piece of map on some stages where missing faces of geometery....

 Other issues where mostly nit picks among players but to list a few. Things like not being able to swing your sword at players and damage them (for clan reasons,mostly) Multiplay being

limited to only 4 players as a Co-Op (so 2v2,2v1,1v1,1v3 pvp) Missions being complete failures once a player on the 4 dies, it stops the game for everyone. The Castle map not being open

for multiplayer....etc etc

 

I wanted to make alot of these changes to the game to open up headspace for more game play among the players albeit it was apart of Neo Zin's original vision of the release or not. I felt

it has so much potential to be that game. Hence it's one of the reasons i enjoyed it so much during XBL days. The experience was just on par IMO. The scenary, music, lore.

 

Where i'm at ~

Curently i've been dumping all the games assets & tinkering with them,cleaning them up,repackaging and re applying them to the game. TBH , i've have about 85% sucess with it & i'm confident

to keep going to see where the cards may fall. I have texture support mostly atm for all uses(Char,items,UI,subtitles)

.

Im working on import/export-ing of all asset models - 

 

...Stages included.

 

Sound/music is open to support but it's admittedly not a strong suite of mine but i just feel i have more pressing interests elsewhere in the game. i've gotten a good bit of sound to work but again other concerns.

Particles & shaders are becoming closer to delving into after animations & sequence support. NPC chars & such i plan to add support for becoming playable but it will be tricky so Trail & Error is is

effect.

I've created a RTE Tool for the retail release just for fun, but it's unfinished. The tool is intended to be multi tabbed at the top for different area's of modding. Char,item,etc swapping,

map config's, etc etc. Nothing is solid as i will test to see what is possible and what's not.

 

 

I came across a Debug executable of the retail release,I've been digging through it as well as decompiling it and creating a Eng. translation for the

debug menu on the side.Alot of that requires time in me learning how to convert physical address' to virtual address' & man....it's fun. The .xex

explained alot of things i had suspicions about, but honestly didn't seem to show anything further than from what i had already researched apon.

However the debug menu was a nice additon to experiement with. Mostly atm i've been dumping ,archiving & documenting my findings for furthering

my work on. It's alot of items to dig on but eventually ill get through it and put it all back together as i intended to. There is alot i'd like to do and add to

it but i'm only a man alone and have so much time in the day,week,year.  I'd really would like to make this more than it is. but i have to find out the limits

of what is possible and what's not. As i said most i've been successful with and very little hasn't been. Though i would argue i think most of that is possibly

due the game not being so strict on inputs. Makes me keen on it's programming.

 

Eh well i'm not sure what else to say here and i hope some of your find it interesting of the work shown. If not that's alright also. Following my passions = )

I'd inspire you to do tha same! Take it easy gents!

 

Sn34k out!

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Sn34k