Rayman 1

[The Jonster]

What do you guys think is the best Rayman 1 track? Like one you could listen to endlessly? For me, my favorite is The Magician's Challenge.

Oh god, this is tough for me. There are a number of tracks in Rayman 1 I could listen to for a long time. I could say the same for every Rayman game in fact, there's always at least one track I could jam to.

[Greengoop]

There’s at least 5 for me in most games

[PluMGMK]

I think part of me wonders if this serves as a sort-of evolutionary in-between that might have informed some aspects of the UbiArt titles.

I've been pretty much convinced of that ever since Droolie revealed the old gameplay mechanics with the Prototype Restoration Mod back in 2021, even before the "leak" which came the following year! The Rayomz thing I guess makes it even clearer, but I'm still holding out hope that that was just an in-joke enabled on dev builds, and never planned to ship!

What do you guys think is the best Rayman 1 track? Like one you could listen to endlessly? For me, my favorite is The Magician's Challenge.

Probably this one:Of course now that I've played through the game a few times with the correct per-level soundtrack, I've learned that it's used in some of the most frustrating maps of the game, which may or may not have soured me on it just a little…


On another note, here's something interesting I discovered recently: at some point in the game's development, there was an intention for Bad Rayman's fist to instakill Rayman when he hits it! I discovered this when looking at the function table which decides how different objects behave in certain situations. Each object type has a routine for what happens when it collides with Rayman, and it turns out that the same routine is used for both Bad Rayman himself, and for his fist! Obviously whatever programmer set it up this way intended for the fist to kill Rayman, yet this doesn't happen in the game. The reason seems to be that the fist's état/subétat (state/substate) has no collision zone associated with it, so it never actually collides with Rayman.

Now I wonder if they originally had collision enabled on the fist, and realized the gameplay was unfair, or if they just never noticed that it wasn't working, and shipped behaviour that is technically bugged. Tbh I'm not sure if they ever realized any gameplay was unfair when they were building Rayman 1, so I think it could indeed be the latter case I guess realistically, it wouldn't be that unfair, given that the only place you need to use the fist in that level is to grab the flying rings, which you need to move away from quickly anyway…

EDIT: Btw, the idea that they may simply have shipped broken code is not that far-fetched, given that it's even more broken in the DOS version. In that version, Bad Rayman's fist doesn't appear at all, because they never updated Bad Rayman's code to work with some extra book-keeping logic they added in the PC port. But I'm fixing this for the next version of the TPLS TSR!

[Greengoop]

[Probably this one:Of course now that I've played through the game a few times with the correct per-level soundtrack, I've learned that it's used in some of the most frustrating maps of the game, which may or may not have soured me on it just a little…

Can it play in the dream forest in rayman forever then?

[PluMGMK]

No, these two play in the Dream Forest in Rayman Forever:



In fact, "The Stalactites' Teardrops" isn't included in Rayman Forever at all…

[Greengoop]

And does dream forest music play in the caves of Skops?

[dr_st]

In fact, "The Stalactites' Teardrops" isn't included in Rayman Forever at all…

It's included in Rayman For Ever, though (the French release with non-butchered OST).

[Greengoop]

I thought rayman gold, forever, for ever and all the other bundles had butchered music so they could leave space for all the games on 1 disc

[dr_st]

It was not really necessary. The French release of Rayman Collector, which has all the levels + "making of" still managed to fit the full soundtrack.
See here:
viewtopic.php?t=74559

[Greengoop]

I thought that one was released a few years later though?

[The Jonster]

No, these two play in the Dream Forest in Rayman Forever:



In fact, "The Stalactites' Teardrops" isn't included in Rayman Forever at all…

Ahhh entering the cavern. My favorite music from the Cave of Skops. That’s one of those tracks I could listen to for hours. To answer Silver’s question earlier. But I have more than that!

[Greengoop]

Ahhh entering the cavern. My favorite music from the Dream Forest. That’s one of those tracks I could listen to for hours. To answer Silver’s question earlier. But I have more than that!

Fixed your post

[Hunchman801]

Btw, the idea that they may simply have shipped broken code is not that far-fetched, given that it's even more broken in the DOS version. In that version, Bad Rayman's fist doesn't appear at all, because they never updated Bad Rayman's code to work with some extra book-keeping logic they added in the PC port. But I'm fixing this for the next version of the TPLS TSR!

Having always played the DOS version, I was used to seeing Bad Rayman stand idle when mimicking a previous punch, and I never knew that the fist actually appeared in the other versions!

[PluMGMK]

Yeah, me too! I have actually played the PS1 and Saturn versions via emulation, but the last time I did that was about a decade ago, so I guess I had just completely forgotten that fact!

Anyhoo, I'll be putting a video of the restored fist on YouTube just as soon as I can figure out why DOSBOX-X isn't capturing any audio (EDIT: Maybe the simplest solution is just to do it using regular Dosbox ) EDIT2: Actually the capture is fine, it's just VLC has decided it's not going to play any audio for me when I'm reviewing the video Anyway, expect videos tomorrow night…

[Master]

Now this is interesting, I've only ever played the PS1 version and I can distinctly remember seeing his fist, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it disappear if he's mid-punch while you get to the exit as well...

To think that wasn't the case in the DOS version is quite something...

[PluMGMK]

Here's a video in which Bad Rayman's fist regains its ability to kill Rayman:


Basically you only see it when I let him hit me deliberately at the beginning, otherwise it doesn't really make things any harder…

[Greengoop]

That’s cool! I never stopped to notice how bad rayman hits you

[dr_st]

Here's a video in which Bad Rayman's fist regains its ability to kill Rayman:

Cool!

I wonder - could you share the details of this (and other amazing hacks you've made) that could be translated into simple code changes in RAYMAN.EXE? Obviously not something as elaborate as the per-level music, but I believe something like this should be just a mere edit of a few function pointers / table entries. No?

I'd be happy to work on this with you and publish such a table of DIY hex-edit instructions, like I've done for the no-CD patches and the 1.21 language change support. However, I'm not sure I have the skill or time to look for these myself.

[PluMGMK]

That’s cool! I never stopped to notice how bad rayman hits you

You do realize I had to mod the game to make it work properly, right?

Here's a video in which Bad Rayman's fist regains its ability to kill Rayman:

Cool!

Thanks!

I wonder - could you share the details of this (and other amazing hacks you've made) that could be translated into simple code changes in RAYMAN.EXE? Obviously not something as elaborate as the per-level music, but I believe something like this should be just a mere edit of a few function pointers / table entries. No?

Well… Actually the per-level soundtrack is probably the easiest to hex-edit in! Once the appropriate CD-check bypasses are in place, you basically just need to patch a table of track numbers and lengths. I prefer to do it at runtime, since that allows you to check the track length of the CD, like in Designer and the Educational games. The original game just uses hard-coded lengths, which is why you get several minutes of silence in certain levels when using a "butchered-soundtrack" CD.

Making the soundtrack react to events (e.g. the flood in the Tarayzan level) is trickier as it involves calling non-trivial new functions from the appropriate places in the code. The TSR achieves this by injecting "int F5h" instructions (two bytes each) and branching to the appropriate code in the handler for that interrupt. A hex edit would probably need to use near calls (five bytes) instead, which mightn't always fit in the same locations. In fairness, most of these events in the game do have a function call left over from the PS1 version – evidently the developers commented out the contents of these functions. The Watcom compiler then condensed most of these empty functions into a single "ret" instruction, which is at the end of a non-empty function that was presumably in the same source file. Incidentally, the example I gave, the flood, didn't have any function call that I could find, so that would be even trickier in a DIY scenario.

Most of the other stuff involves patching in non-trivial function calls too. Making Bad Rayman's fist deadly could actually be achieved without touching the EXE at all, as you just need to turn on some flags in PNG.ETA (part of ALLFIX.DAT) to enable the fist sprite to collide with Rayman *, but I chose to do it transiently in the TSR out of an abundance of caution… And of course, you'd still need to patch in function calls to even make the fist appear in the first place.

Not to say that it's impossible… Patching in function calls can work, and putting some hand-written machine code in unused areas and/or making creative use of gadgets could probably achieve a lot of the desired effects – I just haven't really thought about it!


* By the way, as I mentioned there, the reason that Bad Rayman's fist doesn't kill Rayman is that the "collides with Rayman" bit is not set on any of the animation states for the fist in PNG.ETA. The same animation states are used for both Rayman's and Bad Rayman's fist, so changing the flag would affect both – however, Rayman's own fist isn't programmed to hurt him anyway, so this shouldn't have any adverse side effects (and indeed, none are evident in the video).
The thing is, Rayman's own animation states (likewise reused for Bad Rayman's sprite) DO have the "collides with fist" bit set, which makes even less sense to me. This is evident because when you punch Bad Rayman, the fist makes contact and makes a pink "boum" effect, although it doesn't do anything else.
So basically, I'm thinking: maybe instead of setting the "collides with Rayman" bit on the fist, they got mixed up and set the "collides with fist" bit on Rayman? Then they either didn't test it, or didn't care enough to figure out why Bad Rayman's fist wasn't actually colliding with Rayman…

[Greengoop]

You do realize I had to mod the game to make it work properly, right?

Yes I am well aware, appears I made a typo