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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 121 KB, 400x301, Stop_n_swop_proc.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10907921 No.10907921 [Reply] [Original]

Why didn't they just use the controller pak for this?

>> No.10907940

>>10907921
Because Rare thought they found a clever exploit and nobody told them it wouldn't work on newer models until it was too late.

>> No.10907941

>>10907921
muh innovation

>> No.10908192

>>10907921
Western game developers prioritize technical wankery over making good games.

>> No.10908930
File: 48 KB, 278x299, Game_Pak.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10908930

It's the funniest fucking thing in the world to me that they couldn't have the player transfer items to Tooie from BK, so instead their solution was to have the player "collect the items within Banjo-Kazooie" by putting literal BK carts with googly eyes in the game you break open to get the items.

We said you'd be able to collect the secret items in Banjo-Kazooie. See guys? There's Banjo-Kazooie right there. Go get the items!

>> No.10908936

>>10907921
Brits love abusing hardware.

>> No.10908939

>>10908192
This.

>> No.10908978

>>10908930
well technically you COULD get all the secret eggs and the ice key within kazooie without gameshark or whatever.

>> No.10909032

>>10907921
They probably would have if they had gotten word they weren't allowed to do it sooner.

>> No.10909207

>>10907921
>swop

>> No.10909281
File: 61 KB, 579x536, Norf.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10909281

>>10909207
yes

>> No.10909293

If the 64DD didn't crash and burn, maybe Tooie could have been a Disk Drive game and you could keep the Kazooie cart in while you play? Like how the early DS models could read data from their GBA slot.
The controller pak would obviously be more practical, I'm just thinking out loud.

>> No.10909502

>>10909032
>>10907921
It's not like they had this big plan for them, after all they couldn't have a sequel be dependent on some items you could only get if you played and finished the original games AND put the secret code to get these items. It was always going to be some lame unnecessary extra sadly.
With that said, the stop N Swop likely would not have existed had they known they couldn't use it, the whole thing was only created because of the memory exploit, if it didn't exist then they wouldn't have even done it in the first place. That's the reason they didnt' sue the controller pak for this, that wasn't interesting to them.

>> No.10909507

>>10909293
A 64DD expansion pack for Banjo (like what they did with F-Zero X) actually sounds sick
>new levels
>new moves
>new boss battles
>expanded parts of Grunty's Lair/Isle o' Hags

>> No.10909510

>>10907921
>swop
This is the bitch spelling.

>> No.10909591

Nobody knew about the cheat code riddles that unlocked all the eggs and ice key until the RareWitchProject.

>> No.10910124

Yeah, they could have done something like the Bomberman games. Have the main game save to the cartridge, and have the "character profile" optionally save to the pak. Once you unlocked the SnS menu, there could have been an option to save the items to the controller pak.

>> No.10910167

>>10907921
>Why didn't they just use the controller pak for this?
that's a really good question.
can multiple games access the same memory pak save?

>>10908930
the worst part was finding the codes for the other eggs before tooie arrived
so we had several unused eggs in bk1 that were never addressed

there's a chance they future proofed kazooie by adding the extra eggs that could be accessed by later rare titles.
at least coding-wise we know what what items the game looks for on boot and how to send them, which is neat.
theoretically if any beta build of tooie/dk64 drops in the correct range of time it was implemented, we can actually stop n swop.

>> No.10910429

>>10910167
>can multiple games access the same memory pak save?
Yes. Though I don't think any game ever took advantage of this. It is at least theoretically possible since many games have a controller pak menu which can read all the saves in the pak.

>> No.10910541
File: 179 KB, 1242x1098, 2044683135.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10910541

Before Banjo-Tooie came out, I remember there being speculation about maybe it would be a lock-on cartridge like S3&K. I can't imagine that would have been cheap though.

>> No.10910546

>>10907940
This didn't actually make it into the final ROM, did it?

>> No.10910571

I feel like over the years the way Stop 'n' Swap was going to work has got so corrupted even RARE themselves aren't sure what's going on. I have to believe they were trying to use a CART_REMOVED interrupt to stop the game, wait for the cart to be inserted, check the ID and either resume or jump to Tooie_Special_Initialise() if it's the sequel cart. But then big N said "oh by the by, retail N64s are not going to have hot swap safe cart slots."
The thing about relying on RAM contents being preserved between power cycles makes no fucking sense. It's RDRAM, that shit's corrupt in milliseconds, forget long enough to swap a cart. And it's fundamental to all consoles, computers and microcontrollers that power on is when RAM gets trashed by the hardware. The idea that there was ever ANY N64 model that somehow preserved RAM on boot makes so little fucking sense it HAS to be someone confusing dynamically reloading a debug ROM on their dev kit with swapping carts.

>> No.10910582

>>10910541
I always wondered if SEGA saved any money with that crazy lock on thing. They got to save a few bucks by re-using the GFX ROMs from S3, and the FRAM, but apart from that the entire game engine is loaded from the &K part and the music and stuff. Like someone at SEGA had to point out that the R&D and manufacturing of a batshit cart like that was more expensive than simply releasing a double sized ROM cart with S3&K. It had to have been a marketing decision to say "people will bitch if they are buying half the game, then the whole game later, invent some bullshit way it seems like they aren't."

>> No.10911306

>>10910546
>>10910571
https://tcrf.net/Banjo-Kazooie/Stop_N_Swop#The_Mechanism

>> No.10911340

>>10911306
>Interestingly, the magic number 0xC908C52F, when shifted right by 2, gives the ASCII string "2B1K". The orderly presence of the letters B and K suggests that this is not a coincidence, but the meaning of the numbers 2 and 1 are unclear.
>2B1K
2 Banjo's 1 Kazooie?

>> No.10911498

>>10911306
That's just specious reasoning by a 3rd party. The game code had functions to read and write specific memory and if those values exist then stuff happens. Woo. Guess how video games work? It doesn't explain how it was supposed to operate between boots because you can't know and the only explanation we have is from the notoriously unreliable RARE employees. Seriously they must've been micro-dosing daily because none of the shit they say makes any sense and yet somehow they made some of the best games ever to grace a home console.

>> No.10911542

>>10911498
People have already tested this stuff on real hardware, using a rom hack to send the data to the authentic BK car unlocking the eggs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHQbswTkEjQ

>Anyway, this is the first time this feature has ever been seen working in any form outside Rare in Twycross/UK. We had planned for 6 Rare games to work with SnS, and if you collected all 6 then the last game would send a “super-code” back to the first one (Banjo Kazooie) to complete the circle.

>When we tested it on that revision of the N64 hardware we had reliable results up to about 23 seconds of power-off time. If more games had come out using the feature, and we had to tell people about it then we’d have claimed a 10 second limit to give a big buffer. Quite honestly, 5 seconds would be enough for someone to lazily cut power, remove/replace carts, power on again. Nintendo didn’t spot what we were doing when we were getting certification for BK which is why the feature is fully enabled there, however our next release was DK64 and they spotted the DK64 cart “doing something weird” at boot up, asked us what it was, we explained SnS to them and they said “NO”. Can’t blame them really. If that hadn’t happened then DK64 would have connected to BK, and then Banjo Tooie after it. I don’t 100% recall what the other 3 games of the 6 we envisioned would be, but Perfect Dark and Conker were contenders. Possibly Jet Force Gemini as well but i don’t recall exactly when we released that one. Anyway, go easy on your hardware and have fun folks……..

This is probably the most that I have ever seen revealed about SnS in the 20 years I've followed the story. I don't think any more is gonna come out.