Proto:Star Fox Adventures/Dinosaur Planet/Unused Models

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

GameShark code 8125372E ???? (where "????" is one of the below) will replace the crates in Warlock Mountain with the selected model.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

To do: Find a way to prevent the Rare and N64 logos from despawning.

Arrow

Value: 0000

A multi-coloured arrow, likely used for development purposes. This same model can also be found in Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini, Mickey's Speedway USA, and the final Star Fox Adventures.

Clapperboard

Value: 00CA

A clapperboard, probably used for development purposes.

LEV CTRL Cube

Value: 00E7

A blue dev cube with "LEV CTRL" on it.

OBJ CTRL Cube

Value: 0296

A blue dev cube with "OBJ CTRL" on it.

Pillar

Value: 0313

A yellow pillar left over from an earlier build of the game. It even has an animation of it falling over when spawned.

Rare Logo

Value: 033D

A 3D Rare logo. The Rare logo shown in the intro is a 2D graphic. When loaded in-game, the model is very large and instantly despawns.

N64 Logo

Value: 033E

A 3D N64 logo. The N64 logo shown in the intro is a 2D graphic. When loaded in-game, the model is very large and instantly despawns.

RE START POINT Cube

Value: 046A

A blue dev cube with "RE START POINT" (likely meant to be "RESTART POINT") on it.

Krystal's Hands

Value: 046C

Krystal's first-person-view hands, left over from an earlier build of the game.

Sabre's Hands

Value: 046D

Sabre's first-person-view hands, left over from an earlier build of the game.

FX Cube

Value: 0486

A blue dev cube with "FX" on it.

XYZ Axis

Value: 04DE

An XYZ axis.

Blue SnowHorn

This unused model was probably intended for the special SnowHorn who guards the Krazoa shrine entrance in SnowHorn Wastes, since there's a blue SnowHorn at the equivalent spot in Star Fox Adventures. They look quite like Taj from Diddy Kong Racing, which could be an intentional Easter egg considering Dinosaur Planet started out as a sequel to it.

To patch the model over the SnowHorn shown above, change the value at address 380A1BD from A1 to A2.

Cape Claw Courtyard Beacon

Indexed just after the "CCperchSwitch" object model is this Cape Claw themed version of the beacons that are revealed after solving the area's Krazoa symbol lever puzzle. The beacon model from Swapstone Circle was reused as a placeholder, but it seems they never got around to updating it after this model was created. Kyte can still interact with it correctly after replacement, however the beacon's model does float very slightly above the ground.

To patch the model into place, change the two bytes at address 382405C from 00D7 to 0147.

Unused DarkIce Mines Tents

DIMTent
Regular	Burnt (Unused)

A burnt version of the SharpClaw tent can be found at model index 0x376. This model was likely supposed to be gradually uncovered as the burning special effect masked away the regular version of the tent, but it goes unused in this build since the tents just vanish.

Value: 0334

An unused model of a massive SharpClaw tent can also be found indexed immediately after the burnt tent, with the internal object name "DIMBigTent". The regular SharpClaw tent is shown for scale. The tent's base perfectly matches the shape of a square straw-covered patch of land just beside the small tents, so this is very likely where it was going to be placed. For some reason the model references an enormous number of textures that it doesn't use (a whopping 93 of them!), which seem to mostly be environmental textures from Northern Wastes - maybe some of the surrounding level geometry was accidentally included when this model was first imported. The tent also has a fully-modelled interior:

Unused Planets

The orrery in Krystal's side of Warlock Mountain shows the eight planets (referred to as the "Majestic 8" in the game's story) of Sauria's planetary system. Each planet uses one of the 9 models (8 planets and 1 moon) contained within the "WL_Planets" object, however for some reason the last two planets inside the object go unused, and the orrery instead displays two Earths and two ringed planets. It's possible that these last two planets' models weren't ready in time for implementing the orrery animation (which might suggest that they're more significant to the game story than the other planets and extra care had to be given to their designs), and so duplicated placeholders were used in the meantime.

The cyan planet is unique because it uses two tiled textures with an effective resolution of 128×64 across its surface, whereas all the other planets use a single 64×64 surface texture. Maybe the artists gave it extra detail because it was intended to be shown up-close in a cutscene, perhaps during the unused dialogue about the Krazoa/Kamerian war.

The last planet might be Sauria, since its colour palette is relatively close to Dinosaur Planet's surface texture in Star Fox Adventures (moreso than the other 7 planets at least). Its landmasses also loosely fit the layout and compass directions of the game world - with Sabre's area on the western continent (the brown/beige patch would be Ice Mountain and Northern Wastes, and Volcano Force Point would be on the narrow peninsula almost touching the middle continent), and at the opposite side of the planet Krystal's areas would be on the eastern continents (SwapStone Circle in the south of the green patch, Cape Claw on the western yellow/green area, Golden Plains on the orange patch to the south, Moon Mountain Pass leading into the easternmost half of the continents, and CloudRunner Fortress atop the eastern coast), and Warlock Mountain on the solitary island. Star Fox Adventures' Krazoa Palace (which evolved out of Warlock Mountain's design) is also located on a lonely northern island with a similar shape.

Dinosaur Planet	Star Fox Adventures

Unused Sun

Value: 0569

Indexed just after the "WM_Planets" models (i.e. model 0x1B7) is this unused model with the internal name "WM_PlanetsSun". The model uses animated texture tiles, but the textures don't seem to animate when the object is loaded.

It should probably be positioned at the centre of the orrery's virtual solar system, considering Dinosaur Planet's daytime skybox shows the planet orbits a sun. A cracked volcanic planet (likely the Kamerian homeworld) seems to be used instead as a placeholder.

Viewed in perspective, the model consists of two single-sided curved tessellated planes, both facing upwards (along Y). As a result of this, the player can't actually see the model from below if it's placed in the orrery. This suggests it was either intended for a cutscene that would view the orrery from above, or the model was going to be a camera-facing billboard visible from all angles. The billboarding effect isn't enabled on the object though, possibly because the model needed to be edited to comply with how the game handles billboards - their planes seem to need to face forward (along Z).

The model's vertex normals are strangely all set to zero, which may cause it to have an irregular interaction with the game's lighting system. Its vertices should probably be excluded from the model's vertexGroups (in the same way SharpClaws' eyes are ignored by the lighting), since it makes sense for it to be an emissive material. The way the game handles unshaded vertices may have changed during development, considering Scales' and the GuardClaws' eyes used to glow in an earlier build, so this model's zeroed vertex normals could potentially be an outdated or unimplemented way of achieving the glowing effect.

The model also has strange vertex shading which causes it to appear as a green sun. This is how it would look with those vertex colours ignored:

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Warlock Mountain Special Effect

Object model 1A5h (named "WMinroom" internally) seems to be a special effect intended to illuminate the walls of Warlock Mountain's central chamber. The model almost perfectly matches the main room, except it's been offset slightly inwards to avoid z-fighting. It seems to have been created for an earlier iteration of the level, when the walls of Krazoa relief statues stood vertical instead of diagonal, the ceiling was slightly higher, and the chamber's entrances were smaller and rounded. It partially clips through the walls of the December 2000 version of the level because of those modelling differences.

Positioned in Warlock Mountain (Clipping)	Fixed

It seems likely that this special effect would have been used for the cutscene where the Quan Ata Lachu crystal transforms into a star, since the crystal is the next indexed object model (1A6h) and the models for the star are indexed directly before it (1a2h:1a4h). The model's UVs are quite rough, suggesting it was an early test that was soon scrapped in favour of the animated vertex colour effect used in the later versions of the cutscene.

The model uses the following animated texture, which has a large resolution of 200x200px. The model seems to crash the game when loaded, presumably because the texture dimensions are much too big to fit into the N64's texture cache.

SharpClaw Meat Stocks

Meat, which would be one of the healing items in Dinosaur Planet, is currently not present in the December 2000 rom, because it was replaced by the Dino Eggs/PukPuk Eggs, it is only found in the Press Video Build. The only trace left of this item is that the Dino Eggs have the Meat sprite in the inventory, and a ShopKeeper dialog in the store when you approach an egg in the store.