Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: Weird Discoveries

Rick
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Posted on 09-10-12 01:06:00 PM

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Well hey, I didn't know how well-known it was here. *Shrug*

Still lookin' around for some juicy tidbits, they just haven't been presenting themselves lately. Maybe I could just do some revision differences on MK1 and MK2. Seems like a good idea... *Ponder*

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nensondubois
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Posted on 09-10-12 10:07:45 PM

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I have been digging through yet another Probe developed game, this time we're going to settle on Stargate for some reason on none. Quite a few things are unused; first is probably the most puzzling item... the seemingly broken sound test. I'll probably need to set a few call functions.

(original post from 12-22-2011: http://board.gscentral.org/retro-hacking/52815.htm#post179061)

Appearing broken is a simple sound test.

An unused Acclaim logo. US and European releases are the same version.. at least the current dump suggests. Couldn't find any references to the logo.

Obviously unused.

Maybe unused. I recall seeing a second part to the credits but I can't remember how I accessed it since I forgot where I initially left off.

I also found several cutscenes though I'm not sure whether any are used or not. I also have the original .CHT file if anyone wants.

Teflon
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Posted on 09-11-12 04:45:37 AM

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Decided to take a deeper look into the Doom 3 prototype out there, and I found some interesting stuff:

*The protoype has no hints of a flashlight, but there is a working flare weapon. It uses a placeholder grenade model. When you toss it, it emits a green light and never goes away. My guess is that you'd use flares to light up areas instead of the flashlight at one point.

*The Soul Cube was already in the game at this point, but it has no model in the prototype and it does nothing when fired.

*There's a lot of hidden weapons in the game's files. All of the are extremely work in progress, such as how the Rocket Launcher, Plasma Gun and BFG use their Quake 3 Arena models.

*The monster.def files contain some interesting info about bosses. Apparently, there were supposed to be two women scientists and a cult leader as bosses at one point. What's interesting is that their entries are after the Cyberdemon, which suggests they'd be fought after killing the Cybie. There's also a listing for a spider boss, but I'm not sure if that's for something like the Spider Mastermind or a prototype version of the Vagary that's in the final version.

*The Baron of Hell and Bruiser are listed as separate enemies. The Brusier is iD's internal name for the Baron of Hell, but it seems they wanted to make them two separate enemies at one point. Then, they scrapped them entirely.

I have an old, half-baked Doom 3 prototype article laying on my PC that hasn't been worked on for almost a year. I should get it fixed up and posted here one day.

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Celice
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Posted on 09-11-12 03:03:46 PM (last edited by Xkeeper at 09-12-12 02:30:01 AM)

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I made some progress in accessing some secret (and bizarre) content by switching some offset bytes. Now I need to reverse-engineer the code some more to figure out where in the game the code is accessed.

Btw, this is like a secret programmer's message that I think he did for his daughter because Ohkubo is the main programmer.

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,13779.msg219675.html#msg219675

I forget what the name is, but I think it's that Chess-RPG-thingy on the NES.

D:

Foxhack
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Posted on 09-11-12 04:32:40 PM (last edited by Foxhack at 09-11-12 05:08:50 PM)

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That's Triumph / Castle Quest! I attempted to hack the game some years ago, it's a really fun chess / RPG hybrid. Only the Game Boy version was released in English.

So I grabbed The Punisher for XBox (after unraring a two part rar inside a 50 part rar inside a seven part rar) and it has the same placeholder videos I found in the PS2 version, with some added stuff. There's a few other files in there in XMV format, and I have no idea how to open or convert them.

Luckily the audio resource files are all in a packed WAV format! So they should be easy to compare against the PC version.

Edit: WHOA. There's a file called "slaughter_complete_1.xmv" in there. I managed to get VideoLAN to load a bit of the video before it crashed and it appears to be some sort of a demonstration video for slaughter mode... as far as I know, this is not used. I need to find a way to convert this back to a viewable format...

Edit: Oh boy! FFMPEG can convert these into other formats! There's a bunch of unused stuff in here:

attractMode - a trailer with early footage, basically an early cut of the attract mode video.
AI_current - a showcase of the AI's attack patterns.
Flashback_final - Three early flashback sequences with different artwork. The final uses comic book panels, this one uses actual pictures. It also uses a different voice actor.
quick_Kill01 - Early quick kills, also has different UI messages
slaughter_complete_1 - Three different stages of Slaughter mode. All different from the final version.

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nensondubois
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Posted on 09-12-12 02:22:42 AM

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Originally posted by divingkataetheweirdo
The Genesis version of Stargate has some text relating to a method unlocking a sound test (it's near the end of the cutscene text), but it doesn't seem to work.

I was unable to find any text referring to a Sound Test in the Sega Genesis version of Stargate, however, I found this amusing text. "OI! THAT'S MY POT!... IT WAS!. ROB HYLANDS SAY'S IF YOU. WANT TO CHEAT PUT 19 & 04. ON THE OPTIONS SCREEN,. BEFORE PLAYING THE GAME. THEN WHILST YOUR PLAYING. ENTER THE MISSION SCREEN. THEN HOLD DOWN A & C AND. PRESS START TO EXIT SCREEN. THIS WILL TOGGLE. ININCIBILITY MODE....THANKS!"

Celice
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Posted on 09-12-12 09:31:08 PM

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Originally posted by Foxhack
That's Triumph / Castle Quest! I attempted to hack the game some years ago, it's a really fun chess / RPG hybrid. Only the Game Boy version was released in English.

I liked the game too

Glad to hear you tried playing around with it a bit. The games remind me a bit of Sugoro Quest on the Famicom, another nifty RPG spin-off title.

Cool find on the early video files. I love seeing all the early footage of games--maybe if you get them ripped, let the folks over at Unseen64 know, so they can make a page with the new-found stuff

Foxhack
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Posted on 09-12-12 10:10:12 PM (last edited by Foxhack at 09-12-12 10:11:20 PM)

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Originally posted by Celice
Originally posted by Foxhack
That's Triumph / Castle Quest! I attempted to hack the game some years ago, it's a really fun chess / RPG hybrid. Only the Game Boy version was released in English.

I liked the game too Glad to hear you tried playing around with it a bit. The games remind me a bit of Sugoro Quest on the Famicom, another nifty RPG spin-off title.

Cool find on the early video files. I love seeing all the early footage of games--maybe if you get them ripped, let the folks over at Unseen64 know, so they can make a page with the new-found stuff

I've already uploaded them to my Youtube account. I'll have a writeup as soon as I get confirmation about something in the game - I don't own an Xbox so I can't test this myself.

I also need to go through the Xbox and PS2 sound files to make sure the test voices are in all versions.

I'll try to contact the site and see what they think. After I publish the stuff on the wiki, of course. ;p

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rabidabid
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Posted on 09-13-12 07:43:10 PM

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I translated the Morse code in the intro to the NES version of 1943 a little while ago. Video. (The same message plays twice.)

It basically goes like this:

-.-. --.- -.. . -.-. .- .--. -.-. --- -- -.. -. ... -.-
CQ DE CAPCOM DN SK
Calling any station. This is CAPCOM. Down and out.

Just thought it was kinda neat. Dunno if it's really page-worthy though.

Aeonic Butterfly
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Posted on 09-14-12 02:50:16 AM

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Originally posted by rabidabid
I translated the Morse code in the intro to the NES version of 1943 a little while ago. Video. (The same message plays twice.)

It basically goes like this:

-.-. --.- -.. . -.-. .- .--. -.-. --- -- -.. -. ... -.-
CQ DE CAPCOM DN SK
Calling any station. This is CAPCOM. Down and out.

Just thought it was kinda neat. Dunno if it's really page-worthy though.

If its unusual and/or hidden, then its able to be put on the Wiki. That is REALLY neat.

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nensondubois
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Posted on 09-14-12 05:04:46 PM

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I'm throwing up the Sutte Hakken article soon though I want to be sure on two things. 1: Drag discovered the Instrument Test and I want to be sure that I'm correct. I only redumped the SPC because of the first note had sound remnants of another song.

2: The game was released on both the BS-X on separate occasions and also as a NP download and in actual retail cart form. I'm not sure on the exact dates on any of the releases/what console to list the game under/and gamefaqs can be horrendously incorrect.

Also, I recently found a load of Super Game Boy BIOS content that I want to fully examine before I add.

Aeonic Butterfly
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Posted on 09-14-12 10:52:09 PM

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Originally posted by rabidabid
Those were actually hidden. And I made those pages.

But I guess it can count as a hidden message if it has to be decoded.

Wonder if there are any games out there with HFFax or SSTV now. >>;

Would be neat. I'm a hobbyist SWL (shortwave.)

I'd consider it Wiki worthy if its in a language that is encoded / in a language not native to the audience they are pushing it for (like Zulu in an American game.)

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Peardian

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Posted on 09-19-12 03:53:01 PM (last edited by Peardian at 09-19-12 06:14:51 PM)

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So, the article on YIDS got me curious, and I looked inside Artoon's previous game: Yoshi Topsy-Turvy. And guess what I found. Text for some kind of debug mode!

Label at 0x4086CC:
Player Param

Starting at 0x04088B8:
tire bound min
tire bound max
run speed max
fall limit(float)
fall limit
break
run start_speed
run acc
walk start_speed
walk acc
jump ctrl lr2
jump ctrl lr
jump limit lr(float)
jump limit lr
fall ctrl
fall acc
Jump ini speed

And a little further down, at 0x4089D4:

Motion Sensor
Super Move
Invincible

Note: It's located after some code that seems to be defining a font, possibly to use with said debug mode. Edit: Actually, there's a large number of font/text defining sections. Some almost seem redundant. Why so many? Edit: They might actually be tileset intializer things.

Edit: Found more above it!

At 0x4077B4:
Path

Path Edit Print
Path Edit

Edit: I just found... super inefficient level layouts? They have a 2-byte header that gives the dimensions and then un-optimized data using ASCII letters to define tiles. ~~Judging by how incredibly simple these are, they're likely test maps of some kind. (I've mapped the whole game, I know the levels.)~~

At 0x3DBEEE: 80x48 room with a slope that has a notch in it, very much like 4-2 room 4
At 0x3DE896: 102x42 room with a series of slopes, looks a whole lot like 1-3 room 2
At 0x3E0F90: 98x44 room, looks like early version of ski slope challenge
At 0x3E2B73: 64x20 room with a single dip on the right-hand side and a steep slope on the left, very much like 3-7 room 4
At 0x3E36C6: 20x48 room with a single giant cliff on the left side, similar to 6-2 room 4 but smaller/mirrored (!)
At 0x3E3F82: 32x16 room with square-wave-y low ceiling, much like 6-7 room 4

...rather than continue to list them all as I find them, let me look more.

Edit: ...please don't tell me this is how Artoon stored the collision for all the levels in the game.

Fun fact: 0x321358 is where they put the animation sequence for some kind of expanding box... as a series of 0x1E0 byte chunks.

Edit: Finally! Something else interesting!

At 0x29FB14:
Coin
Print
Flag Num
Set
DYNAMIC_RED
DYNAMIC RED NORMAL

At 0x268DAC:
Free Fall
Goal Disable

Someone with actual hacking knowledge want to help out?

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-Peardian-

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." -Mark Twain
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