Proto:Star Fox Adventures/Dinosaur Planet

This is a sub-page of Proto:Star Fox Adventures.

This article has just been started and needs the article basics added. Help us out and add them.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: Compare build to E3 2000 footage, remnants in final/July demo, and final itself.

A rather early build of Star Fox Adventures, back when the game was still in its Dinosaur Planet phase. Dated December 1, 2000, this appears to be a late N64-era build.

See also Proto:Star Fox Adventures/July 2002 Demo/Dinosaur Planet Leftovers and Star Fox Adventures/Dinosaur Planet Leftovers.

Sub-Pages

Unused Models All the dev purpose markers, unused planets, and catching those hands!

Unused Areas & Maps Back when Walled City and Earth Walker Temple still were two separate areas

Unused Text & Development Text Early localizations, early scripts and lots of placeholders.

General Differences

• In a bit of a surprise, Fox McCloud has already begun replacing Sabre, the original male protagonist, by this point. This said, there are still numerous references to Sabre present, including his model, implying that the change was rather recent.
• Krystal is fully playable throughout the game, rather than only being playable in the prologue.

Sabre

Sabre's gameplay and cutscene models are thankfully still present in this build of the game, but they each have some issues. Sabre's gameplay model (which is used as a placeholder for Fox's SharpClaw disguise) uses the wrong texture on the back of his head - a similar-looking texture intended for the ShadowHunter dinosaurs' legs is assigned by mistake but thankfully his proper texture is still in the ROM. Either of these textures would work, though the half-resolution one is probably intended for the gameplay model so a tiny bit of RAM can be freed:

Sabre's cutscene model (which doesn't appear to be used anywhere in the game but is very luckily still included) does have the correct textures assigned to it, however his model's skeleton seems to use a different joint hierarchy that doesn't match the one used by Fox's model. His animations don't play correctly as a result, causing him to stay in his bind pose most of the time and wiggle his ears instead of talking. Sabre's cutscene model also doesn't emote during cutscenes. It's currently unknown if the morph target data for his different expressions is still present in the ROM but unreferenced by his model, or if the blendshape deltas were simply erased as part of importing Fox's models into the game (Fox doesn't emote either, presumably because they only recently finished the model and didn't have time to create blend targets for it yet). Sabre's set of morph targets would probably be comparable to those used by Krystal's cutscene model, since she emotes correctly when brought into any cutscenes that're supposed to feature Sabre. Incidentally this shows that the facial animation keyframes for Sabre's cutscenes are all still there, they just don't do anything to Fox/Sabre's model!

Sabre's eyes animate properly on both models, but neither of them blink despite the textures for his blink animation still being in the ROM. Both models also have a bug which causes an overlay on Sabre's sword (which is a separate model) to go solid white most of the time, except when it briefly flickers back to its proper texturing during very specific combinations of viewing angles, player coordinates, and weather conditions.

The following GameShark code will replace Fox's cutscene and gameplay models with Sabre's gameplay model. Sabre's gameplay model isn't designed for cutscenes so it doesn't emote either, and its joint IDs are also slightly different from those used by Fox's cutscene model which again causes his ear to wiggle when his jaw should be moving:

81021780 0C02
81021782 6CC1
81021784 0000
81021786 0000
8109B304 240E
8109B306 0007
8109B308 108E
8109B30A 0003
8109B30C 240E
8109B30E 0008
8109B310 148E
8109B312 0002
8109B314 0000
8109B316 0000
8109B318 2404
8109B31A 0009
8109B31C 0800
8109B31E 5F57
8109B320 0004
8109B322 2023

Early HUD

Remnants of an earlier user interface seen in the press video and several teasers for the game. The head icons are prerendered images of the characters' high-poly models, the same models which were used for the higher resolution rendered artwork seen on the leaked character biographies. Sabre's icon is missing (it would also be a prerender of the model seen in the character bios, and is seen in teasers). It is unknown if Kyte ever had one in the first place, but an icon for her is missing as well. Also missing are most of the item icons and the font for the magic and food counters, along with the base health bar, which this blue one would overlay and be cut off as your health lowered.

E3 HUD leftovers

Unfortunately, little to practically nothing remains of the HUD shown off at E3.

Scarab Counter

The game contains a Scarab counter which is normally disabled. It can be re-enabled with the following GameShark code: 805C4D66 0008.

Opening Demo Cutscene

To do: Replace the video with a better one in the native resolution.

An unused opening demo. It doesn't appear to be finished given how rough the animation looks in some areas. It can be viewed in-game by using the following GameShark code and pressing D-Pad up after starting a new save file.

815C5048 C538
815C504A 1BC8
815C504C 4092
815C504E 73A3
815C5050 4694
815C5052 F18A
D10A7DC0 0800
800B4A58 0001

Unused Options Menu

There exists an unused options menu within the data for Dinosaur Planet. Almost none of the options work, however. Enabling the below code will bring the game here upon booting, instead of the save file menu. Exiting this menu with B will crash the game; the game appears to load segment ID 0x3E, which was likely an old menu screen that no longer exists.

Main Menu = Unused Options Menu
8008C857 0041

To exit the menu without crashing, apply the below codes and disable the above code to exit back into the logo screens from this menu. This makes the menus slightly glitchy, however.

Return Out of Options Menu
8008C853 003C
8008C857 003F

VIDEO

Allows for adjustments to screen settings. The Ratio option is always set to 16:9 by default, but the game still appears in 4:3.

AUDIO

Allows changing of music, sound effect volumes, and speaker setup settings. Setup appears to take no effect, but the Music and SFX sliders work as intended.

DISPLAY

Allows toggling of subtitle text, though subtitles still output regardless. It's not clear what the Instruments setting does, if anything.

CONTROL

Allows changing of the Z button functionality. Also shows the controls.

CHEATS

A cheat menu with no functionality. "BIG HEAD" is toggled to the On state and cannot be turned off, though it has no effect. The rest of the cheats are below:

GIANT HEAD
BLANK 1
BLANK 2
BLANK 3
BLANK 4
BLANK 5

There's two pages of cheats. Attempting to scroll down to a third page will crash the game.

CINEMA

Doesn't work. Was possibly intended to be used to view all cutscenes currently encountered in a save file's playthrough.

Crash Handler

If the game ever crashes, it'll display this crash handler.