DK64 - Ice Key Discovery

[paul.roberts20]

have I got this right then? when you first start up dk, icekey=0, but once you reach the game select menu, icekey=1?

so for people who played it on n64 when it came out, without GS or anything, icekey=1 would have been set the whole time?

couldn't someone try to force icekey=0, then play through and see if there's any differences?

[torrentstorm]

Originally Posted by paul.roberts20

have I got this right then? when you first start up dk, icekey=0, but once you reach the game select menu, icekey=1?

so for people who played it on n64 when it came out, without GS or anything, icekey=1 would have been set the whole time?

couldn't someone try to force icekey=0, then play through and see if there's any differences?

I don't think it works that way ...

[runehero123]

Originally Posted by paul.roberts20

have I got this right then? when you first start up dk, icekey=0, but once you reach the game select menu, icekey=1?

so for people who played it on n64 when it came out, without GS or anything, icekey=1 would have been set the whole time?

Yeah, that's pretty much how it worked. Strange, huh?

By the way, I had to wipe my hard drive of all data due to some nasty virus infection. Once I re-download Nemu and some of the necessary video plugins + cheat tools, I'll look into this again.

[Banjo-Man]

Why dose the game change the value for the Ice Key from 0 to 1 when you go to the file select? You would have no opportunity to get one. Maybe it was for testing purposes for SNS from BK to BT as BK and DK64 were in development at the same time and because they both use the same engine the could test it on DK64 easily.

[runehero123]

Originally Posted by Banjo-Man

Why dose the game change the value for the Ice Key from 0 to 1 when you go to the file select? You would have no opportunity to get one. Maybe it was for testing purposes for SNS from BK to BT as BK and DK64 were in development at the same time and because they both use the same engine the could test it on DK64 easily

Well, we know that for one, we would never know that we had 1 icekey collected unless we could see it in the Totals Screen.To do this you would have to find a value to activate it. I know that the way it is activated is different from all the other items on the totals screen. How it was activated is what's in question.

The most probable thing we can assume is that it was activated by cold-swapping "Flag data" from Banjo-Kazooie after collecting the ice-key.

[Banjo-Man]

So to my understanding you ALLWAYS have 1 Ice Key, however you never see that you do have it until a flag data tells the game to show that you do indeed have one,(seeing as it would be easier programming wise to just always let you have one and only let you use it after its revealed).

Now I have two possibly dumb questions but:

1: Does it affect the game clear % at all? I know it probably doesn’t because you can start a new game immediately save and quit and it will still show 0 %.

2: What if you forced the game to not give you and Ice Key until you actually start playing? It might show up if it's collected while the game is playing and not just in a File select screen.

This is just a guess but thanks for your time.

[ssj]

did a bit of research today

the ice key flag in dk64 is not in the same area as it is in banjo kazooie

because I loaded up the flag table in artmoney with kazooie. I collected the key, got a 0601 activated in RAM and then loaded up the dk6k rom with the the table still loaded

the table then had a load of random digits 06 01 was nowhere to be found, even with runes codes. This is probably down to the expansion pack.

I then loaded the flag table in banjo tooie. Though obviously not able to do anything with it I had a better result. The digits in the area ( remember I still had bk's flag data table loaded) were all set to 00 01

so having a flag set in that area of tooie would have been acceptable

[Hammerhead Guy]

Can you post the gameshark codes to get the ice key in it's own slot?

[GameMasterGuy]

the image might not be in there, maybe they were intending on SNSing the image from BK to DK64

[Tooie]

I can't help but wonder, is there any possibility that the Ice Key was a beta item having nothing to do with SNS or Banjo-Kazooie, that ironically got removed at some point in the game?

I mean, after all, Mumbo showed us the Key would be used in Tooie.

[bottles revenge]

keep it up rune. We might find it yet.

[xxjoesusxx]

Crazy bump, I know, but I wondered if anything more ever came of this.

[xxnekrosisxx]

Originally Posted by xxjoesusxx

Crazy bump, I know, but I wondered if anything more ever came of this.

When i saw this thread up here i was like ..repost wha wha ...wait NOPE haha...yeah idk if anything more came of this either..someone tell us?

[runehero123]

As a matter of fact, I posted this in another thread:

Originally Posted by Runehero

Actually, I was messing around with the ASM routine that displays the items in the totals menu.

There are two loops. A loop that checks the amount of each item in the totals menu. If > 0 it will create a slot in the totals menu for that item. The next loop also checks the item amount and if it's > 0 it will load the image for that item and the text into the proper slot.

However, it clearly only checks up to the 8th item in the totals menu (blueprints). Since the ice-key is the 9th item in the totals menu, it's not possible that the ice-key will load into the totals menu using this routine.

It makes sense too seeing as it shouldn't matter how many ice-key's you've collected (since only 1), but if you've activated some sort of trigger, or flag. I've forced the script to also load the 9th item, but it loads without a picture(probably because the script doesn't know which image to load?).

This basically confirms that the ice-key isn't loaded within the same code-loop as the other items in the totals menu. Which makes sense, seeing as that code loads them only if the amount collected is > 0.

This doesn't rule out the possibility of there being code left in the game for activating the ice-key. Though I'm starting to think it's unlikely. However, I'm going to assume that once the ice-key was activated in DK64, it would be saved into EEPROM in an area that could be accessed by all game save files.

So, if you think about it, that's the best place to start searching for any activation code. I'm sure if Dk64 checked for flag data from BK on boot-up, and the ice-key was collected, it would store information to EEPROM for later access.

Example:

-On Boot-Up, search for flag data stored in RAM by BK.
-If found, save data to eeprom indicating that ice-key has been "transferred" from BK.
-When loading Totals menu, check EEPROM for ice-key variable, if collected, display ice-key in totals menu.

[Edit]
It could also just check EEPROM for the "ice-key activator" variable on boot-up as well, and store that to a variable in RAM that is checked for when the totals menu is loading.
[/Edit]

Therefore, I'll probably do some close examination of eeprom, and see if there is any data that DK64 is checking for, that isn't already used in-game.

[xxjoesusxx]

well done sir.