Diddy Kong Racing

This repo contains a work-in-progress decompilation of Diddy Kong Racing for the N64. You will need to have a original copy of the ROM.

Currently, only the US 1.0 version of the game is supported. US 1.1, EU 1.0, EU 1.1, and JP are not supported at this time.

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Dependencies

• gcc
• make
• python3 (latest version)
• binutils-mips

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config git binutils-mips-linux-gnu python3

Setup

1. Place the ROM file within the baseroms directory.
   a. Any DKR ROM should work as long as it is US 1.0.
   b. The name of the ROM file does not matter. It will be detected automatically from an md5 checksum.
   c. If you use a byte-swapped or little-endian ROM, then it will automatically be converted to a big-endian (.z64) ROM file.
2. Run ./setup.sh in the main directory.
   a. All of the tools within /tools/ will be built.
   b. Assets from the original DKR rom will be extracted into the generated /assets/ folder.
   c. Lastly, the linker file dkr.ld will be generated

If you see the message Setup complete!, then you are ready to build.

Build

To build the ROM, you just simply type in make in the main directory. You should see an OK at the end of the build if it worked correctly. The generated ROM file should appear in the /build/ folder.

Scripts

There are some useful scripts that should be kept in mind when working on this repo.

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./generate_ld.sh

This script will generate the linker file dkr.ld, which is used for building. You will need to call this when you add or remove files from the /asm/ directory.

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./extract.sh

This script will extract all the assets from the DKR ROM and place them into /assets/ folder according to the extract-config file within the /extract-ver/ folder. You will need to run this every time you update one of the .extract-config files.

Note 1: You do not need to call ./generate_ld.sh, since that is done automatically from this script.
Note 2: The /assets/ folder will get deleted if it already exists, so don't put anything important in there!

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./rename_symbol.sh <old_symbol> <new_symbol>

This script will rename an existing symbol within undefined_syms.txt and all the .s files within the /asm/ directory.

Example: ./rename_symbol.sh D_A4001000 SP_IMEM

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./get_symbol.sh <ram_address>

Will return the symbol associated with the RAM address within undefined_syms.txt. The RAM address must be in base 16. The 0x prefix is not required.

Example:

./get_symbol.sh 0xA4001000
0xA4001000 = SP_IMEM

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TODO list

TODO: Add more things to the TODO list.

Major

What should be focused on.

• Determine and integrate the compiler used for the game.
• Determine all of the assets used, instead of just having unknown .bin files.

Minor

What can be done, but not essential.

• Split the asm files into smaller ones. This has been partially done, but nowhere near complete.
• Determine the compression format used for levels and objects.

Future

These features won't be complete anytime soon.

• Make the ROM shiftable.
• Add support for the other 4 versions.