Dinosaur Planet Leftovers

This is a sub-page of Proto:Star Fox Adventures/E3 2002 Demo.

The 2002 Star Fox Adventures demo not only contains an earlier build of that game, but a ton more Dinosaur Planet leftovers than the final has.

To do: Upload all files mentioned and create sub-pages for bigger files. Get all the unused music and sounds up here.

Dinosaur Planet-Related Files#

Many files from Dinosaur Planet are on the disc, together with early ports for the GameCube and more.

• AMBIENT.bin

Holds the environmental sound effects.

• AUDIO.bin

Contains the sequencing data for all of the music tracks.

• BLOCKS.bin

Contains landscape models. The landscape was cut up into 640×640 unit volumes in x/z (variable in y).

• BLKEXTRA.bin

Block extra was used to store any additional block-related info.

• DLLS.bin

Contains most of the gameplay code of N64 Dinosaur Planet. A DLL system was used so that code could be swapped out when needed to save space on the Nintendo 64.

• FRONTTEXT.bin

A leftover file from Diddy Kong Racing. Dinosaur Planet directly evolved from the Diddy Kong Racing code base.

• HITS.bin

Would have been either collision geometry for the landscape, or additional specific collision markup that the designers added to specify things like where the character can jump, etc.

• INCLUDE.bin

A listing for the text strings, objects, and levels to be included in the game.

• LEVELNAMES.bin

A list of all the internal names of the game's levels.

• MPEG.bin

Contains over an hour of Dinosaur Planet voice acting. About 90% of the game's plot is in there (although the game's ending was never fully thought out, so this is probably all there is to it in general). It seems to be one large file, but the different sequences are actually cut up and can be easily extracted using a hex editor.

• MUSIC.bin

Holds the instrument samples used for Dinosaur Planet music, plus two item jingles.

• OBJECTS.bin

Defines all(?) objects by giving model ID and other IDs (probably animation IDs, state IDs, collision IDs and more). Does not contain model geometry. Objects can only be replaced with other objects that are in the same group. It's currently unknown what objects belong to what group.

• OBJFSAS.bin

The state machines for all the characters in the game. They were written in a kind of script language.

• out

A directory listing for all the files used in the N64 version of Dinosaur Planet.

• SFX.bin

Holds many sound effects and a portion of voice acting (Command Sidekicks, battle grunts, and random Dinosaur talk).

• STORYBOARD.bin

Contains storyboards outlining scrapped cutscenes which would have taken place at CloudRunner Fortress. One scene depicts Krystal and Kyte being attacked by a SharpClaw spaceship, others describe a scrapped subplot involving Kyte's uncle colluding with General Scales.

• default.dol

Contains raw files for a Dinosaur Planet build later than the December 1st one, dated around March 2001, possibly one of the earliest builds for the GameCube. The raw files it has, however, are not enough for a playable build.

Level Names#

Here's a list of all the game's internal level names as of 21/03/1999, as found in LEVELNAMES.BIN:

Front End2
Front End
animtest
Dragon Rock
Yeti Mountain
Force Point 1
Snowball Mines
Test Room
Discovery Falls
SwapStone Hollow
Golden Plains
Northern Wastes
Warlock Mountain
Ice Mountain 2
CloudRunner Fortress
Intro Sequence
SwapStone Hollow 2
Walled City
SwapStone Circle
CloudRunner Fortress - Treasure
CloudRunner Fortress - Dungeon
CloudRunner Fortress - TrapRooms
Moon Mountain Pass
Krazoa Shrine
Krazoa Hall
snowmines
NewIceMt1
NewIceMt2
NewIceMt3

As expected, this level list is much shorter than the one in the December 2000 version of the game. "Snowball Mines" is likely an earlier name for DarkIce Mines, and "Krazoa Hall" may be a prototype name for "Krazoa Palace" (as in the area Krystal would have visited to find her third SpellStone, not to be confused with the Krazoa Palace in Star Fox Adventures which evolved out of Dinosaur Planet's Warlock Mountain). "Yeti Mountain" might possibly be the name of the second icy mountaintop speeder track that can be found in the unreferenced map blocks of the December 2000 build - Dinosaur Planet's other mountain areas (Warlock Mountain and Ice Mountain) are also included in this list so it would seemingly have to refer to a unique mountain area like this one.

"Ice Mountain 2" may refer to a second art pass of the level's model - a few slightly different versions of the area were seen in pre-release footage, and the entirety of one of them can be found among the December 2000 ROM's unreferenced blocks.

"CloudRunner Fortress - TrapRooms" refers to an area that was scrapped from the game by the time of the December 2000 build, however that version of the game does contain partially-completed map models for the area in its level list and unreferenced blocks. A storyboard can be found in STORYBOARD.bin which outlines the cutscenes that would've taken place there involving Kyte's evil uncle colluding with General Scales. December 2000's "CloudRunner Fortress - Race" area is missing from this list, so it may have been designed as a replacement for the Trap Rooms.

It's curious that "Walled City" is present in this list but "EarthWalker Temple" isn't, considering some of the earliest footage of the game shows a version of EarthWalker Temple from 1999. EarthWalker Temple (a level with stepped pyramids, a sun/moon theme, and the plot-relevant Communications Chamber) and Walled City (a dangerous marsh-surrounded area filled with RedEyes and blocked off by an enormous gate) were amalgamated into one level named Walled City (or EarthWalker City in the case of the initials prefixing its Krazoa Shrine room "ECShrine") by the December 2000 version, and the original design for Walled City has not been seen. With that in mind, the "Walled City" in this list might just be a prototype name for the old EarthWalker Temple map. Maybe the area started off with "Walled City" as its name, was renamed "EarthWalker Temple" sometime before the build shown in the 1999 footage, and was then renamed "Walled City" again when the areas were amalgamated. It's confusing!

"Golden Plains" is a desert level that was removed in the final version, and was altered to become Ocean Force Point Temple.

Development Texts#

Buried deep inside this version are loads of error messages and texts not in the final game.

Starting at 7D5F7D8 in the .gcm file, there's a large debug menu:

 Dino Planet Development System
 
 Play Map

 Texture Viewer

 Model Viewer

 Start Game
  
 Save Game Manager

 Resolution:
 World Edit:
 Correct All Rom Lists
 Game Monitor

 Talking:

 Surround:

 Head size:

 Object Editor
 Object Sequencer
 Object Copier
 Level of Detail
 Vdf Editor

 Map editor
 
 Hit editor

 Track Viewer

 Full Game Save

 Diagnostics

 Objects+hits
 Objects+Active

 Game Diagnostics
 Performance Profiler
 RCP counters
 Object hits:

 Object repel:
 View Hits:
 View Edges:
 View Voxel Maps:
 View Shadow Objects:
 View texCache Usage:
 View Memory Usage:
 View Memory Used:
 View Frame Time:
 Wide Screen:
 DinoVista:

 Game Editor
 Game Text

 Task Text
 Romdef info
 Instrumentation:

 Trigger Monitor:
 Rompos Table
 Objtime Table

 Recording:
 Real Time:
 Profiler:
 Playback

 Player Selection
 Setup-Point

 Gameplay
 Animation
 All Objects

 Level Settings
 AIgrading

 Gametext Menu
 Gametext Text
 Language num
 View as text
 View as subtitle

 View Tasks Done
 Task Done Number
 View Next Clue

 LoadFlag
 LoadRange
 ViewFlag
 ViewRange

 Romdef Info Menu
 Sort By:
 Romdef details

Unused Graphics#

Nintendo 64 Controller Icons#

root/cloudtreasure/TEX0.bin

File offset	Identity	Tile
000F1F50	Stick
000F21D5	Stick
000F243A	Stick

root/Copy of swaphol/TEX0.bin

File offset	Identity	Tile
00083BF5	Stick
00083E5A	Stick
00083970	Stick

root/frontend/TEX0.bin

File offset	Identity	Tile
0002B040	C-Button
0002B620	C-Button
0002BBA0	C-Button
0002BE40	C-Button
0002C0C0	C-Button
0002C360	C-Button
0002CAC0	C-Button
0002D1E0	C-Button
00066B34	A Button
00066D94	A Button
00067014	A Button
000672D4	A Button

root/swaphol/TEX0.bin

File offset	Identity	Tile
00025020	C-Button
00025600	C-Button
00025B80	C-Button
00025E20	C-Button
000260A0	C-Button
00026340	C-Button
00026AA0	C-Button
000271C0	C-Button
00027600	C-Button
00066B34	A Button
00066D94	A Button
00067014	A Button
000672D4	A Button

A lot of button icons from Dinosaur Planet still remain in these files.