SHENMUE II APRIL 11TH, 2001 PROTOTYPE SOLD ON YAHOO AUCTION

The model of Ren shown in the stream looked like an alternative model. The face overall looked less detail. Can you report of any changes to the character models from the final game?

Edit: Just posted as you provided confirmation. Amazing what small tweaks to eyebrows, eyes and slightly different lightening can produce.
 
Just so everyone knows, there's a ton of information about Miao Village on here. I have pretty much solved a large majority of the mystery of it. The village itself isn't here, but I have a general idea of what's going on. I'll post the complete details as I have them all compiled and looked over.
 
The proto still uses Shenmue 1's vending machine, as you can see because it still shows the yen symbol

screenshot2.png

When you interact with it though it changes to what it should be with the amount of money (at least it tried)
screenshot3.png

BONUS!

When Ryo has his finger show up to select a soda, a text box appeared and made me exit without buying anything. Can anyone translate this?
screenshot5.png
 
The model of Ren shown in the stream looked like an alternative model. The face overall looked less detail. Can you report of any changes to the character models from the final game?

Edit: Just posted as you provided confirmation. Amazing what small tweaks to eyebrows, eyes and slightly different lightening can produce.

Shenhua is a little bit different as well.

Final Release:
1652932142301.png

April 2001 Build:
1652932164535.png

She definitely smiles more often in the prototype, and is a little bit more smug. I kinda like it haha!
Her eyes are also larger in the prototype, and her jawline might be a slightly different shape.
 
BONUS!

When Ryo has his finger show up to select a soda, a text box appeared and made me exit without buying anything. Can anyone translate this?
screenshot5.png

You probably have no money lol
 
The plane that goes over the wise men's QR doesn't have a loading screen to show in this build, it shows it immediately
 
Just so everyone knows, there's a ton of information about Miao Village on here. I have pretty much solved a large majority of the mystery of it. The village itself isn't here, but I have a general idea of what's going on. I'll post the complete details as I have them all compiled and looked over.

Amazing can’t wait to see your post once you have compiled all the information.

As they were diving into some of the beta content I couldn’t help but reminisce about the amazing discoveries you made on the old forums and wondered out loud what you would have made of some of the recent discoveries. Glad to see you have your hand still in the process!
 
Just so everyone knows, there's a ton of information about Miao Village on here. I have pretty much solved a large majority of the mystery of it. The village itself isn't here, but I have a general idea of what's going on. I'll post the complete details as I have them all compiled and looked over.

Cannot wait for this!! So good to see you back for the party man 🎉🥳

I can't wait to mess about with this prototype in general - my laptop came back from repair at the right time!

I know @spud1897 used Demul on the stream as apparently Redream doesn't run this very stable? Has anyone else tried it on Redream?
 
Cannot wait for this!! So good to see you back for the party man 🎉🥳

I can't wait to mess about with this prototype in general - my laptop came back from repair at the right time!

I know @spud1897 used Demul on the stream as apparently Redream doesn't run this very stable? Has anyone else tried it on Redream?

So Redream can run it but I found it would jump into almost random 8x speed for some reason.

I didn't want that happening on stream haha.
 
Amazing stream and just when you think you've seen everything Shenmue has to offer more bombshells get discovered!

While I am sure we will talk about Yu Suzuki's model being discovered-

View attachment 16145


I am just as interested in the folks being one step closer of reverse engineering bike in Shenmue in addition to seeing some of those minor and small changes in cut-scenes, textures and names. Wonderful work all around.

Not going to lie, seeing this Dreamcast-era model of Yu Suzuki made my day. Both surreal and hilarious at the same time. Yet at the same time it somehow feels completely natural. Yu Suzuki poured his heart and soul into Shenmue, it's only fitting that he would somehow 21 years later manifest within the game itself.

But enough gushing. I'm eager to see what other secrets the Shenmue community can uncover from this build.
 
Hope everyone appreciates this release, I put a lot of money into acquiring and also a lot of time into researching and ultimately reverse engineering this beta, a lot of very cool things were found which have been documented and tools created specifically for it. We're now able to compile our own event scripts, decompile existing ones and ultimately do whatever AM2 could in the game, ourselves.

Naturally there will be some things that we didn't have time to look into, especially myself who was just interested in the reverse engineering of this 20+ year old code/data.
 
If anyone's interested...(forgive my predictable obsession with Shenmue II NPC's...)

As Laurent points out on the release page, this Lucky Hit bookie seen in Green Market Qr. is a different one from the final game:
1652950147996.png
This is actually Sui Jiangyou, who in the final can be found as the Lucky Hit bookie in the Thousand White Building's Dural Room!

In the final, he is replaced by Tao Cheng:
1652950246423.png

So the inevitable question is... is Jiangyou still in the Dural Room in the beta as well?? I shall have to investigate, unless someone beats me to it :p
 
My technical overview of my reverse engineering on this beta:

1drv.ms

Document 1.docx

Microsoft Word Document
1drv.ms

More information, documentation and code can be found in the Shenmue Reverse Engineers discord server.
 
Amazing work, everyone involved 👏

Does any of the texture work prove/disprove the theory that the Xbox port was based off an older build of S2 DC? I've never believed this, personally, but happy to be proven wrong. I've always assumed the differences exist because the models had to be reskinned due to differences in software/hardware.
 
Amazing work, everyone involved 👏

Does any of the texture work prove/disprove the theory that the Xbox port was based off an older build of S2 DC? I've never believed this, personally, but happy to be proven wrong. I've always assumed the differences exist because the models had to be reskinned due to differences in software/hardware.

It's like you're reading my drafts... I'm currently writing up the next major post about all of this sort of stuff!
 
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