ggxrd_replay_mod

Description

This mod for Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 version 2211 works as of 30'th December 2023. It allows you to record some game footage with players' inputs into a file, then open said file and copy inputs from it as text for the GGXrd wakeup (reversal) tool. What will help you find the inputs is being able to play/seek/scrub the video footage along with the inputs.

Credits

Thanks to WorseThanYou for finding the input ring buffer, from which the inputs data is taken, and for finding many other things that are used extensively in all my mods.
Thanks to GGXrd Reversal Tool for information about the input data format (https://github.com/Iquis/rev2-wakeup-tool).
Thanks to Altimor's GGXrd Hitbox overlay mod for the original hitbox-drawing code (http://www.dustloop.com/forums/index.php?/forums/topic/12495-xrd-pc-hitbox-overlay-mod/).
Thanks to OBS studio for an idea of how game video capture could be implemented (https://obsproject.com/).
Check out the new Xrd Mixipedia project which collects pressure sequences for various characters as text inputs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1244K9vJcUeOUdN2pHA19zLjv2LrZp1UOwqN_-FDMnxo/edit#heading=h.q9yfad8iqfy1
If you encounter anything interesting (especially if you can make a whole set of options to go along with it, such as high instead low, low, grab, etc), make sure to share them there.

System requirements

Windows 10. Could maybe work on 7, I haven't tested it. Will definitely not work on Linux running GGXrd under Steam Proton, not even with Wine.
The app benefits greatly from having multiple CPU cores. The impact of having a video card has not been tested.

Only Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 version 2211 has been tested to work. A newer version might not work.

Quickstart

Video guide: https://youtu.be/HR6x9U7tNlw

Steps:

1. Start Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2.
2. Start ggxrd_replay_viewer.exe. You can press Record now or later.
3. Start a match. At any point during the match, you can start recording.
4. When the match finishes, the recording stops automatically (you only see it when you press Stop recording). You can stop recording manually at any moment.
5. In ggxrd_replay_viewer go to File - Open or press Ctrl+O to open the file you just recorded.
6. Select a section of the inputs you want to copy by clicking and dragging with the mouse.
7. Press Ctrl+C to show a dialog box with the inputs displayed as text that you can copy.
8. Paste the inputs into the reversal tool. You have to go into training mode with the right characters, etc yourself, this is not automated.

You cannot play the video while recording and you cannot record a video while playing it.
Each file can only contain one match. The recording stops automatically when the match ends. To record the next match, you must press the button again.
You can record an online match you participate in, an online match you observe, an offline versus, a training session or a replay.

Controls

The app window has several sections:

• The button bar:
  • Record - starts or stops the recording. Recording will stop the playback and actually close the old file.
  • Play - plays or pauses the video. You cannot play the video while recording.
  • Step one frame backwards (hotkey , or <, can be held)
  • Step one frame forward (hotkey . or >, can be held)
• Left and right panels containing inputs (to see inputs you need to go to File - Open and open a file first, even if you just finished recording a file):
  • Follow button - toggles the follow mode, during which the panel automatically scrolls to the last input corresponding to the position in the video. You cannot scroll the panel manually during follow mode, unless the video is paused.
  • The inputs themselves - you can select the inputs using: Mouse click, Shift + Mouse click, Mouse drag, Shift + Mouse drag, (optionally Shift+) Up/Down arrow keys, (optionally Shift+) Page up/down keys, (optionally Shift+) Home/end keys. The selected inputs range can only be contiguous.
  • The left edge of the panel - can be used as a seekbar. By dragging it with your mouse you can seek to the portion of the video that corresponds to that input. This might work odd in recorded online matches affected by rollback.
  • Mouse wheel and scrollbars - used to scroll the panels.
  • The panels have a right-click menu which allows you to Select all or Copy.
• Video
  • Clicking the video itself does nothing
  • The seekbar under the video - can be used to navigate the video
• Left/Right arrow keys - can be used to go backwards or forward 30 logical frames. Can be held.
• Settings menu - invoke the settings menu by going into the top menubar - Edit - Settings
  • Display hitboxes in-game - check the box and press OK to display hitboxes in the game (game must be launched by the time you press OK). Will not display boxes for invisible Chipps while participating in online matches
  • Display inputs in-game - check the box and press OK to display inputs in the game. Will not display inputs when participating in online matches, but will if observing.
  • Record every N'th frame - this regulates how many visual frames are recorded per second. Logical frames (inputs) do not get skipped. This is mainly used to conserve file size. And yes, you can set it to record every frame to get 60 FPS, provided your machine can handle that. Visual frames can be skipped if the encoder is not fast enough to encode all of them.

Project dependencies

libpng

Used to load PNG icon resources. This gets included in the project and does not require installation.

Microsoft Detours

Used to hook functions in the dll part of the mod. This gets included in the project and does not require installation.

Direct3D SDK

Direct3D is used in the dll part of the mod to draw inputs and hitboxes on the screen. It's also used in the app part to convert YUY2 video format into XRGB when playing the video. It's not used when recording a video, unless the Microsoft H.264 codec is doing something hardware-assisted (but I don't know how it works).
The user must have d3d9.dll on their system, and it's not shipped with the project.

zlib

Is needed by libpng. This gets included in the project and does not require installation.

Microsoft H.264 codec

I don't know if this is needed to build but it definitely must be installed on the user's machine or else the whole app will not even start.
This is used to encode and decode the video. It is probably part of Windows Media Player and/or Microsoft Media Foundation Platform.

How to build

The idea is to build the ggxrd_replay_viewer as 64-bit, while the hook must be always 32-bit, because the game is 32-bit. Use Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition to build.
Go to ggxrd_replay_viewer project settings in the Solution Explorer and navigate to Advanced.
Set Character Set - Use Unicode Character Set.
Navigate to VC++ Directories.
Add following paths to Include Directories: path_to_your_direct3d_9_sdk\Include;path_to_your_libpng-libpng16;$(IncludePath)
Add following paths to Library Directories: path_to_your_direct3d_9_sdk\Lib\x64;path_to_your_libpng-libpng16\projects\vstudio\x64\Release Library;$(LibraryPath)
Navigate to Linker - Input.
Add following libraries to Additional Dependencies: libpng16.lib;zlib.lib;Rpcrt4.lib;Strmiids.lib;d3d9.lib;%(AdditionalDependencies)
Rpcrt4.lib is needed for UuidCompare (I actually don't need this function anymore, but forgot to remove it).
Strmiids.lib is needed for IID_ICodecAPI definition. These should be in the Windows SDK installed by Visual Studio.

Building libpng

You should statically link its 32-bit verion into this mod. Its sources are not included in the mod in any way, you must download and build it yourself. libpng homepage: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
After you download the sources, make sure to also download the zlib (https://www.zlib.net/) sources and put the zlib sourcetree directory in the parent directory relative to libpng sourcetree and rename the zlib sourcetree directory to zlib if it's not already named that. Just to recap, the directory tree should look like this:

• The directory containing both libpng and zlib:
  • libpng sourcetree directory - can be named anything
  • zlib sourcetree directory - must be named exactly zlib

You don't need to compile zlib separately because it will get included as a subproject in libpng and will get compiled when you build the libpng solution.

In the libpng folder go to projects\vstudio and open the vstudio.sln solution file in Visual Studio. If Visual Studio asks to Retarget Projects, agree.
In the top bar of Visual Studio choose build configuration Release Library (just Release seems to compile a DLL (with a .lib file, but that .lib requires the DLL actually still), while Release Library compiles a static .lib library) and Win32.
If you don't do the following step you will get a 32-bit library, while it would be much better to get a 64-bit library, if our own mod's app is going to be 64-bit. To get the 64-bit library that we actually need all you need to adjust is go into Configuration Manager (accessible via drop-down list from the top bar where it says Win32) and in each list item of the table in the Platform column select <New...>. In New platform select x64 and choose Copy settings from: Win32. You need to do this for each row.
Then go to Build -> Build Solution. Everything should succeed. The build files will be written to projects\vstudio\Release Library (if you built a 32-bit library) or projects\vstudio\x64\Release Library (if you built a 64-bit library). We need the libpng16.lib and the zlib.lib files.
Open the ggxrd_replay_mod solution, right-click the ggxrd_replay_viewer project and select Properties. Navigate to VC++ Directories and add the full path to the libpng sourcetree into the Include Directories. Add the full path to libpng's projects\vstudio\Release Library (projects\vstudio\x64\Release Library) directory into the Library Directories field. Navigate to Linker -> Input and add libpng16.lib and zlib.lib into the Additional Dependencies field.
This will include libpng and zlib statically (meaning it's included into whatever you've built) into the ggxrd_replay_viewe.exe so you don't need to ship anything extra with the ggxrd_hitbox_overlay.dll to get PNG functionality working.
The ggxrd_replay_hook also needs these libraries, the 32-bit versions of them, so you need to do the same for it.

Other things that need building or downloading

1. Microsoft Detours - follow their official build instructions, I haven't encountered problems build them with Visual Studio.
2. Direct3D SDK - the Microsoft DirectX SDK (June 2010) (for DirectX 9) version will suffice. Does not need building.

GG btns.fla

This is a Flash 8 Professional file. It can probably be opened by Adobe Animate, Adobe Flash CS3/4/5/6. It contains the art for the buttons used in the dll and app portions of the mod. You don't need this file unless you want to edit the button visuals.

Missing features:

• Not auto-saving last let's say 100 matches that you play, so can only start recording manually. Can only record 1 match, you must press the button again to record another match.
• Doesn't save names of players participating in the match, haven't found that yet.
• Saves character types (Sol, Ky) into the file but doesn't use that anywhere yet
• Can't display hitboxes in the app, only in the game, but they're still being saved into the file
• Can't play the video while recording it or vice versa
• Can't automatically position yourself and the opponent in training mode just as you were in a given frame of the saved replay - you must position yourself and the dummy manually. Also summons - you need to generate those somehow yourself if they're important in the setup or include in your copied segment the section of the inputs that caused them as well.

Changelog

• 30'th December 2023 - fixed a crash when copying inputs that were selected up to down, instead of down to up. (released vesion 1.1)
• 30'th December 2023 - now fixed the incorrect behavior of missing the first input when copying a section of inputs that was selected up to down. (released vesion 1.2)
• 4'th January 2024 - fixed the issue of video display not working if you changed full screen mode in the game while the app is running.
• 4'th January 2024 - test release to see if Chrome marks the new version as virus.