[DTP for GC] Urban Action: Royan Vacation '16

"The Urban Life has become revitalized and restructured through the dreams and ambitions of our modern heroes."

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Urban Action: Royan Vacation '16 (stylized in~game as アーバン アクション: Royan Vacation '16) is a 2016 Downloadable Texture Pack (DTP) for the Gamecube version of Sonic Adventure II: Multi~Dimensional (better known to most as Sonic Adventure II: Battle) for Dolphin created by the people who make up Royameadow and Co., with the original concept having been created by Royameadow: Generation II Privileged Variety Member Derek King, and lead development for it having been done by Roya Rockwood, the group's original creator and Top Head Administrator.
It is one of the first major attempts to create a complete overhaul of the entirety of the graphical approach for Sonic Adventure II, aiming to restructure the visual template to look dynamically different from its original counterpart, potentially making it feel as if it were to be a totally new adventure, even though there are no layout or script changes; this texture pack is also made to celebrate the Fifteenth Anniversary of Sonic Adventure II's original initial release on the Sega Dreamcast, June 019 of 2001, which was also part of the motivation for this pack's inception.

Royan Vacation '16 had originally started out as an idea by Derek King, one of Royameadow: Generation II's earliest members, Roya was feeling down in the dumps in September of 2015 and Derek had come to his aide at the time to cheer him up.
One of the things mentioned during his encouragement to Roya was the following sentence: "Perhaps you need to take a Royan Vacation.", little did he know that recommending this would lead into what is being viewed here; this pack also had influence by that of Tezuka101's Hi~Res Texture Pack on the Dolphin Emulator Forums from 2012 (https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-sonic-adventure-2-battle-hi-res-texture-pack-v0-2-gsne8p), and it was used as the original template while working on this over time, it took some time to get used to during development, but it has only gotten better over time, thanks to its help in understanding how it all works.

Similar to Roya Rockwood's Sonic Mega Collection, select Head and Co~Head Administrators take over for the menu icons for each character, spanning across Neo Generation 0I to Generation III.
They are listed below with which character they respectfully represent, followed by their title in the group and which affiliate(s) they run.

~ Sonic: Ashley Belair (アシュリー ベルエア), Royameadow and Co.'s Second in Command (2007), Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Neo Generation 0I and Top Head Administrator of Ashumeadow.
~ Miles/Tails: Amanda Belair (アマンダ ベルエア), part of Royameadow and Co.'s Fourth in Command Triumvirate (2008), Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Neo Generation 0I and the handler of the team's International affairs and foreign regional content.
~ Knuckles/Knux: Gabriel Paulino (ガブリエル ポール・イノ), Royameadow and Co.'s Third in Command (2008), Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Neo Generation 0I and Top Head Administrator of Gabimeadow.
~ Shadow: Kayla Lawson (ケーラ ローソン), Royameadow and Co.'s Twelfth in Command, Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Generation III and the host of the Kayla Lawson ~ KLLS.
~ Rouge: Luna Marie (ルナ マリー), Royameadow and Co.'s Fifth in Command (2010), Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Generation II and the provider of the primary channel's Closed Captioning.
~ Robotnik/Eggman: Troy Guscott (トロイ Guscott), Royameadow and Co.'s Eleventh in Command (2012), Co~Head Administrator of Royameadow: Generation III and the creator of SuperTNT '94.

This Texture Pack presumes that the player is a user of DualShock controllers when using Dolphin, all buttons have been listed below to assure that they are aware of how their controller setup is meant to be mapped.
The listing for these button mappings is presented in the below legend as "~ Gamecube Button: DualShock Button."; it must be assured that the controller settings are mapped in the way it be presented below to prevent any confusion in how the buttons presented in the menus were meant to function.

~ A: Cross.
~ B: Square.
~ X: Circle.
~ Y: Triangle.
~ Left Stick: L03 Pad.
~ C Stick: R03 Pad.
~ L: L02 Trigger.
~ R: R02 Trigger.
~ Z: R01 Button.

Screenshots for this Texture Pack are viewable below, they will be changed in Future~Time when the utmost recent revision changes what the player will be viewing.
Please note that these screenshots were created with the Widescreen Hack enabled and the Aspect Ratio being set to Stretch to Window, rather than Force 16:09; some also utilize Dolphin's Free Look Mode, so select objects on screen might be angled or further away than they actually appear in the normal display defaults.

~ Title Screen:



~ Main Menu:



~ City Escape (June 019 of 2016 Demo):



~ Mission Street (June 019 of 2016 Demo):



~ Radical Highway (June 019 of 2016 Demo):



~ Meteor Herd (June 019 Demo):



~ Final Rush (June 019 of 2016 Demo):



Download Information:

Below be the Mediafire link to download the Texture Pack.
Because there will be revisions to this pack, must anybody make Mirrors of it, please update upon release of the utmost recent revision to prevent any dated and/or deprecated incarnation from being available.

~ Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7es4d702pg3pnb2/Urban_Action_~_Royan_Vacation_'I6_(NTSC~U)_[!].rar

Installation Instructions for this Texture Pack are simple.
Please note that these instructions are assuming that you are resorting to the Dolphin Emulator folder in the My Documents/Documents folder for installing the pack.

~ After downloading the pack, extract it using WinRAR or any RAR file extractor that is compatible with this file.
~ Copy or cut the folder that was delivered with the RAR file, which is respectively known as "GSNE8P", and put it in C:\Users\(Insert Username Here)\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\Load\Textures.
GSNE8P is the official codename that is used for Sonic Adventure II: Battle (NTSC~U) in Dolphin and it is mandatory for this folder to be named as such, it be imperative that none of the file and folder names be modified as well, or else the textures will not load as they were originally intended to; due to the fact that this texture pack was originally being worked on before the Revision 8000 and 9000 series of Dolphin, you will possibly not be able to use this pack on many earlier builds, please resort to the utmost recent builds for optimal usage of this pack.
~ After the GSNE8P folder has been pasted into the Load\Textures subsection, boot up Dolphin and load a copy of Sonic Adventure II: Battle (NTSC~U).
~ Go into the Graphics Menu, customize the settings to the following presets, these are what were used for testing out this pack.
~ Aspect Ratio (found under the General tab): Stretch to Window.
~ Widescreen Hack (found under Enhancements): Enabled.
~ Load Custom Textures (found in the Utility subsection of the Advanced tab): Enabled.
~ Prefectch Custom Textures (found in the Utility subsection of the Advanced tab): Enabled.
~ Free Look (found in the same area as Load Custom Textures): Enabled, it is recommended to have this enabled if for exploratory usage in the zones, especially if you want to get some nice screenshots at dynamic angles for showing off.

Those of whom are using alternate regional versions of Sonic Adventure II: Battle will possibly not be able to use this texture pack in the PAL and NTSC~J builds, unless it is confirmed that it is indeed possible; the reason for why this is being said is because this pack was made before the Revision 8000 and 9000 series of Dolphin's builds, which reads the dumped textures in a differed form, as opposed to the Revision 4000 series, which was what this had started on, followed by being moved to the 9000 series after it came out.
In the event that it is possible though, you will need to edit all respective files to apply to the following folders in the texture loading folder for it to work on other regions:

~ Europe (PAL): GSNP8P.
~ Japan: GSBJ8P.

In order to function specific textures for this texture pack, you will need both a MAX Percent Save File, as well as some of the Action Replay MAX codes that are provided in this pack's RAR file, the Phantasy Star Online: Episode II Armour is in play here and it is best to have these codes enabled to view Sonic, Shadow, Rouge, and Knux's new armour designs in the later and final builds, as well as the June 019 Demo (Rouge's custom armour is not in the June 019 Demo, it will be available in future releases, including the Sonic Hacking Contest XIV Online build).
Simply copy and paste the codes listed into the GSNE8P.ini file in this pack via Notepad or whichever application you use, place it into the Dolphin Emulator\GameSettings folder, enable the respective codes required and it will work as intended; feel more than free to mute the music to add in custom music to go with the new artwork, the original OST simply does not fit all too well with some of the redesigns, so play some Vaporwave or something similar for easier enjoyment.

Credits:

~ Roya Rockwood: Project Creator, Lead Developer, Texture Editor, Japanese Translator, Art Developer, Performance and Quality Tester, Online Promoter.
~ Derek King: Original Creator of Concept.
~ Gabriel Paulino: Quality Analysis and Prototype Build Feedback for the Partial Private builds.
~ Chris Nevers: Quality Analysis and Prototype Build Feedback for the Partial Private builds.
~ More will be added to this list upon the release of future builds.

With all of this said, it is very well hoped that you do enjoy the texture pack, both in its current state and what you will view in future releases, this pack has indeed not been all too easy to work on and the fact that it has made it this far up to now is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Please also note that anything that you view in the utmost recent build might or will be subject to change in subsequent releases, not much in this is definitive at this time and could well be modified over time; there is also a possibility that this pack could also come to the PC (2012) version in future years, but that is still up for debate at this time, it is wholly unknown as to how that would go and it might require more work than the Gamecube version already has had, more on that will be discussed at a better time, but for now, simply enjoy this pack for what it's worth, this has indeed been enjoyable to work on and it will only get better with time, that is a guarantee for sure!

 

I like textures, but your post is too large and images are too large. Summarizing - good job!

 

This again. Ugh.

Look, have you ever tried to check your eyes? At this point I'm almost sure that you have serious problems to see proper aspect ratios. Either that or something in your mind tries to tell you that it looks "fine". Plus, we've had this whole discussion about your friends before. Nobody knows who these people are except you, so naturally nobody cares. Why do you still insist to put them down our throats so relentlessly?

I wish I wouldn't have to sound rude here, but after the last disaster I'm simply astonished and sad that you haven't learned a single thing.

And seriously, stop talking in walls of texts.

 

Well I gonna be fair this texture pack looks decent. If the friends wasn't forced upon us or the photos look wierd then I would play this. The dealbreaker is the wall of text.

 

This is something that bothers me: when people don't take any consideration for other people's criticism, when releasing a product over the internet people will critique it, if they criticize things about your product then you need to consider using their feedback to improve your product or future products to come. I have seen your last texture pack and what people have been telling you about walls of text. You've gotten somewhat better with writing shorter paragraphs but you still upload blurry looking textures, as for the texture pack while the ideas that are there are good on paper the execution is not good.

The main menu looks okay and City Escape seems decent but everything else looks blurry and the textures seem random, like they were just added for the sake of being added. Remember when I said you've gotten somewhat better with writing shorter paragraphs? yeah I really meant "somewhat" because you've still got a wall of text here, I understand this is a texture pack release and not a normal post but you should still keep the paragraphs short otherwise people are gonna skim through the text and miss crucial information (if there is any). I hope you can take all of what we have said into account to not only improve this texture pack but also improve your future products. (Also on a side note next time you make videos of Sonic hacks can you please stop green screening the footage).

 

Here's something I don't understand.
You changed the rating of the game from 'E for Everyone', a modern ESRB rating, to 'MA-13', and outdated rating system used by SEGA in the 90s. What within this texture pack warrants a 13+ Parental Advisory rating in the first place???

 

What you said about here about paragraphs needing to be short, I completely disagree with. As being one who can sometimes write a large wall of text, I disagree with the notion that in itself is a bad practice. IMO rather, people who do not take the time to read it and posting something like "TL;DR" or asking stupid questions which are already explained in the text, are the ones in wrong. However, what I think is more important is content. If you have a wall of text without much content in it; it is meaningless blabber and/or stuff that could be explained in exponentially shorter text, should indeed be rewritten to be more concise and on the point. Same with information that is really not necessary and is there doing nothing more but wasting the readers time and patience. I sometimes spend a good few hours just revisiting a piece of text I've written to cut down on useless things and reformatting it to make more sense and to be on the point. Why? I want the reader to be engaged and get the most possible amount of information in smallest possible time investment. The point of writing something is not to cram everything you need in small amount of text, but rather to keep the interest of the reader, whether what you are conveying is information or just pure comedy. This is why something Roya writes, even how short, is not interesting at all, and something a book writer writes can keep you on edge for 40 hours of reading. I read a few sentences of what was written in this topic, and all I could muster up is yawns and occasional facepalm moments. This is not how you keep your audience interested, in the slightest.

Also those images took over 30 seconds to load on my crappy WIFI connection, compressing or even resizing them couldn't hurt. They DO NOT need to be 1:1.

 

Happy fathers day Daddy Royameadow.

 

I'm going to lock the thread now for the time being, the discussion has turned towards the philosophy of whether or not it's right to post walls of text, and how it should or should not be done.

Quite frankly all this can do is escalate into an argument.

One thing I will point out though is that those images are way too large, I loaded this page up in a tab and tried to load other pages in other tabs while I was going through the board, and the speed plummeted. It took me a while to realise that it was the images that were doing it. I strongly advice on shortening those, putting them in spoilers, or just pasting a link to them.

I won't unlock the thread until this situation can be resolved privately by staff, maybe by means of a revision to the rules. Either way, we'll see.