https://sites.google.com/site/supermario64starroad/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJTLOiz5kws Any chances of getting these to work?
That would be great, some coop in Mario 64 would certainly bring a few friends togheter... And then separate them in anger as it must be difficult like hell to manage the mess of 2 Marios!
It's a problem with the toads tool rom expansion, it misaligns data. Last I looked, vL-tone had actually fixed it but the fixed tool wasn't released. I'm not sure that it has yet been released. I know one of the hacks was also fixed by hand, but likewise, not sure it's been released. Hopefully someone eventually gets thigns rolling cuz i'd love to play these hacks on hardware.
The multiplayer patch actually uses the original ROM - doesn't require the expanded version. Sadly doesn't work on the Everdrive anyways, though. Hope it can get fixed! And that'd be great if the expanded ROM fix could get released too. Would be spectacular to play those huge mods like Star Road on an actual console.
there was work towards getting them to work, but even with the offsets properly aligned he still had issues with display lists so the game rendered out really out of whack
Right, it's not an ED problem, it's a problem with the hack itself. Unfortunately the real issue is N64 emulation, dudes are developing all these hacks that work great in emulators, but not testing on hardware in the interim. N64 emulation is pretty horrible, so it lets them get away with all sorts of coding hackery that doesn't actually follow spec at all.
And as soon as a better N64 emulator rolls along people will quickly notice that these hacks won't work there either and blame the emulator. Which will put the author in a position of supporting garbage or pursuing accuracy to the best of the ability of that day's hardware will support speed wise.
^ I feel that would be a good thing. Make it so that some of the better hacks will work properly. I have hundreds of hacked Genesis games that play on real console without any issues. Why can't we get this for the N64? Lazy ass hackers...
To be fair, before SubDrag, Wreck, and I had backup devices it wasn't obvious what needed to be done in order to make GE/PD hacks backup compatible. The original issue had to do with filesizes of compressed files, since the zlib readers use a different fileloader that doesn't account for non-aligned data. Yes, the game has more than one zlib library o.0 PD has at least three. It's been fixed for years. Older versions of GE:X would crash if you used a head ported from GE because of a peculiarity in the display microcode that would, eventually, overflow and halt the RSP. Why the issue? We didn't have a reference for a change in the flags of a certain command. Obviously was fixed. Other systems have documentation and accurate debuggers. Try to google up a microcode reference sometime. It wasn't until we already RE'd most of GEs that we got ahold of some source code to fill in the blanks. That said, Mario is a bit of a special case nowadays. Wonder Project J2, most if not all of the Zelda tools, the F-Zero X tools, and the various Rare game tools are all backup-compatible, besides random patches. Plus, if anyone's up to it, I have the stage setup data worked out for Lode Runner 64 if anyone wants to write an editor for it.
most people are perfectly happy with N64 emulation and think it is 200% awesome just cuz they can play Zelda with hires texture packs and mario hacks work, when in reality n64 emulation is held together with gum and string and in a pretty poor state of affairs. Pretty much nothing frustrates me more than when I point out how shoddy the emulation is in terms of accuracy, only to get a response of 'OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVENT PLAYED OCARINA OF TIME IN HIDEF WITH TEXTURE PACKS' or some variation there of involving some super popular game that has obviously been tailored into working, while plenty of other games are still pretty piss poor. The guy who did star road found a gfx plugin that does show the current errors, but has not yet gotten things working afaik. N64 hardware devices also didn't really come to prevalence til recently in terms of easy to use carts, z64/v64/doctor64/etc etc became pretty scarce prior I'm glad Wonder Project J2 works though for sure
my understanding is that the initial issue was that vl-tone's rom expander wasn't properly aligning data, the problem was fixed (don't think the fixed tool is publically released), but the star road guy says theres another issue with his display lists being incompatible, this was a good while ago but i haven't heard of progress on fixing it
It's the display list error that's the big issue, and without using the libraries it can be touch-and-go. There's very little reference for it, especially if you do something peculiar. Plus, no HLE plugins get that remotely right and many ignore half the settings altogether. You basically have to run it on hardware unless you have a system that can run an LLE and external debugger, and if it doesn't run--well, tough beans. (To be fair Glide isn't bad and supports a heck of a lot more features than most, but it's tailored to running what already exists versus what's actually supported, and there are features missing.) I'm lucky not just to own a V64jr but a computer with an LPT port to use it. The new devices are great if only because they're compatible with modern hardware. The most reprehensible thing would be games where one version of a game is fixed to run well but the same settings weren't copied to the rest. Stray from the popular US release list and suddenly you're in a sea of random bugs and peculiar output.
which is sadly the state of affairs of n64 emulation, popular titles look great, start straying from that and you're mix and matching plugins to try and get output / performance to be ok here's hoping the hacks can be made to work eventually
I have no idea of a lot of what was said because I have no knowledge of programming lol But I am glad for the ED64 because games like Star Wars Rogue Squadron can't be emulated! (At least it can't be emulated good enough to be played the last I checked...)
You'd have to go LLE. MESS plays it perfectly of course, if you have a system capable of actually running that anywhere near full speed.
Project64 has a perpetual 1.7 beta going on, but I don't think they're really making any changes towards significantly improving accuracy
On the PC front Mupen and MESS are receiving constant updates, and several cycle-accurate projects are underway. There's also a bit of work being done to emulate the 64DD. Otherwise, more is being done porting existing open-source(ish) projects to consoles. There's a patch for PJ64 1.6 to implement some fixes from 1.7, and it doesn't seem 1.7 will actually be finished at this rate.
