Within the time since last month’s blogpost about this mod, my attention has shifted to some of the finer details. I still have plenty of outfits to design and replace, but taking a short break from that has allowed me to finetune other aspects.
Let’s talk about some of these new features, and how they came to be!
Corruptions When?
Corruptions Now.
This effect was tricky to pull off, but adds some novelty to the gameplay. Vinesauce fans are well aware corruptions have been a major staple of Vinny’s streams over the past decade. Usually this is done by injecting random bytes into the memory of emulated games, yielding unpredictable and unstable results.
Corruption videos are what got me watching in the first place, and they still never fail to leave me in side-splitting awe. I wanted to make an homage, so I figured the best way would be to replicate corruptions in-game. Without actually corrupting the game itself, I made use of .EPLs, which are files that control certain visual effects– screen shakes, lighting animations, or in this case, particles.
The .EPL contains a given particle, such as an animated Super Mario World “? Block“, which is then attached to the player model. By finetuning the angle, spawn range, and size of the particles, this gives the illusion that sprites are popping in and out at random, all over the map.
It took some trial and error to limit the effect enough that it doesn’t become extremely distracting. I wanted it to feel noticeable, but natural, so you can still enjoy it while focusing on the gameplay.
Later on, I plan to make more extreme corruptions occur in the overworld on Sundays (the day corruption streams traditionally take place). Certain weapons and outfits may include corruptions viewable during battles and dungeon-crawling.
Green, Green, and more Green
Persona 5’s user interface is strikingly characterized by its vibrant red color. There’s no better example than the pause menu, which I was lucky enough to have lots of help overhauling.
Zarroboogs, who is known for making mod support patches for P5R on PS4, as well as P4G Vita, P3P on PS3, and the Dancing games, was kind enough to find the color values for the menu background and provide a patch. Because the values are in the game’s executable, without reverse engineering the game’s code, I would never have accomplished this myself, so I owe a huge thank you!
Due to the patch being for the PC version specifically, the menu will still be red on PS4 and Switch, unless a similar patch is created for those versions. At least you would still get to appreciate the wonderful art created by CheesyDraws!
(For now, the PC version is prioritized since it’s where the mod is most convenient to develop and test, but porting as much as possible to the other versions is still in the realm of possibility.)
Also check out the results screen, where the green color is more than prevalent now. I owe CherryCreamSoda the thank for this one, since it was a struggle to edit the colors for these elements. Sometimes they consisted of materials, sometimes textures, sometimes vertex colors… But I think the effort paid off.
As of now, I don’t think any other aspects of the game are going to be recolored. I wish I could turn absolutely everything that’s red into green for maximum consistency, but so much of it is handled by the game’s code that it would be a gargantuan task.
Wanna Talk About Some Distribution?
When it comes time to release this mod, anyone with a legally purchased copy of the game on PC can enjoy it. You just need to follow these steps to download and setup ReloadedII by Sewer56 and configure it to work with P5R.
Once that’s done, it’s a matter of downloading the .zip and placing the mod files in ReloadedII’s Mods folder. From there, you can use Reloaded to sort which mods take priority, toggle them, and launch the game.
I decided to split the mod into multiple separate Reloaded mods, for a couple reasons. First, I want to make it compatible with DeathChaos’s upcoming P5R CBT mod. This mod overhauls certain aspects of the game and shares a lot of features with his previous release, Persona 5 EX for the PS3 version.
Users taking advantage of certain aspects of P5RCBT (the colored outline in battle, additional voicelines and costumes…) will need to enable an optional P5RCBT compatibility mod that contains the Vinesauce equivalents of those files.
BTW: It should be noted that neither the Vinesauce mod nor P5RCBT have a set release date yet, other than “it’s out when it’s done.”
Another reason the mod is split up: this way multiple artists can contribute to the mod, even if they choose to modify the same assets. For instance, in the previous post I talked about both NeonWillowLeaf and CheesyDraws contributing All out Attack graphics for Scoot and Vinny respectively. But neither of them are beholden to a specific character, and may want to create their own versions.
They will each have their own Reloaded mod included in the download, with which users can re-order priority to their liking. That way, each artist is free to explore their own designs and still have their work included without having to compromise on a single creative vision.
There’s nothing stopping anyone else from contributing their own artwork too, even after the mod is released. It would be as simple as creating another ReloadedII mod and adding your own files with higher priority. Users can of course merge all the mods into one single folder once they have decided on a permanent loadout they enjoy, thus reducing the clutter.
I’m grateful to any contributor who has allowed this project to become the amazing community effort that it is. Since everyone is working hard on their own time for free, I’m happy to at least keep it fun for everybody to be a part of. Their kindness and impassioned creativity help put much-needed pressure on me to see everything through to the end.
On to New Horizons
Red Vox’s new album, Afterthoughts, premieres tonight… which is likely to impact the current BGM track replacements. These are never set in stone anyway, so it’ll be interesting to experiment with what sounds the best and compliments the gameplay well.
Once a few more costumes are added, and eventually more 2D artwork for Vinny and Scoot such as cut-ins and bustups, I’ll be ready to show off more actual gameplay in the form of trailers, short videos, or even livestreams as release becomes nearer.
In parting, the only other thing I have left to share is this in-depth look at Vinny’s streaming setup in the Cafe Leblanc attic: