Rayman 2

[Master]

Heh, moonjump? Reminds me of this "beat Rayman Revolution with just 3 jumps" speedrunning:

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dev801.raymanpc.com

Ahh using dodgy collision to clip out and cause him to swim. That's pretty clever, tho I'll admit my attention span isn't the best and was starting to wane a little, so I ended up skipping ahead to the end of the Woods of Light. I didn't realise there were such level warps in the game to cause you skip from the first area all the way to the last, and then straight to the Crows Nest! I'll have to read up on the Revolution speedrunning cause I'm curious as to the why on that.

As for the moon jumps hack I mentioned earlier, it's located here: https://dev801.raymanpc.com/forum/threads/rayman-2-gog-pc-moon-jump-hack.23420/

I recall having a play with that actually:

God I miss when I had the time to mess with stuff like this. Tho I can't say there's a shortage of nifty Rayman stuff in this day and age - just look at raym.app

 

[Greengoop]

I mean, it appears you’re still active on it

 

[PluMGMK]

I don't think the "fishing" pirate can be destroyed through legitimate gameplay. I imagine if you moonjumped you could destroy him, since he seems to be an ordinary Henchman, but I don't know if that's what you were really asking…

 

[RayCarrot]

Not sure if this is allowed, but I found two devs that developed part of the 2D prototype.
Does anyone have a LinkedIn account, they can use to reach out to these two devs, and ask if they have anything from the development repository, or a build of the game they can share.
The first dev mentions that 2 levels are playable in the PSX version, but only one is accessible.
I wonder if it's still there, but there's a variable that doesn't increment, leaving only 1 level playable.

That's very interesting. I can however confirm there is only 1 level on the disc. So if a second level was planned then it was never included. It wouldn't surprise me though - the game's code has references to a lot of object types and some gameplay modes that aren't in the level we got. I would love to eventually see what else they had planned!

 

[Greengoop]

Not sure if this is allowed, but I found two devs that developed part of the 2D prototype.
Does anyone have a LinkedIn account, they can use to reach out to these two devs, and ask if they have anything from the development repository, or a build of the game they can share.
The first dev mentions that 2 levels are playable in the PSX version, but only one is accessible.
I wonder if it's still there, but there's a variable that doesn't increment, leaving only 1 level playable.

That's very interesting. I can however confirm there is only 1 level on the disc. So if a second level was planned then it was never included. It wouldn't surprise me though - the game's code has references to a lot of object types and some gameplay modes that aren't in the level we got. I would love to eventually see what else they had planned!

So I assume you searched the code? Maybe somebody could ask him for more detail?

 

[RayCarrot]

I have yeah. I've gone through the majority of the decompiled code in Ghidra. There is a lot of unused stuff in the code, and also a lot of leftovers from Rayman 1. For example, 66 out of the game's object types are unused in the level we got. 3 of these are Rayman 1 leftovers, so 63 unique object types made for Rayman 2. Some of these could ofc be variants of existing objects, but 63 is still a lot so I bet there's more there we haven't seen!

I also can't remember what I've shared here and not, and I still need to get around to updating the wiki articles on the unused content, but semi-recently I discovered this unused hook move:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1665807863866900483

One interesting thing when on the topic of missing files on the disc is that the game attempts to load these files when you start the prototype:

SRC\PSX\ENGLISH.TXT
SRC\PSX\MENU.RES

But since neither of them exist on the disc it return empty data. There's also the fact that the game tries loading it into the extended dev console memory space which doesn't exist on retail PS1 consoles. Still, this shows they had more than just a single level set up. There's an entire menu system in the code that uses this data, and the game also has a slightly updated worldmap code from the edu games (where the game can have a maximum of 50 levels, each with 1-4 maps).

 

[Greengoop]

Thai is more proof that PS1 is best version

 

[Hunchman801]

So I decided to run thru the PS1 version of Rayman 2 on a whim, and I noticed something that might be a bit odd...I can't use the charge for the magic fist if I'm helicoptering.

I don't even remember noticing this, maybe I just never gave it a try... Definitely worth mentioning anyway!

I was reading through RayWiki and I am now wondering something. The lone Robo-pirate that looks like he's fishing in the Marshes of Awakening, can he actually be destroyed? I never bothered to try doing this since I was always just trying not to die while skiing on Ssssssam, but....

You can shoot him once, but that's about it, I believe. As far as I remember, even you manage to get on the boat, he will push you out and into the water.

 

[The Jonster]

I’m trying to remember where it was on RayWiki that I had seen the discussion regarding this robo-pirate in particular since seeing it was what piqued my interest and spurned me to ask about it here. I’ve never actually tried to get on the boat though. I should experiment on this when I get on my PC later. I’m still curious about what Master discovered too hehe.

 

[PluMGMK]

Oh wow, it never even occurred to me to try to interact with that Pirate! So you can get on the boat then? When I try to think about it, my intuition tells me Rayman should just fall through it since you're not really supposed to be able to climb on it. BUT now that I think about it, that's not the case, since it is possible to get detached from Ssssam…

Oh man… I can't explain why I find this so disturbing

EDIT: Btw, I think you meant "spurred", not "spurned"!

 

[Master]

So I decided to run thru the PS1 version of Rayman 2 on a whim, and I noticed something that might be a bit odd...I can't use the charge for the magic fist if I'm helicoptering.

I don't even remember noticing this, maybe I just never gave it a try... Definitely worth mentioning anyway!

It's not the most spectacular find tbf xD. What it effectively boils down to is that you can't use charge when helicoptering in the PS1 version. I've already added it to the PS1 Rayman 2 Wiki article, alongside the statement about how the swimming controls work in that version (which I notice you had to amend cause my brain doesn't do grammar too well these days - well worse these days xD)

The PS1 version deffo is unique in some respects, like on the whole it is very much the Diet Rayman 2 experience, but the changes make it its own experience and worth playing just to see. I still maintain that the PS1 final boss is the more fun one.

As for that pirate in the marshes. I was able to retrieve the moonjump hack, but unfortunately my install of the PC version of Rayman 2 seems to have gone awry. The game seems to crash when loading certain levels so I can't get there

 

[Hunchman801]

I couldn't agree more about the PS1 version. Unlike dr_st, the technical inferiority doesn't bother me much, as I stop noticing it after a few minutes, but I understand why you'd want to get the best of both worlds!

As for that pirate on the boat, I believe my motivation to interact with it was to document its resistance for the list of Robo-Pirates in Rayman 2. Speaking of which, there are few missing, and I've been told that this data should be retrievable using the desktop version of RayMap, but I don't have Unity, so, if anyone does, help is more than welcome here!

 

[Fifo]

EDIT: Btw, I think you meant "spurred", not "spurned"!

Grammar Nazi! If I did the same I’d get criticized.

 

[The Jonster]

Yes I meant spurred, just mixed up letters

I agree about the PS1, I forget about the negatives once I start playing, and getting to the prototype at the end is satisfying. It may not be my favorite way to play R2, but it’s certainly not my least favorite and I can see myself replaying the game multiple times if I felt like it.

 

[Droolie]

I like that the PS1 version is basically a (modified) look at an early version of Rayman 2. It's fascinating how similar the level layout in this version sometimes is to PC/N64 levels shown in early gameplay videos. But it's more obvious from the lums of course.

As for that pirate on the boat, I believe my motivation to interact with it was to document its resistance for the list of Robo-Pirates in Rayman 2. Speaking of which, there are few missing, and I've been told that this data should be retrievable using the desktop version of RayMap, but I don't have Unity, so, if anyone does, help is more than welcome here!

There's no need to install Unity You can find that information in the web version of raymap - although it's a bit hidden.
The pirates' HP values are set using their "init" scripts, so check those scripts and you'll find the HP values there.

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streamable.com

This video shows 2 different robo-pirate AIs used in the PC version of the game. The "complex" pirate AI FRH_sbire_gnak can have either 6 or 9 HP depending on a designer variable (which you can view in the web version). If it's 0, the pirate will have 6HP, otherwise it'll have 9. For example, the Canopy 3 pirate in the video will have 9HP (I highlighted the wrong option in the video ).
The "simple" pirate AI ARG_SimpleSbire, used for the "fishing" pirate, will always have 6 HP.
There are more AIs than just these two, but you can always find their HP in the init script like this.

 

[PluMGMK]

EDIT: Btw, I think you meant "spurred", not "spurned"!

Grammar Nazi! If I did the same I’d get criticized.

I'm not sure that you would actually…

Anyway, I didn't know about that wiki page. It looks like it says five HP for the guy we were talking about, but from what Droolie said it should be six… I'll see if I can fill in some of the blanks based on those instructions, thanks Droolie! Also, is the Grolgoth really a Robo-Pirate as such?

 

[Hunchman801]

There's no need to install Unity You can find that information in the web version of raymap - although it's a bit hidden.
The pirates' HP values are set using their "init" scripts, so check those scripts and you'll find the HP values there.

Loading…

streamable.com

This video shows 2 different robo-pirate AIs used in the PC version of the game. The "complex" pirate AI FRH_sbire_gnak can have either 6 or 9 HP depending on a designer variable (which you can view in the web version). If it's 0, the pirate will have 6HP, otherwise it'll have 9. For example, the Canopy 3 pirate in the video will have 9HP (I highlighted the wrong option in the video ).
The "simple" pirate AI ARG_SimpleSbire, used for the "fishing" pirate, will always have 6 HP.
There are more AIs than just these two, but you can always find their HP in the init script like this.

Anyway, I didn't know about that wiki page. It looks like it says five HP for the guy we were talking about, but from what Droolie said it should be six… I'll see if I can fill in some of the blanks based on those instructions, thanks Droolie!

Thanks Droolie, that's very useful! One thing, however: a while ago, Robin/bunnieblaster actually helped me with that one pirate on the boat, and he even made a video of it:

As you can see, this clearly shows that it has 5 HP, not 6. That's where the number on the wiki comes from. Could there be another variable overriding the default value of 6 here?

Also, is the Grolgoth really a Robo-Pirate as such?

Well, it's not shown to be autonomous, but it felt natural to include it there. It was never added to the Robo-Pirate article, but the Biditank was, so I suppose that's just an oversight.

 

[Droolie]

As you can see, this clearly shows that it has 5 HP, not 6. That's where the number on the wiki comes from. Could there be another variable overriding the default value of 6 here?

That's a very good point. I looked into it and yes, you're right - that pirate's HP is indeed 5. And it's not easily verifiable (not even with the Unity version of raymap) so it completely invalidates my post from before about it being possible/easy to use raymap to determine the pirates' HP...

What happened is that for this specific pirate, the developers skipped over the init script. If this is by mistake or on purpose I don't know, but it's a dirty hack... or rather, a feature in CPA that shouldn't exist: for each individual object you can choose to use a different initial script. For some reason, this specific pirate has it set to "ARG_tirs" instead of "ARG_init", which means it skips over the 6HP in ARG_init as well. The current & max HP values of the object before that are 5, so this creates a pirate with 5 HP (that might also be bugged in some way because it skipped all other bits of initialization as well).

 

[PluMGMK]

Thanks Droolie, that's very useful! One thing, however: a while ago, Robin/bunnieblaster actually helped me with that one pirate on the boat, and he even made a video of it:

As you can see, this clearly shows that it has 5 HP, not 6. That's where the number on the wiki comes from. Could there be another variable overriding the default value of 6 here?

Well shoot, and I had already gone and changed the wiki! Better fix it. Is it all right if I include this video as a reference to avoid any future confusion?

Also, the video does show Rayman falling through the boat! My world makes sense again!

What happened is that for this specific pirate, the developers skipped over the init script. If this is by mistake or on purpose I don't know, but it's a dirty hack... or rather, a feature in CPA that shouldn't exist: for each individual object you can choose to use a different initial script. For some reason, this specific pirate has it set to "ARG_tirs" instead of "ARG_init", which means it skips over the 6HP in ARG_init as well. The current & max HP values of the object before that are 5, so this creates a pirate with 5 HP (that might also be bugged in some way because it skipped all other bits of initialization as well).

Oh man… That feature sounds like a proper footgun all right! If I had to guess, I'd say they did it to skip over "ARG_AttendRM", which would try to change the music when the Pirate first sees Rayman, and the music in that level was being managed separately. The only side effect seems to be that CustomBit 15 doesn't get set to zero during initialization… And I'm not sure what that does / doesn't do…

Also, this guy is named "MIC_Sbire_Barque" – does that mean Michel Ancel himself put him there and set him up this way?

EDIT: No wait, it's nothing to do with music, that can be disabled by setting UByte_1 to zero. In fact, the reason this was done was because the default behaviour is for this type of pirate to drill up out of the ground when Rayman comes near him. Obviously that's not what they wanted here, hence the override!

EDIT2: I see you fixed it on the wiki and put the video and post in the edit note… How about an inline citation too, or is that too much?

 

[Hunchman801]

That's a very good point. I looked into it and yes, you're right - that pirate's HP is indeed 5. And it's not easily verifiable (not even with the Unity version of raymap) so it completely invalidates my post from before about it being possible/easy to use raymap to determine the pirates' HP...

What happened is that for this specific pirate, the developers skipped over the init script. If this is by mistake or on purpose I don't know, but it's a dirty hack... or rather, a feature in CPA that shouldn't exist: for each individual object you can choose to use a different initial script. For some reason, this specific pirate has it set to "ARG_tirs" instead of "ARG_init", which means it skips over the 6HP in ARG_init as well. The current & max HP values of the object before that are 5, so this creates a pirate with 5 HP (that might also be bugged in some way because it skipped all other bits of initialization as well).

Now that's unfortunate! I don't suppose that there's a way of checking that it's not also the case for the other two pirates from the Fairy Glade whose HP PluM determined using this technique?

I see you fixed it on the wiki and put the video and post in the edit note… How about an inline citation too, or is that too much?

Well, adding an inline citation for every pirate sounds like way too much, so I suppose you mean the ones with "exceptional" HP values only? We'd probably want to define that first. For the red Henchmen 800, it looks like it's only two of them (that we know of).