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1 user currently in Rom Hacking:  hukka |
| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Rom Hacking - Starfox Level data found, and hidden new weapon. |
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VL-Tone Red Cheep-cheep Level: 23  Posts: 25/200 EXP: 64158 For next: 3565 Since: 06-06-04 From: In the Moon! Since last post: 5 days Last activity: 2 hours |
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I updated the Starfox object Decoder. Now it includes 75% of objects from the 2 SNES StarFox. Including most of the animated ones like the Andross animated face and morphing ships from SF2. Some little quirks here and there, still no colors, but I'm working on it. http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/StarFoxObjectDecoder.htm There are screenshots there but these were not updated. http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/SFXdecoderScreenshots.htm So aside from cracking the animation format for polygons, I found the location of Level data, and began to crack it. Here is the part of the data for the training level begining at $6F0F8 in StarFox v1.0 I hope this makes sense  (Edit: added monospaced font html tag)
The type $00 object uses one refering byte. For example the small white box uses the number $44. At $2848 in the ROM there is a sequence of 16-bits pointers. The $00 object byte will referer to one of these 16-bits adress.The $86 objects directly use 16-bits pointers instead of refering to a list. Take the refered 16-bits address from either the $00 or $86 objects, substract $8000 and add $2E15 to them to get the actual ROM position of the 28 bytes long string defining a couple of things about the object like palettes, relative scale and pointers to the polygon data. The $86 objects seems to have additional palette data that overides the one in the 28 bytes string. $74 objects also use one refering byte, but from another list (that I didn't find yet), mostly these are moving and interactive objects like enemies and bosses. They can be composed of more than one sub-object. The Z position of all object types is relative to where you are in the level when you reach this object. You can look at an early decoding of the training level here:  Yesterday while corrupting the level data, I found a new special weapon! It's activated when you reach the part of a level that contains it. It's object type $74 and object number $E0. For example it could be hacked in the level data as: 74 00 00 00 00 00 00 88 13 E0 The hidden weapon uses the same sprites as Nova bombs. A flashing bomb sprite circles your arwing, like it would be protecting it (like in SF64?), if any enemies goes in the line of sight of the arwing, your ship automatically begins to shoot multiple smart bombs that aim and destroy enemies. Note that these smart bombs also aim and shoot on your teamates    If you want to try it you can apply this IPS patch to version 1.0 of StarFox. http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/fox1newwp.ips Note that version 1.0 is the one with a bright red contour over the logo, while 1.2 has a brownish one, and the Japanese a blue contour. To see the new weapon, you have to go to either the Training level, or Corneria route 2. It should be activated at the begining of the level. I tried to find a cheat to activate the weapon permanently but failed, maybe someone else could give it a shot. So for now with this IPS patch, you have a limited amount of ammo, in Corneria you run out of it quickly. In the training level you may be able to see the weapon in action a longer time. Little side note, it seems that the namco Japan StarFox dev team stumbled on my site and I got many visits from them last week, I wonder what they think of it (edited by VL-Tone on 09-09-04 12:36 AM) |
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The Arkichef Red Tektite Level: 15 Posts: 45/75 EXP: 15823 For next: 561 Since: 03-19-04 Since last post: 192 days Last activity: 182 days |
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...Stunning work That weapon's very cool too! Although when I use it, It seems to hit my teammates more than my enemies lol. How do you know that the Namco team visited your site? |
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Gavin Fuzzy Rhinoceruses don't play games. They fucking charge your ass. Level: 43  Posts: 172/799 EXP: 551711 For next: 13335 Since: 03-15-04 From: IL, USA Since last post: 13 hours Last activity: 13 hours |
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extremely impressive. although i'm not sure which one is more mind-boggling, the apparent difficulty or the fact that it's all still created in flash  |
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dormento Shyguy Level: 17 Posts: 44/99 EXP: 24075 For next: 668 Since: 03-15-04 From: Esteio - Brasil Since last post: 182 days Last activity: 161 days |
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| Cool! How do you know that the Namco team visited your site? Maybe he checked the logs? Most server softwares keep logs of operation.In these logs you can check the origin of the requests and stuff. Cool to know that Namco visited you. Just keep an eye out if they release something like "Namco VOXELized collection 1.0"  (edited by dormento on 09-07-04 12:22 PM) |
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Xkeeper The required libraries have not been defined. Level: NAN  Posts: -3259/-863 EXP: NAN For next: 0 Since: 03-15-04 Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: -753366 sec. |
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| For the monospacing, use < <
For the how-can-you-tell thing, you just find the IP that visited it and run a DNS on it, it'll generally tell you some data (for example of a googlebot visited the page, a DNS on the googlebot would return something like spider#.google.com or wahtever, it's been a while) For everything else: Very nifty. Maybe I should find a Starfox ROM (I own the game, heh,, too bad you can't hack acutal cartriges  ) and play with this new weapon.How can you run out of ammo and/or how can you tell? o)O |
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VL-Tone Red Cheep-cheep Level: 23 Posts: 26/200 EXP: 64158 For next: 3565 Since: 06-06-04 From: In the Moon! Since last post: 5 days Last activity: 2 hours |
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| Hey thanks for the nice comments As for how I know namco visited me, yeah I could have checked logs if it was my server, but since is not I'm using a "tracker" which is like a counter but without having the numbers on my page. Since it's the free version I only get the IP and referer for the last 20 visitors... So I have to check often. My stats are actually public, you can see them at http://extremetracking.com/open?login=antoooo You'll see that I had two huge spikes in visitors in May and June and that since then the traffic dropped (I don't really advertise it). The June spike coincide with the release of Metroid Zero Mission in Japan, and I got many visits from Japan in that time and even since then Japanese make like 25% of my site's visitors. The IPs I had last week from from namco looked like that: gw**.yccext2.namco.co.jp Actually, last week I also was visited by just about every major Japanese game companies, Capcom, Konami, Midway, Sega, Nintendo of Japan... They all were refered from an article about my site in a blog at http://fumufumu.q-games.com . Now Q-games is a Japanese game company founded by Dylan Cuthbert... who is that guy? I'll let you find out by yourself. As for the difficulty of doing this in Flash, well yeah it would be next to impossible to do this in Flash. The only thing is that my demo is not in Flash. It's in Shockwave I know Flash files are .SWF files, but they are not Shockwave files. Shockwave files are .DCR Shockwave files are produced by an app called "Macromedia Director" which can be used for many other things than online games Shockwave is actually a run-time for Director project with security limitations (restricted access to local disks). Director/Shockwave has a nice extensive set of true 3d tools and it uses OpenGL or Direct X when possible or an included software renderer. Doing the same thing in Flash would have required drawing the polygons using vector shapes, calculate lighting and z-sort them manually, and it would have end up being slow and clumsy. Cool to know that Namco visited you. Just keep an eye out if they release something like "Namco VOXELized collection 1.0" Lol yeah we never know You know in 5-10 years classics will still be classics, maybe companies will look for a different way of presenting their games while keeping the original bitmap look. I thought about doing a voxel PacMan conversion but given the simplicity of the game, I would be better off using polygonal 3d, but that would be too "ordinary" for my tastes, it would end up looking like Pac-Mania. Anyway I'm looking foward to hack deeper into StarFox, and I'll keep you informed with that. Now if anyone wants to help me, I wouldn't mind, but it seems the rom hacker pros here have other games in their minds to hack Or maybe they don't like the fact that I'm using Shockwave to present most of my hacks... Or both Anyhow I'm doing this mainly for fun, learning many things in the process. |
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BMF98567 BLACK HAS BUILT A SILLY DICE-MAZE! GO! Current list of BURNING FURY >8( recipients: - Yiffy Kitten (x2) - Xkeeper Level: 53  Posts: 324/1261 EXP: 1094149 For next: 62970 Since: 03-15-04 From: Blobaria Special Move: Rising Meatloaf Backhand Combo Since last post: 21 hours Last activity: 1 hour |
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| Hey, uh...have you ever examined the code at the very beginning of the ROM? It appears to be a large portion of debugging code of some kind. I visually traced a large part of it, and it seems to load some colors and graphics, references a couple of memory addresses that are never initialized anywhere in the ROM, and finally puts itself into an endless loop. Viewing this part of the ROM in YY-CHR reveals an unused font in 2bpp GameBoy format, and there's some unused ASCII text as well: HOVER 1 TANK WALKER 1 REL AXIS 1 REL AXIS 2 DEMO GAME PAUSED REL AXIS 3 Judging from the strange Arwing transformation references (scrapped ideas later used in SF2?), I'm assuming this code is pretty much dead, a non-functional fragment of long-lost debugging routines. It makes me wonder if there's any other unused code hiding in the depths of the ROM, perhaps some that actually works... [EDIT] Some more text I forgot about: LOADING BAY EMPTY NULL MISSILE1 MISSILE2 TLASER HMISSILE TM GUN MACH GUN LASER TRILASER SHOT GUN Machine gun? Shot gun? Homing missile? Also, something of interest in the StarFox 2 "final" version, at $6BDA2: 00 0 0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 000 0 0 000 000 000 000 (edited by Neko54123 on 09-08-04 04:47 AM) (edited by Neko54123 on 09-08-04 04:49 AM) (edited by Neko54123 on 09-08-04 04:50 AM) |
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Kitten Yiffer Purple wand Furry moderator Vivent l'exp����¯�¿�½������©rience de signalisation d'amusement, ou bien ! Level: 135 Posts: 4821/11162 EXP: 28824106 For next: 510899 Since: 03-15-04 From: Sweden Since last post: 3 hours Last activity: 4 min. |
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Awesome, someone finally hacked  Seems like they planned a more advanced weapon system but changed into the simple one we all love. It's common that japanse game companies stumble over ROM hacking sites, FuSoYa got visits from Nintendo of Japan on his site once. |
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VL-Tone Red Cheep-cheep Level: 23 Posts: 27/200 EXP: 64158 For next: 3565 Since: 06-06-04 From: In the Moon! Since last post: 5 days Last activity: 2 hours |
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| Neko54123 I examined the source code a few times but never actually started from the begining, I was looking for specific values. And for some obscure reasons I don't use tracers (yet). I'll try too look for what you found. I think the graphics you found are the SFX chip textures as the rest of the bitmap graphics are compressed as far as I know. I noticed the Hover, Tank etc. long time ago. I thought the same as you but here is what I learned: These are from an early demo presented to Miyamoto, which was essentially a StarGlider II clone for the SNES. When Miyamoto saw the demo he said no (didn't like the free roaming), and the team went to produce a foward-going demo that became StarFox. Supposedly all the unused code was removed and there is nothing left. Still I found a couple of unused things in the game, this weapon, a parrot and a weird asteroid. Also, very cool easter egg you found there from Dylan in StarFox 2 Ailura, I know it's not that extraordinary, but still it's cool to see that they were refered by an article about my site in the blog of a company founded by the main programmer of StarFox 1 & 2. I saw that glitch hack and was a little sad to see that they claim this as the first hack of a 3d console game...oh well they are right Anyway like I often say I do this mainly for fun and to learn, not "to be the first". Edit: Forgot to address a question from Xkeeper How can you run out of ammo and/or how can you tell? The weapon simply shoots everything it can aim until it simply stops. It's all automatic and independent of the normal beam. It's hard to count how many projectiles are shot because many can be fired at the same time. I tried find a value in RAM that you could lock using a cheat so the weapon didn't stop but failed... I'm used to find these kinds of things in RAM , but for some reason I couldn't find any decreasing values associated with shooting these projectiles. Edits: Typos and bla bla. (edited by VL-Tone on 09-09-04 12:24 AM) (edited by VL-Tone on 09-09-04 12:41 AM) (edited by VL-Tone on 09-09-04 12:49 AM) |
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BMF98567 BLACK HAS BUILT A SILLY DICE-MAZE! GO! Current list of BURNING FURY >8( recipients: - Yiffy Kitten (x2) - Xkeeper Level: 53 Posts: 327/1261 EXP: 1094149 For next: 62970 Since: 03-15-04 From: Blobaria Special Move: Rising Meatloaf Backhand Combo Since last post: 21 hours Last activity: 1 hour |
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Originally posted by VL-ToneStarGlider...wow, I'd never heard of the game before. Good thing this site exists! That reminded me of something else I found, near the beginning of StarFox 2: STAR GLIDER 01 NOV 1991 Check out the date! That's two years after StarGlider II was released. What's it doing in SF2? Could SF2 contain even older code snippets than the original? [EDIT] From StarGlider II's description: "...such as one that requires you to capture a space whale to trade for a ship enhancement." Hmm...perhaps the inspiration for the hidden whale in Sector Y? (edited by Neko54123 on 09-09-04 04:29 AM) |
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VL-Tone Red Cheep-cheep Level: 23 Posts: 28/200 EXP: 64158 For next: 3565 Since: 06-06-04 From: In the Moon! Since last post: 5 days Last activity: 2 hours |
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From all the info I dugged up, I would suspect that the FX chip is actually something like a hardware version of the StarGlider 2 polygon engine. I didn't find any detailed docs about the FX chip though... X (or Xekkusu) is the first game Argonaut and Nintendo co-developed, with Dylan Cuthbert as a main programmer, Miyamoto as a director, and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka for sound effects and music, the guy responsible for the DK arcade and Metroid 1 sounds and music, GameBoy Camera etc. So X is a GameBoy game featuring wireframe graphics (like Star Glider 1) and that was released only in Japan. I wish someone could translate it since I get stuck after the third training level and those levels are so boring that the title screen demo is more interesting. In 1991, Argonaut and Nintendo officially revealed a partership. We could deduce that 01 NOV 1991 is the date they started to code what became StarFox, but they used the Starglider (2) source code at first, since they ported the game to many platforms before. That would make 2 years in the making of StarFox 1, which is a realist time frame. I tried to play the DOS version of SG 2 but didn't get far, something was wrong with the controls, I'll have to try back since I didn't try much. I did try the "Painting with Rolf" mode which is essentially the exact same thing as the continue screen in StarFox, where you can spin the objects and optionally "draw" with them. Unlike StarFox, you can view all the objects in the game, and you can see how much the StarFox team was inspired by StarGlider 2. You can find space fishes, whales and birds in both games.One of the alternate arwing ship in StarFox 2 is actually much like the Icarus, the StarGlider ship. It could be interesting to try to make sense of the data surrounding the STAR GLIDER 01 NOV 1991 Maybe it's really old code and/or data. I suspect they started with an older code base for StarFox 2 since maybe Starfox 1 didn't have any all-range mode code left. (edited by VL-Tone on 09-09-04 10:48 PM) |
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