Over 1000 commits later and Ray1Map now finally supports the Jaguar prototypes, meaning it now supports every single game and version which uses the Rayman 1 multiplatform+Jaguar engines!
I'm going to go over some findings and such from the prototypes now:
Jaguar prototype:
This prototype actually has a reference table at the end of the rom which has a name for every piece of referenced data in the rom. This means we actually have function names, data names, certain variable names etc. which is absolutely amazing. Droolie even made a script so we can view it in Ghidra with this info, which is really cool.
Besides the aspect of being able to see function names we now also have event and animation names. Some interesting things from this:
- Event names matches the names in Designer, i.e. they all start with "MS_" and have names like "LIV", "CHA" etc.
- MS apparently stands for "Multi-Sprite", which makes sense since an event is a collection of multiple sprites.
- The name "event" was apparently used by Ubisoft after all. We assumed it was a name only used in Designer, since the PC source code always calls them "obj", but here they're called events.
- Animation names are also incredibly interesting. You can view them in
the animation export.
- Collision types in this version don't match the other versions. It seems there are two types of collision for solid tiles, most likely one for tiles you can go down through (the proto and demo allow you to go through certain platforms by pressing jump+down).
Other interesting discoveries:
- Mr Stone is in the prototype and uses placeholder graphics for some parts. There are multiple animation names referenced in the rom, but they all point to the one and only animation actually available:
- The image data for the tentacle flower is in the rom, but it's missing the image descriptors (used to parse the image data) as well as animation data
- Gendoors in this version spawn events, rather than making them visible. For example at the beginning of the stage there's a gendoor which can spawn both small and big livingstones at random. Ray1Map doesn't display this as there are no graphics for it (there actually aren't gendoor graphics in the final Jaguar version either, but we hard-coded it to the user the Magician's sprite since other versions do that - we can't here though since it's not actually linked to anything, the events are spawned from code). This is only possible because the Jaguar version can modify the amount of events at runtime, unlike the multi-platform engine which has a set amount of events per level.
Some early graphics:
Jaguar demo:
I'm not really sure how many maps people are familiar with from this demo. The game becomes unplayable at a certain stage due to a non-functional Moskito boss, levels without exit signs etc. I know some people managed to access other levels by hacking, but not all. So for many this is probably the first time we actually see all maps. I'm only going to post the most interesting ones here (I'll post all of them on the wiki soon so you can see them there). Before that though, some interesting stuff:
- The level order is very different, but interestingly it matches the level order in the vol. 6 Japanese PlayStation demo!
- There is a leftover "DEMO?!" event from the vol. 3 Japanese PlayStation demo
- This is the only version we've found where this unused sign actually has an event definition (meaning it can actually be hacked into a level like it was intended, rather than just changing the graphic). Sadly it's completely non-functional (no collision or anything)
The music sign on the other hand seems to cause a level end animation to play, but then the game freezes:
- The Bzzit flight stage is there, but since the Rayman on Bzzit event isn't available the stage crashes when loaded in-game. Viewing it in Ray1Map shows it's mostly complete, but unlike the final game it doesn't have the tings spell out the cheat code to access Breakout. (the music signs in the screenshot below were added through Ray1Map - the game has no graphics for editor events on Jaguar, so we add them manually to make it look nicer when viewing - the music sign was in fact originally intended for something else).
- This build have functions to load levels in all worlds of the game, even though it only includes levels from Jungle and Music. Sadly the maps aren't in the rom. There is however leftover data for certain graphics, like the totem in the Mr Stone boss, the fish from Cave etc. These can be parsed using the descriptor data from the final version.
- The Music levels have a giant version of a cloud:
- They had a lot more fun with the eye placements here
- The stage where you fly up on a maracas has auto-scroll triggers which move faster than the maracas, so the level is nearly impossible to beat
- All the Betilla stages are completely different, and have water so you can die
- Only the Bzzit version of Moskito exists, so he is the one who chases you, unlike in the final Jaguar version where it's Moskito. It seems like originally there was only the Bzzit version, but then they split him into two bosses and made the second one red. Maybe the devs got confused as to who was chasing you and forgot to change his colors on PS1?
It can't have been easy maintaining two completely different engines for the game (the Jaguar engine is completely different)...
Some of the interesting maps:
Hopefully I didn't forget anything, but this post is already long enough so I'll stop here lol Hopefully this interests some people
I'm going to upload maps to the wiki soon (I need to finish adding the other ones to the level articles first) and then I'll probably make a video on YouTube to show all the discoveries we've made across all versions of R1!
