JackandBeans/Snap64Recomp v1.1.3

Snap64 Recomp 1.1.3

on GitHub

Snap64 Recomp is a native port of Pokémon Snap (Nintendo 64, US release) made by static recompilation: the game's own code runs on your PC, the port only hosts it, and everything about how it looks is off unless you turn it on. 1.1.3 adds four save files on a new Game page, takes the seams out of every course's sky, sorts the Graphics page into groups, and gives mods the clock, a line on their own page and a line over a course.

Downloads

You need your own cartridge dump. No game data is included. Start the program and choose your pokemonsnap.z64 when it asks (US, SHA-1 edc7c49cc568c045fe48be0d18011c30f393cbaf), or put the file next to the executable yourself. START HERE.txt in each archive says the rest, in one page.

What's new

Four save files

• The Options screen's sixth row is Game, a page with three rows. Save File runs from File 1, the file the port always had, to File 4, each its own file under saves/ that starts empty and appears when the game first saves, so a family can share one program. It takes effect at the next start, since the game reads its save as it boots. Snap Station is the kiosk printer's switch, which had lived in the settings file alone. Exit Game is the row the list's item was, asking first as it did.

The sky

• The lines across a course's sky are gone. Each sky is a six-sided drum around the camera, and at the port's resolution three lines stood on it: the picture's last column meeting its first at every join, the crease where the corner colors change pace, and the lid's rim. The port now reads the drum as the course loads, cuts each of its triangles into sixteen, colors the new corners smoothly from the game's own and blends the picture across each join. A sky that is not such a drum, the Cave's and the Rainbow Cloud's, is left as it was. SNAP_SKY_DRUM=original keeps every sky as the cartridge draws it.

The pages

• The Graphics page is in three groups, in the order a player asks about them: the display, the picture and the fixes. Its seventeenth row, Wide HUD, chooses whether the film counter and the side icons sit at the wide picture's edge, as 1.1.2 made it, or at the 4:3 picture's, where the cartridge has them.
• The Controls and Button Setup pages say what they do. The Button Setup row says Open; the Button Setup page has its own legend, A Change and B Back; its top row reads Device; Stick Swap is Off or On; the Dead Zone's values carry their percent sign; the scroll arrows sit beside the scroll bar. The keyboard ships no key for the L button, which the game never reads.
• A mod's options page draws all of its rows. The pages' pool of text strips ran dry with a mod of ten options over a picture, and the last rows went blank.

The window and the picture

• The maximize button maximizes the window, as any window's does, and a window left maximized opens maximized at the next launch. Since 1.0.0 it had been a fullscreen switch. F11 and the Graphics page are the fullscreen switch.
• In a wide picture the word PAUSE comes in from the edge. The game starts it off the 4:3 screen and slides it in; in a 16:9 picture that start was inside the view, so the word popped in.
• With Mouse Aim on, a course no longer starts looking straight up. The mouse moved the view through the run-in and the game's other scripted moments; it moves the view only while the game's own stick is live now.

Fixed on the way to this release

• A settings file from an earlier release keeps its fullscreen. The port rewrites an older file once to add the new fields, and that rewrite came a moment before the saved fullscreen was restored, so it wrote fullscreen off and the second start was windowed. Found while cutting this release; no player had seen it.

Mods

• A mod can read the computer's clock and calendar (snap64_local_time, snap64_local_date, snap64_utc_offset), the port's first functions of its own for mods.
• A mod can put a line of its own on its details page (snap64_set_status), with a %T that shows the clock as the page is read.
• A mod can show a line over a course (snap64_notice): centered at the top in the film counter's row, for four seconds, fading in and out.
• A mod's hook on a function the port rewrites keeps the port's work in it. The runtime gave a hooked function a fresh copy from the cartridge, without the port's additions: a hook on the particle drawing dropped the names that keep 2D effects smooth.
• A mod is N64 code only. A declared native library or an offline-recompiled mod is refused with a reason, and the mods page says so.
• The first mod that changes the island, Island Skies, sets the hour and the weather by your clock: night, sunset, dawn and dusk, rain, storms and snow, the moon's phase, and a line over the course as a ride starts.

Every change, with its cause, is in CHANGELOG.md.

First start

• On Windows, past SmartScreen: choose More info, then Run anyway, once.
• On a Mac: right-click the app and choose Open, or on macOS 15 double-click, dismiss the message, and click Open Anyway in System Settings > Privacy & Security, once.
• The box asks for your ROM; choose the file and the game starts. The first start also compiles the shipped shader list during the boot logos and takes longer.
• The Snap Station's Print restarts the program twice, on purpose.
• On a Deck, add the executable as a non-Steam game and run it in either mode, or install the Flatpak; the Deck page under docs/ has the shortcut and gyro settings.

Known limitations

• The Mac build has not run on a physical Mac; the ARM64 build and the Flatpak have not run on real hardware. Their sounds, pads and speed are unheard and unmeasured.
• A few 2D pictures still move at the game's rate when the frame rate is raised: one that slides past the side of a menu in a wide window, and one that jumps a long way in a single frame. Outside Oak's check, a slide that slows to a stop can still end a pixel at a time.
• A mod installed during play loads at the next start; the page says so.
• On an N64-shaped pad, which has no right shoulder button, fast forward has only its key until the file names another button.
• A Pokémon pops out of the picture before it has fully left it: the cartridge draws a Pokémon only while its collision point projects within 1.5 times the half-screen of the center. The port keeps the rule as the cartridge has it.
• Gyro has been confirmed on a Steam Deck and no other pad yet.

How this release was checked

• The release suite (tools/release_check.py) on the Windows executable GitHub built: 28 of 29 checks in 1153 s, the one left being the fast-forward ride, which ran short of its time on a busy machine and passed when rerun alone against a fresh normal ride; and the Snap Station's 5 of 5 in 489 s. The same suite on the build made here: 29 of 29, and 5 of 5. VERIFICATION.md says what each check does.
• The sky, the pages, the notice and the save files were measured on recorded runs with captured frames, and played by hand. The recorded run's 45 photo scores are the same as before the changes, with the Island Skies mod on and off.
• The Mac workflow's checks on GitHub's virtual Mac: 15 of 15 natively and 10 of 10 through Rosetta 2, no crash reports. The package checks passed on all five archives, and each archive's build provenance verifies.