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Zelda Hacking and Hardware compatibility


HeavyZ
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I've always been the type of person who wouldn't play a console game/mod on PC unless it were to kill me. I love having an ED64 (N64 flash cart).

I love playing mods like Goldeneye X, as if Rare were still alive and were doing something like releasing a game the fans were asking for.

As if video games were actually still being made for the N64. Sadly the only modding community that really cares about hardware compatibilty is the Goldeneye/ Perfect Dark one.

 

The problem is that the only programmersI ever knew to actually care about hardware compatibility was Death Basket, and he doesn't even program let alone hack anymore...... Well actually Airikita  is a programmer herself and has been struggling getting her mod to work on hardware to the point that it's making her just wanna take break, after break, after break from modding it.

 

I mean yeah if I couldn't afford an N64 flash cart (Like I wasn't able too before) I would play games and mods on emulator (like I did). Though honestly It's not the same feeling as playing on hardware. You can argue that it is the game itself that provides all of the feels, but it's not like everyone enjoys playing on PC when they have the alternative.

 

Imagine people playing your mod, your little peice of hard work and devotion on the TV on the Nintendo 64 like it's still the mid/late 1990's the era that gave you the inspiration to mod and program. Imagine people are able to play those mods on the console they've stayed true too because you made the program to help make it possible.

 

I'm reaching out to you guys, make it happen, it would be worth every bit of nail bitting frustration if that's what it took to make things like new maps work on hardware, or custom animations. We can't let those feels die because we get tired of modding, or programing, we gotta fight through it. You could let people experience mods the same way you had the very first time you played OoT/MM. The whole idea is something to really consider if you really want the most people possible to enjoy these mods.

 

Save up, buy a cart, or hell ask me to test, think I'm trying to test for a little glory? Ask someone else with a cart I just wish people cared more about it.

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I'll admit I never really used to care, but that's because in the beginning I was naïve and assumed anything on emulator worked on a console too. That and I just assumed 99% of people only played on emulator because it's more convenient (ex. I don't have a USA N64 or flash cart so I can't really play NTSC games on a console anyway, and I never played games for any extended period of time). However, once I started noticing things that behave differently on different emulators it became a bit of a pain in the ass not knowing which emulator was giving you the correct behaviour or if any of them were at all. Also, since we are making N64 games, they should surely work on an N64...

I don't know, it just got to the point where I didn't really want to continue knowing that I don't have a way to ensure what I'm doing even works on the original hardware. It's a bummer. :/

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You can force NTSC to PAL video and vice versa with the ED64, although I've noticed that forcing PAL to NTSC doesn't work on my cart there are programs that you can use to actually change the video I used it to change the N64 40 Winks from Pal to NTSC. I couldn't tell you what program I used now it's been a long time since.

All of your tools worked for N64 hardware too DeathBasket. The main things that didn't work were custom maps/models, and we just got our first N64 compatible custom map last night. All of Jason777's, SoD's and JSA's programs kept the roms hardware comptible too. Nearly all of xdans programs kept roms hardware compatible, the only things that didn't were sharp ocarina and some converter, but since we've been working on hardware compatibility that won't be a problem any longer.

 

The only ones that might not work now are Flotonics Hylian Toolbox, and Cloudmax's OoT/MM menu editor, although I cannot say becuase I have not tested any roms that were edited by those two programs.

 

Mainly we just have custom enemy's/animations in question now.

 

Off topic:

I was hoping I would see you on soon anyways, I was going to ask if I could get all the notes, and info I could on the InstEd, and possibly an open source version of the program?

I have a friend or two who just might look into that little problem it was giving me, and they just might fix it.

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Probably not, he seems pretty busy with all of his other projects like Izou, and some other stuff from what he's told me he's got his hands full for the time being.

@Cloudmax, if you see this then if you would send a few patches so I could test to see if your Menu Editor works for hardware I will totally do it. I'm a little busy to actually use the program myself then test, but just patching a few roms and testing them wouldn't be time consuming at all

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Mainly we just have custom enemy's/animations in question now.

 

Off topic:

I was hoping I would see you on soon anyways, I was going to ask if I could get all the notes, and info I could on the InstEd, and possibly an open source version of the program?

I have a friend or two who just might look into that little problem it was giving me, and they just might fix it.

 

Regarding any kind of custom actor development: did anyone ever find out if there was a version of the mips-gcc compiler that didn't mess up the relocations data? This made it really difficult to properly produce custom actors. Also, does anyone know anything about why using custom actors often triggers the so-called "Hyrule Field glitch" (prevents actors from being spawned)?

I also noticed that some things I wrote in assembly code worked differently between PJ64, Nemu, Wii VC and N64 and I don't know why (I'm not really a programmer and don't know much about programmy stuff). This is probably why my boss rush thing only partly works on console. Just a thing to consider for anyone still working with assembly code.

 

I don't know if I can do much about InstEd. Anything about what it can do should have come with the program or be somewhere on my site I guess. I'm not great at keeping notes about stuff. If I can find the source maybe I could post it but that wouldn't be for a while right now. Sorry about that.

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It's cool man. After seeing one of Tommy!'s post I think I can manually fix the problem in hex for now, though I haven't yet tried it. If you find the source eventually it would be very helpful, I was thinking about seeing if Flotonic (once he's not busy) or Airikita (if she's really interested) would look into it if I got something for them to work with

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