Glossary

Decomp

The Paper Mario (N64) decompilation. This is the source code that Merlon patches.

Distributable

A distributable is a file that can be distributed to users. It contains the changes made by a package. Distributables have the .merlon extension.

A distributable can be added as a dependency with merlon add.

A distributable’s source code can be opened with merlon open.

Package

A Merlon package is a mod created with Merlon. It is a directory containing a merlon.toml file, a patches directory, a README.md file, and a LICENSE file.

Package manifest

The package manifest is a TOML file called merlon.toml that contains information about the package.

Patch

A patch is a file that contains a list of changes to be made to the game. Patches are stored in the patches directory of a package. A patch file is effectively a Git commit in file form.

Shiftability

A ROM is said to be “shifted” if it has been modified in a way that changes the location of data in the ROM. For example, if we add a new texture to the ROM, the location of all the data after where the texture was added will be shifted forward by the size of the texture.

This can be a source of very confusing bugs, so it’s important to be aware that bad shifting can occur. If you encounter a bug that seems to be caused by bad shifting, please open an issue.

To view known shifability issues, see decomp issues marked “shiftability”.

ROM

A ROM is a file containing the game’s code and data. Both N64 consoles and emulators can run ROMs.