15 Oct 2021
I am really late on this one, not long after I released Paint and Polygon combo ROMs, Zoinkity gave me a working version of Talent Studio’s Combo ROM that works with the japanese disk on real hardware, so here it is, released now, in the Translations page, as usual.
So, not that long ago, Zoinkity on YouTube has shown off some of his latest work, the ability to play Mario Artist Paint Studio translation as a cartridge expansion to the main disk, which you can see how it works here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIIvYStmZME.
Well I was just given not only one, but two of those: Paint Studio and Polygon Studio!
I have tested them on my real disks, and it works perfectly fine, and mind you, my own Paint Studio disk doesn’t boot at all, so this makes my disk actually playable lol
The way it works is basically that the cartridge boots a modified main executable of the game, with modifications in a way that it reads every file that’s different from the cartridge, and everything untouched from the disk, including save data.
So let’s be honest, not a lot of people would really make use of this, it’s clearly aimed at the people who owns a real 64DD, a flashcart and the games in question.
Anyway, both are now available in the Translations as what I name “Combo”. Just insert the disk before booting those and you should be fine.
Due to the assembler I used for the Mario Artist translations in the past not really existing anymore in that form, I was obligated to update it, and so ported all of my previous work with Mario Artist translations to it.
I didn’t think I would do a massive update to the Mario Artist Polygon Studio english translation with a brand new v3.0 release now found in the Translations page!
It comes with massive changes to the text, more stability, much more attention to detail than I ever did previously that I hope it makes it feel like an official localization to you.
But I must do a little warning: I did something that makes the translation not recognizable by some emulators like Project64. So I updated the archive with a brand new database file that sees it + more.
The emulator itself hasn’t changed one bit, so if you don’t feel like redownloading it and setting it up again, I have made a link to the database file available. Just copy it to the Config folder of Project64.
Hopefully this won’t be too inconvenient for you. This release comes with a Disk version, a Cartridge Port version (compatible with flashcarts) and a new D64 Master Disk file. Again, you can find it in the Translations page on the site.
Recently, you might have seen the release of a Zelda OoT Mod called Zelda Expansion (Video here) spearheaded by ZethN64, which is a mod that aims to use the original 64DD dungeons found in the gigaleak. This has differences compared to what was released for Master Quest, with different layouts and puzzles.
You can find the original ROM patch here: https://github.com/ZethRyder/Disk-Expansion/releases
Or you can now play the brand new disk version of the mod, made by myself with assistance from the original mod team, and is compatible with all NTSC Retail versions of Ocarina of Time, of course. It is playable in both japanese and english depending on the ROM chosen.
It is based on the disk expansion source code of Zelda 64 Dawn & Dusk, albeit much more simplified since this mod needs way less work. This is possibly the closest to what Nintendo originally intended.
But without further ado, you can find it in the Homebrew / Hacks page, or right here: https://github.com/LuigiBlood/zelda_expansion_disk/releases
I have done a couple updates to the site in the past few weeks:
I have updated the Project64 Tutorial to include a very quick tutorial that doesn’t need more explanation once you read it. A bunch of people do not necessarily want to read everything first, and I do really want to show that 64DD emulation is genuinely not that hard to deal with!
But most importantly, I know a few people were interested about converting 3D Models made with Polygon Studio into something compatible with more modeling software. Well thanks to krom, I have now something for you: A Blender import script! It also imports textures properly, so have fun with it.
There’s a bit of work on how to make it functional but it’s still simple, it’s now available on the Emulator / Tools section of the site.