Fun With The Ocarina Of Time Debug ROM: Part 1
The Ocarina of Time debug ROM is pretty interesting. It’s a European version of Master Quest so everything save for most of the debug menus are in English. There are also options you can set for French and German but I’m not sure how to use them since access to all features requires four controllers or a compatible keyboard setup.
Although it’s been out for awhile now and most people have probably seen everything there is to show, I think playing it yourself is the best way to experience it. Some of the features don’t work properly on Project 64. At least not with the configurations I tried. For instance I can’t jump back to the room list via L+R+Z (eventually I got this to work). Room 120 requires a code in order to get to the room beyond the crawl hole. And I had to used a different emulator (1964) in order to get room 125 to work. Otherwise it just freezes and gives you continuous error messages every time you try to unpause the CPU.
I recommend reading this document on the debug ROM. I believe it’s one of the first that was made. I’ve seen it copied elsewhere but this is a web archive of the original page.
Some things I’ve noticed when running the ROM in Project 64 vs 1964 concern grottoes and the way the room list appears.
From the linked document: “Note that if you warp to an underground grotto or similar area, trying to leave will take you to an undefined area which appears to be an unused part of the Deku Tree.”
When I try this on Project 64 I’m usually warped to the appropriate normal location instead. But sometimes the emulator simply crashes. On 1964 warping out or in to a grotto crashes the game much of the time. So I guess it’s not loading the unused room for some reason, unless the document is wrong about this strange warp.
Also at one point I could have sworn that room 124 led to a boss battle rather than the depth test. But I may be mistaken as I was pretty tired. It could also be due to some cursor lag making me think I selected something else. I haven’t been able to reproduce this. A glitch in the emulation maybe?
On Project 64 the room list looks fine. However on 1964 the list looks corrupted yet it still works. Maybe it’s my settings that caused this oddity. I haven’t used the patch that translates the Japanese text on the room list to English. I’m not sure if that fixes the corrupted text. I imagine it would. The room list began displaying correctly when I loaded a texture pack. But this also caused me to no longer have access to 125. After cutting off the settings to allow texture packs I still had the normal looking room list but couldn’t load 125 visually. I can hear link when I move him and use the sword and shield. But the room list hangs. I’ll have to mess around with things some more since I’d like to regain complete access to this room.
Here are some screens that I took of 125. It’s an unfinished version of the courtyard area of Hyrule Castle. It’s one of the most interesting areas. The camera isn’t fixed so you can enjoy what’s done so far from all angles. I used the moon jump code to check some things out. Note that there’s no water flowing in the gutter (the water in the moat isn’t animated or solid) and originally boxes were stacked there instead of the barrels used in the final version. They both use the same texture though. The gate on the tunnel is not present either, although the outside view isn’t among my screenshots.
Also, Navi can be taken out and put away but you will only hear the sound effect. She isn’t visible. A sword slash creates a glitchy black effect and powering the spin attack makes everything go very dark. Probably because the lighting effects here aren’t finished and you normally cannot use your sword in this area anyway because the B button gets blanked out.
While you cannot crawl into the tunnel that leads in/out of the courtyard, you can moon jump into it. Although it’s a bit of a pain to land in the right spot. The floor inside the tunnel is solid so you can stand on it. And while both child and adult Link can land in here just fine they end up with the same results. Completely stuck. You can only walk in place and you cannot moon jump out at all. I’m not sure if any finished tunnels work this way too as I haven’t tried it yet.
The water hasn’t been added to the fountains yet. The fountains are solid from the outside but if you moon jump into them you’ll be walking through the stone texture at the top. And you can walk right out of the fountain from the inside too. There’s no texture on the back of the fountains either. I’m guessing it’s to save on loading textures because in the normal game you’d never see these fountains from the back anyway.
Link hanging from an invisible platform. I used the moon jump to get up there. But I did manage to make the jump from the trellis once as well. It was just a lower portion of that invisible platform. If you moon jump onto the hedges a similar effect occurs. It seems to have something to do with how those objects behave. At least in that stage of development. I haven’t tried to moon jump up there in the normal version of this map. The high ledge might be up there to prevent players from accidentally ending up on top of hedges or the stone divider beyond the trellis.
The middle part of this statue is missing. But the smaller figures flanking it are already there and there’s a shadow effect in the middle of the stone on top. It has no back textures just like the fountains. And you can moon jump in and walk out. Further on, near the tunnel there’s the statue of what appears to be a scholar. For some reason it only shows up sometimes. I’m not sure why. Being an adult or child doesn’t seem to affect it.
I think this is pretty much the same as the final version but I’m including it anyway. The hedge on the left is a bit different because it’s not finished yet.
Here’s the end of the tunnel where the circular part of the courtyard begins. Note that there’s no water or flowers yet. A very high invisible wall prevents you from going further. If you hit it with your sword it makes the generic wall hitting sound. You have to moon jump pretty high to get into the circular portion of this area. And the ground and walls there are not solid anyway. There’s also a dark triangle on the middle wall. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe the design of that wall was originally going to be different. It looks like the unfinished triforce portion of the Hyrule crest. That’s probably what it is. This is most likely the version of the inner courtyard that you'd see before transitioning into the area. To save RAM the rooms that were visible from adjoining areas were actually lower polygon models of the real thing.
Here’s a nice view from a side angle that I got with moon jump. You can see here that the stairs aren’t finished. As I said before none of this area is sold. And it’s very difficult to maneuver here. The boundaries on this map are pretty high in places and it’s hard to get a good angle. I know you can use the camera moving tool. But I find moon jump easier even with the high boundaries.
I have some more debug ROM stuff left to post. It’s mostly fiddling around with the inventory editor, which procured some interesting results.