iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Update to this: If you noticed the entire top half inflating like a balloon when he breathed, that's because of some data I initially copied over from the early TiP version of the animation. Changing that data back results in just his torso breathing, so this'll basically be the intended animation.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The model is named "aid_model_common_test_jointtweak", so yeah. Presumably they just kept updating it for future testing.

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Andrew Borman @borman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I think Ive tracked down why there were so many issues with the Viva Pinata / Pinata Paradise build: By August/September 2004 (and possibly earlier), the team looks to have already started converting some things over to working on Xbox 360, so it's an in-between state.

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Andrew Borman @borman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Interesting menu I hadnt seen before.

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Andrew Borman @borman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Another menu I haven't seen before.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Feeling confident enough to post this up here: I have a tool named CAFFeinated that can read, export from & (partially) modify various formats used in Rare's Xbox/Xbox 360 games, either unique or derived from R1. Give it a check! github.com/OlieGamerTV/... #Rare #Modding

The main window of CAFFeinated, with nothing loaded.

The CAFFeinated window with the "common.bnl" file from Grabbed by the Ghoulies open.
It shows the file information in the top left widget, file properties of the currently selected file in the bottom left widget and the file list of all the contained files on the right-hand side.

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Barry @etreant.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Anyway if you want new games like Professor Layton that aren't made with AI, look up the Detective Grimoire games (Tangle Tower / The Mermaid's Mask)

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It was found to have been left in the game data for Viva Piñata as a testing model. It’s since had a NinjaRipper rip of what was displayable in game and a W.I.P actual model data rip.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

With the recent deep dive Evercade did in relation to their native ports of Banjo, they showed off some of the development tools used during the game's development. Interestingly, they do appear to share similarities with the star menus and Marker Editor found in a dev build for Viva Pinata.

A screencap of a development Star Menu for Banjo-Kazooie.
The options are: PROPS(3D 2) CTRL, TEST (MB), RETURN, CAMERAS and LIGHTS.

The base Star Menu found in the Development build of Viva Pinata.

The Marker Editor in a garden scene, with its respective Star Menu active.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Internet Archive actually, someone uploaded their copy of Young Conker up to it back in 2024. Funny of that too considering I assumed the game was just lost for the longest time. It's been one of the Rare-IP games I've been wanting to have a peek into to see what it used.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

At least with the copy I found, all the strings the game uses appears to be stored in the "tt##.pc" files in the "trtext" folder as plaintext. Specifically, tt01.pc appears to be the English bank, and tt02.pc looks to be a (very unfinished) French bank, containing more J.O.E. references.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

It's likely missing some files yeah, I only have wording to go on. To clarify, the "Banjo-X Mumbo in VP Assets" idea was derived from comments from Skill and Torrentstorm on the RWC Forums. > "It's in the pinata set under BanjoX actors btw." > ..."not related to VP despite being in the VP assets"

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

IDK the specifics of the build but it probably won't be "full" in the sense of being fully playable, considering it is fairly early. There is a non-zero chance however of there being a bunch of interesting content in the files, such as the Banjo-X Mumbo model if the info I have is accurate.

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Andrew Borman @borman.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Doesn't really do anything beyond this, but I finally got those old XBEs for Pinata Paradise to do something. Behold, a (partial?) menu for the game!

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This is the Sept. 15, 2004 build that you had issues getting to boot for the longest time, correct? If so, it's pretty neat to see more of that build outside of its bootloader (even if it is just the title screen) 👀

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Alex Strook 🐭⚡️SQUEAKROSS @alexstrook.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Ive seen multiple posts online saying that "there are no game devs doing games without AI today" which is complete bullshit Raise yor hand if you don’t use any form of LLM and actively avoid it ✋

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X ΘΔ (Giant Tyrant Overlord) @xkeeper.net · 05/07/2026

these two portraits are just wonderful

deltarune susie and deltarune ralsei reacting with shock on either side of a message reading "GDQ is TODAY!?"

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Minor correction in wording for those reading: Microsoft had Rare's trademarks (the ones registered in the UK at least) reassigned from Rare to Microsoft, so Microsoft holds ownership of Rare's UK trademarks since 2023. It doesn't change the facts, just a slight difference in wording.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

It's not a *perfect* release, there are bugs and some crashes which are being worked on, presumably for the cart release, but it's definitely had a lot of care into it. Example: some of the timer challenges people didn't like (E.g. GV's star pyramid) have been tweaked to give some additional time.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

To add my own note to this: You only unlock the extras menu as well as the Stop 'n' Swop locations upon 100%'ing/completing(?) the game on the Evercade release. In order to unlock the Music Player, you need to obtain the Ice Key, as the SnS items have "Extras" stuff unlocked upon getting them.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Many games and programs have been opened wide thanks to the incredible efforts of those who figure these formats out. The Plagiarism Machine™ is not needed in any part of dissecting a file format. It's not something that can be churned out cos you see the process as something that can be optimised.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I watched one person attempt to Claude vibe code a model converter, to go from a proprietary model format to OBJ. TL;DW, it was giving just bullshit. It scraped existing work for the container but was lost on the model. Why? Because little/no training data for the format exists in public spaces.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

These LLMs require large amounts of available training data (always resulting in scraping the hard work of many) in order to even get anywhere near close without being just abysmally lucky. If people haven't already done work on the file format in question, where's the training data it would need?

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

(Image because QRT's were disabled) I typically avoid using public platforms to complain about something I've seen, but the comment the person made about using an AI/LLM to help dissect proprietary file formats really bugs me, as someone who *has* been working on dissecting proprietary file formats.

Part of a Bluesky thread by XKeeper regarding the uptick in people complaining about TCRF and DataCrystal's "No AI content whatsoever" policy.

This part of the thread is about a part of a smartass' post about "how people will just try to use AI and hide it", because people can't take no for an answer apparently.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Big boxed games are very cool. I have four big boxed games up on shelves next to my setup. (Tilt! and Hyper 3-D Pinball are the same game, it had different names between regions.)

Pictured are two big boxed games.
The top is a sealed floppy copy of Shuttle, with a CD-ROM version of Shuttle in front of it.
The bottom is a copy of Adrenix.

Pictured is two big boxed copies of the same game from different regions.
The left is the European copy, titled "Tilt!"
The right is the North American copy, titled "Hyper 3-D Pinball"

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FE MS Paint Memes for the Strategically Challenged @fepaint.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Been replaying DK64 and I will never understand what bullshit Funky was on in that game

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Zane Schacht - Voice Goblin @voicesbyzane.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

This is the platonic ideal of the bluescreen. I am using a device. When it fails, I want to see a big sterile readout that says "the machine has failed. This is why." Not fucking "Google the error message to learn more :]" you fucking rats.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Watched Gameoverse and thought it was good. I did notice that the system Kaboodle fixes in the ship looked suspiciously similar to Blueprint Nodes from Unreal Engine, so I took an attempt. It translates pretty nicely, imo. #gameoverse

A screenshot of the Unreal Engine Blueprint Graph with a setup of nodes, replicating what Kaboodle fixes to get the ship's shields back up.

It first runs a "shield check" where it checks if a value is true.
It then subtracks the damage from the current shield level and sees if it's greater or equal to 0. If it is, then it prints something and sets the shield level accordingly.
If the shield level is less than 0, then it instead subtracts damage from the ship's HP and sets that accordingly.

A screenshot of the nodes Kaboodle is working on when the ship is under attack, trying to get the shield up and running.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Additionally, we have the mission names for Weird West, which gives us an idea for what was potentially planned, but that's about it. Do you know if any summaries / dialogue was written for the missions that were present, or was the only things written for Weird West these names?

A screenshot of the entries for Weird West's world and mission names as present in the text bank "aid_loctext_banjox_challenges", after reversing the contents back to *.ini/*.inf for easier reading.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Hey @leighloveday.bsky.social, I wanted to ask two questions regarding Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and its older text banks. Alongside the various loctext banks for the game, an older variant of the intro is present. I was wondering if you by chance knew what was present for some of the entries.

A screenshot of the upper half of the loctext bank "aid_loctext_banjox_gameintro", decompiled back into a *.ini/*.inf for easier reading.
It lists various strings for the animated and playable sections, cutting off part way on the second entry for "Animated sequence 3".

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Unsure as to what exactly lead up to this internally and what was specifically wrong, but here's to an early 21st anniversary for a comment left by Will Bryan on one of Richard Geary's work scenes in Viva Pinata, which is dated to May 22, 2005. (Found in the code of PinataParadiseDv)

A separated code snippet from a "Pseudocode" output of one of Richard Geary's work scene functions.

There's a comment left by Will Bryan in a print function which reads:
"This is just wrong - WB 22/05/2005, look at the code".

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

The leftover dance animation for the Viva Pinata model of Mumbo is very reminiscent of his dance in Tooie when casting magic. As such, I went and recorded it at a bunch of different angles and synced it up to the unused Raindance tune from Banjo-Kazooie, for a bit of a laugh.

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Robin Beanland @robinbeanland.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Happy 5th birthday Willow!

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

A recomp doesn't really help towards that goal unfortunately. What does help towards that would be figuring out how both the model format and the Havok Collision files work. Once those are done, a reimplementation could truly begin.

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Chris Marlow @chrismarlow666.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Just to clear things up. This cover artwork was definitely not created by AI, but by the incredibly talented Pete Hentze, a long time Rare artist, and one of the concept artists on Conker: Live and Reloaded! 🙂

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Robin Beanland @robinbeanland.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

The cover art was drawn by the one and only Pete Hentze. He was the concept artist on Conker Live & Reloaded.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Addendum A: (thanks to KholdFuzion for mentioning it) A handful of names can be found in some of the Rare games suggesting at internal names for this stuff, such as: * R1/R1SDK * RareTech * AssetMonkey * UE4RareAudio (SoT for the spatial audio)

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KholdFuzion @kholdfuzion.net · 08/03/2026

R1Engine/R1SDK. Bean (goldeneye xbla port) used it. Also I have a build of a game using it with full symbols I’m using to make a full suite of tools (targeting bean specifically)

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Project Bean's a good shout. I think "R1SDK"'s also mentioned in Kinect Sports' working paths (alongside the names "RareTech" and "AssetMonkey"). I have that in the spreadsheet, uses the same CAFF version found in Nuts & Bolts and VP.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

That's about it for this. Unfortunately there is no "official" name known for the engine or any of its pipelines. If anyone from Rare or other studios who had access to this engine stumble across this and wishes to comment on any of the points here, feel free! Thanks for reading! 🧵 7/7

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

MGS' "1 vs. 100" and Carbonated Games' "Hexic 2" would also be developed with the usage of Rare's engine. There's still work to be added to it, but I have made a spreadsheet to try and compile some of this, if you are interested in learning more. docs.google.com/spreadsheets... 🧵 6/7

docs.google.com

Internal Rare Engine Documentation & Usage

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

As is also mentioned on Richard Gale's resume however, Rare wasn't the only team with access to it. The tech developed by Rare would also be used by various teams across Microsoft Game Studios. Most notably being Turn 10 Studios with the Forza series, which utilizes the "Loctext" pipeline. 🧵 5/7

The boxart for Forza Motorsport, which utilizes the loctext pipelines.

The icon for "1 vs. 100", a game developed by Microsoft Game Studios which utilized Rare's internal engine.

The XBLA art for "Hexic 2" by Carbonated Games, which utilizes Rare's internal engine.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

This technology would power Rare's library for their time on Xbox, including Ghoulies, Kameo, PDZ, Conker, Nuts & Bolts, Viva Pinata and even Kinect Sports. The Banjo Team even had their own "fork", based on the codebase from Ghoulies. This would be used for the games they developed. 🧵 4/7

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

The engine is described by Mark as a "centralized engine" made for the whole company, all the teams had access to it. According to Richard Gale, head of Rare's Software R&D department at the time, the engine developed was designed with multi-platform in mind. (www.richardgale.org/resume/) 🧵 3/7

Richard Gale's resume of his time as:
* "Head of Software Research and Development" at Rare Ltd, from August 1999 to January 2006
* "Software Development Engineer Manager" at Microsoft Game Studios from January 2006 to December 2007.

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OlieGamerTV @oliegamertv.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

When the engine started is not known, but it was in development during Rare's time with the GameCube. According to Mark Stevenson on Tepid Seat for Kameo, it started moving onto the engine near the end of the game's time on GameCube, so it was likely in the works well prior to the buyout. 🧵 2/7

Mark Stevenson answering a question from Priyesh in regards to Kameo's development cycle and the difficulties that came from jumping platforms.

"Mark: We have an internal research and development department at Rare who produce a centralised engine for the whole company. Towards the end of Kameo's time on GameCube we had been starting to move the game onto this engine, so what this meant for us was that when we moved to Xbox we had the game running in literally weeks, and moving to Xbox 360 from Xbox was even easier. The hardest part was reworking all the art to take advantage of all the extra power. Sequel – no comment!"

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