Legend of Zelda OoT/MQ & MM - Gamecube to N64 patches (with fixes/decensorship)

[Goemon]

That Gamecube versions are really some strange roms. They were modified to run on that GC emulator.
It seems that the video stuff is all 60Hz but they kept the PAL timings for sound and music stuff.
My guess is that this was made in order to keep the video resolutions for the emulator the same.
I am surprised that the header is not already NZLP after the rip but the header alone won't help it seems.
You can fix the speed and the music/sound by using the old progam PALadin.
Not sure why it is oversaturated for you.
In PALadin, you have to change the rom to PAL. This will change some entries in the Video Table.
But because the video was for 60hz, you will get black borders at the top and the bottom on a PAL N64.
Also you can not choose the language. This GC roms took the language of the Gamcube IPL.

[Messerjocke]

All of the GameCube releases (PAL, NTSC-J, NTSC-U) are at 60MHz, so NTSC.  They would require some massive rewiring to get them to run on PAL systems.  That is all on Nintendo though.  I think the most recent version of OoT that will run on a PAL system is currently the PAL v1.1 cart release (AKA PAL rev. A).  No version of Ocarina of Time since then has been made to run on a PAL system.

So even if you loaded up the original, unpatched PAL Master Quest rom would not run on a PAL system.

Thanks for your response :-)
I've done some testing and got some interesting results.

Using the ROM I have extracted from my GC-Disk, I have created three patched versions (GC2v1.0, GC2N64, Aroenai's) and tried them all on my N64 including the original release. All of them worked fine except for the issues I previously mentioned.
But since I have invested a lot of time and money into getting that far (buying a Retroblaster + the writer, buying a neat looking cartridge for OOT MQ, a Wii and the Master Quest Disk + softmodding said Wii and extracting + patching the GC game) I will not give up so easily on getting this thing to run on my PAL console :>

So after doing some research I stumbled across a post where somebody mentioned, that a PAL region N64 can output both, PAL50Hz and PAL60Hz, with the latter being generally poor supported. Long story short: Testing the ROM on my old TV yielded some interesting results. Although this did not fix the sound issues, I managed to get a clean and stable video output :-)
Now all that is left is to get rid of that annoying sound issue.

For reference, I have documented all of my issues on imgur. Sorry for the poor video quality. I had to use my phone as I do not have any capture equipment.
https://imgur.com/a/VP7TUtz

After that, I followed the suggestion of Goemon, thank you dear sir , and tried patching the game with PALadin. Unfortunatley though it did not change a single thing. But I've gotten some interesting info from the readme!

  [ Some technical stuff ]

    Usually the sound of a PAL'ed NTSC-rom is garbled - that's because
    the soundroutine is optimized for 60Hz and creates soundbuffers
    which are to small for 50Hz. This produces the anoying "clicks".

    It's not possible to make a generic-fixing-routine for that.
    There are to many different sound-routines on the market.
    (Of course all know routines could be build in...but that wouldn't
     be a generic fix! - I also got to many false fixes when I tried it)

    It's also _NOT_ a matter of sound-tables or something like that.
    Changing the Videotable doesn't change the sound!! The changed
    video-mode just isn't compatible with the used sound-settings
   
    Hope this stops the whining about PALadin being unable to fix sound
    and the requests for it in future versions

    There are Video-Fixes available which handle this problem.

But since this tool is from 1999 I could not as of yet find any informations regarding these supposed sound fixes :-/ Does anyone have an idea or a tip where I might have luck finding some informations?

Now for some interesting bits of informations I gathered while working on my ROM:
- Converting my ROM from n64 to z64 did not seem to be necessary. While the file extension is .n64, tool64 showed blue arrows pointing to the right and displayed the byte order as big endian
- The header of my original extracted rom red NZLP, but after applying one of the patches it changed to NZLE
- Changing the Header did not change anything at all (probably? Might have slowed down the sound a little bit)
- GCto1.0 and GCtoN64 both work emulated with project64, but Aroenai's does not (neither with AA nor without)
- Funfact: The creator of PALadin is a group called dextrose. Their homepaged redirects (www.dextrose.com) to https://krikzz.com/store/

[Goemon]

Using PALadin is supposed to be working. I tried it out before writing here.
However, you need to make also sure that the Country is set to P. Otherwise the fixes by PALdin wont have effect.
Also after patching the Rom with PALadin, you need to correct the CRC.
The NTSC picture has 100 less lines than PAL, that is why after patching you have "PAL Borders"
Also before patching the rom you should try PALadin on a clean rom. I tested only with a plain unpatched rom.

[Messerjocke]

Using PALadin is supposed to be working. I tried it out before writing here.
However, you need to make also sure that the Country is set to P. Otherwise the fixes by PALdin wont have effect.
Also after patching the Rom with PALadin, you need to correct the CRC.
The NTSC picture has 100 less lines than PAL, that is why after patching you have "PAL Borders"
Also before patching the rom you should try PALadin on a clean rom. I tested only with a plain unpatched rom.

Weird, converting the ROM appears to have no effect save for changing the header. I do not even get the PAL borders.
What I did step by stept is this:
- RIP the game (the header of the clean rip is E)
- Apply Aeronai's patch including the noAA fix (Header changed to P)
- Run PALadin (header switches back to E)
What I did not do was a seperate CRC correction. PALadin does so automatically, or does it?

The game runs just fine on my hardware except for this damn sound issue. What I also noticed is, that the running speed is closer to the 3DS version, which means faster than the original PAL OOT. So maybe its still sped up?

Did you use the PAL 60Hz or the NTSC version of OOT Master quest as the basis for your conversion?


I cannot test PALadin on a clean ROM as I neither have any NTSC games to convert to PAL nor the means to play NTSC->PAL converted games :-/

[ozidual]

I seriously doubt PALadin will be able to fix this.  There's no simple way to convert the audio speeds and video speeds in OoT, there's just a lot of editing that would need to happen.  If you pull the audio files for PAL 1.0-1.1 and any of the NTSC 1.0-1.2, there are huge differences between PAL and NTSC, while there's not much difference within NTSC or PAL.  That's just the audio.  The "video files" would then need all their timings adjusted, and there are multiple adjustment points per "video file".  They aren't really video files, but that's a simple explanation for it.

Your only solution is to have a TV that can handle PAL60 or to use an adapter that can handle the conversion.  UltraHDMI allows you to play PAL50 on NTSC TVs, so I'm assuming it works the other way as well.  There could be other video adapters out there that do the same thing.

[Messerjocke]

Well, to my own surprise it actually did work. Although I do not know why
It's all thanks to Goemon's handholding to be honest.  I would not have gotten any results if it weren't for him. Thank you very much. I regret that I have trouble expressing my gratitude in english, but really - thank you. It has been a long and arduous (but nevertheless fun) journey getting that far and I am really happy that all is working now.

The only remaining issue is the one Goemon himself pointed out - the so called PAL borders. But I am honestly content with them. They do not bother me.

As for the technical side - I am not nearly as proficent as ozidual, but the readme of PALadin itself explained that it will not fix any audio issues. Why it still did I do not know. To be fair I don't get why I got PAL borders if it has been PAL before and is still PAL afterwards...

At any rate - here is a link to prove that I am not delusional and is also showcasing the PAL borders :-)
https://imgur.com/a/EB0bEAn

[Shadow_Zero]

Hi there,

I'm trying to run Master Quest on my original PAL hardware using a retroblaster (not an everdrive).
While the game runs, there are several issues:
 - The game runs at a higher speed
 - The colors are oversaturated
 - The music and sounds play to fast and stutters
With this version of the patch and no other patches apart from that:
Legend of Zelda, The - Ocarina of Time - Master Quest (Europe) (GameCube Edition) [60 Hz] - GCto1.0 v09.09.2019

I tried changing the header from NZLE to NZLP but to no effect. It seems the user geriatrix voiced similiar issues on October 26, 2016 (Reply 103). Using an emulator, the game runs fine with no issues at all.

The ROM I'm using is the euopean version of Master Quest from the Ocarina of Time double Pack in the Wind Waker Special Edition and has been ripped using my Wii. But I feel that the problems lie at a diffrerent place.

Does anybody have an idea why this is occuring and how to fix that?

All of the GameCube releases (PAL, NTSC-J, NTSC-U) are at 60MHz, so NTSC.  They would require some massive rewiring to get them to run on PAL systems.  That is all on Nintendo though.  I think the most recent version of OoT that will run on a PAL system is currently the PAL v1.1 cart release (AKA PAL rev. A).  No version of Ocarina of Time since then has been made to run on a PAL system.

So even if you loaded up the original, unpatched PAL Master Quest rom would not run on a PAL system.

My curiousity awakened. PAL GameCube games usually had a boot option to select 50 or 60Hz. Doesn't that falsify the statement that everything was 60Hz? And I recall a youtube comparison vid of Ocarina of Time (not sure if it was the N64 or GC version, dunno if it would matter) showing NTSC-J, NTSC-U and PAL next to eachother. PAL-60 was still slower. And I think NTSC-J was even slightly faster than NTSC-U, but not entirely sure anymore.


EDIT:
This could've been the vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCvyNKKZeg


EDIT 2:
Ah, just saw a video showing PAL GC Zelda "This game supports 60Hz mode only".

[fluffysorbet]

Am having a really hard time specifically getting the Debug Master Quest ROM (verified good - checksum matches the first post listing) to work when patched on my actual N64 (expansion pak is in). The regular Master Quest works fine with the patches, just not the MQ debug version. Tried both the compressed and uncompressed patches. Any ideas?

Tried;
The ROM SHA1 matches that listed for the debug version the patches are for; 50BEBEDAD9E0F10746A52B07239E47FA6C284D03.
Used patches (separate copies of ROM);
http://www.mediafire.com/download/y9vt4uuuiqf2atn/oot_debug_firetemple.zip   - Uncompressed
http://www.mediafire.com/download/f05dvo87kztfky2/comp_oot_debug_firetemple.zip   - Compressed

Both resulting versions tried on NTSC N64 w/exp pak, forced TV option off, forced to NTSC, forced to PAL
Both resulting versions tried on PAL N64 w/exp pak, forced TV option off, forced to NTSC, forced to PAL

All result in nothing but a black screen. Are the debug patches actually correct versions (the file names within do not mention debug just Master Quest...) and if so... Why are they apparently not working? These are literally the only ROM variants out of a lot of mods, prototypes, hackjobs that I cannot get to boot.

[Frank]

Hey Aroenai,

The Preview Demo version of Majora's Mask doesn't have Link falling through the ground when touching a loading zone in the air (easy to perform in East/South Clock Town). That fix went undone for the final version.

[Zorg07]

I have an error in the vc wii injection, it shows me the language selection, then the game crashes when starting a game, specifically with the rom pal, use the correct rom for the patch, use majoras mask ntsc as the base wad and pal and it was the same result. Please help me.

[The Renegadist]

Is it possible to use the patch to get Master Quest and then patch it again to be uncensored, I'd like to do Master Quest but the thought of playing it censored doesn't sound like a good time.

[The Renegadist]

Thanks for the help.

[ozidual]

I’m honestly not sure what you’re asking. 

Is it possible to use the patch to get Master Quest

You have to either extract Master Quest from the GC disc image or download it.  Our patches don’t create Master Quest.

I'd like to do Master Quest but the thought of playing it censored doesn't sound like a good time.

If that is the case, get ahold of a MQ rom and patch it with one of Aroenai’s patches.  If you need instructions for patching, I include them on the post for my OoT patches.

[The Renegadist]

I don't get it then, what's the point of the very first patch if it doesn't bring over those elements? I assumed you take a clean OOT N64 ROM and apply the patch to receive the changes brought over by Master Quest.

So in that case I just take the MQ ROM and do I patch it with the first and then the bonus patch to decensor or do I patch it with the very first patch and then hit it with the decensor patch?

[ozidual]

Ohhhh!  You mean the two patches in the zip file.  The main patch has all the fixes/decensoring.  The "no-aa" patch just turns off Anti-Aliasing.  Basically removes some of the smearing effect that N64 games use.  It's a patch form of the Gameshark codes that are out there for removing Anti-Aliasing.  Personally, I'm not a fan of turning it off, but some people like it, and some systems might look better with it.