Unused Maps

This is a sub-page of Star Fox Adventures.

Left over on the Star Fox Adventures disc are many remnants of maps that were changed or deleted during the game's hectic development cycle.

Dragon Rock Bottom#

To do: Port code to other versions.

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Originally, there was an underground section between Dragon Rock and Drakor. This map remains in the game and can be accessed using the following code (for v1.0) and entering any Magic Cave:

042C6CFC 803220C8
0418B344 38600053

(The first line fixes a crash caused by some objects trying to use a deleted DLL; the second changes the cave destination.)

AnimTest#

A test map, devoid of any objects. There are no warps leading to this map, so it's only accessible by changing your coordinates directly. This Gecko code (US v1.00) will place you in the test map upon creating and starting a new game:

062c2170 0000000c
c6146000 c2fe7511
c694a200 00000000

This map is missing some polygons, allowing you to step out of bounds, which will cause you to freeze in place forever. There are also many ledges that can't be climbed due to missing hitbox data, and remnants of a zip line, which the character will attempt to climb onto (in midair) and immediately fall from.

Krazoa Palace (Dinosaur Planet)#

This map is named krazoapalace internally, however it doesn't at all resemble the layout of the Krazoa Palace that appears in Star Fox Adventures. All that's left is the grid layout (assigning each block to a location in the world) and a handful of objects, including an old version of the Transporter (warp pad) object. There's one warp at each end. You can warp to this map using entries 5D and 5E in WARPTAB.BIN, but there's not much to see since the map has no geometry, every object is considered out-of-bounds and fails to spawn, and the player is stuck in midair.

The Star Fox Adventures Krazoa Palace (which is named warlock internally) evolved out of designs for a very similar area in Dinosaur Planet named Warlock Mountain, which the player would have returned to throughout their adventure to deposit Krazoa Spirits. Late in Dinosaur Planet's story, Krystal would have visited an entirely unrelated location also named Krazoa Palace, where she would have met a living Krazoa and travelled through time to save Sabre and obtain her third SpellStone. The layout of the map blocks in the krazoapalace data perfectly matches the layout of Krazoa Palace in the Dinosaur Planet ROM, as can be seen by overlaying an orthographic view of the area:

The other scrapped Dinosaur Planet areas (Discovery Falls, Diamond Bay, etc.) barely have any map data in the final Star Fox Adventures beyond their name strings, so the fact that so much of Dinosaur Planet's Krazoa Palace survives suggests that Rare had originally intended to keep it and scrapped it at a later point in development than the other cut areas. Presumably, they would have changed the name of "Warlock Mountain" to "Krazoa Palace" around that time.

To do: Get a better map that shows the objects' locations.

Deleted Maps#

A few maps are still listed in the game's files, but can't be accessed. Some are stored in an older file format that the game will crash upon trying to load; others are an empty void, or have no files left at all.

Map Changes#

Many maps were renamed or deleted during development, as evidenced by their internal names and data.

Internal Names#

Each map has an ID, a romlist file, a directory containing its assets, and an internal name (in MAPINFO.bin). Many of these names don't match each other.

The internal names aren't displayed in the game. Many are truncated, and most unused entries have a Z in front. Unused entries are highlighted in bold.

MAPINFO.bin also assigns a type to each map:

• 0: normal map
• 1: normal submap
• 2: special map - removes all objects
• 3: special submap - removes all objects
• 4: special map - title screen and Arwing sections

Type 2 is completely unused; type 3 is only used by map #1 which is itself unused.

Unused/Mismatched Directories#

A few directories aren't used, or don't match up with the actual map:

• Directory frontend is unused; map frontend uses directory shipbattle.
• Directory dfalls is unused, probably belonged to map discovery or dbay.
• Directory swapcircle is unused; map swapcircle uses directory lightfoot.
• Maps newicemount2 and newicemount3 use entries 0x1F and 0x20 in the directory list.
  • Both are animtest but most unused maps use entry 0x05 instead.
• Map duster uses directory cloudjoin.
  • duster is the internal name of the Bafomdad item.
• Map cloudjoin uses directory animtest.
• ID 0x05 (animtest) is also used as the default for any invalid map IDs.

Unused Warps#

The file WARPTAB.bin defines destinations for warps. About half of the entries are empty (coordinates 0,0,0); a few interesting unused entries remain:

Note that warps leading out of bounds will usually crash the game when used.

The game actually checks if the destination is all zeros and will load AnimTest instead, but not actually place you in it, so you end up suspended in an endless void.

To do: Confirm if entry 55 is unused or just being accessed incorrectly