|
Khaz User Level: 8      Posts: 1/10 EXP: 1629 For next: 558 Since: 01-26-15 Since last post: 7.3 years Last activity: 7.0 years 
|
|
| So I spent a good year or so tearing Dragon View apart in the name of a glitched TAS of the game (here if interested). I found some unused content in the ROM along with some other interesting observations.
The thing I spent the most time on is the World Map in the game, which is a unique first-person-perspective engine that I at least find impressive, if a bit frustrating. They give you a map in-game made of smaller regional maps, but it doesn't cover everything. The only map previously existing was made of the in-game maps pasted together and the missing parts roughed in. I wanted a more accurate one I could count on, and also to find out if there was anything out there that nobody ever found, so I made one. Doing so turned out to require a complete understanding of how the map is constructed from ROM (not to mention some serious Excel macros that took over five hours just to execute), so I then went ahead and wrote a FAQ about it too. Mentioned in there are a few things I found along the way, specifically some unused scenery in the game: http://www.pictureshack.us/images/51543_BadselStuff.png http://www.pictureshack.us/images/59549_SnowfieldRocks.png http://www.pictureshack.us/images/33165_Skullsmaybe.png I got these screenshots using a romhack that replaced segments of the world map with a grid of all 256 possible object numbers. This caused a lot of crashing as well as some strange effects, like something with broken tree graphics that seemed to prevent you from facing toward it (before crashing). Generally, the list seemed to be mostly the same repeating set of 10 or so objects in each region, with a bunch of really broken ones in the higher numbers. Anyways, I found four objects total that don't appear in the actual game - the plants and green (grass/stump?) in the first picture, the greenish rocks in the second, and what I think are glowing skulls in the last one. The only one of these that I saw scale with distance was the plant to the left of the first picture - you can see one close and one far away in the screenshot. The other three remained the same. It occurs to me now that I have more knowledge that there may be more unused tiles hidden in VRAM that weren't actually coded into the game, and that should be looked into. During various other crashes, I've repeatedly seen one other tile that IS in the ROM of what appears to be some kind of face (a very basic blocky 8x8 pixel monochrome kind of face). If there is a way to directly view VRAM in an emulator in a graphical format, that would be awesome and I'd love if someone could point me to it. Finally on the subject of the map, I noticed a few scenery objects on the map that are normally invisible in the game. You can see them just to the left of the Chest Game in the Snowfield - if you zoom right in you'll see they're green dots like the trees in other regions. The map tile they're on is not re-used anywhere else on the map though, so why they are programmed in is beyond me. Moving on: The other major exploration I did was into the list of interior rooms in the game. I made a FAQ about that too, with a complete list of what I found. There are many unused rooms in the game, but most of them are the same exact copy of an empty Ice Fortress room. There are a few unique ones though, you can watch me explore them all here. In summary: One very strange very deliberate-seeming wide room appearing like Sektra Temple, two fully functional but empty caves consisting of several rooms and an exit each, and finally two TOTALLY BLANK rooms connected together, with an exit. Finally some more trivial things: -They made at least one mistake in the ROM: The table of angles for the world map has an error on Angle $E6. $E0 is, as expected, 45 degrees between East ($C0) and South ($00). As your angle increases toward South the X component starts to decrease, but at angle E6 it's suddenly 6 and 6 again - back to 45 degrees. You face the correct direction in-game but you can see visually how you slide sideways along the perfect diagonal when you try to walk. -There's a well-hidden sound effect when you reveal the path to Ortah Temple, you can hear it in this video. The odds of you hearing it are extremely low, since it's normally covered up by the long Horn melody. To hear it you have to play the horn facing almost completely the other direction, so that you slowly turn around first and the horn song finishes before it starts. This suggests to me that the "Score" was a late addition to the game, and that they originally intended for the regular (much shorter) horn noise to unlock the path. -The path to Ortah is itself made of water. You can see water on the horizon as you're walking toward it, which will mysteriously disappear when you get close (which could actually be considered a mirage, and thus a feature, if you're optimistic). The path actually uses the same object number as water, so it renders properly from a distance. When you get close, some special rule is engaged that shows water as either nothing before playing the song, or the path after. -You can overflow your height indoors. To do so you have to use the menu to cancel your taking-damage animation after taking damage in the air, which lets you jump again and gives you a theoretically infinite number of jumps so long as something is hitting you. I think you have to do a sword technique in air to actually overflow your height though, I think it blocks you during a regular jump. -Oh yeah. And one thing that definitely bears mentioning is the massive game-breaking bug that freaked me out as a kid and is the subject of my entire TAS. When you kill Piercia in the Storehouse, it does a special turning-grey animation that never happens again (to my knowledge), and it writes a $7F to a particular memory location, which is then cleared to a $00 next time you save and reload. That address is accessed again right as you trigger the Dragon Lords to appear for the first time in Ortah, and it's ASSUMED to be zero. When the $7F is there the program derails completely and what happens next is essentially completely unpredictable - 99% of the time it simply crashes but occasionally it will warp you straight to the ending. This was previously thought to be an emulator-only glitch but has been confirmed on console, and it will happen any time you play from Piercia to Ortah without saving and reloading. SO. I'm looking to make a page about it on TCRF wiki. I'd appreciate some input on what things belong there and what things don't, for example. I'll answer any questions anyone has. |
 Register - Login | |||||
|
Main
- Memberlist
- Active users
- Calendar
- Wiki
- IRC Chat
- Online users Ranks - Rules/FAQ - Stats - Latest Posts - Color Chart - Smilies |
|
| | ||
