Goldeneye 64 Beta

[Tina Popielarczyk]

BeforeGoldeneye was released, a lot of changes were made, including many features and objectives being scrapped. For example, many objects were not used such as the island in Dam. We can never know exactly how the earlier versions of Goldeneye were set up with these leftovers hidden in the game, but we can guess enough to bring back some lost features in Goldeneye. This project is dedicated to making a ROM mod that will permanently showcase things normally only accessible through use of a Gameshark.

Island Now accessible, plus guards and alarm. Boat is there. Beta Doors there.Bungee and Piton in inventory, and Lock Exploder. Commander modded with a key. Grate may be scrapped (Part of Background data). APC implemented as a new preset. Lock Exploder implemented with an action block that works pretty well. Guards on Island have their paths. I checked over this level for unused presets and it ended up that there was a ton for this map. A beta covert modem screen now used, and a blast door and tons of guards and crates, although the interesting dam truck doors can't really be used without beta BG Data and clipping to go with them.

The Doors and Guards have been changed, and every other scientist is now Female. Scientists acting as guards are in many places, a whole row of unused presets were perfect for it. More extras were used for guards, and cardboard boxes. Knives were scrapped due to problems and the fact that they may not have been intended for the level. There are no presets for extra tanks stacked up as in the beta screenshots, new presets have to be made for stacked tanks. Watch communicator implemented. Extra door in Tank Room, no preset available.

There is an incredible amount of unused presets in Runway, mostly around the same area. Looking at the movie, it looked like the bins were much more present, so they seem to fit good in those spots. There was no unused preset for a different starting point on the slide, so I don't believe that was ever the actual Beta intention. I threw in the Motorcycle at an unused preset as a standard object as well as threw a Biker next to it.

It seems like Surface originally did not have action blocks spawning most of your enemies, because there is a lot of unused weapons, and a good amount of unused guard presets. As well as some unused tables and the Bunker glass door. The taser is seen in two beta screens. The dark green, beta doors are now being used. Only about half the paths were bing used, I assigned them to new guards. There were surprisingly no new presets in the Observatory. Theres a couple beta object placements in the err, "beta hut", the one with the motorcycle. I put a couple random objects there.

I decided not to use the beta doors since the textures are invalid on them anyways, and they look downright crappy. Some Metal Crates, a couple guards. I just put Microcode in the inventory, kinda sorta goes along with the Datathief. I gave the computer room keycard to Boris and the security keycard to the commander which makes more sense and makes the level more challenging. They were three cool wall monitors that stuck too far out from the wall, I re-assigned them random images. The already used Screen has three unused images I re-assigned (Since it is a Multi-Screen), although not easily seen behind the beta screen. And another glass preset so there is doubled glass, which makes sense with that bar thing.

At Ars Technica, our love of classic shooter video games usually revolves around the PC, but it's hard to talk about that golden age of shooters without talking about Goldeneye 007. Rare's first shooter for the N64 was an astounding technical achievement in 1997, and many of its innovations still hold up nearly 25 years later... but that's only part of its modern mystique.

In light of the latest leak, I spoke via email to two of the Goldeneye 007 remaster project's eight original team members, artist Ross Bury and programmer Mark Edmonds, to fill in as many gaps as they could remember 14 years later. I tracked those names in part because they're not credited in the leaked game's normal credits sequence, but rather are visible when looking at any in-game computer terminals. When pressed about his involvement, Bury began his first email with two modest answers: "Not sure that there's too much to tell," and "I'm pretty sure I'm no longer under an NDA regarding it."

"It started as a 'let's start and try this' while we get approval," Edmonds says. "I'm sure it must have come partly from Ken [Lobb, longtime Rare and Xbox producer], since he was procuring games for Xbox, was well-connected with Rare and [studio co-founder] Chris Stamper, and well-connected with Nintendo from when he worked there."

[Update, February 9: A follow-up interview by Video Games Chronicle's Andy Robinson includes an additional morsel from ex-Rare dev Chris Tilston, who was co-lead on the remaster. He claims that the project began life when Nintendo representatives made a phone call offer to Microsoft and Rare. The handshake was contingent on Nintendo releasing a version of the original Goldeneye 007 on Wii, and Rare releasing their own on Xbox 360. Exactly what happened with that Nintendo version remains unclear, nor whether any negotiating followed up between Nintendo and Activision to pave the way to a wholly different Goldeneye game on Wii in 2010.]

Seemingly sheltered from the hustle to secure those rights, the team moved forward with a modest plan: to build off the N64's existing source code and art assets, which Rare had saved in their entirety, and "keep the game exactly the same as the original, but with newer graphics and networking," Edmonds says. He claims there was no plan to increase the game's scope with additions like refreshed music or tweaked AI: "Changes like that would have required a larger team, and much more testing! Plus, we wanted to stay true to the original."

On the coding front, Edmonds recalls porting the N64 game's C code to C++, then modifying the interface to Xbox 360's low-level libraries: "The idea was to keep the code as close as possible to the original, and compile it as it was where possible." Where things got interesting was the addition of a "swap graphics" button. Any time a player tapped that button, the game's new Xbox engine would bolt new models and textures on top of the N64 version's geometry, collisions, movement, and "joint and skinning" systems, then increase the in-game resolution and remove an N64-like anti-aliasing filter. Tap the button again, and the game would go back to the original resolution, textures, and base geometry.

It would be another four years after the project's 2007 cancellation before anyone tried this on Xbox 360 again, in the form of 2011's Halo CE: Anniversary. And the results are quite impressive as the first version of this trick on 360 hardware.

Playing through the leaked GE360 beta, it's apparent how and where this system applied, which Bury and Edmonds clarify. Levels' distant backgrounds can bolt new geometry like mountain ranges onto the older, simpler versions, while various parts of characters, particularly the number of polygons dedicated to faces, can be swapped in and out with higher-resolution textures attached. But the ways joints come together and animate is identical, even if you furiously tap the "new graphics" button over and over. Some objects, like weapons and Bond's hands, were rebuilt with new geometry and textures; others, particularly vehicles, buildings, and wooden crates, couldn't be overhauled any further than texture updates without breaking the original code base.

Updated character models and faces were handled by Sergey Rakhmanov, who Bury says "had a great pipeline to work through in-game characters quickly. For main characters, I believe he just used his skills to improve their look from his source library and Internet reference, certainly nothing official to use." In other words: Remade faces were built from scratch without official MGM/OEM documentation. With the exception of Natalya's updated "boxy" head, they look quite impressive, especially as made by (apparently) only one artist.

"When it was put to Nintendo, everyone there approved it," Bury says. "Except they didn't check with the one guy who mattered." Bury then clarifies who that person was: former Nintendo Chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had vacated the post by 2007 but was still Nintendo's largest Japanese shareholder.

"I believe I was told his response went along the lines of, 'There is no way a Nintendo game is coming out on a Microsoft console,'" Bury adds. (If you're wondering how some of Rare's N64 games eventually wound up on Xbox consoles, remember: Rare took many of its older games' rights with it to Microsoft, but not all of them. 2005's Conker: Live and Reloaded was the first example.)

Neither Edmonds nor Bury has particular insights on the evolution of Nintendo, Rare, and Microsoft's combined rights relationship, having both left Rare years ago. When pressed about a leaked mini-documentary from 2014, which hinted to Goldeneye 007 almost landing on Xbox One via the Rare Replay anthology, Bury shrugs his shoulders. "I am assuming that all the information and quotes around rights negotiations on the 'Net are from this time period, as previous to that, [the Nintendo boss]'s orders trumped everything," he says. (This includes loud rumors that MGM and OEM's handling of Bond video games evolved over the years to place serious restrictions on the license in games, many of which have never been confirmed.)

I have been working on a project to restore many aspects of Goldeneye considered "Beta" for quite some time now. My progress is somewhat accurately (not really, but close) detailed here: =Beta_Restoration_Project

A lot of the project involved figuring out leftover preset positions, and therefore I made alot of new discoveries of how the original stages of Goldeneye were like by figuring them out and restoring them.

Anyway, Im getting a wee bit tired of working, and am to a point where I have a lot of work that has not been released at all. Theres still text mods, some clipping mods, refinements, BG mods (which might be just too hard), texture mods and multi maps that need to be modded to complete the full ambition of the project, but right now I have 21 solo setup mods that are all mostly completed, and three clipping mods (Dam and Frigate and Silo). So Ill be nice, and release the setups and clipmods early, yet since Im also doing this out of laziness (I havent been working on this project for abit and I plan to take abit of a break from it) so this is not coming in a nice IPS patch with a 21990 mod. Oh no. Im uploading the setups and clipping files as is. Many unfinished, some you have to use codes for (if the setups are too big, replace a mission setup like facility's and use the gameshark stagemod table to make that mission load facility's setup, I have a copy of the table here: =Switching_Map_Resources

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