I Built an Open-World Engine for the N64 [video]

(youtube.com)

96 points | by msephton 2 hours ago ago

8 comments

  • amelius 2 minutes ago

    The first comment:

    > "The N64 is very memory bound"

    > Aren't we all these days?

  • user____name 18 minutes ago

    This is really cool. Kaze Emanuar[0] seems to be able to hit 60hz consistently with his Mario 64 rework, I wonder if such perf is achievable for these wide open landscapes. Iirc Shadow of the Collosus rendered distant geometry into the skybox, which always struck me as a neat trick.

    [0] http://www.youtube.com/@KazeN64

  • azertify an hour ago

    In case anyone is interested, this creator built a remake of Portal for the N64, uploading a really cool set of videos describing the work that went into building it.

    He's since stopped to work on his own IP, I believe that the issue was that Valve couldn't allow it because they'd never get Nintendo to agree to it. Something along those lines, anyway.

  • gryfft 2 hours ago

    I watched this on YouTube the other day. Another beautiful example of the creative power yielded from building within constraints.

    • msephton 37 minutes ago

      Such a clever way to approach the problem! I'd say only possible with a detailed understanding of the N64 constraints.

  • cubefox 21 minutes ago

    The same guy, James Lambert, also implemented texture streaming (which would not be invented until two console generations later) in an N64 demo. The textures look uncharacteristically high res: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sf036fO-ZUk

  • AdmiralAsshat 28 minutes ago

    Somewhat annoyingly, the actual homebrew z64 seems to crash both of the N64 cores that RetroArch supports. :(

    • b00ty4breakfast 9 minutes ago

      At the end of the video he says it needs real hardware or a "highly accurate emulator like Ares".