Kargaroc

Holy crap something NEW to get hyped about in OoT hacking! Exciting! It's kinda just been stagnating since that one thing happened. I actually like how it isn't based off of any Zelda 64 beta stuff, or whatnot. I suspect there'll be stuff inspired by it but it seems original.

Of course all the file formats are completely different. >.< I don't have a tool that can extract SARC files currently either.

I really hope Epona's not the only method of getting around :/

I've been saying this for years but no one would ever take me seriously! Either way, this is really impressive! Obviously needs polishing but considering you got this far this fast is stunning!

LordNed of the TCRF IRC got the .exe hidden in the Pikmin files working. I followed their instructions and took a picture. I've never seen it dip below 60fps. I don't know much else other than it's very buggy and has loads of debug options. Also really hard to control, with a really backwards control scheme. I'd keep an eye on http://tcrf.net/Pikmin though as of right now it's not been updated yet.

How did you even manage to extract the files from the ROM?

ROM hacking and game development in general are very similar and share lots of things, like the effort required to make content. What happened in the mid 1990s for game devs is happening now for ROM hackers. I could make an entire post about this, but it's half out of the scope for this thread.

Or what about the tons of embedded youtube videos on TCRF? My first thought would be moving them to someplace like Archive.org.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16672629/ootroomwtf.png okay... I found this while browsing the maps in the Debug ROM. Considering how much scrutiny this game has gotten I simply refuse to believe that this hadn't been found before, and therefore must be a bug in SceneNavi, hence why I'm posting this here. I don't know how this could've happened though.

All those speedruns... they'll never be the same after hearing that chicken sound...

Maybe it'll be the Triforce! *shot* I bet it's part of the level geometry I have to say wow! I know in the actual game this kind of stuff was simulated by just having one big texture for the contents of the entire shelf It does look like a quite small room though, so that's good

This is really impressive!

I don't think we have to go that far. I think that we shouldn't have minibosses after every floor. Having a miniboss room every floor lessens the amount of rooms we can use for puzzles. Also, it imposes a segregated design because each segment would be kinda like a minidungeon, with it's own boss. Also, is a segmented design even the best way to go? The last dungeon wasn't like that in ALTTP... Also, I wrote a small roadmap, showing what needs to get done, design wise. " Decide on basic dungeon asthetics. The graphical style (Zelda 64/Mario 64) is already known.Finalize basic layout for dungeon. How will the player be able to move around the dungeon?Design basic/rough layout of the individual floorsDesign puzzles based on the basic layoutTweak the layout based on the puzzlesFinalize individial layoutsDesign layout for enemies and non-puzzle actors. Abruptly stop when about 65% done.Implement the dungeon with instructions from my Alpha Dungeon Design document "

http://zeldawiki.org/Spectacle_Island

The 7 floor layout, with 6 of them being their own elements, and the warp points being at the ends of each segment would probably result in a very linear dungeon. I don't know about that... Also, there's a 32 map limit I believe. That would impose a 4 room limit to each segment, and with each one needing an entrance and "miniboss" room that brings it down to 2 per segment. The segments would have to be more closely interlinked somehow. Maybe the portals between floors shouldn't be the only method of moving around the dungeon?

I can see that. Though I don't think I mentioned how much actors would be switched around, I just said that some of them would be. Maybe we could limit the amount of actors being switched? Cause, to be honest, I really want to play a new epic dungeon as well. And the chest-opening-a-door thing I mentioned was just a thought, I didn't expect it to go anywhere.

Exactly! Though, I don't know if a key would be changed into a bow, and it wouldn't be a constant stream because chests are only opened once. Maybe, if you open a chest (Maybe a switch turned into a chest?) You get whatever is inside the chest and it does what activating the switch would've originally done?

Okay, I've finished almost all of my Alpha Dungeon Design document. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten about something, if you could tell me that would be great Designing an Alpha Dungeon (revision 0) I know, the writing really declines later on, I admit I had to push myself to finish this, and plus, the final third of this deals with a phenomenon that is relatively easy to emulate (problems caused by the dungoen being abandoned for so long). Making a dungeon is hard, making a dungeon that fits in with alpha screenshots is really hard, but breaking the dungeon to "account" for technical differences between the alpha and final is relatively easy. Despite this, I'm pretty sure I go over all the main issues.

Okay, so why am I posting this? I'm in the middle of writing my Alpha Dungeon Design document, and this is one of the sections of that. It's not done yet, but early on I talk about the graphical style of the old Zelda 64 screenshots, which also shares lots of elements with Mario 64 due to lots of factors. I've actually already completed the section about this, and since I don't know when I'll complete the document, I've decided to post that part here, for reference. Update: The first version of the final document is here! --- First, go play Mario 64 a bit, preferably with cheats. Study the way the game's graphics look meticulusly. -Why Mario 64?My hypothesis for this is that in the early days of Ocarina of Time's development, since there wasn't a concrete art style chosen, the modellers were free to do things the way they were used to at the time, which was Mario 64. Also, the early engines were heavily based on Mario 64. -About the Mario 64/Zelda 64 style:Most objects are made of few polygons, and as such have a peculiar "chunky" look to them. Straight lines and geometric shapes abound in this style.There isn't much textures - Objects usually only have one or two textures for them. The textures themselves are blurry and simple looking, lacking much detail and usually being different shades of the same color.The colors there are however is quite vibrant, and not much objects lack some sort of color. -Differences between Mario 64 and Zelda 64 graphics:One difference between Zelda 64 and Mario 64 is that lots of objects in Mario 64 are simply sprites that always face the player.In Zelda 64, that is not the case. Most larger objects are modeled out, though they may have semi-transparent textures applied to fake more detailed objects, for instance the Alpha Stalfos.This is most relevant to actor modeling, though there are some exceptions, for instance the torches on the wall in early versions of Ganon's Castle use the same principle.Smaller objects may use the sprites that follow the player principle though, as there's no point to using models for small objects that can barely be seen at 320x240.Another difference is that in Mario 64, most polygons lack any kind of shading, and as such look faceted. Gouraud shading could be applied on occasion but this was not very common. In Zelda 64 however, most objects that weren't geometric shapes had shading applied. ---

All the action is in the Modifications section nowadays. This section, until there's another official project, is more or less an archive.

Never remove the arrows for the room transitions. It's just about as good as you can get from a visualization stand point; the room transition should be a separate arrow from the actor arrows. It makes it less confusing that way. You can be sure you're modifying a room transition just by glancing at the window.

I don't know how doable that would be. Though if it is, I would expect to see something similar to cartridge tilting.

Okay, so me and Spire banged out a final boss room (complete with non-existent boss!), as well as a few major decisions regarding the time the dungeon was supposedly started development, the time it was abandoned/cut, and the basic design of the dungeon. Here's what we know: The Triforce was originally planned to be obtainable, and there's a marker on the quest status for it (between the medallions), but selecting it crashes the game as later on it was changed to the game ending with Link getting the Triforce, thus making the quest status icon a relic of older coding. But, since no ending was programmed, when Link gets the Triforce, only empty text boxes pop up, and then control is handed back to the player. The dungeon started development during the early A+B development period (with no Navi). The dungeon was cut/abandoned about a month after the A+B+C control scheme was introduced, as it was based around the old story which was on it's way out at the time, and the Mario 64-esque graphical style of the dungeon was severly outdated as they had decided on an art style by then. As the old story lacks Child Link, none of the puzzles will involve Child Link, and any Child Link -only items are banned from being used. The dungeon will not be split into separate mini-dungeons, but rather have varied elements based on the (alpha) dungeons to signify the differences. The dungeon will include puzzles based around the medallions. The puzzles involving the Fire, Ice, and Wind medallions will be doable but there will be other puzzles based around the removed spells; they will be impossible to complete. Same with the Fire, Ice, and Light arrows, since they also used the medallions to power up in earlier versions of the game. Okay, here's the fun part: The boss room is shaped like a diamond, with a hexagonal platform in the center with smaller platforms beside it. This is the final boss arena. It's supposed to be an early version of the Chamber of Sages. When you enter, you get to the platform (somehow), the actor for the ring of fire in the Ganon battle appears, and there's an invisible target in the center as a placeholder for the boss. Strike it once, and the fire goes away. Then, you enter the Triforce chamber, which we haven't designed yet (though I would imagine it would be an evolved, polished form of the original Triforce chamber in some of the earliest Zelda 64 screens). You get the Triforce in which is supposed to be the ending, but since no ending exists, some placeholder textboxes pop up (empty of course), and then control is handed to the player again. At this point, the player is trapped in, and the only way out is to use the warp songs, which the game didn't count on you being able to do at this point in development. All the NPCs act normally, since they're not aware of the Triforce being in your inventory. Note: if the invisible actor can't be done, then just entering the room and the door to the Triforce already being opened could work as an alternative.

I was pretty much about to say this. My first thought is, can we modify the status screen to include a Triforce graphic that crashes (or maybe displays garbage where the text should be) when selected? It seems to me that menu screen hacking has been one of the neglected areas of OoT hacking, though I could be wrong. On another note, have we progressed in any way when it comes to dungeon layout? Or anything to do at all with the dungeon itself? Like puzzles? I like the idea with the diamond shaped dungeon and the seven floors. What will the individual floors look like? I had an idea, building on that it would mostly retain the general style of the Light Temple, but would contain puzzles ranging from their respective dungeons. That way, it would be similar to Ganon's castle, but wouldn't be boring as the dungeon would still have it's own style. We would get something new out of that. Also, we get to speculate what kind of puzzles the dungeons would of had at that point in development (Everything up until right after the A+B+C controls was originally introduced?). At the same time, I really, REALLY don't like the segregation of the puzzle themes that going a Ganon's Castle-esque route would do. I would really like to see this dungeon try and take full advantage of the Player's capabilities, at least in theory. Edit: Okay, I've decided to write a txt file about alpha dungeon design. I'll post it when I'm done.

Yep. It'll seem too good to be true.