vigilante_8-020

64-bit Hacking Adventures – Hunt for 16:9

chasseyblue.com

Many first-party Nintendo 64 games receive extensive attention from the emulation community. Dedicated groups of hackers often spend hours combing through a game’s memory to find enhancements, making these classics run and look better on modern PCs.

However, my nostalgic favorites were mostly third-party games (with the notable exception of Rareware titles). Unfortunately, these games rarely received the same support or enhancement hacks from the community.

This led me to take matters into my own hands to find the magic addresses that control the Field of View (FOV) and create a widescreen (16:9) experience.

I developed a systematic approach for these memory searches, moving beyond manually tweaking values in the hope of seeing a change. While I’m not a math expert and have a dislike for numbers, my passion for memory editing drove me to dive deeper and figure out the necessary steps to hunt down these magic values.

Knowing about resolutions and screen ratios, I started by Googling the hexadecimal equivalent of a 4:3 ratio. A valuable resource was WSGF, which has a dedicated page for hex values of resolutions and screen ratios.

Armed with a list of common values, I applied this logic to scan the game for the 4:3 screen ratio. Using an IEEE 754 standard calculator, I converted these values into hexadecimal format, compatible with the Project64 Debugger Memory Scanner:

0x3F800000 for 4:3
0x3FAAAAAB for 16:9

With these crucial values identified, the next step was to search for the right address that controlled the 3D space. Depending on the game, this search could yield anywhere from fewer than 100 to over 1,000 addresses with the same value. It required patience, flicking between save states, and time. Starting with a float value of 70 for the FOV, I gradually pinpointed the 3D space adjustments needed to create a 16:9 output and generate a GameShark code.

Throughout this process, I learned that these golden addresses are key to successfully adjusting the 3D space in Nintendo 64 titles for a widescreen experience.

With the current learning curve, I’ve now created an emulation category in the Mods/Hacks menu.
You’ll find an Enhancements/Widescreen section that has raw ‘.CHT’ format codes that either have 16:9, 21:9 or other enhancements. Expect this section will grow when I make further discoveries.

Keep in mind, I’m still rather amateurish at this and therefore some of the Widescreen codes might be buggy.

Example of Top Gear Overdrive - 16:9 with FOV of 90 degrees
Example of Vigilante 8 - 21:9
Enhancement Codes Page
v8-repo-relaunch

Vigilante 8 Repository Relaunch

chasseyblue.com

It’s no secret that Vigilante 8 is the golden game of my lifetime. To honour this beloved series, I’ve dedicated time and resources to creating a comprehensive repository.

Initially, my plan was to develop a simple, browsable directory tree, devoid of graphics, videos, and sounds—much like Myrient or the-eye, which cater to fellow data hoarders. This approach would require meticulously organized folders and filenames to make it easily navigable for the public. However, despite its simplicity, the output felt underwhelming and, honestly, laziness would begin to creep in.

Given my longstanding interest in digital graphics, sparked by my love for games, I decided to take a more creative approach. Although my career has kept me busy in a different industry, I’ve recently rekindled my passion for digital design. After many moons of relearning Illustrator, Photoshop, and Blender, I’ve created new site graphics for the Vigilante 8 Repository. Gone is the faux file tree navigation—replaced with a modern hero tile set, which has grown into a massive project within the project.

Vigilante 8, being a series that started back in 1998, presents a unique challenge. The available assets, both in-game and out, are often low in resolution and detail. Stock images of packaging, for example, are virtually non-existent online. This led me to the daunting task of creating everything from scratch.

I unearthed all my physical copies of the games to use as references, meticulously scanning and editing the covers. I then imported these into Blender to create high-quality stock images of the packaging and other promotional materials. Below are a few examples showcasing the extent of my efforts to design the hero tiles, given the internet’s apparent drought of stock images and magazine covers. Fortunately, there are dedicated individuals out there preserving retro magazines, which has been a tremendous help.

Check out the newly designed Vigilante 8 Repository!

Bye Bluehost

chasseyblue.com

A few days now, my website has been in Maintenace Mode while I resolve many problems with a migration.

Time for a new webhost that isn’t greedy and shady to put it lightly, as the original tactics have sadly changed with Bluehost.

Many horror stories regarding Bluehost are all over the /r/webhosting subreddit. Many have had their domains being ‘released’, plans being altered without their consent, and other changes that many would consider shady.

What really got me to change was the fact they decided to completely remove their online chat support. On multiple occasions I’ve had to use their chat support as there was problems that I could not fix without SSH – The online chat was a great way to resolve a small problem that didn’t require me to be on hold until it was resolved.

There was no notice sent to their customers about this change in their support, it was just suddenly one day not accessible. Buttons, and links are still listed within their support pages but are blank Hyperlink Anchors that appear to do nothing when clicked, not a great look – I don’t see the problem in just removing the buttons completely at that point.

After a bit of research, the company appears to have been outsourced to India and ran by an umbrella company that runs multiple hosts. Bluehost is no longer a recommendation across web developers and owners alike and is steering into the direction of “hire a pro” to fix problems that they originally cause.

Luckily my website is all about a hobby and nothing more, I don’t make any money from it and if I did, I’d probably seek legal advice.

So I’m done, I’ve migrated and moved my domain and data to another host. Already seeing the benefits too.

All broken downloads have been fixed

chasseyblue.com

Without any communication from my host… I have had to have multiple chat sessions, and even an escalation to finally sort out why all previously mapped downloads cause permission errors for public access.

This whole time it was because the plan for the webspace has changed, therefore the site was migrated to another directory, throwing all sources out of whack to a directory that didn’t actually exist.

Luckily, I don’t actually make any revenue from this site, it’s purely a hobby and just to share my appreciation of reverse engineering games I grew up playing but couldn’t imagine if this site was a store front for a small business.

Thanks to those who support my hobby and contacted me via Discord PM to tell me they couldn’t download anything, honestly none of that would’ve showed up in my alerting.

Extracted Blur Audio Archive Released

chasseyblue.com

A long weekend, has been and gone but I have finally manage to extract all the audio from Blur.
Extracting the Audio wasn’t exactly easy.
It was packed in serval archives, so it was just the matter of going down the tree – even the audio was packed into individual archives containing 1-14 sounds each!

As many of the sounds used in this game were made in house by the sound engineers, they’re all unique to Blur.
Now you can enjoy all the engine sounds from the Garage UI without the UI sounds going over the top 😊 

Barge into the Blur Download section to grab the archive.

EXAMPLE-scaled

Blurᵀᴹ – Debug Menu Enabled Binary Released

chasseyblue.com

Blur was the most interesting racing game of 2010 for me, power ups, licensed vehicles and many of those vehicles were obscure. It’s a game that actually made me purchase a Playstation 3, just so I could play the game online.

I luckily was able to buy Blur on Steam before it was quickly pulled from the Steam Store just before Bizarre Creations were terminated by Activision.
Sadly even though the online servers for the game remained live there was no anti-cheat measures. Any public trainer on the internet can be used for infinite power ups resulting in players spamming the races.

Small introduction out of the way, I present…

Another quick patched binary, this time for Blurᵀᴹ for Windows that enables the hidden Debug Menu!

All the technical changes can be seen in the Mods/Hacks section of the site, so I won’t bore you with those. 

Here’s a link straight to the page!

Vigilante 8 Repo Announcement

chasseyblue.com

With some surprise one of the 4 Luxoflux developers commented on one of my videos on YouTube who asked me to join a Discord server which is hosted by another Australian and Vigilante player “Real Down Under”.

Once I joined the Discord server, I was very much welcomed by all the active server members. Thanks to those guys!

With some small discussions about Vigilante 8 content, we all decided that instead of making a bunch of links and throwing them into a Discord channel. That a repo with content would be the better way to go.

As I have a domain, and webspace I decided to host much of the content that many of the members have contributed or sent me directly.

So far there’s extracted Audio, and Assets from the games along with the 2nd Offense Strategy guide in CBR format.

If you’re into the Vigilante 8 series and would like to join likeminded people from around the world, you join the Discord Server through this permalink.

See you there! 😎

Year 2020, inactivity in a non-stop time. Cheers COVID-19

chasseyblue.com

If a worldwide pandemic wasn’t enough, well I can say that my life has progressed – I’m now engaged to the love of my life, and we are now living together.

So, what that mean for my projects you’re asking? 

I often get messages, asking about progress on FlatOut Ultimate Carnage Extended Mod.
With nothing but apologies I have not been able to make any more progress, since the last update. Having said that I have made multiple backups of the project to return at a later date. Rest assured that the project has not died.

Life just gets in the way of personal projects, just like many who have project cars and they end up sitting in the garage for years untouched. It happened with my father and now I can see why that was the case.

Hopefully sometime this year I can actually get the ball rolling again.

Anyhow, I’m more active online at Instagram and Twitter. Also, they have been added to the social menu above.

Lastly, every one of you please stay safe!

fbp

Changes to Facebook Page Messaging

chasseyblue.com

Short message update here.

I have been getting a pretty big influx of messages on my Facebook page asking questions on how to do certain hacks for Vigilante 8 2nd Offense.

Most of these questions are relating on some videos I created a year or two ago.
Many of those hacks were in ‘float’ addresses, which means they change every time the game is restarted. Therefore, I cannot give clear instructions on how to get the desired effect in my older videos.

The videos I get asked about would involve me creating tutorial videos on how to do the hacks in question. To all be honest with you all, I simply don’t have the time and or energy to create tutorial videos anymore – let alone finding new hacks for Vigilante series. At the time of making all those videos I wasn’t in a full-time job, and my whole day involved memory editing Vigilante series. Some hacks even taken days to complete even without making them into a video with the amount of editing I did in them.

Having said all that, I have decided to turn off private messaging on my Facebook page.

You can all still contact me on my Discord channel. I will reply to your comment when I get a chance and usually if I don’t reply. My good buddy TITAN will forward your message to me personally.

Hopefully you can all understand my decision.