OK, a few things.
First, I wasn't reiterating what I said earlier. In my previous post I said I think bugs like HESS, wrong warping, etc, were in the 3DS version. Then I made some fact checking and I found out that, indeed, they are in the game.
Second, iirc (I'm not gonna check it now) I once read that the Mario 64 engine was written in Perl, meaning that the hardware-exclusive code must be altered, but the rest of the engine should be portable enough. Otherwise we should believe any port of any game was made from scratch, and anyway, we already have Starfox 64 3DS, which plays exactly the same
as dedicated speedrunners pointed out. Which was also a N64 game. As a point for skepticism, the Ocarina of Time engine requires far more variables and interactions in mind. But the N64 was a 3D console. 3D engines are easier to port than hardware-specific 2D engines. This is why you usually see enhanced ports based on 3D-era games, because taking Super Mario World and enhancing it would require rewriting the game from scratch. Nintendo does not care for that.
Third, I don't claim to be an expert on N64 and 3DS-related things, and by no means I'm not a hacker. What I know (which is an incomplete information so far) is what I have read on dedicated websites and communities. But instead of taking Nintendo's word as granted and then questioning wheter this is a new engine or not, I want proofs from every side. Now this is what we have so far. You posted a comparison between some maps of every version, and while this confirms the maps have been at least altered, I don't think this confirms anything about the engine which uses and renders the maps. Nintendo and Grezzo have basically said nothing except that they have "implemented" bugs. And I have linked a topic were dedicated OoT speedrunners with far, far more knowledge of the game's technical details than you and me have basically tried every glitch and trick from the N64 version, and while some are unavailable in the 3DS, the vast amount can be performed the same way in the 3DS version. In any case, the speedrunners have basically said this is a enhanced port, but a port anyway, not a rewrite.
Can the OoT 3DS engine be a modified version of the engine which powered both WW and TP, which could be based on the original OoT engine which was a modified Mario 64 engine?
Maybe. But then it does not explain how so
many tricky glitches can be performed the same way as in the N64 version, because when companies tried to actually implement bugs, they usually only implement a few ones. Not hundreds. As I said, that would require a lot of dedicated input and hours of work for a very small market which anyways it already have the original version. Or that would require a lot of bugs from the N64 engine were fixed in WW and TP (because they aren't in those games) and then reimplemented again, which is the expensive route when they could have just copy-pasted the old code. Or that would mean those bugs from OoT N64 and 3DS are in WW and TP and speedrunners haven't found out yet, which has no sense because speedrunners by definition are very dedicated players which spend years trying to destroy the games they love. And indeed, OoT Any% is destroyed at this point.
Considering Nintendo has never really catered to the speedrunning community, I doubt they really went so far as to implement very obscure bugs only a few hundreds of peoole would knew about. Now, we have the staff superguides in NSMBWii, yes. But that's the exception which confirms the rule. This is also why I am so skeptical about their support of competitive Smashing, just when Smash 4 was gonna be released. Things gonna say wheter they're gonna extend their support for more years. And anyway, you can have new ilumination, stereoscopic 3D and the like, but the core of the engine be the same. This is what I'm talking about.
So... does we have a full confirmation? No. But if I'm gonna believe someone... I stick with the speedrunners and hackers.
Edited by Maleboocado, 12 November 2014 - 12:54 PM.