The Oracles Project 1.2.0

A faithful, moddable port of Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons for PC, macOS and Android. Your own ROM runs in an emulator core: SameBoy, unmodified, the accurate reference, or 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, and Core, in Display's Advanced page, changes it. Around it, a native host observes the game and presents it: the original image, or a widescreen view with the neighbouring rooms, at three levels, Near, Medium and Far, in the shape of the screen, 16:9 or 4:3; Display's Quality sets the view and the core for the device in one choice, from Low to Max. Gameplay options, Lua mods and fan games from their BPS patch come with it.

The game needs your own ROM of Oracle of Ages or Oracle of Seasons (US), and a fan game its BPS patch; none is included.

Installing

• Windows (the-oracles-project-1.2.0-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-1.2.0-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 notarised: open it the first time by right-clicking it and choosing Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "The Oracles Project.app".
• Linux (the-oracles-project-1.2.0-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/.
• Android (the-oracles-project-1.2.0-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.

What's new in 1.2.0

Most of this release answers what players asked for after 1.1.0, many of them on Retroid, AYN and Anbernic handhelds. Thank you for every report, screenshot and log, and to everyone who tested the builds and posted feedback: they shaped this version.

New

• Languages. Ages and Seasons can now play in French, German, Italian and Spanish, in the official translations, or in the European edition's English. Choose your European ROM in the game's Cartridge page, under European ROM, then pick the Language row, where each language is listed by its own name. The texts are taken from your European ROM once, on your own device, and nothing of it is shipped. The screens that carry text are translated too: the file select, the save menu, the game over screen and the dungeons' names. Mistakes of the official translations (a place named for another, an item named several ways, a wrong word) are corrected. The title screen and the credits stay as the US game has them. English (US), the default, is the cartridge's own text, untouched.
• Cheats. Ages and Seasons have a Cheats page, in the game's menu after Mods and in the pause menu: No damage (enemies, spikes and falls no longer cost hearts; Link is still knocked back), Ammo never runs out (seeds, bombs and Bombchus are not used up) and Rupees never run out (buying costs nothing; mods still charge). Cheats play with your usual save, and what you keep stays in it. From the pause, a change applies as soon as you resume.
• Full-width status bar. In Enhanced, the status bar's colour now runs across the whole width of the view instead of leaving two dark bands beside it. Display > HUD: Full width (the new default) or Original, the bar as the game draws it. It works in the five games and changes at once from the pause.
• Hold to swim. Controls > Swimming: Tap, as the game wants it, or Hold, where holding a direction swims at full speed, instead of tapping A with the flippers or tapping the direction with Ages' mermaid suit. It works in Ages and Seasons, in Faithful and Enhanced.
• A controller button for the menu. The pause menu now opens from a controller without going back to the home screen: the left stick's click (L3) by default, and Guide (the Home button) where the system lets it through. Change the button in Controls > Menu: any button the game and the item hotkeys leave free, or a trigger. The first game you start with a controller says once which button it is ("Press L3 for the menu.").
• Diagonal transitions. With Continuous transitions, walking or swimming diagonally into the next room now carries on diagonally through the scroll, instead of sliding straight along the edge for half a second. Walls still hold Link where the game would. It works in Ages, Seasons and the three fan games.
• Scaling. Display > Advanced > Scaling: Sharp (the default), the game at its largest whole scale with every pixel exact, as before, or Fill, the image as large as the screen allows in its proportions, the pixels slightly softer. Fill applies in fullscreen. On a screen where the view would otherwise sit small in a black frame (Far 4:3 on a 640x480 handheld), Fill lets it fill the screen.
• New version notice. When a newer version is published, the home screen says so next to the version at the bottom left ("1.3.0 available"). Select it (Down from Exit, then Enter or A, or click or tap it) to open its release page in your browser; the launcher stays open. The launcher asks GitHub once at launch, in the background, and sends nothing else; update_check=off in settings.txt turns this off (not on Android for now, where settings.txt is out of reach).
• Screen margin. Display > Advanced > Screen margin: Off (the default), Auto, Small or Large. For a device whose screen hides its top or bottom edge, cutting off the status bar or the top of the inventory: Auto keeps clear of the notch or curved edge the system reports, Small and Large keep a fixed margin at the top and bottom. It applies at once, from the pause too.

Improved

• Far view fitted to the screen. On 4:3 screens of about 1280 pixels across, Far showed at twice its size in a black frame. It now takes a size made for the screen and fills it at three times: 426x320 on a 1280x960 screen (Retroid Pocket Nova and Mini, Anbernic RG477M) and 412x360 on a 1240x1080 screen (Retroid Pocket Mini V2 and Classic, AYN Thor's lower screen). Display shows the size the game will take, and in the 4:3 layout View's help says "Far fits this screen". Every other screen keeps Far's usual size.
• Smoother camera on computers. In Enhanced on Windows, macOS and Linux, the camera now moves by fractions of a pixel at your screen's own resolution, and Link is drawn at his exact place: walking diagonally or on stairs, the scenery glides instead of stepping a pixel at a time, and Link stays steady in it. It shows on a screen at least twice the view's size (Far on a 1080p screen, for instance), not with a Screen margin. To keep the whole-pixel camera, write subpixel_camera=0 in settings.txt while the launcher is closed. Android keeps the whole-pixel camera for now.
• Key hints that follow your device. The key hints at the bottom of the launcher's pages, the pause menu's included, now show only the keys of the device you used last: the keyboard's after a key, the controller's (D-pad, A, B, the menu button) after a button. Controls shows Escape and F2 to F11 only once a keyboard is used.
• Display now reads Profile, Quality, Window, View, HUD, Color correction; Continuous transitions moved to Display's Advanced page, with Core, Vsync, Neighbor workers, Scaling and Screen margin.
• On a screen where every Window choice comes to the same size, choosing Fill now starts the game fullscreen, as Display's diagram shows it.
• The neighbouring rooms fill in more reliably, under the sea in Ages in particular.

Fixed

• In the drawn-back view (Medium and Far), far rooms are prepared a little before they come into view, so their corners show black much less often at the edges of the screen, swimming in particular.
• In Far, when Link first reaches the past in Ages, the rooms to his left, past the Maku sapling's grove, now fill in much faster instead of staying black. The same goes for the rooms beyond any other room that starts a scene as Link enters it.
• At each door, while the next room loads, the status bar keeps its look from play (full width, with the item hotkeys) instead of switching for a moment to its original, narrow form.
• After the season changes in Seasons (crossing into an area of another season, or with the Rod of Seasons), and after a game loads, a piece of the season's or era's banner no longer stays drawn over the scenery for a frame.
• Enemies of the room Link leaves no longer vanish at the edge of the game's own screen during the scroll: they stay where they were and fade out once it ends, as the ones of the room entered fade in.
• Walking diagonally or on stairs in Enhanced, Link no longer shakes a pixel back and forth against the screen. The fix in 1.1.0 was not enough; the camera now follows Link where the picture draws him.
• With Continuous transitions, Link no longer vanishes for a few frames as he crosses a room's edge in Enhanced, swimming at the surface across the bottom of a room or walking across its left edge.
• Entering or leaving a house or a shop with the game's menus enlarged (the default on Android) no longer shows the room enlarged before it shrinks back: the room stays at the view's scale while it loads.
• With the Fast (mGBA) core on Windows, mods could misbehave; they now play as on the other platforms.
• In Gifts of Kinomi, the caves made of several rooms (east of the map) now show in Medium and Far with the rooms they open onto, instead of a single screen framed in black.
• In Enhanced, the cutscenes that draw a picture over the whole screen (the story of the tower told by a worker in Ages, and other scenes of both games and the fan games) now show it framed, as the game draws it, instead of amid the scenery with its top in the status bar and a line of its text copied above it. The rooms these scenes play in stay in the wide view.
• When a scene darkens the screen in Enhanced (night falling over Lynna in Ages' introduction, a scene of Seasons' introduction), the neighbouring rooms now darken with it, instead of the game's own screen standing as a dark rectangle in a bright world.

Android

• A new application. On Android, 1.2.0 has a new identifier, org.theoraclesproject, so Android sees it as a new application: it installs beside 1.1.0 instead of over it, and starts without your ROMs, saves and settings.
• Back opens the pause menu, also on handhelds whose Back button belongs to the built-in controller (Retroid Pocket), where it used to open the game's map. The controller's Select button stays the game's Select. A controller that Android reports without a Select of its own keeps its Back as Select: its left stick's click or Guide opens the menu.
• The system bars stay hidden. When the status bar stays over the game (after the notification shade, a system dialog, or back in the app), it is hidden again when the app gets the focus back, or three seconds after it showed. A swipe from the edge still shows the bars for a moment.
• Screen margin (above) is for handhelds whose screen hides an edge, such as the AYN Thor: try Small, then Large if the picture is still cut. The log (the-oracles-project.log) now records the screen's safe area, the margin and the band the game keeps to: please send it with a report.
• The launcher's pages no longer show keyboard keys on a handheld played with its controller.
• The left stick's click or Guide opens the pause menu in game (above), without going back to the home screen.
• Mods now work on Android: put each mod in its own folder in Android/data/org.theoraclesproject/files/mods, from a computer over USB (since Android 11, most file managers cannot open Android/data), then switch it on in the game's Mods page, as on a computer. The Mods page shows that folder, and Cartridge the ROMs' folder, Android/data/org.theoraclesproject/files/roms, where your saves are, as a computer sees them over USB.

Notes

• Defaults. The status bar is Full width in Enhanced (Display > HUD > Original brings back the old look). Continuous transitions, on by default, now include the diagonal. Far takes the fitted size on the screens above. The menu button is L3; if your settings already gave L3 to Select or to an item hotkey, it stays theirs, Guide alone opens the menu, and Controls > Menu lets you choose another button. Swimming starts on Tap, Screen margin on Off and Scaling on Sharp, so the game plays as before until you change them. On computers, the camera moves by fractions of a pixel (Smoother camera, above).
• Saves and settings. Your saves (.sav) and settings.txt from 1.1.0 carry over as they are (on Android, a new application, they do not: see Android above), and cheats use the same save. Savestates (F5) from 1.1.0 still load, with one exception: a savestate taken in Far on a 1280x960 or 1240x1080 screen loads only at the size it was taken at; add far=fixed to settings.txt to keep Far's previous size and load it. On Android, where settings.txt is out of reach, such a savestate does not load: continue from the game's own save (.sav). A savestate taken in a language loads only in that language.
• On macOS, the application has a new identifier too, org.theoraclesproject: your settings and saves stay where they were, but macOS may treat it as a new application and ask again, the first time it opens, as it did when you first installed it (right-click, then Open).
• Fan games keep English for now: their own dialogues are not translated yet, so the Language row is only for Ages and Seasons. Cheats and Hold to swim are for the original Ages and Seasons too.

Android: bring your saves over from 1.1.0

On Android, 1.2.0 has a new identifier, org.theoraclesproject, so Android sees it as a new application: it installs beside 1.1.0 instead of over it, and starts without your ROMs, saves and settings.

Keep 1.1.0 installed until your games load with their saves in 1.2.0: uninstalling it deletes its ROMs, saves and savestates.

To bring them over (this takes a USB cable and a computer: since Android 11, most file managers cannot open Android/data):

1. Install 1.2.0 and open it once, so that Android makes its folder, then close it.
2. On the computer, copy the files of Android/data/io.github.thibautbus.theoraclesproject/files/roms (your ROMs, their saves and savestates) and of Android/data/io.github.thibautbus.theoraclesproject/files/patches (the fan games' patches and their saves) into folders of the same names, roms and patches, under Android/data/org.theoraclesproject/files/.
3. Open 1.2.0 and, in each game's Cartridge, choose the ROM again (and each fan game's patch), the same file you chose in 1.1.0: the launcher finds its copy already in its folder and plays it with its save. If you no longer have that file, first copy it over USB from the new roms (or patches) folder to Download, keeping its exact name, and choose it there. Settings do not carry over: set Display and Controls again.
4. Once your games load with their saves in 1.2.0, you can uninstall 1.1.0.

Savestates from 1.1.0 (Save state in the pause menu) load in 1.2.0 with the Display settings they were taken with: set Display as it was in 1.1.0 if one is refused, or continue from the game's own save, which always carries over. A 1.1.0 savestate taken in Far on a 1280x960 or 1240x1080 screen does not load on Android, where Far now takes a size fitted to these screens: continue from the game's own save.