Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: Star Fox Adventures E3 2002 prototype (5/17/02)

KCat
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Posted on 02-17-14 02:09:09 AM

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Thorntail Hollow, the early years.
This was really difficult to get shots of because of the lack of proper textures. The trees would normally have see-through leaf textures, but since I still don't have correct texturing, they just get the flat default texture.

But this is what I managed to pieces together, and I figured you guys may be interested.

Image 1 - The little warpstone (swapstone?) island, where he would be sitting on the entrance to a cave.
Image 2 - Looking out across the field, with the river bend there on the left.
Image 3 - The chamber where the Queen Earthwalker is in the final game, although here it just looks like a path leading to another map.
Image 4 - Looking out over the field from where the well is in the final game. Interestingly, here the well is a hollowed out tree stump, with no apparent way in.
Image 5 - Looking behind the waterfall near the swap/warpstone.
Image 6 - Behind the waterfall, where the egg-napping minigame is.
Image 7 - Another shot across the field, from the top of the waterfall behind the swap/warpstone. You can just make out some kind of platform in the back, where the Arwing would land in the final game, which interestingly has spotlights on it.
Image 8 - A shot of the tree stump from ground level.

Further things of note, the shop entrance isn't at the base of the mountain like in the final game. If I'm remembering the left-over dialog right, the shop was originally under the swapstone, so that's the entrance to it in the first image. The path to Moon Mountain Pass is a straight corridor-esque path lined with trees. The only other apparent exit is on ground-level to the left of the tree stump.

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Posted on 02-24-14 06:58:29 PM

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I have been posting new info: http://hugo-peters.tumblr.com/

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Posted on 02-25-14 07:42:00 AM (last edited by Greipur at 02-25-14 11:21:55 AM)

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I've been skimming through this thread and it's fascinating stuff to be sure. However, wouldn't it be fruitful to go back even further if it's possible? This demo (or prototype) came late in development as far as I can see, if Star Fox Adventures got released in September 2002. I mean, if one could find a build a year earlier or so there might be even more good stuff left. I realise that this is all pretty much a pie in the sky recommendation, haha. One should work with what you have in front of you. Let's hope some earlier build finds it way out there.

I'm thinking that it might be fruitful to get a hold of a copy from 2001 (when they still had Dinosaur Planet as part of the name). If you look at the screen shots here it looks almost like the same low-res engine as in DP. Seems to me that it would make sense to throw out as little as possible at that point. And as we all probably know DP was aimed at a 64 MB cartridge while the Gamecube disc had 1500 MB, so if they had a standalone version from 2001-ish (aimed at expos and whatnot) I'd imagine that the programmers would reason that it would be of little importance to cut corners so early. At that time they probably didn't have much material to fill out with yet.

Anyway, good work everyone. Still gives me hope to be able to try out something interactive one day. It might not be a full game, but something.

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Posted on 02-25-14 01:10:19 PM

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Originally posted by Greipur
I've been skimming through this thread and it's fascinating stuff to be sure. However, wouldn't it be fruitful to go back even further if it's possible? This demo (or prototype) came late in development as far as I can see, if Star Fox Adventures got released in September 2002. I mean, if one could find a build a year earlier or so there might be even more good stuff left. I realise that this is all pretty much a pie in the sky recommendation, haha. One should work with what you have in front of you. Let's hope some earlier build finds it way out there.

I'm thinking that it might be fruitful to get a hold of a copy from 2001 (when they still had Dinosaur Planet as part of the name). If you look at the screen shots here it looks almost like the same low-res engine as in DP. Seems to me that it would make sense to throw out as little as possible at that point. And as we all probably know DP was aimed at a 64 MB cartridge while the Gamecube disc had 1500 MB, so if they had a standalone version from 2001-ish (aimed at expos and whatnot) I'd imagine that the programmers would reason that it would be of little importance to cut corners so early. At that time they probably didn't have much material to fill out with yet.

Anyway, good work everyone. Still gives me hope to be able to try out something interactive one day. It might not be a full game, but something.

It would be great to get any new build, but I'm doubting there are any more out there.
SFA was shown once at ?the GameCube launch event in Japan? and that was when it still had DP in its name. That version is partly available on the kiosk disc: the bootloader (main code), logo, intro movie, models and textures, but right now I haven't had any success booting it up. I haven't seen any GC E3 discs leak out of any game yet, so the chance that that will happen in this case is not very high. There are a few more kiosk versions, I currently have two in my posession, one of which is the one we all know, the second has exactly the same files on the disc but a different bootloader which allows you to select other levels than the first. There might be other kiosk versions around, but I doubt there are any more new files on there...

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Posted on 02-27-14 07:27:50 AM

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This must be Warlock Mountain.
A version of Warlock Mountain / Krazoa Palace that appears more like its Dinosaur Planet incarnation (as seen in the gameplay footage) than the SFA version. The map seems to be made in two "halves", though they are connected via a main chamber. It'd make sense that one of these halves is Krystal's side, and the other is Sabre's.

Note that I've also discovered that what I thought were the normal vector indices in the draw commands were actually color indices. The colors seem to be some kind of 16-bit Luminance or Alpha/Luminance value, so the "lighting" appears a bit better. There are, though, some black (not missing) triangles, which I haven't figured out yet.

Note also that this is built from BLOCKS.bin, which holds the static geometry. Things that move, like doors or other dynamic objects, aren't here (they'd presumably be objects from MODELS.bin).

Side 1...
Image 0: Biggest difference is here at the start. Instead of the curved path up against the wall, leading to the room Krystal places the Warp Activator, it's a straight ramp. There's also the archways featuring what I presume to be Krazoa heads.
Image 1 - 2: Corridor to the warp pad Krystal takes in the gameplay footage. Here, it's lined with Krazoa statues.
Image 3: The room where Krystal places the Warp Activator.
Image 4 - 6: A "secret" path along the left side of the mountain. Leads to a small dark cave/alcove.
Image 7 - 8: Corridor where Krystal runs across the dead and dying EarthWalkers.
Image 9 - 10: Corridor with the energy beams that try to stop Krystal. This room is also lined with Krazoa statues now.
Image 11: The broken pillars. The one in front would have the chunk that Krystal pushes over to get a piece to put on the pressure plate.
Image 12 - 13: The next room where Krystal would find Randorn and the Warp Activator. Right above the Warp Activator is another corridor leading further in, and likely there's supposed to be a lift where the Warp Activator sits. This room also has a doorway on the right side (you can just barely see it in the gameplay footage, where it has a door blocking the way out).
Image 14 - 16: Outside the doorway us a pathway in a large room, which seems to be some kind of "outside" area. I imagine it'd use some kind of effect on the enclosing walls. At the end of the pathway appears to be some kind of teleport pad, which I presume takes you to the roof.
Image 17 - 19: Through the raised corridor in the previous room. This seems to be fairly similar to what you see in the final game, although not as well lit. On the right side looks like where you'd release the Krazoa Spirit, and the left leads to the main chamber.
Image 20 - 21: The main chamber. It's lacking quite a bit that's in the main game, including the wind lifts and multi-leveled pathways with side rooms. The top is also closed off, likely with some kind of glass roof. There are two balconies, although there doesn't seem to be a way to reach them from here. There's also a big pit in the center.

Side 2...
Image 22: A second warp pad. Likely Sabre's way in/out of the place. Of interesting note is that this side of the map seems to have shallow-ish water, rather than being up in the sky like Krystal's side. There's a room and a corridor leading into the place.
Image 23 - 25: Another not-so-secret cave along the side.
Image 26: A room similar to the one Krystal places the Warp Activator in.
Image 27 - 28: Through the corridor, a poorly lit cove of some kind. This could perhaps be where Sabre actually starts, coming in by sea rather than air, and leaves by the second warp pad (as seen in image 22).
Image 29: Through the cove, there's a pathway leading up.
Image 30: A corridor similar to the one on Krystal's side where there were the beams blocking her. Here, however, you come in going up, rather than down.
Image 31: In a room similar to the one with the pressure plate. There's what appears to be drapery in front of Krazoa statues (which was also on Krystal's side, but missed getting shots of).
Image 32: A room similar to the one Krystal would find Randorn in. This one also has the elevated corridor and doorwar leading out.
Image 33 - 35: Pathway leading out to what I can only guess is another teleport pad. This path is a bit more broken up, however.
Image 36 - 38: Similar corridor as on the other side, with what appears to be the place where you'd release a Krazoa Spirit, and connects to the main chamber.

Rooftop...
Image 39: Rooftop, directly above the main chamber. There's two corridors leading out, one in front, and one in back.
Image 40: On the sides are these ramps, leading to solid walls with Krazoa statues. There's nothing on the other side of the walls.
Image 41 - 42: Through the corridor leads to a room that overlooks the area with the second warp pad. The other corridor leads to a similar overlook room for the other side of the mountain (which you can see in the first image, above the archway).
Image 43 - 44: Passed the overlook room leads to a bendy corridor.
Image 45 - 46: At the end of the bendy corridor is a pit.
Image 47: Drop down, and you end up in a balcony in the main chamber. Going the other way from the roof would lead you to the other balcony.

Hope this is interesting to at least some of you.

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Posted on 02-28-14 08:54:20 PM

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I glitched the SFA Kiosk into unlocking all items, Tricky and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gv4cXxQWHU

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Hugo_Peters

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Posted on 03-09-14 08:53:33 PM

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I found out how SFA's texture files are formatted + I made a decompressor for the LZO files (and ZLB) on the SFA kiosk disc!!!

Here's my post from Tumblr:

I introduce to you: Kyte's Command! A small program that does huge things! Kyte's Command can extract both SFA's ZLB and LZO compressed files! Kyte's Command (KC) was initially designed to just convert textures, and it does that very well! More features come as I make 'em.

Here's a screenshot:

I will release KC very soon, probably today. Sidenote: KC has an intelligent algorithm for searching the BIN files for any entry (ZLB, LZO and DIR (an unknown entry that is not compressed)), so it doesn't need a corresponding .TAB file!
Anyways, enough with the chitchat, here are some pretty cool textures from DP and SFA, or both, or not at all. I don't know.

Disclaimer: I put the following stuff together pretty quickly, so please forgive me if you find stuff with KC that's not listed here, or if the title that it's listed under is not correct, or even if there are duplicates.

Early (?) world map:

Early moon texture:

Early logo (Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet) (it's very small)

Early Slippy (no one cares)

Early, beta (and final) HUD textures:

Earlier HUD textures (note Krystal's Disguise icon):

Very early HUD textures (yup, there's more) (note: for some reason, all these textures are slightly "corrupted", I don't know if it's KC or the textures themselves...)

Early map textures (I'm not sure if these are DP or SFA... probably early SFA with unused locations, kinda hard to see what they are due to the "corruption", plus they are in random(?) order).

Early enemy / character textures (ugh damn that corruption... possible a lot from DP though..)

Click here for the full sized image

There's a lot more for y'all to explore, a lot of beta textures like for the Arwing and what not, but I don't really see a point of posting those here. You can all extract everything once I release Kyte's Command!

So yeah, even though I haven't found Krystal's (the original) or Sabre's textures yet, or maybe I have but I don't recognize them, they could still be on the disc, but the chance is getting very slim now... But these textures are fucking cool nonetheless.

Here are the textures I previously posted on my Tumblr page:

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einstein95
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Posted on 03-09-14 10:23:08 PM

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Originally posted by Hugo_Peters

Early logo (Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet) (it's very small)

Originally posted by einstein95

It'd be stretched horizontally so it'd look like:

Also appears (unused) in the final version.

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Hugo_Peters

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Posted on 03-09-14 10:27:56 PM

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Okay, here it is!!!

>> Download Kyte's Command v1.0 <<

Kyte's Command (KC) allows you to extract and decompress both ZLB and LZO files from the SFA kiosk and retail disc! It can also convert decompressed texture files to .TPL (Nintendo GameCube / Wii texture format, search "Chadsoft CTools" for a TPL viewer) and then convert them to PNG, which can be viewed by any picture viewer.

"Cool, I guess. So how the fuck do I use this?"

KC is very easy to use, but it does require that you have a basic knowledge of the structure of the SFA kiosk / retail ISO.
Each model / texture file is a collection of individually compressed texture files. Before you can convert the textures within these files to .tpl or .png, you first need to unpack and decompress them.
To do so, click the button "Unpack + Decompress LZO / ZLB .bin"...
After you selected a file KC will start to analyze, extract and decompress all files within the .bin file!
Once that is done, select all decompressed texture files, and drag & drop them into KC. Make sure to check KC's preferences first, for instance, the "Convert to PNG" mode, which is kinda necessary unless you want to do something with the raw TPL files.
KC should now convert the files to PNG (and TPL) files!

Example, not that it isn't clear yet:
We want to get PNG textures out of kiosk\Copy of swaphol\TEX0.bin.
Copy the TEX0.bin file to an empty directory, to keep stuff organized.
Extract + decompress the file using KC.
Select the "Convert to PNG" and "Delete .tpl after .png conversion" options, then drag & drop all extracted files into KC.
There you go!

The most interesting stuff can be found in:
insidegal
swapcircle
Copy of swaphol

But all other files contain their own interesting/unused stuff as well!

Note: you can extract + decompress ALL SFA compressed files, so also model files for example! Give it a try!

So, that's kinda it! If there are any bugs, or if you have a feature request, or if you just want to say thank you, please send me a message (or if you prefer email: hugo@djek.nl

)!

PS. typing on an iPad is not fun.

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KCat
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Posted on 03-10-14 01:55:58 AM

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Neat.

Out of curiosity, can you provide any information on the texture format (how to load them), or perhaps the source code for reading the textures?

FWIW, the "corruption" seems to be caused by an incorrect starting offset on the texture data (the far right side of each affected image looks like it belongs on the left).

einstein95
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Posted on 03-10-14 11:03:32 AM

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Originally posted by gilgamesh

I would like to know in what files you have found screens Krystal's Adventure ... and Sabre's Adventure ...

SCREENS.BIN

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Hugo_Peters

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Posted on 03-10-14 11:03:44 AM

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Originally posted by gilgamesh
Hi Hugo_Peters,

Your utility works perfectly, I looked quickly some textures. Some dates undoubtedly 2001, as evidenced by the first images of the game, including gauges and icons.

I would like to know in what files you have found screens Krystal's Adventure ... and Sabre's Adventure ...

Thanks

Those two are from SCREENS.bin, though the format is slightly different, so Kyte's Command doesn't recognize it by default. I'll update the tool today with a few important fixes and support for SCREENS.bin!

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Hugo_Peters

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Posted on 03-10-14 08:57:30 PM (last edited by Hugo_Peters at 03-10-14 09:15:27 PM)

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Originally posted by KCat
Neat. Out of curiosity, can you provide any information on the texture format (how to load them), or perhaps the source code for reading the textures?

FWIW, the "corruption" seems to be caused by an incorrect starting offset on the texture data (the far right side of each affected image looks like it belongs on the left).

When comparing the texture files to the GameCube's standard texture file, TPL, I recognized it was very similar, though not the same. Why Rare chose to make this into a custom format makes no sense to me.

Most important offsets / data:
0x0A - 0x0B: Width
0x0C - 0x0D: Height
0x16: Texture format (most used are 0x5 for RGB5A3 and 0xE for CMPR)

Then at 0x60 the data stream starts, and continues until the end of the file.
As a sidenote, I just resolved the corruption bug, and you were indeed right

Kinda stupid of me not to compare a good / bad raw output file before, but it's fixed now. Turned out the "corrupted" files' texture data stream offset wasn't 0x60, but 0x20. In the other files the 0x40 bytes between 0x20 and 0x60 are (always??) zeros for padding. Again, why they changed this doesn't make any sense. I haven't found a file yet that has data in that position...

>> Download Kyte's Command v1.1 <<

Changelog:

Decompressing goes much faster now!
Fixed extra checks that rejected files that didn't have LZO or ZLB magic's at 0x0
Added the option to use the alternating texture data offset, which fixes the corruption bug.
Added support for SCREENS.bin (drag and drop it on KC's main window)
Added the option to extract .BINs using the classic .BIN & .TAB combination!
Updated Kyte's icon to the non-corruption-fixed-version
Added check on startup for missing DLLs
Included MSVCR110.DLL for people without .NET Framework...
Fixed some moar bugs

Here's a picture of the updated GUI, just because it's sexy.

And here are some of the previously "corrupted" textures:

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KCat
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Posted on 03-11-14 03:16:40 AM

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Originally posted by Hugo_Peters
When comparing the texture files to the GameCube's standard texture file, TPL, I recognized it was very similar, though not the same. Why Rare chose to make this into a custom format makes no sense to me.

Most important offsets / data:
0x0A - 0x0B: Width
0x0C - 0x0D: Height
0x16: Texture format (most used are 0x5 for RGB5A3 and 0xE for CMPR)

Then at 0x60 the data stream starts, and continues until the end of the file.

Thanks. I actually suspected something like that, but I could never get the texture format worked out (RGB5A3 sounds like a really odd color packing, and I didn't expect it to be packed in blocks (even CMPR, which itself is in blocks, so you have blocks in blocks).

As a sidenote, I just resolved the corruption bug, and you were indeed right Kinda stupid of me not to compare a good / bad raw output file before, but it's fixed now. Turned out the "corrupted" files' texture data stream offset wasn't 0x60, but 0x20. In the other files the 0x40 bytes between 0x20 and 0x60 are (always??) zeros for padding. Again, why they changed this doesn't make any sense. I haven't found a file yet that has data in that position...

The textures in TEX.bin actually have their image data start at 0x20, although in those cases the width and height are specified in the first few bytes rather than at 0x0A-0x0D, and those textures seem to be N64-formated.

And here are some of the previously "corrupted" textures:

I'm certainly recognizing some of the older maps I pulled from BLOCKS.bin in there, including old(er) Krazoa Palace/Warlock Mountain, and what I believe to be the old Dragon Rock.

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Posted on 03-11-14 11:40:29 PM

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Originally posted by gilgamesh
I posted a long time ago on the forum 64dd.net the list of levels, from Dinosaur Planet N64 Version. Everything is contained in the DLLS.bin file. Anyone know if the fonts and scrolling routine appears there?

DLLS.bin contains, as far as I know, and as far as Phil knows, only the "swappable" parts of DP's code.

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KCat
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Posted on 03-14-14 03:59:55 PM (last edited by KCat at 03-14-14 04:02:31 PM)

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As far as I can tell, the format is

0x00: u16 - width

0x02: u16 - height

0x10: (RGB5A3 pixel data)

Here's some info on the pixel data: http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/Image_Formats Note that the pixels are packed in blocks (4x4 for RGB5A3), they're not strictly linear.

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Posted on 03-14-14 06:39:53 PM

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Originally posted by KCat
As far as I can tell, the format is
0x00: u16 - width

0x02: u16 - height

0x10: (RGB5A3 pixel data)
Here's some info on the pixel data: http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/Image_Formats Note that the pixels are packed in blocks (4x4 for RGB5A3), they're not strictly linear.

SCREENS.bin is in RGB5A3 indeed, I just guessed that looking at the data (CMPR is compressed so it looks very different, and SFA basically only uses CMPR and RGBA535). What I do to get a PNG out of it is to first make the data into TPL format and then use SZS Tools' WIMGT. It can convert .TPL (any pixel format) to .PNG.

The other SFA texture formats are just standard TPL, with only a modified header.
The pixel format identifier is exactly the same as how it's defined in the GC SDK:

GX_TF_I4     = 0x0,

GX_TF_I8     = 0x1,

GX_TF_IA4    = 0x2,

GX_TF_IA8    = 0x3,

GX_TF_RGB565 = 0x4,

GX_TF_RGB5A3 = 0x5,

GX_TF_RGBA8  = 0x6,

GX_TF_CMPR   = 0xE,

There is some more data, but it doesn't seem important when just looking at the plain texture. Might be some identifier stuff for the models?

Also, STORYBOARD.bin should be interesting. I think it uses the same compression format as TRACKS.bin. If we could find out what it is (it's not LZO nor ZLB... maybe RZIP?) we should be able to get pictures out of it containing cut scene designs for DP....(?)

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