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

[Wreck]

I actually wasn't planning on releasing any information about this publically until something playable was ready to be put up for people to test. However, since the project is currently on hold - due to other important things, I thought I'd post something about it. I call it "The GE:10 Project".

Seeing as GoldenEye will be turning ten years old in 2007, there should be something to help celebrate this milestone. We all know that there's a very narrow window of opportunity that the game will be made downloadable for Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console, and the odds of an anniversary edition aren't in anyone's favour. That means that it's up to us to get off our behinds and do something about it. There's already a team of incredible artists working on a Half-Life II mod, which features some absolutely stunning models and stages. However, that's a completely different route from what I'm speaking of. I'm not looking for visual upgrades. What I'm striving for is Perfection. Taking everything that is GoldenEye and then meshing it with Perfect Dark. Combat Simulator, Cooperative Missions, Counter-Operative Missions, a training facility, etc. It's a massive project, that I know. But progress is already underway.

Zoinkity was the first, to my knowledge, to successfully port a model from GoldenEye and load it into a Perfect Dark stage. That model was a room located in Bunker ii. Here are two images of that model, as loaded through PD's Complex Combat Simulator map...





He had sent me an IPS patch featuring this fantastic port. Unfortunately, he could not get the larger patch, which had three room models, to fit onto a floppy to bring to his local library for e-mailing. This had me very interested. And a few months later, I decided to figure out what he did and how exactly I could do the same.

The first model I chose to port was a room from the Caves. I thought you might appreciate seeing the many stages I went through to get it displaying just right...

The first glimpse, of an undersize model with incorrect textures...


Increasing the size to the proper dimensions...


Changing the texture to a slightly better one...


Finally getting the RGB shading to work on the model...


Ringing out a few Falcon 2 rounds at the ventilation opening...


A side-by-side comparison of the Caves in GoldenEye and Perfect Dark...


Since then, SubDrag cooked up a sweet little converter for me, which automatically makes all of the changes neccessary for the stage models. It saves a ton of time, so I'd like to thank him for creating it. Without this tool, the following models would have taken much more effort to port...

Facility




Runway




Archives




Cuba






Temple - NEW @ January 5th, 2007




Most of these models still lack their appropriate textures, as they also need porting. But you can clearly see, and identify, the rooms taken from the original GE stages.

Now, the biggest issues that remain, are the clipping files and figuring out how the pads relate to them. Without those two crucial pieces of information, the stages can not be played. At this time, we can only plop a model in and look at it. I've detailed most of the clipping, but do not have enough technical knowledge to convert between games. I'm hoping that either SubDrag or Zoinkity can help out when they have the free time.

This is a big deal, atleast to me. The idea of playing GoldenEye in Combat Simulator against simulants in King of the Hill matches, or Capture the Case games, intrigues me greatly. It'd make the best FPS of all time even better. And that's exactly what The GE:10 Project hopes to accomplish.
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Last edited by Wreck on Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:00 pm; edited 5 times in total

[SubDrag]

I think it is a very interesting project, and very interesting idea, although I am concentrating on Goldeneye currently. My major in interest in this project would be true Goldeneye co-operative mode, not the multiplayer aspect you're interested in, so that's perhaps a much farther goal. Also, if any PD editor did exist, and I won't confirm it did, it was set back ages in a *cough* hard drive crash, so that will also hold up the project significantly. I believe your goal is very obtainable. Getting a multiplayer map going is primarily a matter of converting all of the models using that method, putting back the old textures somehow, and converting the clipping. Pads shouldn't be too difficult to hack. Very cool pics btw.


The following I believe only work in solo:

I made this code a while ago to display room numbers (thanks to Wreck's lovely map of Complex):
812B8D14 081C
812B8D16 0000
812B8D18 0000
812B8D1A 0000
81700000 3C04
81700002 8007
81700004 3484
81700006 FC20
81700008 8084
8170000A 0003
8170000C 3C0B
8170000E 8020
81700010 356B
81700012 6EFB
81700014 A164
81700016 0000
81700018 8CE4
8170001A 0220
8170001C 8CEB
8170001E 0228
81700020 080A
81700022 E347
81700024 0000
81700026 0000

PD Load one room only:
Load one room only (any level):
81377DA0 2418
81377DA2 00XX

If you want to see your current room, look in memory at: 8007FC23

I haven't had the time for figure out how these room numbers translate to what values Pads use, but I am sure it is very do-able.

[cactus]

Now that is cool! At least you're pretty ahead in your project.

I wish I had a some type of PD level editor to make my old project dD skies.

I can't modify Weapon Functions or types because the save states have a limit. They only show text and names of the weapons. And I still don't know how to place objects in the game in the levels.
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[kcghost]

A massive project, but sooo awesome an idea. Friggin Awesome. Putting everything into the better, more updated graphics and engine of Perfect Dark is sooo cool. Looks like you got Caves to work really good, and some of the textures used by Perfect Dark look cooler anyway, Cuba (that is Cuba right?) ground looks really good, despite the um, metal thing trees, lol.

Can you switch out the weapon models easily? I can imagine it now, being able to Pistol whip with your silencer! And disarm! Bond can have so many more skills, lol.

[Wreck]

All of the models, be them first-person weapons or stage props, should be portable. Infact, the only thing I'm not so sure about is the music. Doesn't the N64 use the same format for all of their games when it comes to the audio design? It wouldn't be GoldenEye without the appropriate musical score.

The coolest thing about this, is that it is GoldenEye. It's GoldenEye, but with all of the advancements featured in Perfect Dark. Everything will appear the same way as it was in the original, with possible enhancements through Hi-Res mode. We can do everything from GE, then mix it up with some of the newer things in PD. Be it something small, like having guards sitting down on chairs, or something big, like EEPROM checks that decide whether or not something should be made available in a mission due to the events you've staged in a previous operation. All of these additions, no matter how subtle, will leave an impact. It's what the game could have been, had it been designed a few years later.

Of course, we'd want to leave in some of the objects, characters and stages from Perfect Dark, as they did the same with GoldenEye. Imagine your throwing knives sticking into an opponent, or your mines actually attaching onto another player. Maps like dataDyne Central and Combat Simulator's Skedar being overrun by simulant soldiers working for Janus in a Capture the Case match. Weapons such as the Crossbow being made available in the Surface, or the motorbike finally making an appearance in Runway. Certain retextured furniture would come in handy when filling out rooms. The ability to make cinematics based on scenes from the movie. There's just so many possibilities.

Edit: I added two pictures of a GE Temple model. The textures on the walls are very poor, which is due to an emulation rendering issue. Hopefully I can find the right plugin and options to get it displaying properly.
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[cactus]

Is it possible having Elvis/Jonathan in one mission and modify their bodies to look alike partners in GE?
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[Saberier]

Hey Wreck, nice job so far!

I noticed you wanted to remake GoldenEye on the PD engine while utilizing PD's features. But I wonder how are you going to port the hat code from GoldenEye to PD as PD's engine doesn't allow hats.
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GE/PD rules!!!

Galbadia Hotel for all your video game music needs: http://gh.ffshrine.org/?r=16600

[SubDrag]

I still think PD does support hats, there's a beta picture of one. We just need to find a valid hat object or something like that. It's probably still object type 11. Hats really aren't so so essential anyways.

[Wreck]

I believe that some of the leftover and unused object types from GoldenEye do still work, in some form, in Perfect Dark. Infact, when I looked at an old piece of paper from my early days of PD hacking, it listed some of the types. Type 05 detailed that it activated an alarm. However, the alarms in PD do not use that type. It could be because they have shifting images, so Rare just chose to use the monitor type and set it to button activation through an Action Block. If that works, it's possible that the hats do, too.

As for having buddies working with you in missions, think of it like Natalya in the Jungle. She'll operate the same way as your normal computer controlled partners in PD. And cooperative missions will allow you to choose a specific character from the cheat menu, setting your simulants. Just as Perfect Dark had done it.
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[cactus]

Hats? Well, I think there's an option for putting sunglasses for the heads, just like in Carrington Villa Mission, where most of the guards have sunglasses! Wreck, do you know any codes that place Co-Ops in specific missions though?
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[zoinkity]

Audio code is *not* necessarily portable between N64 cartridges.

There is a semi-standard format for sound effects, using a standardized table of sound samples and such. However, you would require reassembling the table based on your changes. That would suck.

Music is an entirely different moose altogether, especially concidering PD. PD compresses its music and voice samples in mpeg3 (if you want to get picky it doesn't actually exist, but then you'd know very well what that means, anyway.) So, you need to be able to decompress the stuff, then figure out how it uses the samples. In other words, audio isn't happening any time soon.

-and just in case anyone is wondering, hcs's music dumps utilize a stripped-down rom and force execution using a savestate. In other words, the cart does all the work and outputs audio as though it were the rom, running normally.

Hats, if the object type still is attached to valid code, can at least be made to work. Just a simple attachment point. Easy stuff. PD is action-heavy: hundreds of action types, and the action lists are just stupid-long. Alarms can be fudged using action commands, even in GE, and may prove preferable. Besides, the events triggered by alarms require actions anyway, so it may prove more useful just tagging on the extra code.

Oh, incidentally, PD attaches the glasses to a character, but in GE the glasses are embedded in the model! You can, in theory, attach sunglasses to guys like Ouromov by adding the model info and editting the header.
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[Wreck]

Well, I can confirm that the 05 Alarm type does still function in Perfect Dark. By modifying two panes of glass in the Felicity to use type 05, I tested to see whether or not they'd set off an alarm when I activated them. They both worked perfectly. This must've been the same thing I did when I was detailing object types years back. Changing two doors to alarm types wasn't as welcoming. The first door stretched out and wouldn't respond to any kind of activation, while the second simply disappeared. I checked the savestate afterwards, to see if the loaded in object (for the newly made alarm glass) was any different from when it was using its normal type. It was exactly the same. I can't say how much space an alarm type takes up, but the glass uses 0x68. Here's the codes, made on a PD ROM v1.0 for PJ64 emulation, to switch the object types on the first two panes of glass...

804F2117 0005
804F217F 0005

I'll probably try a few other things tonight, when I have the time...

Actually, I decided to test 24 Gas Release type just now. I set the glass the break, so I could actually tell if anything happened when it was destroyed. When it shattered, the game froze. The first time I tried it, the space that the glass took up turned a bright grey tone. The second time, it went black. Perhaps it does work, but doesn't know where to pull the new data from? In GoldenEye, it changed the weather setup used in the stage. There probably aren't any designed with the proper increment (Stage ID + 64 Hex) in Perfect Dark. Perhaps there just wasn't enough information supplied in the object itself, as I only changed the type.
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[SubDrag]

Did you also fix the glass to the proper size? Remember objects in PD are smaller than in GE, so you probably interfered with the parsing of the next object - either that or they reduced the size of the 24 type, but didn't update which bytes it changed.

[Tomek]

Just read through the entire thread and all I can say is AWESOME!!!

But there are a few questions I have:

1. Will you still be able to play all the PD multiplayer levels + hacked ones like Chicago + Hacked GE ones like Aztec, Citadel, etc

2. What format will this eventually run on, ie will it be made into a rom to run on emulators only or a .bin upload to the n64 like the citadel patch?

I am asking this since the quality of emulation of GE and PD on emulators atm is nowehere near the accuracy and quality of the original hardware. I realise that in the end you do have technical limitations. Either way I dont really mind since I do have a CD-64 unit, capable of playing roms on a cd on the real hardware

3. What excactly do you have in mind for this "Hi-Res" mode? Bigger resolution textures? I would hate to see some levels changed for the worse so I hope they will look better, but not too different.

4. Hopefully you will be able to use ALL of the multi characters from PD and GE and that the original "bonds" especially connery will have the correct heads!

5. Possibly if everything goes well, maybe include some levels/character skins/other things from T.W.I.N.E. After all they do have some nice levels (sky rail, etc) plus some nice skins for bond villians, etc

Finally, I have both the PAL and NTSC versions of GE and PD as well as the respective systems they run on and both Gameshark Pro's and AR pro's. In addition I have a CD-64 which is capale of running n64 roms from a cd on the orgignal hardware.

Feel free to ask me to test something, help out on the project/etc as I do now have a LOT of free time on my hands and a wide array of equipment and would LOVE to be able to help you realise this abitious yet rewarding project.

Best Regards,
Tomek

[Wreck]

Thanks for your offer, Tomek. There's a very good chance that we'll need some testing done in the future. I know SubDrag has a Doctor64, but it doesn't have enough RAM to run Perfect Dark. The compression needs to be worked out a little better, as the current 'best' compressors aren't cooperating very well with backup devices. I believe a lower level of Gzip does the trick, but that's not really my field. Now, let me answer those questions...

1. There will only be a select few Perfect Dark maps available, as there isn't nearly enough memory to store everything from both games. The most popular will remain, while the rest will be taken out. All of the GoldenEye stages will be ported, with most (if not all) playable in Combat Simulator. Custom hacked maps could be ported afterwards. You'd just need to know where to insert the setups.

2. This is a tricky question. Legally, you cannot distribute ROMs. However, this is a modified version of two different games meshed into one. That results in several copyright issues. I've thought that this should be an IPS Patch for the Perfect Dark v1.1 ROM. That way, we aren't giving away other people's property, nor data from either game involved.

3. Hi-Res will probably just sharpen the look of everything, like in Perfect Dark. The textures should be as good as they were in GoldenEye normally, so it's possible that Hi-Res will add a nice touch to them.

4. Like the maps, only a handful of characters will be kept in. Thankfully, they've already included the four Bond tuxedos, so we'll have our All Bonds. As for the heads, we'd need a modeller to take care of that.

5. While I'd love to port stages from other games one day, we only know about GoldenEye at the moment. They were designed by the same team, using the same files. A few modifications were made for one reason or another, which have been mapped out. I'm not sure what kind of compression type EA used on The World Is Not Enough, nor where I'd look for the background files. It'd take time to detail how it all works. Even after, there could be a lot of necessary changes to make. There'd be nothing cooler than playing in the Kokiri Forest or Spiral Mountain in Perfect Dark, but it's far off.
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