thibautbus/top v1.5.0

The Oracles Project 1.5.0

on GitHub

A faithful, moddable port of Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android: the original picture, or a widescreen view with the rooms around Link, at three distances, Near, Medium and Far, in the shape of your screen, 16:9 or 4:3, with picture filters if you want them; item hotkeys and other gameplay options, languages, RetroAchievements, Lua mods and fan games from their BPS patch; on Windows, and on Linux with the .tar.gz, a portable mode to play from a USB stick. Your own ROM runs untouched in an emulator core, and Display › Quality sets the view and the core for your device in one choice, from Low to Max.

The game needs your own ROM of Oracle of Ages or Oracle of Seasons (US); a language its edition (the European ROM, the Japanese ROM, or Kaxus's Polish ROM or patch); and a fan game its BPS patch (Oracles Combined, the two European ROMs as well); none is included.

Installing

• Windows (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-windows.zip, 64-bit): unzip the folder and run the-oracles-project.exe. The executable is not signed, so SmartScreen may warn the first time: More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-macos.zip, one application for Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 11 or later): unzip and move The Oracles Project to Applications. The application is not notarized. On macOS 11 to 14, open it the first time by right-clicking it and choosing Open. On macOS 15 or later, open it once, then choose Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security. Or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "The Oracles Project.app".
• Linux (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage): make the file executable (chmod +x the-oracles-project-1.5.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage, or in the file's properties) and run it; SDL 3 comes with it. If the AppImage does not start, use the .tar.gz, or run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run: a system without FUSE (some containers and minimal installs) cannot mount it.
• Linux, archive (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz): extract the folder and run ./the-oracles-project; SDL 3 comes with it. The the-oracles-project.desktop file inside is optional: set its two paths, then copy it to ~/.local/share/applications/.
• Linux ARM64 (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-linux-arm64.AppImage and the-oracles-project-1.5.0-linux-arm64.tar.gz; Raspberry Pi 5, Asahi Linux...): experimental, not yet tried on real hardware; feedback welcome. They install as the two files above.
• Android (the-oracles-project-1.5.0-android.apk, Android 10 or later): install the APK, allowing its installation from your browser or file manager when Android asks.

SHA256SUMS.txt holds the SHA-256 of each file.

First launch

Open The Oracles Project: the home screen lists Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons and Fan games. Pick a game, open its Cartridge page, pick your ROM with Choose ROM… (a fan game asks for its patch too), then Play. The game starts in Enhanced, the widescreen view; Display changes the view, the window and the quality. The manual has every page, key and setting, and the FAQ the questions players ask most.

Updating

Install the new version as you installed the old one: unzip the Windows folder wherever you like, put the macOS application or the Linux file in place of the old one, and on Android install the APK over the installed application (from 1.2.0 on: 1.1.0 and earlier were a different application, whose files the new one does not read). Your saves, beside your ROMs, and your settings, in your user folder, are kept, and the new version finds the ROMs you chose. A portable copy on Windows or Linux (portable.txt beside the executable) keeps its settings in the game folder: move portable.txt, the user-data folder and the ROMs you keep there into the new version's folder before deleting the old one (Portable mode). What's new, below, says whether the savestates of the version before still load.

Cores

Two emulator cores run the game: SameBoy, unmodified, the accurate reference, and mGBA's Game Boy core, lighter, with one patch (its boot ROM), for small devices. Fast (mGBA) plays by default on Android, Accurate (SameBoy) elsewhere; Display › Advanced › Core changes it.

What's new in 1.5.0

New

• Oracles Combined. Oracles Combined, Ages and Seasons joined in one game, is now in Fan games: its Cartridge page takes your two European ROMs, each on its own row, and the patch of its 1.5 release in your language, joins and patches them in memory, and names the version and language it recognizes. It plays in Faithful and in Enhanced, in its Ages and its Seasons alike and from one to the other: the wide view at every size with the rooms around Link, continuous transitions on foot and swimming, the HUD's layouts, hold to swim, its own cheats, and the compact text, the wide text box, the text size and the instant text in its five languages. It keeps its own save, and Import save… takes its save from another emulator. A state saved in one of its games loads in the other too, and in Enhanced the rooms around Link come back as quickly as after any other load. The item hotkeys work in it too, with slots of their own for both its games: an item of either game in either game, from any of its inventory's twenty slots as well as B and A, and an item kept or given back through Vasu's door. The mods are not there yet. Any other build of it, the patch its web page gives or an image you built yourself, plays in Faithful, chosen as Oracle of Ages' ROM, and so does an image of Crossworld, the fan project it continues.
• Japanese. Ages and Seasons can play in Japanese, from your Japanese ROM beside your US ROM: the official Japanese edition's own text (Nintendo, Capcom, Flagship), in its own font, with its title screen and logo, the small kana over its title's kanji included, its file select and its screens, its save menu, its game over and secrets' screens, its dungeons' names, and the symbols of the present and the past, or of the seasons, in the inventory and as Link enters an era or a season. Secrets are written in kana, as in the Japanese edition: typed on a kana grid, given in kana, and accepted by the Japanese edition itself. In every language, to exchange secrets between Ages and Seasons, play both games in the same language. Names are typed in kana on the Japanese edition's own name entry, Link's and the child's: hiragana, or katakana with Select or the カナ and かな buttons, with ゛ and ゜. A name typed in Latin letters in another language shows in capitals, but one typed all in lower case shows as hiragana; a name typed in kana shows badly if the game goes back to English or another European language. In Japanese the compact text is not available: Display › Text keeps Classic and says so.
• Polish. Ages and Seasons can also play in Polish, the fan translation by Kaxus, from your Polish ROM or his patch, credited under the language while it is chosen: his title screen with its banner, his file select and its screens, his save menu and his dungeons' names come with it.
• Cartridge › Editions. The game's Cartridge page has a new Editions row, which opens Cartridge › Editions: your European ROM, the Japanese ROM and the Polish ROM or patch, each chosen, changed or removed there. The Language row lists 日本語 and Polski after the European languages and shows them all, each grayed with what it needs until its edition is there, and the home screen names them beside Cartridge. Nothing of the Japanese or the Polish edition is shipped: the texts are taken from your files, on your device.
• Floating status bar. In Enhanced, Display › HUD has a fourth choice, Floating: no bar, the world fills the screen, and the hearts, the rupees and the items float over it in see-through panels, the hearts at the top left, the rupees at the top right, B and A at the bottom left. With the item hotkeys on, their slots float beside B and A, laid out as a controller's buttons or as a block of keyboard keys, after the device you play them with. In the Near view every panel is drawn at half the game's scale, so that they all fit; with Android's touch controls, B and A stand under the hearts, clear of the controls. The season's or the era's sign the game shows at the top left on entering an area stays in front of the hearts. Panels, under HUD, colors them with the bar's own color or a light gray. Display › Text's preview shows them, and both change at once from the pause too.
• RetroAchievements. Ages and Seasons on their original ROMs now have achievements, in casual mode: every launcher feature stays, savestates included. Achievements on a game's menu, above Cheats, takes your retroachievements.org account and lists the game's achievements, unlocked and remaining. They stay off until you log in, and opening the page never counts as playing: a session counts when the game starts. The password is sent once and never kept, and the eye in its field shows it if you want to check what you typed. Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) or the on-screen keyboard's Paste takes a password from your password manager. As you play, a toast shows each unlock with a short sound (Unlock sound turns it off), and the pause menu lists the achievements. Each achievement shows its full description, its rarity and its Missable, Progression or Win tag: beside the list in 16:9, in a panel with A, Enter or a tap in 4:3. If the connection drops during a game, its unlocks are kept and sent later; a game started without a connection plays without achievements. A cheat, or a mod that changes the game, suspends them until the game starts again.
• Filters. Display › Picture › Filter draws the game's picture through a filter: Scanlines, CRT, LCD (the grid of a Game Boy screen), Smooth, xBR, HQ2x or OmniScale, Off by default. While the row has the focus, a preview shows the choice on the last picture of your last game, or on your game itself from the pause, where it changes at once. The filters never touch the launcher's menus or the larger text box. Smooth works everywhere; the others need a graphics chip that runs them (Vulkan, on Android too, or Metal on a Mac) and a picture large enough for them: the row says so where they cannot run.
• Portable mode. On Windows, and on Linux with the .tar.gz, Settings › Portable mode keeps the launcher's settings, mods and language files in the game folder, in a user-data folder beside the executable, instead of in your user folder: to play from a USB stick, or to keep several copies side by side. Turning it on copies them there, turning it off copies them back, and the row says how it went; a file named portable.txt beside the executable does the same by hand, copying nothing. Saves already stay beside their ROMs; ROMs and patches kept inside the game folder are found again when the folder moves or the USB stick takes another drive letter, and the row reminds you of the games left outside it. To update a portable copy, copy portable.txt, user-data and your ROMs into the new version's folder before deleting the old one.
• Settings. The bottom left of the home screen now has a Settings button beside the version, easy to reach with the keyboard, a controller, the mouse or a touch. Settings gathers the launcher's own settings, Update check and, on Windows and on Linux with the .tar.gz, Portable mode, then About: the version, where the source and the player's guide are, the two emulator cores and their authors, and Licenses, which opens the list of every license the launcher ships with in your browser.
• Vibration of the touch controls. On Android, the touch controls now give a short vibration as you press them: A, B, Select, Start, the pause, sliding onto the other button, and each direction your thumb adds on the d-pad as it slides (from up to up and right, not on from there to right alone), never while it holds still, rests on a border or lets go. It follows Android's touch feedback setting: turn that off and the controls do not vibrate either. Controls › Touch vibration turns the vibration off without changing Android's setting, from the pause too.
• The fan games' authors. Gifts of Kinomi, Moonrise Regalia and Temple of Seasons now name their authors, as their release pages do, on their Cartridge page and under their name on the home screen.

Improved

• The rooms around Link in a dungeon. In Enhanced, Display › Picture › Unvisited rooms has a new choice and default, Dungeons: in a dungeon, only the room Link is in shows, as in the original game, whole even where it is larger than the screen, every other room dark with a clean edge; as Link walks into the next room, it scrolls into view beside his, as in the game. Outside dungeons, every room around him shows. Hidden does the same in dungeons and keeps the rooms he has never entered dark outside, as on the map. With Shown, a dungeon's room now shows beside it the rooms it opens onto, through a door or an open side, as the rooms around Link do outside.
• Why a row is grayed. A row or a menu entry grayed because the game does not have it now says "Not available for this game", where it named the games that had it, such as "Ages and Seasons only for now." or "Mods play on the original ROMs". One that waits for an original ROM says "Needs an original ROM": choose one in Cartridge. With Moonrise Regalia chosen, Controls › Swimming now says "Not available for this game." on wide screens too, not only on 4:3 screens; the setting stays live, as it applies to every game.

Fixed

• Vsync on fast and slow displays. On a computer with a display of 100 Hz or more, such as 120 Hz or 144 Hz, Display › Advanced › Vsync now keeps each frame whole, on Auto as on On, instead of letting a line run down the screen. On used to turn itself off on such a display, and Auto stayed off there; both now keep vsync, and the game keeps the Game Boy's own pace. On a computer that cannot keep up with waiting for the display, vsync turns itself off so that the game does not slow down, and tries again after each pause. On also keeps it on a display between 60 and 100 Hz, where some frames stay on the screen longer than others, which is why Auto stays off there. On a display slower than the game, such as a television at 50 Hz, the game no longer slows down with Vsync on On: it keeps the Game Boy's pace, and vsync stays off there, as waiting for such a display could only slow the game.
• Diagonals beside a wall. With Continuous transitions, walking diagonally into the next room no longer keeps Link from going sideways for the whole scroll when a wall stands a little further on in that room: he goes sideways as far as the ground lets him, and the wall stops him as it would when walking. It showed most at the corners of Subrosia in Temple of Seasons, where walking diagonally from one room into the room across also no longer slows Link down sideways as he nears the edge: he crosses the corner at his own pace.
• Stopping at a room's corner. With Continuous transitions, walking diagonally through a corner where four rooms meet, Link no longer stops going forward for a moment once he is well into the room beside: he keeps walking both ways as the next scroll starts, turning back sideways there answers at once, and with the Smooth camera he no longer slips back slightly.
• Swimming into the next room beside the shore. With Continuous transitions, swimming diagonally into the next room where the water meets the shore at its edge can no longer carry Link sideways over a hole or, in Ages without the mermaid suit, the deep sea, where he could not stay. He goes sideways no further than the shore.
• Lost Woods. In Enhanced, when Seasons' Lost Woods send Link back into the part of the woods he was leaving as he goes north or south, the view no longer jumps: the normal view no longer flashes a misplaced picture, and in the wider views Link no longer jumps a room's height across the screen before the camera catches up with him.
• A bush in the wrong colors beside Link. In Enhanced, a bush or a rock that hides an enemy in a room shown beside Link's could take the colors of Link's room when the two rooms have different colors, such as a gray bush in the woods above Ages' graveyard. It now has its own room's colors.
• People of a large room as Link walks in. In Enhanced, when Link walks into a large room from the room beside it, as in Gifts of Kinomi's castle near the start of the game, the people of the room he enters now stand where they are while the screen scrolls and on the room's first moment, instead of showing a second time above and to the left of their place before the room settles. Someone standing at the edge of the game's own screen as it scrolls is now shown whole instead of cut in half, and people further into the room, which the wider views show, no longer appear a moment after the rest.
• A scene lost at a room's edge. With Continuous transitions, turning back or walking on just as a scroll ended could start the next scroll in the very moment a scene of that room began: the scene was lost for good and the menu stayed shut until the next scene. The scene now waits for Link's next stop, or plays at once.
• Stuck in a wall with the shield up. With Continuous transitions, crossing into the next room with the shield up, running on Pegasus seeds or with an item in use, such as a charged sword, could leave Link inside a wall just past the room's edge, stuck there while you held the pad, and bring him back there after a fall. Where that would happen, he now ends the room change where the game itself puts him. Walking into the next room against such a wall, a fall there afterwards no longer brings him back inside it either.
• Loading a state in a dialogue or mid-scroll. In Enhanced, loading a state saved while a text box is open no longer leaves only the game's own screen, black all around, until the text ends: the rooms around it come back shortly after the load, or, during a story scene, when the scene ends. Loading a state saved during a scroll from one room to the next no longer shows the world a room off until the scroll ends, with a framed image as it loads and the picture jumping at the end: the scroll goes on as it was saved, and the rooms around come back about as quickly as after a load anywhere else. This holds for states saved with this version.
• The camera a few pixels off. In Enhanced, after the view held the camera back from a room beside that was still being prepared, as on reaching an area of another season, after a load, or in a new part of the map, the camera could stay a few pixels off where it would otherwise be, for the rest of the walk. It now comes back to its usual place, a pixel at a time, as soon as that room is shown.
• People fading out as Link walks in. In Enhanced, when Link walked into a room whose people are brought in by the room itself as it loads, such as the troupe's dancers at the start of Seasons or the crowd around Nayru at the start of Ages, the people already shown in the room beside him could turn see-through and fade back in as the screen scrolled. They now stay as they were.
• A black line at the edge of the far view. In Enhanced, in the Far view at the edge of a map, as in Subrosia, a room already shown beside the screen's edge could turn black along that edge and stay so until Link left the area. It now stays drawn.
• Coming out of a door. In Enhanced, coming out of a house, a cave or a dungeon, the place outside no longer shows for a moment around a blank rectangle, then disappears as the screen starts opening from the middle; and at the start of a game, the view no longer shows a blank rectangle on black. The whole view stays blank, as the game's own screen does, until it opens. While the game's screen is still white, it stays framed in the middle as during the load, with no white flash across the view and no jump. Walking out of a dungeon by its entrance no longer shows the room Link leaves a second time below itself, as if another room lay past the door.
• A pop as a game starts, loads a state or comes back from the pause. The small pop heard as a game starts, before the boot sound, is gone, and so are the louder one a savestate could make as it loaded and the clicks as the pause opened and as the game came back from it, on both cores. The sound now comes in smoothly after a load and after the pause. On Android, coming back to the game from another app no longer plays a scrap of old sound with a click before the pause: the sound fades out as you leave and stays silent until you resume.
• People standing still beside Link's room. In Enhanced, a few people and animals, such as the Subrosians who carry two buckets of water or a cat in Horon Village, now move in the rooms shown beside Link's, as the others around them do, instead of standing still until Link walks into their room.

Notes

• Defaults. RetroAchievements stay off until you log in, Filter stays Off and Portable mode Off. HUD stays Full width. Unvisited rooms is now Dungeons, unless you chose Hidden. On Android, the touch controls now vibrate as Android's touch feedback setting says; Controls › Touch vibration turns that off. With Vsync on Auto, a computer with a display of 100 Hz or more now keeps vsync on.
• The European ROM. Its row moved into Cartridge › Editions, beside the Japanese ROM and the Polish ROM or patch; a European ROM chosen before stays chosen.
• About is now in Settings. The version at the bottom left of the home screen no longer opens a page: the Settings button beside it does, with Update check, Portable mode on Windows and on Linux with the .tar.gz, and About.
• Saves, settings and savestates. Installed over 1.4.0, 1.5.0 keeps your saves and settings.txt, on Android too. Savestates made with 1.4.0 load.