I thought I would put this in off topic since it's not so related to TASing.
Apparently some folks over at The Hylia have found a way to load the Arwing hidden in Ocarina of Time without using a gameshark. It somehow can be done by doing something to an ice trap treasure chest.
The finder (cen) isn't revealing how to do it. But there are hints dropped in the form of assembly code and clever words. I'm sure there are plenty of assembly geniuses reading these forums so take a crack at it if interested...
Link
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the beans are spilled...
This makes sense, looks legit, and has the code to back it up. Now you just have to search the rest of the code to find the line that modifies that value.
It makes perfect sense that an arwing enemy would only pop out of a trap chest.
Joined: 5/1/2004
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Which is the base of the hoax (some perfect sense).
If nobody gave him credit he would just "ok ok, here's how you do it". Or if he doesn't do that, it is a joke.
Now you just have to search the rest of the code to find the line that modifies that value.
I don't think Cen is suggesting that anyone search through the whole disassembly. Regardless of whether the end result is a hoax or not, he seems to be trying to get people to follow his hints on hacking. It must be quite disappointing to have the majority of replies being complaints by people who seem rather obsessed with the game yet not willing to follow his clues.
Looking at the code sample and hints, I came up with the same conclusions as KemenAran, and I can say more about the AT register. That register should not be modified by any interrupt routine. This is one requirement (of many) that makes interrupts harder to write: you cannot use pseudoinstructions. However, I also doubt any interrupt should leave V0 or V1 modified. Otherwise, you'd be able to manipulate virtually anything in the game, not just Arwing. My conclusion from reading the assembly is that it's not actually possible.
Of course, I haven't tried everything that was suggested. Cen wrote:
Why don't you open up a debugger and break on 0x803A5250, and then step through the triggered opcodes to see what exactly goes on? :)
If anyone is truly interested, I think it wouldn't be a total loss to follow through on the remaining clues (instead of whining like everyone else in that thread). AFAIK Mupen does not have an assembly debugger, so you would have to use some other emulator. Even if the secret is disappointing in the end (note that he did say semi-legitimately), you'd still get to learn something about the internals of OOT from one of its master hackers. It's not like he's asking people to do something meaningless like play Pokemon all over again to get to a shipyard and try pushing a truck.
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Dromiceius' joke was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a long while. I am sorry that the drawing cannot fully capture the pure essence of it aesthetically.
Mmm... Orange juice.
HAHAHAHA! I'm so witty! You're too dumb to understand my joke! Teeheehee!
You can't make random little jokes that the person you're directing them at doesn't understand. I thought Peppy was some random person who wasn't very trustworthy.
There's your clue, brainiac.
I did my own picking through the assembly and pretty much decided it wasn't possible, similar to hanzou. I also learnt a ton of useless stuff about N64 architecture. :)
Yeah, I was trying to catch lag's attention on #sda yesterday, but he's a Brit, and sucks at time zones.
Oh yeah, MIPS is fairly simple to understand (I believe that is it one of the easiest assembly instruction sets to learn, being taught in wide array of institutional places) Perhaps someone will realize the correlation between MIPS the rabbit, and MIPS the assembly language.
I took a quick glance at the code, and I really couldn't glean much, other than a fishy looking register (AT). My assembly is rusty, anyways.
