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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Jun 4

I think you're right to be skeptical; it just seems ridiculous. But that's exactly why I appreciate the decomp projects; having reverse-engineered source code can settle a lot of questions. I figured I should post the code for the other two I mentioned just for transparency's sake:

Code from the OoT decomp project for the metal bars in Ganon's Castle. This code demonstrates that the developers put a check in the game to prevent the bars from opening under certain circumstances. Unlike the anti-piracy check with Zelda's hair, this one does *not* check the CIC chip.

Code from the OoT decomp project showing the anti-piracy check involved with fishing. Specifically, if the code detects that the game has been pirated, it sets sReelLock to a non-zero value, which will cause problems in another part of the code (specifically `Fishing_UpdateFish`)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Jun 4

I probably wouldn't believe it either without the code. But here's a picture from a more accurate emulator showing it too. From what I can tell, there are only three checks:
- the Zelda's hair one
- fish will always let go after 50 frames
- the bars in the Ganon's Castle escape sequence won't open

A picture of Zelda's hair scaled weirdly on the ares emulator, a modern and accurate N64 emulator. To produce this image, I modified the code so that the matrix scaling in my previous post would always occur.

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Jun 4

They deliberately and specifically blew up Zelda's hair (there are multiple different variations of Zelda in the code, and it only affects the one that shows up in this cutscene). They even had to remove it for the GameCube versions. You can see the code responsible in the OoT decompilation project:

Source code from the Ocarina of Time matching decompilation project. It shows a matrix involved with Zelda's hair being scaled differently if the anitpiracy check fails.

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Apr 2

It sounds like they're using some sort of software compatibility layer? www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/...

Specifically, "the process of converting game data for Switch to run on Switch 2 is performed on a real-time basis as the data is read in." Wouldn't surprise me if there are bugs as a result

Ask the Developer Vol. 16: Nintendo Switch 2 — Part 4 - News - Nintendo Official Site

This article has been translated from the original Japanese content. This interview was conducted before the system was released. In this 16th volume of Ask the Developer, an interview series in which...

www.nintendo.com

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Dec 11

Happy to announce the Majora's Mask decompilation project reached 100% completion for the US N64 version! Still tons of work to be done (other versions, more documentation, fixing fake matches, etc.), but an incredibly satisfying end to years of work. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this!

A chart showing Majora's Mask decompilation percentage over time. As of December 10th, every single metric is at 100% for the US N64 version

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Reposted

aja @ajarmar.bsky.social · Nov 23

We just released v4.6.1 of Universal Pokemon Randomizer ZX (surprise!)

It's a pretty small changelog, but importantly "Fix Music" for static Pokemon works in BW2 again, among a few other changes.

github.com/Ajarmar/univ...

Release Universal Pokemon Randomizer ZX v4.6.1 · Ajarmar/universal-pokemon-randomizer-zx

Click here to read the changelog for v4.6.1. Download the randomizer below by clicking on PokeRandoZX-v4_6_1.zip. After downloading, extract the contents of the zip file to a folder on your compute...

github.com

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

In this video, I set the blue dog's position to be the same as before, but I also update their "race status" variable to act as if they've passed the appropriate points. This allows me to cheat egregiously but still win. (4/4): www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSZY...

1511249640909602820 jQMW QGi7iS wp0m

YouTube video by darkeye14

www.youtube.com

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

To be more specific, a dog must pass through points 9 and 11 (in that order) to finish the race. These numbers are a bit strange, because the racetrack has a total of 45 points! (3/4)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

This is because the racetrack is effectively just a bunch of points that the dogs run along, and there's a system in place to make sure that only dogs that have crossed specific points are allowed to finish the race. (2/4)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

The dog race in Majora's Mask has a very rudimentary form of anti-cheat. In this video, I edit the blue dog's position to be inside the goal shortly after the race begins, but I still lose (1/4): www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX2o...

1511249593073238017 Lj4osIJTrXuhzUWH

YouTube video by darkeye14

www.youtube.com

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

As a result, if an Eeno is in the middle of submerging when it's time to combine, it will have a target scale of 15, which is 1500x larger than intended. If it absorbs other Eenos, it will grow into a Mega Eeno (6/6)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

When the Eenos start combining, the game usually sets this variable to 0.01, which is their normal scale. But, bizarrely, they specifically go out of their way *not* to do this when an Eeno is in the middle of submerging underground when they all start combining (5/6)

An image of decompiled source code for Majora's Mask. It shows strange behavior described in the post as it exists in the code.

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

You probably noticed that before they started combining, the target scale was 6 and 15. This is because the two variables I've talked about are actually *the same variable*. They reused the same float to hold both the animation frame numbers and the target scale (4/6)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

The Eeno also has a variable that keeps track of its "target scale" when the split-up Eenos all combine into one. The Eenos that get absorbed have a target scale of 0 (which makes them shrink and disappear), while the large Eeno has a target scale of 2x the normal scale (3/6)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

The Eeno has a variable that tracks which frame in its animation it should do something with its snowball. This video shows that on frame 6 of its snowball making animation, the snowball appears in its hand, and on frame 15 of the throwing animation, the snowball leaves its hand (2/6)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

You may have seen this video from indextic showing off the Mega Eeno glitch, but why does it happen? I did some research and I think I know what's going on (1/6): www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI__...

THE MEGA EENO

YouTube video by Indextic

www.youtube.com

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

This is either a classic off-by-one oversight, or it's intentional on the developer's part to introduce even more variance into the race. It's impossible to say without asking a developer, though the same behavior *is* present in MM3D. (9/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

The end result of this is that there are two "lying dogs". One dog says it's in good condition, but is actually in normal condition. Another dog says it's in normal condition, but is actually in bad condition. (8/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

I made a mod that makes it so dogs that are actually in bad condition are magenta. As you can see, I picked up a dog that indicates it's in normal condition (since the text starts with "Rrr-Ruff!"), but when the race starts, you can clearly see it's in bad condition. (7/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

In particular, it adds the "condition value" to 0x3539. This is off-by-one compared to EnDg! The same ranges shown in my third tweet still apply to EnRacedog, so a dog that *says* it's in normal condition when you pick it up can *actually* be in bad condition when racing. (6/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

However, there are actually two separate dog actors. When you're picking your dog, you're interacting with EnDg. When the dog race is going, you're watching EnRacedog run around. And EnRacedog has its own way of determining a dog's condition. (5/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

To make the race more variable, the condition of the dogs is decided randomly when you load into the racetrack. To determine what text to show when you pick them up, they add this "condition value" to 0x3538 (the first text ID used for racing dogs). (4/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

As you can see, text IDs 0x3538 to 0x353D indicate good condition, text IDs 0x353E to 0x3541 indicate normal condition, and text IDs 0x3542 to 0x3546 indicate bad condition. They're just three simple contiguous blocks of text. (3/9)

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

The dogs can either be in good, normal, or bad condition. They indicate this in their text; the text that starts with "Ruff!" indicates good condition, the text that starts with "Rrr-Ruff!" indicates normal condition, etc. (2/9)

A screenshot of a text dump of Majora's Mask, showcasing the various dog messages

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darkeye.bsky.social @darkeye.bsky.social · Nov 23

Found some very strange behavior regarding the dogs in the Doggy Racetrack in MM that's either an oversight or some bizarre intended behavior. (1/9)

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