(April 18th, 2017, 11:18 pm)cartridgeguy Wrote: (April 17th, 2017, 02:43 am)mib_f8sm9c Wrote:
Just posting this because I've gotten enough information that it'll be helpful to anyone who's wanting to do in-depth hacking of Mario Golf 64. I've decoded the compression used on both 3d models & surface mapping for levels, and found a resource table that lists all level data and other unknown goodies. Just look here if you're interested.
https://wiki.origami64.net/mario_golf_64
Also, if anyone has questions about the Mario Golf 64 rom, I can try to answer them here.
Definitely interested! How are the course layouts stored in the rom? How difficult would it be to swap out a character?
Lastly how difficult would a course editor be? That would be a dream come true
The wiki has more in-depth answers under the Resource Table section, but essentially there's a table which holds a bunch of information about the levels. Each level has 7 different data sets associated with it. The first two are encoded height map data (which I'm currently investigating), the third is the object list (so details where trees are stored), the next three are still unknown (possibly the location of the cup/player starting, and other goodies) and the last data set is compressed surface map data (so what areas are green, which are rough, etc).
Right now the surface map and the object list would be very simple to make editors for, and due to the nature of the table, it might also be possible to easily tack on new level data at the end of the ROM. The height map is a bit difficult to decode, but it's fun so I'm actively interested in it.
To sum it up, creating a course editor would seem to be very viable and rather straightforward. Though I don't have a clue how you'd edit level height data in any efficient way yet.
EDIT: I should note that a course editor is not on my to-do list right now. I'm mostly investigating the format of MG64 data right now simply because it interests me and I'm procrastinating my work on Mario Kart 64 a bit.
