GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[Trv98]

*waves at everyone* GE fan since '98, and I still can't get enough of it! Glad to be around other enthusiasts keeping this masterpiece of a game alive.

I've been very slow to get into the Setup Editor because the learning curve for the inner workings like action blocks looks daunting, and I can't seem to find a "for dumbasses" tutorial to get me started; I haven't even touched paths yet. So instead of trying to walk before I run, I've zipped on ahead with a project gung-ho without any thought as to whether GE's architecture even supports what I'm trying to accomplish.

My project is to pad out Control in a Sims-style manner, with a royal tonload of guards (including Janus guards in semi-defined roles; see below) crammed into every area to really make things a nightmare for Bond, plus more drone guns... a LOT more! On top of that, one of my favourite things has been to add office staff milling about the level, to make it feel more alive than it did in the original, where only Boris greets Bond in that largely empty ground floor area. I've even made a staff kitchen on the upper floor!

Other ambitious ideas I've had (at least for my rookie skill level) include having a Janus guard chaperone a high-importance scientist around the level, as if assigned to protect them, and having office staff follow paths from desk to desk or floor to floor to make it look like they're having conversations with their colleagues, complete with arm-waving and keyboard-typing animations. Another one would be to have one specific office worker pull out a DD44, similar to Boris, except he would take one shot at Bond (with max accuracy), then fumble his weapon and run away; cannot kill him, as he would hold a keycard.

Unfortunately, I've likely got way too ahead of myself by adding objects everywhere without any thought as to framerate or – and this is something that's unknown to me – a hard object limit per map. What I need to know is whether there is such a limit, and if all my efforts to cram the map full of goodies have been for nothing. I'm talking additional small objects like office chairs and desks where none existed previously, and loads more mainframes; in fact, that drone gun room with the empty upper balcony is now full of them, and needs the aforementioned keycard (from that AI who'll never quite be in the same spot, like Dr. Doak) to access.

So when I stopped and thought to finally preview all that, having saved a new uncompressed .setup file, I hit F5 and get this error: "Compressed File is 0x4C88 bytes, and must be less than 0x3B00 bytes". Is that curtains for my project?

[Wreck]

I would first suggest using the "Footsteps" patch on N64 Vault site, to allow Expansion Pak use and more great features. You would choose that ROM in the Preferences folder. You can try importing your custom setup file by using the Game Configuations menu. Under Stage Options section, pick Control, then click the little button next to the setup name, and then choose to import (or inject) the file for your level. Be sure to save as new ROM with a different name.

If you don't care for console play, so long as players have a decent PC and use the 1964 GE/PD Edition emulator, performance will be acceptable. Guards can be tough on frame rate, but so can too many props. That main section of Control is also very open, which renders a lot at once.

May be good to try some smaller mission ideas, like in Bunker i, before diving right into the deep end with something overly complex.

[HackBond]

I would also join the N64Vault discord, I have a few tutorials and informational threads on some of the things, including a semi-complete "First Time with Editor" thread
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Also known as Spyster or Nyxem
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[Decoy] Antenna | Control | Silo | Escape

[Trv98]

Wreck wrote:

I would first suggest using the "Footsteps" patch on N64 Vault site, to allow Expansion Pak use and more great features. You would choose that ROM in the Preferences folder. You can try importing your custom setup file by using the Game Configuations menu. Under Stage Options section, pick Control, then click the little button next to the setup name, and then choose to import (or inject) the file for your level. Be sure to save as new ROM with a different name.

Much thanks for the response!

I took a while to focus and go through all that as meticulously as I could: 1964GE used, Footsteps applied, Game Config tweaked and injected, new ROM generated, but when I go to load the level, the music hits for a split second followed by nothing but black screen and silence. Based on my Visual Editor samples below, could I have simply inserted too many objects for it to ever work?

[Wreck]

Could certainly be memory. There are memory values for different aspects of the level stored in Stage Options. You will need to increase the "-mt" value to around 1000 or so, for sure. The greater the variety of objects and characters will mean more textures loading in. The level can potentially crash if either too little or too much memory is given. Can be a balancing act, even with Footsteps patch for Expansion Pak.

[Lazlo52]

Yeah, you can change the memory Allocations on the Stage tab, it's right below the "Edit in Visual" buttons. With the Footsteps patch, you have a lot of room to increase those numbers. The culprit is most likely textures, which is -mt. The other three things might need increasing by a few hundred, too, since you're adding a lot of objects.
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[Trv98]

Just to clarify, do I first apply Footsteps to an unpatched GoldenEye 007 (U) [!].z64 before injecting my custom .setup and making the above changes to memory?

[Wreck]

Yeah. Apply patch to normal GE ROM, save as new name, select that one in the Preferences menu, then go to Game Configuration menu. Choose Control out of list of levels, import your custom setup file, and edit memory values. The - mt is probably most important, but the others can go up a bit.

[Trv98]

(Much thanks for the patience!)

I think 'Stage Options' is where I seem to be hesitating. Patching, ROM creation and selecting in Preferences indeed went fine. Then, when I go to import my custom .setup file (which is named differently to UsetupcontrolZ as I was wary of overwriting the original; is that a dealbreaker?), I can't find a way to select it.

The small blank button next to the 'Setup File' field inserts some figures into the lower portion of the window, and I'm able to edit the -m values as advised, but then I'm stuck again on how to finalise all that.

Am I to click on 'Write ROM with 21990 Mods' to create another ROM to load into 1964GE?

[HackBond]

Trv98 wrote:

(Much thanks for the patience!) I think 'Stage Options' is where I seem to be hesitating. Patching, ROM creation and selecting in Preferences indeed went fine. Then, when I go to import my custom .setup file (which is named differently to UsetupcontrolZ as I was wary of overwriting the original; is that a dealbreaker?), I can't find a way to select it. The small blank button next to the 'Setup File' field inserts some figures into the lower portion of the window, and I'm able to edit the -m values as advised, but then I'm stuck again on how to finalise all that. Am I to click on 'Write ROM with 21990 Mods' to create another ROM to load into 1964GE?

Yeah that button will write everything that you have imported and changed into a new rom, and you can run that on 1964
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Also known as Spyster or Nyxem
[Youtube]

[Decoy] Antenna | Control | Silo | Escape