Object/coin

This article is about the object »coin« (object id 0x73). Coins are only used in Coin Runners mode of Battle Arenas and in some tournaments.

Settings

Only settings 2 and 3 are used by Nintendo. All other settings (1 and 4 to 8) are always 0 for all battle arenas.

Setting #2: Start or respawn place

This setting decides about the characteristic starting place or respawn place.

Values between 0..49 are used for starting places. Nintendo used unique numbers, but it seems, that any mix is working. At some slots, numbers >50 (may be up to 100) will work too.
The slots have different limits of usable starting places. It varies between 21 and 42.
At battle start, all usable starting places start with a coin.
Respawn places have always value -1 (=65535) and generally used for respawned and new coins. On some slots they are used as starting place too, if the number of starting places is too small.
The total number of coins is limited by the total number of coin objects. Additionally, all slots have different absolute limits for coins (not for coin objects) between 53 and 71.

Setting #3: Spawning type

Nintendo uses types 0, 1 and 2. The tests of Wiimm additionally cover type 3:

No differences between types 2 and 3 found.
Type 0 and 1: Coins are inserted at place.
Type 2 and 3: Coins fall down from the sky.
Coins from starting places of all types except type 1 are moved to respawn places at the beginning of Phase 2 (see below).

Phases

There exist 3 coin phases:

In Phase 1, coins are only available at start places. The game starts usually in Phase 1.
In Phase 2, coins of starting places (except type 1) moved to respawn places.
In Phase 3, additional coins (not starting coins) become available and will be spawned time by time.

The triggering of the phases are not really clear. It seems that there are different triggers for each phase.

Phase 2 is triggered:

when a player is damaged (is respawned and maybe hit).
when about the half of the starting coins are caught.
when to less starting places defined (slot dependent), the game starts directly in phase 2.

Phase 3 is triggered:

when in Phase 2 and if a player is damaged (is respawned and maybe hit) and lost at least 1 coin.
when many coins from respawn places were caught.
when to less starting places defined (slot dependent), the game starts directly in phase 3 or skips phase 2.

Observations

For the observations more than 50 setups with different number of objects and respawn types were tested by Wiimm. And here the results:

If no respawn slots defined, coins will not respawned.
In 3 setups with 63, 68 and 100 starting places, no coins were respawned. All other setups had 60 or less starting places.
A starting place with index of ≥60 is ignored. Moreover, it disables respawning at all.
With less than about 20 starting places (value may depend on slot), ...
- ... respawn slots were used as additional staring slots.
- ... the battle starts directly in coin phase 2 or 3.
There are different events (may be slot dependent) that will trigger phases 2 and 3.
As more respawn places defined, as faster the coins will be respawned.
Some original arenas defined more starting places than used by the related slot. Either this is a mistake by Nintendo, or there exists another overlooked parameter or impact.

Slot dependency

The following limits were tested with 50 start places and 90 respawn places, overall with 140 coin objects.

Slot dependent limits of coins and usage of slot object
Slot	Arena name	max coins at start	max total coins	Number of start places			Number of respawn places
Slot	Arena name	max coins at start	max total coins	Type 0	Type 1	Type 2	Type 0	Type 1	Type 2
1.1	Block Plaza	40	67	40	—	—	—	—	53
1.2	Delfino Pier	40	71	10	4	28	8	2	82
1.3	Funky Stadium	42	71	12	30	—	3	3	42
1.4	Chain Chomp Wheel	28	55	48	2	—	—	18	39
1.5	Thwomp Desert	30	55	28	—	—	—	—	52
2.1	SNES Battle Course 4	30	57	32	—	—	60	—	—
2.2	GBA Battle Course 3	30	63	50	—	—	—	—	54
2.3	N64 Skyscraper	28	55	40	—	—	—	—	56
2.4	GCN Cookie Land	21	53	27	—	—	—	—	45
2.5	DS Twilight House	30	57	40	—	—	11	—	45

More technical information

The coin model is not fully loaded from coin.brres. Instead, there is raw model data which contains vertex, UV and normal information into StaticR.rel. The data is found at offset 0x3A2000 for the PAL version of the game, 0x3A1A40 for NTSC-US and 0x3A17E0 for NTSC-J.

However, texture and animation data, as well as the coin's shadow and pile_coin are still used from coin.brres.

Guidelines for good custom setups

These guideline are based on the observations above.

Use between 20 and 42 starting places. Additional places are simply ignored. If using less than 20 starting places, curios effects like starting in phase 2 or 3 will happen.
Use unique identifiers for setting #2 of starting places. Preferred is a zero based unique index. Most likely these identifiers are irrelevant, but only most likely. Anyway, use always values <50, because larger values will disable respawning at all.
Use 20 to 80 respawn places. If using to less respawn places, the respawning process is slowed down.
If using many coins, give the user a recommendation about the slot usage, because some slots have small limits.
Think about the respawn modes. Only coins of type 1 will stay at the defined position until caught. And only coins of type 2 fall from the sky. The choices for start and respawn places can differ.
Use different positions for all coin objects. Give automated height correction a chance.
Scatter the coins around the whole arena, but only in places, where enemies will drive. Read tutorial »Enemy routes in battle arenas« to get good enemy routes.