Origins of Zelda Master Quest Debug Rom?

Sorry, I wasn't really clear with my explanation .. I mean the functions will pull direct from "disk", aka 64DD Disk, which would be pointed to by a file descriptor which would reside on some kind of media, i.e. Gamecube DVD Disc.

So diskGetROMXX would return an XX bit unsigned value from a location passed in as an argument, etc. So to read a 32 bit word from the disk, you would do u32 XX = diskGetROM32(location); That's what purpose these functions had.

When the emulator loads the ROM, they setup a romCache, which then loads the ROM file from the DVD to the Gamecube's ARAM. This is done based on the serial (CZLE, etc) of the ROM, so Zelda MM and Zelda OoT will use this romCache because they are 32MB in size.

Now, regardless of whether the romCache is created, they will then use romGetXX (note, not diskGetROMXX) functions to pull data from the ROM direct, in order to avoid the cache and grab things directly or from a secondary buffer.

The diskGetROMXX functions are never called when emulating Zelda MM nor Zelda OoT (or any game for that matter). This is why I figured, they attempted some sort of skeleton code for 64DD but then gave it up.

 

This may be answered elsewhere, but I'm curious:

Does the emulator use a standard "rom"? As in, something close to what a retail N64 game would be running? Is this ROM changed itself to reflect things such as, on OOT, the button diagram change (A, B, C-buttons -> A, B, X, Y) or does the emulator act as a "translator" between us (and our gamecube-interface) and the ROM (in addition to doing what an emulator does, of course)?

 

Yes it use the actual rom as you would use in any other emulator on PC/Mac or whatever system you're running.

 

Hey emukidid Maybe i can try out the debug rom on wii64

 

I can only wonder what will happen in the future regarding Zelda 64 / URA DD.

It's safe to assume that within the next 20 years something will be released though. (IMO)

 

Would be great, but I think Nintendo really wants to hold all their stuff sealed in the holy archives! For example just look at the content of Twilight Princess, the whole DVD was cleaned before releasing. You nearly can't find any beta stuff on it.

 

Yeah, I have a hunch that we won't be finding very much pre-release code on games any longer, that is assuming they know how wet we all get on that sort of stuff. At least from Nintendo themselves.

 

somebody has a Majoras Mask Debug rom?

 

Yeah, Nintendo does. No one outside of that doesn't though. After the emulator could be run on the Gamecube by seeing it on the Master Quest package, and since any source code was technically theirs, they didn't need to outsource help to anyone outside of Nintendo when they decided to make the Zelda Collection package. Someone from NoJ (who worked as a programmer on OoT/MM I think) decided to add editions to the code in order to emulate the expansion pack as well as the other graphical features of MM. But as you can see, the emulator isn't completely reliable to run MM even at a consistent speed (frame rate dips, crashing, graphical errors, you name it). More than likely they didn't need a debugging rom this time around for Majora's Mask. If I remember correctly, the people who originally worked on the emulator might've had access to debug versions of other retail Nintendo games - but that might be a bit of a stretch.

What I meant by "OoT might be using some of MM's source code" is that it's possible that they migrated some of the engine code from Majora's Mask to Ocarina of Time. The reason for this is because they had a grace period before working on Majora's Mask to optimize, clean, and organize the code so it would allow more room space to work from. From the start, they had access to everything from OoT's code base (old maps, items, objects, etc - as you can see from the treasure chest in Majora's Mask). Since Miyamoto (which you should always take what he says with a grain of salt) has said that the teams who developed Ura and MM were completely separate. From what I can gather from the information I compiled, SRD44 compiled both MM and OoT in their original run. So the same exact team that made OoT created MM as well. Since Ura was probably completely separate from everyone else, it probably had a different SRD number. And since it was designed as an add on rather than a completely new game, they didn't need to make any modifications to the engine code for Ura Zelda. So that means that while they were creating the Gamecube binaries, they didn't use anything from Ura Zelda because nothing was optimized - it was just new content. If, in fact, it was even worked on at all.

 

I actually have the OoT MQ Debug rom somewhere.

 

Unless I missed something, we all do.

 

That was you? Haha.
What actually happened was one of them had given me a copy to play with, and I wrote that document. Later, they actually posted it on their public forum. (This would be the place Knuckles500 mentions? He didn't own my FTP...) It was a pretty small, obscure forum, but public nontheless, so I thought that the hell, and stuck a copy on the FTP to share with a couple good friends.
I did not think to password-protect the archive or put it in a directory that was not open. I had intentionally left that directory open for my own convenience and because it's fun to browse random FTPs, but at the time, the thought of someone stumbling across the ROM didn't come to mind. I thought anyway, it was posted on a public forum already, so it'd be no big deal, right?

I'm quite certain "THE LEGEND OF DEBUG" is a hex edit for identification purposes (emulators would often just list the internal name). I don't know about CZLE but there was something else changed in the header to make it run in PAL60 mode or something along those lines. The ROM has English, French and German that you can switch using the D-pad at any time. I think Japanese is still in there, but you can't switch to it.
I'm guessing Master Quest was made by just copying all of OoT's source and data files, modifying some, and using the same build process that would strip the debug code and most unused files from the release version. So those unused files remain in the MQ debug builds.

Heh, looking at the document I can see how much I've changed since then... and at the archived site, has it really been that long since I first cracked Mario Kart? I need to finish this damn program already! Hey, someone leak a Mario Kart debug build next. ;-)

BTW, one thing I never did find an answer to... on the exception screen, at one point it says something like "OCARINA"... but I once managed to crash it and have it say "LEGEND" instead. What's what about? And that "I LOVE YOU 00000000000"?

 

Somebody has a Majoras Mask debug rom atm but he's holding on to it for the moment, screens were posted in a thread on the Unseen64 forums trying to raise donations then the thread was deleted.

 

did you happen to save these screens?

 

There was one screenshot posted of a boot screen. Nothing shown of a debug menu or anything of that sort.

 

Wow impressive!
Great research work!

As for the technical side, I have no experteeze with Gamecube's, but I guess since they replaced the DD hooks with the Gamecube functions the whole original DD stack may have been removed from the codebase...this is just a guess of course, but this also means that they are NOT emulating the DD hardware for the LEO library, but instead REPLACED the LEO library with something else. There.

 

more explaination please?

 

This is a very interesting topic! I did not know this!

I'd give pretty much anything for a copy of Zelda 64 beta!!

On a side note, someone mentioned Twilight Princess - is there an E3 demo (Gamecube) floating around here anywhere? I used to personally know someone who had it, wasn't sure if he dumped it.

 

What a bastard hoarder! He should release it!!

 

Are you Cendamos?