Grant Kirkhope Blocked Me on Twitter - And That's Heartbreaking

I really want to stress that I wasn't one of those crazy anti-vaccine persons, nor was I "gun advocates" in ways that supports ridiculous laws allowing overly lose protections of guns, nor was I into dangerous conspiracy theories, nor was I supportive of overly sensitive anti-abortion laws (granted I do think it depends but I'm no super solid on it either.). I also want to stress that that I don't much care that's he's political on Twitter as I can try learning let that aside and still follow him for his good stuff.

The reason why I state that is because I wanted to calmly criticize a small post he posted showing desire to block anyone for being into specific things, including those that were "pro-gun" or "conspiracy theorists", and I was worried he was technically including people who simply wanted to own a gun, or was into the "fun" conspiracy theories that were harmless, since a lot of people who are sane may have some slight different stances here and there. So I got a bit concerned and simply wanted to reply saying this:

"I like your work, but I really find saying things like this that includes the fun conspiracies (I mean the harmless fun kinds), and people who wants to own a gun really unnecessary. I mean it's possible to still get along with those people without having to agree with them."

In response to this: 

"the list of people that should unfollow me is getting longer and longer:
Antivaxxers, conspiracy theorists, gun advocates, Pro lifers.
It's a pity there wasn't some button that can block them from following me in the first place."

Note here is my comment here. You can scroll up to see his message too.

And frankly as someone who's enjoyed his music and has think about it a lot, it really does break me to see him do this to some of his own fans. I don't know if I could of said my reply better or not (I was mainly only concerned that he was including people who simply was into fun yet harmless conspiracy theories and those that simply wanted to own a gun for lawful reasons alone), but at this point it just feels like he's expecting everyone who likes him to have the same opinions as him, or else you're blocked and he finds you crazy and idiotic. He has a right to do that, but that doesn't mean people lose the right to be concern and state their own sane thoughts about it. But anyway this really is heart-breaking for me that I felt the need to post this.

I don't like bringing up drama in these places, but this is due to personal reasons. Biggest reason was that he was part of my childhood involving some of his music. I feel ridiculously discouraged from modding Banjo Kazooie, even if I replaced all of his music with music not from him. It's a shame he feels that he can't make peace with people who has a different political opinion than him like "mine" and it's a shame that my comment has offended him.

I personally hope he sees this article and knows I wasn't intending to offend him. I was just worried.

The Forgotten Beach - Shadow of the Colossus

A couple of months ago, I was still exploring the E3 5 demo build of Shadow of the Colossus, a special E3 early build with thankfully the entire lands, new game intro, colossi, and ending not being deleted for the demo. In fact, the only thing that was likely placed and deleted for the demo were: The large rocks, the missing rock bridge pieces, and maybe most of the extra items including some of it's functions.

Anyway as I was exploring, I went ahead and explored more of G8, then upon exploring, I discovered a brand new cave (granted, a small one) leading right to the end of a cliff.

In the PSU preview and beyond as far as I know, the cave was removed. When I first saw this cave entrance, I 'froze' for like 6 seconds in shock. I guess seeing a brand new cave was the shocking part. On the other side of the cave, there happens to be multiple cliffs leading down, suspiciously forming a trail that would be perfect if there were vines leading down.

Unfortunately, the collision was designed to avoid going down there safely. The moment you try to jump down to next cliff after the cliff you can explore, Wander will roll. It seems the collision tried to 'wrap' around the lower cliffs showing the collision was made after making those cliffs likely.

Upon further research, it turns out there is a full blown beach all the way down! (note: I don't think I first discovered this, and will likely update this once I remember name), but it's covered by a separate water surface object. You remember that small patch of "beach" land next to some rocks? Well, there is more of that. (Note: Model was extracted through Wisi's converter tools, and through a special Blender version Wisi helped me with.)

This entire area (including the cliffs above) has a ridiculous amount of geometry detail. Perhaps one of the most detailed areas in game. Though there is an ugly water layer that actually is part of the seamless (main land) model, but it does expose more beach than what the separate prettier water layer does. I've modded the collision (big thanks to Wisi) to help explore, and also show the special water.

Water layer turns dark when sword is raised.

Though the water layer doesn't render in a pretty sight. There is several geometry rendering problems with it, but it's likely that such layer was designed after (or even if they even did) so-called blocking access to the beach.

Layer problems. There is more some geometry past the white/grey water too.

Could This Beach Be Explored at One Point?

This is the moment that I care most about I think. There appears to be some design evidence that it could actually have been explored. The cliff pattern, the amount of geometry the exposed beach has, the fact that there is alpha shading detail all the way down here, and that there is beach land hidden under the separate water layer. However, not knowing 100% has often bothered me, especially since there are a couple of small ideas, and maybe even clues suggesting that it wasn't.

In the assumption that it was, this was likely a build where it was after such time. There is concrete evidence of vines being added later in some parts of the main east cliff side in one spot, but the collision here seems to point that the so-called vines were rather removed.

Some of the rocks has death collision, cliffs wrapping around the lower cliffs, and no collision on main beach thus player falls through, but the beach is hidden by a separate solid water layer object, suggesting the collision was designed with that in mind. Only catch is one rock above the separate layer not having collision.

There is also the possibility that it was just never finished, then canceled out. There is signs of that for the main garden temple in the game, so I wouldn't be too surprised if this applied here too.

For the idea part, one idea is that perhaps the beach was only meant to be viewed from above. There is a small opening on main land above where you can see some of this beach, and the lowest ground parts of such a beach doesn't have an even height layer, though the broken water height covers it all.

The thing I am wishing to know so much is if the same geometry found in this build (the vertices) was the same exact ones that could be explored, assuming this could normally be explored at one point? Of course the vines and (maybe) actual normal water was removed if so, but I only care if the main cliffs and beach land was the same or not. There is a chance the geometry was somewhat altered during the so-called cancellation thus losing the true original image of such a place. Hopefully an answer will be given at one point.

At least for now, we know for sure that there was a full-blown new cave to explore normally and at the moment leading a new mysterious wonder for a beach with it. There is also the fact that the large cliff at the end of the larger cave (which mainly exists (but geometry slightly altered) in the NTSC build) was longer.

I still am thinking of making a video about this beach by the way and also, this article might get modified in the future.

Clustered HUDs With No Option to Toggle Off Is Terrible Game Design

I don't usually post here these days, but I honestly feel like more developers of good games really need to be aware of the fact that having too much HUD on the screen for certain games is bad game design, especially for exploration games in the third dimension. The reason? Well, some developers don't seem to care that much about how important immersion is for exploring, and that's honestly a problem.

Whenever I play a third person game that feels good, having no HUD (or at least not too much and is far away from the center as possible) really gives me more of an immersive feel of the world that surrounds me. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example, there is a HUD but it naturally hides from the screen when you don't really need it, and the remake of the game allowed options for it (despite it already being dynamic rather than static). Sometimes I like to see a HUD, such as the dreaded mini-map, but as long as the option to hide it is always there in case I just want to explore without feeling like it's a 'game' (yeah, ironic I guess), it's good.

Let's show how different a clustered HUD can impact the game. I'm going to just show a picture of an area from Shadow of the Colossus (from PS2) and then take another picture and modify it a bit:

A world that I feel part of.

This doesn't feel right...

 Note: The HUD at the bottom and bottom right is actually from the game, but as I said it does auto-hide.

The game wouldn't feel the same if all that stuff was on the screen at all times. It would honestly ruin the sense I have with the world when such stuff happens and becomes pretty much a deal breaker if there is no toggle option for it. Whenever a HUD is so small and far from the center, or there is no HUD during exploration, it feels better and doesn't actually feel 'fake'. Zelda Breath of the Wild is another game with immersion, and thankfully despite the HUD being a bit clustered, there was this option to hide most of it which was very useful to get that feeling I wanted.

Back then, when 3D platformers was pretty much king, there was often a design where the HUD on the screen would auto-hide. Banjo Kazooie for example did such that except for when health is low. Even the Super Mario Galaxy games did that (but such dynamic feature was forgotten during Super Mario Odyssey?), and now these days that feature seems to be more missing, but maybe it's just me.

I feel like this sense I have is not just me either. I believe there are a lot of people out there that feels the same, and I really wish this gets recognize more with many great developers who aren't aware. I hope more great developers becomes more aware of this idea I'm trying to share!

Why was this article made? Well, as someone who is desperate of owning (owning a physical game for a Switch is really important for me) good third-person exploration games, E3 2021 was really terrible for this year, and Nintendo was the only hope I've had. Sadly the only other third-person game they've shown outside of Zelda Breath of the Wild's sequel, was a game called Shin Megami Tensei V. The trailer during E3 looked great, but when I saw the Nintendo Treehouse Live gameplay, it became pretty much a deal breaker and felt like a final straw for this article.

Maybe there will be an option?

Anyway, that's it for today. I apologize for any sloppy writing here.

Theory - Phoenix was at I4

Found at Tem Ico Wiki and picture was uploaded by GertdeHond

Note: The other images on here were found on Nomad's blog, I am not too sure if that's the original source. Some could be found on other parts of the internet too though, but I still want to link to his blog. :)
Nomad's blog page: http://nomads-sotc-blog.blogspot.com/2011/07/unusedbeta-colossi.html

I4 is a beta location in Shadow of The Colossus, it was a place I always hoped to see and explore one day. Sadly today, and even with the new build recently found, I4 is still that cursed white null object sitting there in the middle of the quadrant. In fact, all of those white null objects including the one way south and a bit west of the map still remains even in the "PSU Preview" build. But recently I was comparing the pictures of Phoenix to J4, which is not cursed (still exist as actual land) to many sections of the Phoenix area, and I was able to find some shocking matches. The reason why I compare J4 is because J4 is supposed to be very connected to I4, so I assume I4 is supposed to have a lot of similar textures to J4.

So are there similarities?
Here are four pictures I found from Nomad's blog:

The first picture and last two pictures seem to remind me of J4, which is connected to I4 deeply.
The ground and the mountain are very similar to this:

From "PSU Preview" with debug iso hack on thanks to wisi.

 In J4, there is a very familiar style to a couple of pictures from the Phoenix arena. During the time I was comparing it, I don't think I found the fourth picture at the time, so at the time, it was hard to tell what those mountains were.

Then later, I found the fourth picture... but it wasn't the one on Nomad's blog and was too small... Then I went to Nomad's blog and discovered the picture and was much larger, and thanks to that picture, that's where things got really interesting...

First, here is the texture that's used in J4:

I think J4 is the only place that uses this so far.

I have a folder called Barba filled with probably every texture from the preview. I sadly don't exactly remember who sent me it though. However some textures might of not been ripped correctly. It's not the texture ripped from PSU Preview, but I assume it's the same texture.
Anyway, let's now look at this too:

Let's look closer...

Left: From Phoenix picture. Right: From the J4 snapshot.

Examples, there are more to compare.

It's probably not the most accurate and we are mainly comparing the texture pattern itself, the actual 3D model may not be the same, but we are trying to show how similar the nto texture itself is. 3D model form can also possibly distort the pattern.

But wait, we are not done!
In the NICO.dat file of the PSU Preview, I was able to find a bunch of "i4" names at the end of a couple of main nmo areas. One of them was the geyser area (the turtle colossus arena), and the other was the 3rd arena. At an geyser model, the following I know were found: "i4_a_tree_large", "i4_branch_parts", and "i4_tree_trunk02". I think the same goes for at least one of the 3rd arena parts.
There was also some i4 names at the end version of the 3rd arena one but couldn't be found in the preview if I'm guessing right.

I am not sure exactly what the names are at the end of the nmo file, but I think I usually see this as different name versions of textures, as if this was the material name from the PC editor. When I rip a model using a converter made by wisi, I see the different names in the material list instead of the nto ones. I am however not so sure if these alternative names can have other things other than textures however.
Anyway, these names seems to reference to trees obviously and if you look back at Nomad's blog, you can see how similar the trees are to the Phoenix pictures. There are also similar trees found at the 3rd colossus arena. I am not so sure if these trees can be found anywhere else. So far, they seem to match the the information found in the NICO.dat file.

So things to note:
That texture in J4 cannot be found anywhere else in the current known builds, the texture is very similar to the one at Phoenix's arena, the ground in J4 is even similar to the ground in some of the Phoenix areas, and there are trees in the Phoenix pictures that look similar to trees in two arenas where in NICO.dat, there are "i4" tree names at the end of such nmos.

In theory, Phoenix was actually in I4.
I also had a theory that many beta low polygon mountains has used another texture before, and it seems the PSU Preview proved my theory. Haha

Shadow of the Colossus - Journey

This is WWWArea, which I like to be called SpaceOmega5000 now. I personally don't want to tell why for the change, but yeah. I honestly felt like I should of been active on the journey.

I have made this article, but sadly paused it and should of continued, but maybe I still can:
https://sites.google.com/site/wwwareaplace/shadow-of-the-colossus

Sadly during many days, I felt like we were running out of stuff to do, then for a while, I started to kinda move on. However, I started to come back again, especially when someone in the name of wisi came and was able to do some very interesting things with the preview build of Shadow of the Colossus, and one of the amazing things was that he was the one to break open those forgotten quadrants (the square map locations) which were I1, and I7.

Originally, these places would "crash" the game when you go even near these locations in the preview build. In the final build, I7 was completely replaced with a single polygon which happens to use either a blue texture, or a colored non-textured color that was blue. However, I1 was still the same maybe.

In the preview, we (me, Nomad, and wisi) have a version of which both quadrants are free to explore. They are both a bit glitchy and I7 has a risk of crashing. Some PCSX2 emulators might even crash the game somewhere in I7 while the one where it isn't the same has a rare chance of crashing.

Beyond that, I came back and recently things were getting very interesting involving the debug stuff. I guess we are so lucky the preview version exists!

A dirt path in I1, in a low polygon area.

I think the main reason why I write an article was because I felt like I've been missing out. Nomad Colossus, an awesome friend by the way, has been mentioned in a way by the company that made Shadow of the Colossus for the PS4, and I'll say, that's really cool! There was even one mention but I don't think I can say on here that I thought was cool and interesting.
At the same time, that's where I felt like I missed out a lot, of course, he still deserves credit even though I was the one to help him a lot years ago. I am sadden I'm not mentioned though, but I guess that's where I should of been more active. Maybe at least with a site? But even then, I failed to have such thing...

Recently, even if it's too late, I am inspired to use a blog as well. I used to have a site where I talked about my personal journey, which I linked of course, but I would rather use blogger since Google Sites is rather limited.

Good luck on the game, and I hope it sells well! ;)

___

Note: This blog post was mainly made over a week ago. I edited at least one small part though.

A Personal Blog and Fresh

Hello, this is SpaceOmega5000, I used to use a different username but changed it for personal reasons. I been feeling kinda lazy to do videos and I am still happy that I was able to help some others with their hacks. I am still in love with the game Shadow of the Colossus and really look forward to some new games, even though I am picky.

This blog will probably talk about personal works such as ROM hacks, debates in a careful way, and general thoughts in careful ways too.
I had a bit of drama with some terrible people, but personally at this time, I would rather stay separate from that just like I usually do with my SpaceOmega5000 Youtube channel.

If I get a lot of followers, then maybe I could carefully talk about it. For now, I don't think I will.


Enjoy!