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Lucas' Simpsons Hit & Run Mod Launcher: Save States Testing Builds (Updated November 23rd, 2019)

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Introduction

This thread contains information on public testing builds of Lucas' Simpsons Hit & Run Mod Launcher featuring the upcoming Save States hack.

Testing Builds

These are all the testing builds we've distributed thus far.

Spoiler: Testing Build #7 (November 23rd, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This version is based on Version 1.23.9 of the Mod Launcher.

Note: While using XInput typically allows you to plug-and-play controllers while the game is running, this functionality is not supported while using Save States (unless you're using the "-noxinputignoredisconnected" command line argument).

Spoiler: Testing Build #6 (September 24th, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This version is based on Version 1.23.6 of the Mod Launcher.

Spoiler: Testing Build #5 (September 1st, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This version is based on Version 1.23.4. It also fixes a crash when loading a save state after disconnecting a DirectInput device (including those not used by the game but not including gamepads when using the XInput mod hack) after having started the game when using the "-testing" command line argument.

Spoiler: Testing Build #4 (August 16th, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This build is based on Version 1.23.3 and adds experimental support for Additional Script Functionality.

Spoiler: Testing Build #3 (July 29th, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This build has a number of improvements and bug fixes:

  • Adds support for saving during movies.
    • You could already load states during movies in previous versions.
  • Adds support for the Video Texture Support hack.
  • Fixed a bug where certain sound effects would not be resumed at the correct point after loading a state.
  • Fixed an issue where having Rumble unticked in XInput would cause the game to crash on startup or when loading a state if you had any controllers connected.
  • Fixed some crashes related to DirectInput when loading a state. Also made some DirectInput related things that would cause a crash get ignored when loading a state.
  • Made various asserts only show up when using the "-testing" command line argument.
  • Made it so if the game tries to exit unexpectedly, you should now be able to resume a save state like how you can with some other types of crashes.
  • Made it so testing builds have a canary-coloured icon (as pre-release versions of programs often do) and show their codename in the title of the program.
    • For example, this release will show "Save States Test 8" in place of "Version 1.23.2".
  • Made it so audio will stop when a crash message with a prompt to load a state shows up.

Spoiler: Testing Build #2 (June 25th, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This is an updated build with preliminary mod support and significant improvements to load times while the hack is enabled.

Mods are no longer blacklisted with the exception of Discord Rich Presence, Text Names and NVIDIA Highlights which are still explicitly blocked.

Mod compatibility depends on what functionality and hacks the mods require to function. For example, Additional Script Functionality and Video Texture Support refuse to load at this time.

This version also includes stacking status messages when there's rapid saving and loading. This can be disabled in the hack's settings.

Spoiler: Testing Build #1 (June 19th, 2019)

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This was the initial testing build containing the Save States hack. For this release, most major issues with the hack were resolved and it was in a very usable state with some notable limitations:
  • Save states can only be used in the game session they were saved in meaning that you cannot save a state, restart the game and load it again. This also means save states cannot be shared with other people.
  • Mods aside from most of the ones included with the Mod Launcher (everything barring Discord Rich Presence, Text Names and NVIDIA Highlights) are not supported alongside this hack.
  • You cannot save during a movie but you can load during one.
  • You cannot load a state that was saved in a different resolution.
  • It may also cause load times to be noticably longer for some users.

Controls

The controls for using the hack in the testing builds above are as follows:
  • 1 and 2 save and load from Slot 1.
    • These keys only work if the Cheat Keys is not enabled.
  • Shift+1 and Ctrl+1 save and load from Slot 1.
  • Shift+2 and Ctrl+2 save and load from Slot 2.
  • And so on up to Slot 9.

Prerelease Development Timeline

This spoiler contains an in depth development timeline from when LiquidWiFi initially posted his bounty for the hack up until now for those interested.

Spoiler

May 24th

Liquid initially approached us before posting the bounty for the mod on our forum to confirm it was okay to do so.

We told him he could post it and also communicated our thoughts on the feasibility of the idea; we were not very optimistic about the possibility of it at the time.

May 25th

Liquid posted the bounty on the forum.

We also did further research into this idea but couldn't find any good examples of save states being implemented in a PC game. We also discussed the idea and complications with it a bit in our Discord server.

May 26th

Lucas began starting to actually try and make this hack but at this point he did not expect it to get anywhere.

May 31st

The hack was able to save a bunch of the game's memory to a file but had no way of loading it. Saving this data took about 1 second.

June 2nd

The hack was still not able to load the state but it saved it much faster.

June 3rd

The hack was able to save the state and also load it but it didn't do so particularly well:


This is a screenshot of the pause menu if you were to start Level 1, save the state, load it and pause the game. On the main menu and ingame while not paused, you'd only see white.

This might not seem very promising but this is actually the point at which Lucas started to feel it might be possible to get it to a usable state.

June 4th

The hack allowed you to save and load states but the game was unable to continue loading files (like the world when driving around) after doing so. At this point, the game would crash after a few minutes regardless of what you did but usually there would be some audio related crash before that happened. Until this was resolved, Lucas made the hack enable the game's "MUTE" command line argument to disable audio.

Movies were also not supported at all with this hack enabled.

Here's a video of the hack in action at this time (before it used "MUTE" to disable audio, hence the end of this clip):
Video

June 5th

The game was now able to continue loading files after you loaded a state.

June 6th

We communicated to Liquid that Lucas was working on this hack for the Mod Launcher and that it was still in a proof-of-concept phase. We included a list of issues ranging from very severe to minor to explain the current state of the hack.

We also offered to allow him to try this version out as doing so was a criteria of the bounty even though we don't typically distribute testing builds of our tools beyond our staff.

June 7th

We shared the testing build with Liquid with many of the issues described the day before still in it.

Later that day, for a brief time, there was a fun issue where a lot of the textures got shuffled after saving and loading states in specific ways:



You might remember these images from Loren sharing them in the Discord server with no context.

June 10th

The issue where the game can only run for a few minutes before crashing got resolved so Liquid gave Lucas the bounty.

Later that day, audio and movies were supported.

June 17th

Liquid demonstrated the hack on his live stream.

June 19th

We released the testing build linked above with the aforementioned limitations.



That is all we have for you today.

Happy saving,
Donut Team
Real men use Debug Test and spam F10.
This post has been removed.
4 yrs ago (Statistics)
I updated the development timeline slightly to have a new video on June 4th.
We released an updated testing build just now.

Download

Dropbox

Information

This is an updated build with preliminary mod support and significant improvements to load times while the hack is enabled.

Mods are no longer blacklisted with the exception of Discord Rich Presence, Text Names and NVIDIA Highlights which are still explicitly blocked.

Mod compatibility depends on what functionality and hacks the mods require to function. For example, Additional Script Functionality and Video Texture Support refuse to load at this time.

This version also includes stacking status messages when there's rapid saving and loading. This can be disabled in the hack's settings.
Hey everyone, we just released an updated testing build just now: Testing Build #3.

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This build has a number of improvements and bug fixes:

  • Adds support for saving during movies.
    • You could already load states during movies in previous versions.
  • Adds support for the Video Texture Support hack.
  • Fixed a bug where certain sound effects would not be resumed at the correct point after loading a state.
  • Fixed an issue where having Rumble unticked in XInput would cause the game to crash on startup or when loading a state if you had any controllers connected.
  • Fixed some crashes related to DirectInput when loading a state. Also made some DirectInput related things that would cause a crash get ignored when loading a state.
  • Made various asserts only show up when using the "-testing" command line argument.
  • Made it so if the game tries to exit unexpectedly, you should now be able to resume a save state like how you can with some other types of crashes.
  • Made it so testing builds have a canary-coloured icon (as pre-release versions of programs often do) and show their codename in the title of the program.
    • For example, this release will show "Save States Test 8" in place of "Version 1.23.2".
  • Made it so audio will stop when a crash message with a prompt to load a state shows up.
Hey everyone, we just released an updated testing build: Testing Build #4

Download

Donut Team CDN

Information

This build is based on Version 1.23.3 and adds experimental support for Additional Script Functionality.
Hello, would it be possible in the future to resume loading a save after restarting the game? I wish I could have done that. Thank you