Forest of Illusion is on a roll, when it comes to uncovering gaming history. Their latest find is a copy of Dinosaur Planet for the Nintendo 64–a game that never saw an official release, as the project was moved to the Nintendo GameCube and eventually came to be known as Star Fox Adventures. They’ve dumped the game where it can be now be found online, preserving it forever. This build of Dinosaur Planet is dated December 1, 2000 and is playable, though the ending levels are reportedly unfinished and potentially unable to be completed without the use of cheats. According to Forest of Illusion, emulator compatibility with the game is spotty, leading to multiple instances of slowdown and graphical glitches, however it works fine on official hardware through flashcart use.

As a reminder, sharing links to ROMs is against the rules.

Forest of Illusion official Twitter account

 

[KiiWii]

Woot:

Giving a shoutout to the brave souls decompiling the recently released Dinosaur Planet 64. https://t.co/RarinbHXzb If you’d like to help with the project, feel free! If not, RT and spread the word. ❤️

— The Hidden Palace (@HiddenPalaceOrg) February 27, 2021

 

[legaiaflame]

So, did anyone manage to brute force their way to the actual end of the game with codes or otherwise. Or is it going to take a fan project like the one above to make the game completely playable from start to finish?

 

[AncientBoi]

[goes monster hunting on Dinosaur planet] I'll get 'em all. hehehe

 

[2DSGamerdude]

this is great!
im impressed at how this protoypte/beta demo is out for the n64,
and it's quite good, has VA even,

i wonder how playable this is, i mean it's not 100% complete or a full game,
it's more like 80% playable, 20% not playable.

but it is good, very good!

felles like ST adventures but on n64 instead of GC.

i tyred this on andriod,

it didn't works but with glicthes for Mupen64FZ and mupen64AE free
works for Mupen64- Next Core retroarch plus (2.1 vulcan) (but frezzes when krystal warps to swarpstone from kyrzoa pad)
throws FP ERROR stack dump page.
not sure about the other n64 cores in retro.

not sure if there is a fix for this? as i cannot go further becuae of this, down the demo (eg fox stage).

also, fox's stage is the exact same as the final one in ST adventures, lol
and the mountian stage for krystall is kryzoa palace beofre it becmae krzoa place in st adv.

 

[jnl1]

WinAPS is the only APS patcher I know of.
I only made it a .aps since that's what Everdrive would expect if you wanted to patch it on the fly, but I can also make an xdelta if you'd just like to patch it on PC and use that.

Thank you! xdelta worked perfectly! It looks really outstanding now!

 

[jnl1]

Does anoyone have the patch which replaces Fox with Sabre?
There is a video on youtube:

 

[Spider_Man]

has anyone got the save file thats supposed to be created on ed64 thats been edited to improve stability.

the only way i get this to run is change save to flash able to play after the ship then get bug crash, but ive saved and it never seems to save, so im always having to start new game.

odd they say runs better on the console, im unable to get past the ship.

emulation ive got as far as the snow peaks after the race to save tricky.

its a shame this game got so close to completion and never got released, it would have been one of the best looking n64 games

 

[duidovwud]

Does anyone here have the parallel64 core for retroarch on switch? I’ve been looking everywhere for it and their website says to download it through retro arch but it doesn’t appear in the online updater. I know it plays some games that mupen64-plus won’t like this and sm64 hacks. If somebody has it so I could manually put it in retroarch I’d really appreciate it.

 

[Reynardine]

There is now a patch on the Dinosaur Planet wiki that fixes some of the bugs and adds a useful cheat menu to the game.

It allows you to warp to any map in the game, jump to any point in the story, unlock all abilities, fly around the map with noclip, play as Sabre instead of Fox, disable anti aliasing, access the unused options menu and there's even a simple music and sfx test built in.

Here: https://dinosaurpla.net/Main/Tech/Mods/

 

[jnl1]

There is now a patch on the Dinosaur Planet wiki that fixes some of the bugs and adds a useful cheat menu to the game.

It allows you to warp to any map in the game, jump to any point in the story, unlock all abilities, fly around the map with noclip, play as Sabre instead of Fox, disable anti aliasing, access the unused options menu and there's even a simple music and sfx test built in.

Here: https://dinosaurpla.net/Main/Tech/Mods/

Can you apply various xdelta patches at once?

 

[Reynardine]

Can you apply various xdelta patches at once?

The author writes that the Fox to Sabre text changes patch can be combined with others. I tried, but with xdeltaUI I still get a Checksum mismatch. So what I did instead was use a hex editor to add the Sabre text changes to the DinoMod version.

DinoPatch fixes a couple of game breaking bugs and enables the Scarab counter.
DinoMod includes the same bugfixes as DinoPatch but also adds a useful cheat menu.

Personally I use the DinoMod version. It includes the option to play as Sabre if you want that. You can still do a regular playthrough. You are not forced to use the cheat menu, but it is useful if you run into bugs or crashes and get stuck.

Dinosaur Planet sometimes crashes when entering a loading zone to a new area. I assume it is because of object overload, too much stuff gets loaded at once.

With the cheat menu you can disable object loading to get past these crashes.
Use savestates before entering new areas. If you run into a crash spot disable object loading to bypass it and then enable it again.

 

[PrinceRikei]

The only one that can be combined with others is the Fox to Sabre text changes patch.

DinoPatch fixes a couple of game breaking bugs and enables the Scarab counter.
DinoMod includes the same bugfixes as DinoPatch but also adds a useful cheat menu.

Personally I use the DinoMod version. It includes the option to play as Sabre if you want that. You can still do a regular playthrough. You are not forced to use the cheat menu, but it is useful if you run into bugs or crashes and get stuck.

Dinosaur Planet sometimes crashes when entering a loading zone to a new area. I assume it is because of object overload, too much stuff gets loaded at once.

With the cheat menu can disable object loading to get past these crashes.
Use savestates before entering new areas. If you run into a crash spot disable object loading to bypass it and then enable it again.

I'm curious, can this patch work with the de-blurred patch?

 

[Reynardine]

I'm curious, can this patch work with the de-blurred patch?

If the deblurred patch does nothing other than disable anti aliasing then that is already an option in the DinoMod cheat menu.

Otherwise it probably won't be possible to combine them, you'll get a checksum mismatch.

 

[jnl1]

Simply amazing patch! I have tried out dinomod 2.1 and it works outstanding! Could get pass the gas chamber at cape claw without any issue

 

[jnl1]

There is a new version of the dinomod (now V2.3) since today:
https://dinosaurpla.net/Main/Tech/Mods/dinomod-exploration-testing-debug-tool-xdelta/
Will check this out this week!

 

[Reynardine]

There is a new version of the dinomod (now V2.3) since today:
https://dinosaurpla.net/Main/Tech/Mods/dinomod-exploration-testing-debug-tool-xdelta/
Will check this out this week!

They are a bit slow with updates on the wiki.
The random out of memory crashes are finally gone in the new version.

I made a playthrough of DinoMod 2.3 up to the Desert Force Point Temple using mupen64plus-next on my Switch.
I've uploaded my savestates to gdrive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJlnWbJaace59ugu24IJV4XYCzIa-kpg/view?usp=sharing

I saved before every major part of the game, so you can use them to quickly get to every point in the story.

I only used cheats to get the Spellstone after defeating Galadon in DarkIce Mines and to remove the useless Spellstone after Desert Force Point Temple from my inventory so you can use the Swapstone to change characters again.

The files are compatible with other versions of mupen64plus too. Maybe it's useful to someone.

 

[jnl1]

I am using a flahscart and had crashes in discovery falls with dinomod 2.1. Will see if this is better now with 2.3

 

[jnl1]

Just tried out Dinomod 2.4. Simply amazing what these guys are capable of! The main screen looks fantastic! This would have been by far the best N64 game if it had been released in former times.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Just tried out Dinomod 2.4. Simply amazing what these guys are capable of! The main screen looks fantastic! This would have been by far the best N64 game if it had been released in former times.

What's the link to keep up with the updates?

 

[jnl1]

What's the link to keep up with the updates?

I am just looking from time to time there:
https://dinosaurpla.net/Main/Tech/Mods/dinomod-exploration-testing-debug-tool-xdelta/