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-   -   20th Anniversary of BK - truth behind infamous SNS (https://www.therwp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55584)

BanjoPL 13th July 2018 08:31 PM

20th Anniversary of BK - truth behind infamous SNS
 
RFDB: So you were the mastermind behind Banjo’s infamous Stop N’ Swop. How did it come to be, why was it canned, and what was the overall plan for it?

Paul Machacek: …..One day Tim asked me if there was a way to transfer an unlock code from one game to another without using standard codes that could be “printed and typed in”. He wanted something that meant you physically had to have two cartridges to do the transfer (which might boost sales). I quickly came up with a technique based on residual data surviving a power outage on RAM, which I’d got from some effects we used to experience with home computers a decade or more earlier. I wrote a demo the same day, and that night Tim, Gregg Mayles and I sat in my room and went nuts swapping cartridges back and forth and examining the results. Someone subsequently christened it ”Stop ‘n Swap” and we found that a heavily error checked data packet could survive a journey of up to 24 seconds of total power loss. There are multiple reasons why this worked, but one of them is easily demonstrated if you disconnect a power brick for many gadgets from a wall socket and a little light on it carries on running for some time afterwards before fading out. We did a lot of testing on as much hardware as we had to ensure it was good. The feature was born. Assets went in, a plan was hatched to initially have 8 unlockables within BK that would connect to a notional sequel.

BK was written so that if you completed 8 tasks in the game then codes were dropped into RAM so that this (currently unnamed) sequel could recover and unlock features. However, we then wanted the sequel to send things back, so we got BK to look for incoming codes, and if they were found then they’d unlock access to a bunch of assets we’d baked into the game (seven Easter eggs and an ice key). However, BK was late (should have launched as Nintendo’s Christmas #1 in 1997, but was replaced by Diddy Kong Racing in the end), and Nintendo only found out what we were trying to do right at the end as we were trying to get a final build of the game to them for launch. They didn’t like what we had done, felt it was too risky, and told us to disable it. However, it was way too late to do anything about all the visual assets in the game, so they got left behind and a legend was born. Sorry about that. We did have a backup plan BTW, there were a series of long text codes we implemented that you could “type” in using the quiz board at the end of the game. Eventually some hackers found them I believe, but it meant that even if the feature hadn’t worked, we could have published the codes and allowed people to unlock things.

There’s one more aspect too; we weren’t just thinking about a sequel. We had a plan to connect six games together, each would pass codes to the next and if you completed the “full circle” by getting the last game to send codes back to the 1st (BK), then there was supposed to be an extra special bonus (which we never actually worked out). I don’t recall the exact order that the games needed to be played, but the six titles would have included Banjo Kazooie, Tooie, DK64 and Conker. My memory is hazy right now on the other two, but possibly Blast Corps and Perfect Dark , but can’t fully recall right now.

BanjoPL 14th July 2018 06:56 AM

Just think if this interview could be posted in let's say 2004 then there could be more than 10 pagies of replies :p

Whyme123 14th July 2018 12:37 PM

The seven eggs may had been a forget on their end, because there are only 6?

qwertykins76 14th July 2018 02:33 PM

I think from the way he's speaking that he just forgot the exact number of eggs.

Aygs.

Walecs 16th July 2018 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whyme123 (Post 1282662)
The seven eggs may had been a forget on their end, because there are only 6?

I was wondering this, too. Was it a mistake on Machacek's part or a was an egg eventually removed before Rare released the game?

qwertykins76 17th July 2018 02:14 AM

Are you threatening my beautiful RGBCYM? Do not joke about these things.

Whyme123 17th July 2018 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alakazam (Post 1282720)
it was the brown egg all along guys

Stuck in the wildmill in Conker's, do'h

BanjoPL 2nd November 2018 09:36 PM

Update with info from Twitter:

- Cold Swap trick was discovered during Spectrum/C-64 era,

- Cold Swap could allow transfer data between N64 games in 24 seconds,

- Stop 'N' Swop featured 8 items - 7 eggs and ice key,

- SNS was planned as link between 6 games - Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Conker 64, GoldenEye 007 and Blast Corps. After doing of full circle a "Extra Special Bonus" was planned to be activated. Rare never worked on it,

- sandcastle codes for ice key and eggs were included as a backup plan if feature couldn't work as planned,

- Nintendo didn't know about feature untill Rare give them the final build of the game. Ninny didn't like Rare's idea and wanted them to disable feature at the very last minute of BK development so Rare didn't have a time to remove ice key, eggs and Stop 'N' Swop screen,

- Stop 'N' Swop was never fully activated in Banjo-Kazooie,

- Prizes for Banjo-Tooie were supposed to be designed after release of BK,

GamerMan23 4th November 2018 12:27 AM

Still 6 eggs, and it would probably take a long time to implement sns across all those games. I would've liked to see that!

bobbynicjr 6th November 2018 03:42 PM

I knew you would solve SNS BanjoPL

BanjoPL 6th November 2018 07:04 PM

bobbynicjr I didn't :p Hey i remember You from Team SFS. That was a great time :)

Alakazam Rare man said that there wasn"t any possible hardware damage because of cold swap. Nintendo just said no.

GamerMan23 6th November 2018 10:46 PM

Uh, just a stupid question, but, what were the color of the eggs? And what were the colors in b-t and what did the specific colors unlock. I know the prizes but what did, like, the link egg unlock

BanjoPL 7th November 2018 03:16 PM

GamerMan23 There are cyan, pink, blue, green, red and yellow eggs in B-K. Now we know that there was 7th egg at once. There are only pink, blue and yellow eggs in B-T howewer BK Base Egg (hacked texture for eggs) changes into all 6 colours.

@ Ghouly Boy said that they coded SNS in DK64 and the next game for it could be Jet Force Gemini but then Nintendo decided to canned the feature. Howewer in Banjo-Tooie Tepid Seat, published in June 1999 (so a year after SNS was cancelled in B-K), Rare still promised a connection and said that B-T could open secrets in B-K and those secrets could be used in B-T. My guess is that the next option after cold swap failure was 64DD.

Whyme123 9th November 2018 12:20 AM

I don't think it would had been any particular person or group at Nintendo to say no...

Rather, when they in general realized Rare was going to use an unintended hardware glitch they said no.

Jason 12th November 2018 05:58 AM

It's interesting that 20 years later—despite modern games all essentially have a "shared" save data space—the only games I can actually recall taking advantage of that are the BK/BT rereleases on Xbox.* If a game were to do this today, I would probably still think it's extremely cool. But why do that when they could sell you the unlockable instead. :rolleyes:

[COLOR="Gray"]*I'm sure consoles have software restrictions in place to prevent one game from wrecking havoc with another game's data. If they're anything like iOS, though, software from a developer could read and write data of another piece of software by the same developer.


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