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.
Frenchgeek 2 hours ago [-]
I think the main issue was he used Nintendo owned tools and libraries to make his game instead of the GPL ones, making the release of the port dependent on Nintendo's approval too. I guess even Valve didn't want to deal with their lawyers.
gryfft 4 hours ago [-]
I watched this on YouTube the other day. Another beautiful example of the creative power yielded from building within constraints.
msephton 3 hours ago [-]
Such a clever way to approach the problem! I'd say only possible with a detailed understanding of the N64 constraints.
user____name 2 hours 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.
I emailed him the video from OP and he mentioned they’ve done some collaboration. I’m assuming there’s a retro programming discord that I’m not worthy of.
Yeah I remember hearing that SOTC's "SuperLow" LOD was a 2D image. Trespasser also did that, but only for trees and props, not for terrain objects. Trespasser being basically a heightmap with dinosaurs dropped in
estebank 24 minutes ago [-]
Hey! It also had a barely working physics engine.
Then again the dinosaurs were physics entities, so maybe you already mentioned it. :)
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
The first comment:
> "The N64 is very memory bound"
> Aren't we all these days?
TomatoCo 1 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of Magicore Anomala, a side scrolling game being made for the 1985 Atari. I wish there was a way to know how people contemporary to the release of the Atari or the N64 would react to seeing these modern engines.
cubefox 2 hours 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
ill_ion 2 hours ago [-]
This is awesome!
AdmiralAsshat 2 hours ago [-]
Somewhat annoyingly, the actual homebrew z64 seems to crash both of the N64 cores that RetroArch supports. :(
b00ty4breakfast 2 hours ago [-]
At the end of the video he says it needs real hardware or a "highly accurate emulator like Ares".
Rendered at 16:16:22 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
[0] http://www.youtube.com/@KazeN64
I emailed him the video from OP and he mentioned they’ve done some collaboration. I’m assuming there’s a retro programming discord that I’m not worthy of.
Then again the dinosaurs were physics entities, so maybe you already mentioned it. :)
> "The N64 is very memory bound"
> Aren't we all these days?