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What are the benefits of a PD Disassembly?
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Thundera8589
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 PostPosted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:03 am    Post subject: What are the benefits of a PD Disassembly? Reply with quote Back to top

Since I read the topic of Disassembly and saw Kerr Avon's recent post. I'm wondering just what are the benefits Perfect Dark modding can get from a full complete disassembly decompile of Perfect Dark 64?

1) How and in what ways can such a thing help a modded Perfect Dark hack like say GoldenEye X?

2) Would it help Wreck and his team immensely with their continuation progress of GoldenEye X?

3) If possible what kind of new changes can be done or things added?

I have no clue about this stuff so can someone please explain to me what good things can come out of this for the future of GoldenEye X's modding process? I would love to know as I'm sure others in the same boat as me would as well.
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oldyz
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 PostPosted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

a bunch of things, i suppose, like expanded online game-play, some nice direct x 12 rendering tricks, VR ....

it may also make the game easier to edit
 
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Kerr Avon
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 PostPosted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

And bug fixes, and new features. Some people like, for example, the concussed, blurred screen effect you get when punched in the game's multiplayer. Other people hate it. And the fact that if it's caused instead by a poison weapon then it stays after death and into your next life is very unpopular with many people. And there is no option to disable this effect.

If a disassembly of the game were to emerge, then people could change anything in the game, big or small. And I'm sure that many people would appreciate a new option being added to the multiplayer where you could change the blur effects to, say, any of the three settings 'On', 'Off', and 'Not Past Death'. When the player chooses 'On', then the blur effect would operated exactly as it does in the original game. If 'Off' is selected, then the blur effect wouldn't take place at all. And if 'Not Past Death' was chosen, then the blur effect would work, but when the person is respawned, then their vision would be clear again.

Other options that would be great would include the ability to choose where to place the bases, as when playing Capture the Case then the bases' locations are currently randomly chosen, which can result in the bases being too close or one of them in an unfair position, and the option to only have to press the Left-Shoulder button to throw a grenade (instead of, as it is now, you having to manually select a grenade, then throw it, then go back to your previous weapon,

An option to choose the number of lives of every player would be great too, as that way you can have a Last-Man-Standing mode (which is sort of like the You Only Live Twice mode in Goldeneye, but with more lives) would be great, along with an option to decide if the match should automatically end or not if all the humans end up out of the match but if bots are still playing. An option to choose what the radar shows would be great too, such as the ability to only show the Case, or just the Pop A Cap target, or just your own team-mates (and not the enemies), etc.

I'd also like the option to rename the sims. And the option to save many more multiplayer match setups, to fill the entire memory pak, instead of being limited to four match setups per memory pak as the game is now.

The option to set up a match that would, after a certain time or score is met, automatically change the map (the level, say change from Skedar to G5), would be very welcome. I'd love to be able to set up the game rules, the sims, etc, then start the game and after say someone gets to twenty points, then the game restarts on the next map, and only ends after all sixteen multiplayer maps have been played on, and the person who has won the most maps is the overall winner.

And who know, maybe a really skilled person can actually add something similar to the abandoned 'Perfect Face' feature, so that you can add the faces of your friends to the sims in multiplayer mode. On the N64 itself, this would have been finicky, trying to edit the face to look right on the low resolution characters, but on a PC this would be much easier, with the mouse and much higher resolution graphics, and probably when you'd got the faces looking good on the sims, then you could transfer them into an N64 build made from the PD disassembly code, to play PD on your N64 using your friends' likenesses as enemies (albeit in the much lower resolution that would be necessary to work on the N64).

And the option to reduces the grenades' time from four seconds to two seconds, as four seconds is too long for a fast paced game in confined areas in the multiplayer levels, I think.

And add some sort of penalty for anyone using the K7 secondary mode (the threat detector), as currently you lose nothing by using it, making the primary mode for the weapon pointless. Either make the secondary mode have a lower firing rate, or make it so that the secondary mode can't fire at all, and so when you're using the secondary mode then if you need to fire then you will first have to switch back to primary mode.

And fix the bug that makes the sims *very* bad when they use a shotgun in multiplayer. They handle it very well in the single player mode, but they are almost useless with it in multiplayer.

And one addition I would *really* like would be a feature that appears in games like Unreal Championship 2, and Turok: Rage Wars; a match tree for every playable multiplayer character. This means that when you choose to play as a given character, then you have the option of playing through a pre-defined set of matches against bots that increase in difficulty. Basically the thirty challenges mode that already exists in Perfect Dark, but the thirty challenges (the matches' settings) would be different for every character you can play as. This would be brilliant.

I'm sure you can think of some options and features you'd personally like to see added to the game.
 
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Thundera8589
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 PostPosted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Shocked WOW!! Shocked

Kerr sounds like a full PD Disassembly would make it so that SubDrag or Wreck could then be able to hack into parts of the game that are "hardcoded". If so, that would be truly awesome. The ways this benefits GoldenEye X I could see are almost endless.

So lets say if this becomes a possibility than what about a feature like this GE007 Weapon Set Editor. The reason why I bring this up is you know how in PD/GE-X you can manually edit the weapon sets but are only limited to the 6 available slots in-game. What about now being able to edit all 10 available slots that previously were not in the game only modders had access to it. Now players who play GoldenEye X can edit all to create many variety weapon sets.

Since this was in Perfect Dark's early beta stages I guess bringing back the muzzle flickering effect would be a possibility if that feature is still left somewhere deep inside the game or where the weapons are hardcoded.

I guess added two new scenarios like You Only Live Twice and The Man with The Golden Gun would definitely be a possibility.

I love your idea Kerr of adding the ability to rename individual simulants.

Bringing back the Water animations from levels like Caverns, Dam, and the ship level (forgot the name of it). The bleeding mess death sequence screen with the blood drip when a player dies. The taser in GE-X finally being able to have the animation display on it. The monitor animations having more space to make them less limited like the skateboard animation. Although I believe Wreck recently found some sort of fix for this that he can increase the memory for the monitor animations so we might get a full skateboard animation in the next Goldeneye X update. And lastly that shotgun shells animation depletion could finally be brought back.

Probably more save space to create more files and whatnot.

The ability to possibilty add more ram? so that the game's frame rate won't drop if you're playing multiplayer with say 4 players and 7 simulants. And also make it so that if you play on a level that's large than maybe instead of having a half customized Cradel we can be able to implement the full cradel level for multiplayer/VR.

If possible, do you think Wreck and co would be able to make lights on multiplayer stages like Cradle and Bunker luminate and be able to be shot and light damaged in multiplayer mode?

Please let me know if all this stuff could be a possibility Kerr if PD ever gets fully decompiled and gets the source code/open source whatever.

P.S. Like I mentioned in the beginning of this post this would mean parts of the game that were hardcoded that SubDrag and Wreck didn't have access to would mean now they would have access to those parts of the game?
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RyanDwyer
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 PostPosted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Disassembly and decompilation are two different things. Disassembly can be mostly automated but doesn't offer much in terms of editability. Disassembled code is difficult to read, navigate and change, but is still better than reading hex values from an emualator's debugger. On the other hand, decompilation is a manual process that starts with a disassembly and someone converts it gradually piece by piece to readable source code. This readable source code is easy to read, easy to navigate and easy to change. Once decomp is finished you can use the source code to have full control over the game in the same way that the original developers did.

Using the source code will require a little more knowledge than using the editor. As a minimum you'll need to be able to follow instructions and not be afraid of the command line. And basic developer skills like knowing how to search for code and make minor edits to it will be useful.

For the modding community, I imagine the setup editor will become redundant for PD at least. Those who invest the time in learning how to work with the source will find it much easier to work with than the editor. For model editing, I expect there'll be some conversion tools made which can convert files between Blender and the format used by PD so there'd be no reason to use the editor.

Keep in mind that PD's decomp is at least 4 years away from completion. But it doesn't need to be fully complete before it can start being helpful to the modding community.
 
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Thundera8589
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 PostPosted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

RyanDwyer wrote:
Disassembly and decompilation are two different things. Disassembly can be mostly automated but doesn't offer much in terms of editability. Disassembled code is difficult to read, navigate and change, but is still better than reading hex values from an emualator's debugger. On the other hand, decompilation is a manual process that starts with a disassembly and someone converts it gradually piece by piece to readable source code. This readable source code is easy to read, easy to navigate and easy to change. Once decomp is finished you can use the source code to have full control over the game in the same way that the original developers did.

Wow that is fantastic! Very insightful information. Guess that means goodbye to hardcoded and microcoded areas of the game that made it impossible for modders to hack into.

RyanDwyer wrote:
Using the source code will require a little more knowledge than using the editor. As a minimum you'll need to be able to follow instructions and not be afraid of the command line. And basic developer skills like knowing how to search for code and make minor edits to it will be useful.

So I guess this means the source code and editor would be two different methods as far as modding PD/GE goes. However, it looks like the source code would benefit the editor in alot of ways in all of this.

RyanDwyer wrote:
For the modding community, I imagine the setup editor will become redundant for PD at least. Those who invest the time in learning how to work with the source will find it much easier to work with than the editor. For model editing, I expect there'll be some conversion tools made which can convert files between Blender and the format used by PD so there'd be no reason to use the editor.

Not necessarily. I think if some choose to still want to use the editor for whatever reasons it's there for anyone to use. I mean perhaps you're right but I can see the editor still be used as a different source for modding PD. At least I think anyway but you're probably right.

RyanDwyer wrote:
Keep in mind that PD's decomp is at least 4 years away from completion. But it doesn't need to be fully complete before it can start being helpful to the modding community.

For however long it takes I think everyone in this community would agree we could all wait if it means a very vast improvement in the PD hacking scene. Heck I would be fine if Wreck didn't continue working on GoldenEye X in the next 2 or 3 years if it means the possibility of Perfect Dark's source code being readily available for the GE/PD community and at Wreck's disposal.

Question for you. What does this mean for a mod like GoldenEye X that's already been in progress for about a decade? Meaning if Wreck wanted to use the newly found source code of Perfect Dark to be able to really get things going on this mod, does that mean that he would have to restart the GoldenEye X project from scratch to be able to use it with your newly found source code? Or is there someway he could use your source code for GoldenEye X in the current stage it's in without starting over? This is something that just came to me in all this PD disassembly/decompile talk.

One more question. You mentioned on your other post in the Q Lab Hacking Department section of the forum that you would work on making the game use the full 4mb expansion pak. Can you give me specific details on what you mean by that? Like do you mean like fixing the game from dropping frames when there are let's say four human players and 8 simulant characters running around a map. Could you be able to make the game drop less frames and play at a normal speed with all those players and sims while using automatic or power weapons? Maybe even use those numbers of characters and machine guns in a large map like the full cradle?

P.S. I can imagine this would make it 100% possible to bring back the Tank from Goldeneye64 into GoldenEye X in all it's former playable glory.
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RyanDwyer
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 PostPosted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 6:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Regarding GoldenEye X, it's really up to Wreck to decide what to do with that. He could continue using the setup editor, or he could migrate to using the decomp once it's progressed enough. If he migrated then he'd have to figure out how to re-implement his ASM hacks as source code changes. Asset files can likely be drop-in replaced or converted.

Regarding my 4MB comment, that's unrelated to frame rate. Without the expansion pak the system only has 4MB of RAM and removes access to the single player game because there's not enough memory to use it. My goal would be to get the full game working without requiring the expansion pak. The ways I would do this would involve removing unreachable code, removing piracy checks and removing support for 4MB-only mode itself. And then the most important part: splitting the entire engine into smaller segments and only loading to RAM the segments that are needed for the current gameplay mode. For example, firing range code doesn't need to be in RAM unless you're doing the firing range, and code for the multiplayer bots doesn't need to be in RAM if you're playing solo missions.

Frame rate in multiplayer is likely limited by the N64's graphics hardware. It's likely only solvable by porting it to another platform.
 
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Thundera8589
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 PostPosted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 6:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

RyanDwyer wrote:
Regarding GoldenEye X, it's really up to Wreck to decide what to do with that. He could continue using the setup editor, or he could migrate to using the decomp once it's progressed enough. If he migrated then he'd have to figure out how to re-implement his ASM hacks as source code changes. Asset files can likely be drop-in replaced or converted.

Wow I would hope he would migrate to the decomp progress of Perfect Dark then. If he isn't so stubborn about it and decides to re-implement his hacks as you say then this in my opinion would be an upgrade to the project and the BEST scenario that could possibility happen to GE-X going forward.

RyanDwyer wrote:
Regarding my 4MB comment, that's unrelated to frame rate. Without the expansion pak the system only has 4MB of RAM and removes access to the single player game because there's not enough memory to use it. My goal would be to get the full game working without requiring the expansion pak. The ways I would do this would involve removing unreachable code, removing piracy checks and removing support for 4MB-only mode itself. And then the most important part: splitting the entire engine into smaller segments and only loading to RAM the segments that are needed for the current gameplay mode. For example, firing range code doesn't need to be in RAM unless you're doing the firing range, and code for the multiplayer bots doesn't need to be in RAM if you're playing solo missions.

Frame rate in multiplayer is likely limited by the N64's graphics hardware. It's likely only solvable by porting it to another platform.

I see. I got you. So the only way for the frame rate in mutliplayer to improve would be if someone converted into another platform like on pc windows/mac/linux I asume.

Well I send you all my blessings on a full successful decomp of Perfect Dark 64 and not only for PD but for the other members of your Github group that are working on a decomp of Goldeneye 64 as well. I think get both games source codes would tremendously benefit a mod like GoldenEye X that has to know how things in GE007 function to be able to implement them on to PD. Learning the contrasting differences inside and out of both games completely would really help establish this mod to be one of the best GE/PD mods around ever.

I sincerely thank you and your team for all your efforts into making this a reality for the entire GE/PD community.
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 PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Just wanted to let everyone know that RyanDwyer just cracked the 50 percent barrier about a week ago. He has been pretty much working non stop, I am very excited on the possibilities this will open up for Goldeneye X.

I wonder now that half of the game cracked open if there is anything valuable that can be extracted and worked on at the present time.
 
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 PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

There's a lot I'd love to be able to do in Dark Noon, and I'm already designing the mod with consideration that Ryan might have some sort of editor in the near future that I'll need to switch to!
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Kerr Avon
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 PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2021 4:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

MRKane wrote:
There's a lot I'd love to be able to do in Dark Noon, and I'm already designing the mod with consideration that Ryan might have some sort of editor in the near future that I'll need to switch to!


What is 'Dark noon', please?
 
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Morrigan Aensland-Hill
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 PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Dark Noon is a Spaghetti-Western mod of Perfect Dark.
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HackBond
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 PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Kerr Avon wrote:
MRKane wrote:
There's a lot I'd love to be able to do in Dark Noon, and I'm already designing the mod with consideration that Ryan might have some sort of editor in the near future that I'll need to switch to!


What is 'Dark noon', please?


Not to put too much pressure on MRKane, but it's practically the Goldfinger 64 of Perfect Dark. Like Morrigan said, it's a Western cowboy story, it's in the early stages but it's looking promising.
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MRKane
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 PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

That's a good appraisal of the project really. It's intended as a small mod for Perfect Dark with the mentioned details. It's been a really bad time - modding PD is hell Wink

Thing is the decompile has demystified the ActionBlocks, and also allowed me to bug people about how some of the inner mechanics of the game works, and a few more of the weird gotchas. For instance one really simple cover sequence took me nearly half a year to get working within a reasonable capacity, and thus the decompile was invaluable.
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Kerr Avon
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 PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 3:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Interesting. Is there anywhere I can see the Dark Noon project?
 
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