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

[Dragonsbrethren]

Thanks. There is a change related to this, which I didn't consider testing: They added checks to see if Natalya and Xenia are dead in block 1003. This is the one that sets the timer. In the North American version, if you killed Xenia rather than just shooting her, she'd never say her line and the timer would be set after $384 cycles, same as if you hadn't shot her at all.

The check for Natalya precedes Xenia, presumably so you get the short time if she died no matter what, since it really has no other reason for existing with how the loop is structured.

Actually, I don't think this would solve the problem with Xenia at all looking at it, you'd have to kill her without being in the room with Natalya for it to work.

Edit: Weird, Xenia's block (0417) is set up to give you extra time only if you kill her in both versions. I swear I've screwed myself out of the extra time by killing her before, but the way this reads makes it sound like there's no other way of triggering the line? And it doesn't actually do anything after showing it. Train's never been one of my favorite missions so I'm probably misremembering.

I guess that just goes to show the 1003 change really doesn't have an affect on the timer. It doesn't seem to have any reason for existing, in that case...

[goldengreg007]

Neat, I knew there was a change in the setup on Train, I just never took the time to figure out exactly what it was. When I performed my aforementioned comparison of American and Japanese/PAL level setups, in addition to Train I came up with the following levels as different:

Silo - 4 additional intro cinemas.

Frigate - Adjustment to the engine room intro cinema camera angle.

Statue - Killing Valentin after objective A completes fails all objectives in Japanese/PAL, only fails objective A in the American version.

Jungle - Not sure, related to objective statuses.

Cradle - Also not sure. One difference seems to relate to detection of Bond's location relative to Trevelyan, while the other seems to be a difference in the end cinema.

I made a topic at The Elite Forum pretty soon after this analysis which contains screenshots for the Frigate cinema difference among other things: http://elite.speedrunwiki.com/forum/index.php?topic=17008. As indicated in that post, I intended to confront this community about these differences eventually, just never got around to it. This seems as opportune of a time as any.

[SubDrag]

Can you explain to me why the previously chosen level impacts the cinema/objects loaded? That's baffling to me.

[goldengreg007]

Heh, I wish I could! All that I know about that glitch is exactly what I put in that forum topic. Frigate seems to be the only level that exhibits this behavior. It has varying levels of severity depending on the level that is played before it. It does not seem to have any effect on the level itself, only 2 of the intro cinemas. Once the issue occurs, it only seems to recover once the game is reset. I was able to replicate it in all 3 versions of the game.

I say we just wait for Zoinkity to pop in and explain it!

[zoinkity]

I can't replicate this on console. It could be emulator-specific.
Wagering a guess it would be the two most distant cameras, so the objects are being obscured by a bad distance check.
Most RSP cores (or is it the graphics plugins' interpretations?) goof up the camera distances, so you'd get a false positive on a likely-unrendered fog clip (thanks to the plugins screwing up fog o.0). You get the same kind of thing in Dam (looking through walls), but never heard reports in Frigate yet. If that is the case, it is 100% emulator issues.


Don't get me started on obscure emulator issues with Frigate. There was a cache bug in PJ64 1.5 that basically made it infeasible to make an MP stage using Krijy's method. If you editted anything within certain ranges (such as specific presets or objects) or used certain file combinations that store temp data there it would corrupt the stage setups during decompression. Granted we still managed it, but it really restricted what you could do and what parts of the stages were available until the 'push' codes.
Oh, and then all the plugins that don't do skies don't do water for the same reason.

One change specific to P from J and E is the 'world concavity distort' used in Cradle is missing. They redid the way skies are stored and didn't bother with it. Also, the math would need to change but not really by enough to be a huge issue, on account of using hardcoded values instead of lookups. Pretty sure that isn't rendered by most plugins either, being a matrix conversion against final product.
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[goldengreg007]

As a sanity check, I just replicated this on console. Back when I first came across this, I had been playing on emulator while the guy I was discussing it with was verifying it on console. Just now I couldn't get it to happen by playing Dam before Frigate, but by playing Jungle before Frigate. NTSC.

Edit: Also, if you try again and still aren't able to replicate it, I can make a video of exactly what I do sometime in the next couple days. Might explain it better than I can with words.