Perfect Dark 'PerfectHead' face-mapping still intact?

[tellyjelly]

this is a dump from the perfect dark rom starting at about 001F6ACC. i used nemu64 to search through the memory, after pausing the emulation during the intro Rareware and Nintendo logos. it has been editied slightly for ease of reading.

<dump begins>

Are you sure?

Cancel
End Game


PerfectHead

Load A Saved Head

Make A New Head

Edit A Loaded Head

Edit A PerfectHead
Choose slot to edit:

Cancel

Make A New Head

Load A Saved Head
Where do you want to be able
to use this head?

Combat Simulator

All Missions

Both

Cancel

Camera Setup

Insert your camera into your
Game Boy Pak.

Then, insert your Game Boy Pak
into any controller.

OK

Cancel
Error Game Boy Camera Not Detected!
Please check all connections

and try again.

Cancel

Choose Camera

More than one camera detected.

Please select which camera you
want to use

<end of dump>


does this mean perfecthead is still in a functional form in the code somewhere? i don't see how the code could be removed, but all these messages remain intact. i've no idea how to go about finding instances in the code where these texts are accessed.

and while i'm at it, here's some other interesting things i've come across in perfect dark.

- hacker central is referred to as 'hack that mac' within the functions (or whatever) code nametable

- among the mission names, there appears the phrase 'retaking the institute' among the names of the bonus missions, just after maian sos and just before WAR!. i'm sure i've not read that in the game anywhere...

- one of the debug messages says 'Another Perfect Crash (tm)', hahaha


and finally, quite unrelated, a while ago i was looking through the goldeneye rom with a realtive search program, outside of any emulator, and i found a list of texts that were the names of all the Ultimatelay The Game spectrum games. i don't want to jump to conclusions and assume it means the games are actually in there.... more logical thinking would be that they are names of arrays or something, and the programmer was just giving the code good karma, heh.

unfortunately, i have lost the memory address for the goldeneye find, but try searching for SABREWULF (sp?) or JETPAC and you'll probably find the list. also, i'm not sure if an emulator will find it, so use a program like Hexposeor something.


well, i hope i have introduced some new stuff there! please speculate!

[SubDrag]

Cool to see somebody else interested. First of all, all we know about Perfect Head is on http://www.geocities.com/subdrag1/facemap.htm (or at least all I know). All of the text references don't indicate that it's still there; it's much more likely that it's long gone, but they didn't remove the text for it (too much hassle). All that we have left is the menus on the page above, and text references, as far as I know.

Hack that mac, didn't notice that text. Retaking the institute is one of the more fascinating things we've found. I personally think it would've been the greatest level, as Carrington Institute was probably the best level in the game! However, the level was definitely never completed. We found the objectives (rather Krijy did):

(my guess from the objectives text in RAM)
Agent:
1 Lead the team and clean out the building

Special Agent:
1 Lead the team and clean out the building
2 Kill All Enemy Agents
3 Do Something Else

Perfect Agent and Perfect Dark:
1 Lead the team and clean out the building
2 Kill All Enemy Agents
3 Do Something Else
4 And Something Else


So clearly, not finished, or done much.

You bring up one of the strange oddities in Goldeneye. We've noticed the spectrum emulator and a few games, it's really strange, we have no idea why it's there. I don't know if was going to be like in Timesplitters, or if it was just somebody working on it, and they were using the GE source to try implementing into N64. Very odd. Also, Phantom pointed this out, but Blast Corps has an "Emulation Programmer" credits...and there's no emulation in there...it's a puzzle..

[tellyjelly]

it is written as 'hackthatmac' all one word and crops up a couple of times as part of a bigger name like 'hackthatmac_init()' or something.

you've actually found evidence of emulator code? that's very interesting. am i right in thinking goldeneye uses a filesystem for storing models and stuff? maybe while working on the game, the code sources and model/texture files are all part of a directory structure on the programmer's devkit, and somehow a spectrum emulator that they must've played at coffee breaks or something has found its way to the final build, haha.

hmmm looking at those objectives, it doesn't seem likely that theres anything of it but the text.


regarding the hassle of removing the perfecthead messages, i remember reading that the infamous cheese were once part of a cheat system. if this is true, then why would they remove the text for that particular feature, and leave in stuff from others, without reason? unless of course they were under a tight schedule. hmmm.

[SubDrag]

Not evidence of emulator code, just the same text you found. Very odd. The PD objectives are very interesting, but clearly very early.

Supposedly cheese was to be filmed by camspy or something to unlock cheats, guess it got scrapped, or that could just be a nasty rumor.