Patreon: / kazestuff 🎥 / kazesm64 🐦 / kazeemanuar MERCH: kazemerch.mysp... Also shoutouts to RayMarch for helping me get the eyes right, they were total pain. / ray__march
I'm in the process of remaking the entire SM64 source code to be more efficient on N64. Check out my other videos and patreon to find out more or support this endeavor! www.patreon.com/Kazestuff
The textures remind me of 3D All Stars. For me I love 3D All Stars textures because they're more cleaner and smoother. Off topic but still relevant to Super Mario 64: In my opinion we don't need a remake from the ground up for Mario 64 cuz Super Mario 64 is too iconic to get a remake anyway. But that's just my opinion
@@carltheshivan it is, but that'd be a huge performance tank. Rendering pixels on n64 is pretty expensive. it is probable though that this engine could run sm64 at 30fps 640x480.
if he traveled back in time to 1990s he would be paid $200k+ by any N64 game studio. obvious 10x he would sound like an omniscient god in the interview
@@tacokoneko …you realize that everything seems “obvious” in retrospect, right? 3d game dev was still new then and resources for programming were unbelievably scarce. this is also rom hacking, not game dev. rom hacking is significantly easier. not to discredit kaze, of course, but you sound clueless lol
@@w1l1 saying rom hacking is easier than game dev is like saying amateur sports is easier than pro sports. yes more people can do it but there is not a clearly defined objective technical difference between those two things or the skills required to be great. one of the most famous modern counterexamples to what you're saying is Sonic Mania which was developed by a former rom hacker and sold over 1 million copies. what games have you developed care to show us?
This is insane. The fact that you were able to to run it that well and and make so many improvements is very impressive. Also I can't beleive nintendo didn't mirror the eye texture.
@@MintyRoot You can still look left and right with mirrored textures. In game dev you first design a working solution and after game is fully playable you start to optimize things if they're not looking good or are slow. In this case Mario model was good enough and low texture quality was irrelevant since game runs at 320x240 on N64. Better model is noticeable only when were using emulators that can do 1080p or higher.
@@Leeki85 not exactly. the number of tris adds to performance results and affects the FPS the game has. to accommodate for it they have to either remove scene objects or optimize what they can. guess which is easier.
They were just constructing 3D games for the N64 for the first time, it was a whole new jump into the future of gaming, so they were going to have to use a lot of time, even sacrifice some content like Luigi so that we had more areas. Kaze has shown how Nintendo scripted their N64 games, and they scripted it kind of odd, I wondered why they were all stacked with bunch of binary values, the way they could’ve fixed these things wasn’t going to be possible until someday later when programming languages would be so much better understood with how to create games, you’ve got to give Miamoto credit, he made one of the best titles for Nintendo in their companies history by pushing out Mario forward with future dreams to mold him with more of a life in many games. With the failure to launch the N64DD in the US and with that of so many N64DD’s we’re made in Japan, it was sad to see that they somehow flunked in giving the N64 a add-on with more memory, more uses. We could although get together and give them back the stuff like the Nintendo mouse, keyboard, developer units, programming cartridges, they’d sadly however still today, decline on reviving the N64 because their in a pool of money now with the Switch, dozens of other game consoles, the Switch is moving towards 100 million units being sold, that’s going to make all the Nintendo’s flip with excitement and sadly though, they’ll figure it’s time to still keep going on with more and more to give it, so they’ve long term recycle binned the N64’s console for to see into the future…
@@KazeN64 Would love to see it some day after those major hacks are done, but yeah, not now, that is so much on your plate I don't know how you even do it!
If I may make a suggestion, the original eye gave the impression of the whole blue oval going up and then down at the border, while your newer HD version is missing that curve that goes back down. That (along with the dark part now being tilted) kind of merges both eyes into one big circle for me, Duskull style. Overall though, impressive work as always. I never liked how sectioned the original model was and the yellow skin, so it's interesting to see this.
The eyes look crossed; there needs to be an extra inner line of blue pixels. Currently, the pupil is pressed right up against the inside of the eye, looking crossed. The huge model improvements though are incredible imo
Came here to say exactly this. The irises are too close together, should be slightly further apart, so that you can just barely see the iris on the inside edge, too. Not only is it more accurate to the original, but this just looks weird and cross-eyed.
Yeah! I really wish in future that Kaze Emanuar complete and share a rom hack of Super Mario 64 just the original but with all the optimizations and improvements maybe also widescreen 60 FPS. That would be the best version of Mario 64 running on real hardware so far!
The higher resolution textures on the low resolution model, the weird color changes, and the slight edits to the head geometry make this mario model look really weird. The real improvement here is the polygon count. Definitely a good performance improvement but I wouldn't really say you made it look better.
@@CrazyMetroid all they had to do was spend more actual time and effort on it. Kaze has been reverse-engineering and optimizing stuff he didn't exactly understand from the get-go for years. Nintendo has the tools; the source code; the assets, and everything they could possibly need to properly remaster the game at a display ratio of 16:9, better visuals, and overall optimized performance on the things that weren't done to the best possible extent. Yet all that came out of it was the same damn product but on a """special""" emulation software. Keep in mind, Kaze is also just one person who does pretty much everything. Nintendo had a _team._
@@aerodynamo4874 a team with limited time and budget. I'm not hating on the dude believe me, what he's done is great. It's just an unfair comparison is all.
You are the first person I have so far seen talk about the weird "camera-angle-dependent shading" used in Mario 64. It's been driving me crazy that seemingly nobody is wondering why they implemented the shading in such a strange way. It's almost like they have a bug in their light transformation code (very common rookie OpenGL programmer bug), where the light rotates with the camera.
It’s a very computationally cheap surface- and view normal based trick that helps increase 3D readability without requiring actual light sources and shadows
@@KazeN64 Yeah, and honestly even if from a game dev standpoint it was less efficient, it ended up unintentionally being really good for machinimists down the line because it allows us to do way more complex facial expressions like raised eyebrows, pissed twitching eyelids, looking left and right, etc, in just the vanilla game without locking them behind some more advanced modding not all of us can do. It's good you've made this change for your game but I'm also very glad Nintendo happened to not do it for the original.
Your devotion to real hardware is admirable. Ive played plenty of 64 on emulator but it never feels as natural as with an everdrive. The full release of this is one of my most anticipated games.
Loving this work. By the time you are finished you will have the most optimised engine that could be used to make so many original games that aren't even Mario ones.
I don't get you. I understand loving a game so much you want to expand it but you have gone above and beyond to make insane moderations to this game. Why not try a project of your own? You clearly have talent. Maybe even try to get involved with nintendo! I enjoy the thing's you release but I just don't get why you've done it so long and still enjoy it so much.
Because modding games is the best way to learn how to make games. You can also learn the mistakes that were made and find ways on how to optimize and improve on it
@@thelegendofzeina1707 True that. Many older programmers out there usually say they started out with BASIC, and then went on to play around with other people's code. That way you also don't get stuck in Tutorial Hell.
i do this to every model i use! well i usually leave textures untouched and only optimize the limbs and bone counts. (that usually reduces their processing requirements by 30% to 60% ) i have a video about the birds for example up on my kazeclips channel! ruclips.net/video/9ieLW58wuCE/видео.html&ab_channel=KazeClips
i don't know if this sounds douche-y but i think perfecting and optimizing models like this is a lost art on newer, faster hardware. like, they don't need to do this anymore but it's really, really impressive to put this much effort in every little corner of the game
@@TheBestBrawler yeh, reading the system specs for something that *should* be graphically attainable on retro hardware being "high-end strongly encouraged!" is just... this still needs to be done. games are too big and too slow nay, software is too big and too slow modern hardware is blazingly fast and modern code/data completely undermines those improvements
I know that's mostly just a saying, but just to put it out there, I don't think the big game companies cares about optimization. If they did, there wouldn't be so many problems with AAA titles today. Sadly, the only things they care about are deadlines and gatcha-mechanics to squeeze pennies out of the players. That's why games run like sh*t, but they all have an in-game store where you can spend real money to buy stuff that should have been in the game from the start. Or in the case of EA. Sell the games in parts, and call them DLC:s
Remember, we've got 25 years of reverse engineering and research that Nintendo didn't have, plus, we have no deadlines. Granted, Nintendo knows a lot about the N64 considering it's their console, but they didn't know every last trick at the time.
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire yeah 3d game development and animation were still quite new back in those days. If you go back and look at Shrek, which was stunning at the time, you'll see how the art form was still evolving. And Shrek was bigger budget and made after this game. I do remember the intro to 64 being a big deal at the time, though. We'd never seen anything like it.
3:50 Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast used a very similar technique there are times where the system actually bugs out allowing you to see the gaps ingame too
Kaze, you've done an amazing job! As a graphic designer, let me simplify your process. Take the Mario texture set and run it through the upscaler Remini (iPhone app). It isn't perfect, so you clean it up using vectors. Import the upscale in to Inkscape and trace over the top, adjusting the layer you are working on to 60% opacity, so you can see through. Start with the skin colour as a square, then deduct the ellipse from it to give the white of Mario's eyes. Then add a blue ellipse as a layer below (handles the overlap). Then a black ellipse. Then a white circle. Finally, after the easy stuff is complete add the eye brow, which will be a 4 node drawing, making the two middle nodes curved and adjusting the curve to match the raster image behind it. I think Remini + Inkscape should hopefully reduce the difficulty of upscaling for ya. Seriously loving the stuff you're doing. Very fun to be following allow watching your progress!
4:28 I honestly can't see a difference between the old and new shades, what is the difference? I am watching this on mobile maybe it is the smaller screen
Love the content, keep it coming. Would like to see you give Turok 3 a facelift seeing how impressive the realtime cutscenes and facial animations were back in the day but it always felt a bit unfinished to me.
Hello, you've probably answered this plenty of times but are there instructions I can find how to implement your optimizations on the rom file? I'd like to play your version on an emulator :)
Tip for eyes as a 3D artist. One you never going to make them perfect so give up on that. Second, remember the style you going for and ignore any other nagging voices. Third, accept any good results because perfectionism in you will always exist if you listen to it though too much it will lead to your downfall more than anything good. Most good art is made at the 80 percent/good enough area. If we go beyond that we end up hating ourselves, our piece, and the world and never release anything. Lastly, you will always hate your piece in some way, or find something that is nagging you congrats you reached perpetual hell. Bonus only others in this field will notice the faults including you, however, normal humans well they want to be fooled so they will always probably see a better result than even you hoped for. Want proof go UV seam hunting in video games. You will end up with a long ass list of how did I miss seeing these. Congratulation you now made games worse for yourself and will always randomly notice an obvious UV seam (Though you may break free from this. However, if you are a 3D artist, or work on games you are stuck here.). Other normal people well they want to be fooled so they will be.
I didn't want to say it when you first showed the model, but since you said you'd understand it being more of a preference, I do think the color of the pants looks a bit weird in some of the darker parts. That's my only complaint though. Everything else is great.
for some people this probably seems like black magic, better looking model but runs better? well SM64DS had the same goal as a result it uses a better lower poly Mario that looks nicer while being able to maintain a playable framerate with a second screen rendering a rotating map of the world.
This is a typical showcase on how a late Nintendo 64 game might have looked like. Recently, I am finally able to play Conkers Bad fur day. I got the N64 version of the rare replay collection on Xbox One, and I am playing this game on my Xbox Series X. While I do keep in mind that the resolution for the port has been bumped up, I am soooo impressed with how this game looks! Lots of dynamic light and if you progress further, there are even some really beautiful areas in this game. I am curious to what you are going to show us next! :)
conker cheated a little bit on the performance side. they ended up making the resolution of the game about half as big, so they could get away with more polygons and stuff
Im nachhinein betrachtet, war alles was Nintendo als Lösung präsentiert hat ein Workaround, welches sie nicht anders lösen konnten. Mit heutiger Technologie und dem Wissen könnte man zwei- bis dreimal soviel Gameplay in SM64 packen ohne an Power zu verlieren. Aber ne, anstatt zu optimieren wird alles der Engine überlassen, die wahrscheinlich nicht hochoptimiert ist. Respekt Kaze, einfach fetten Respekt - Sincerly, ein C#-Entwickler... (und ich rede von optimieren lul)
"You know when Nintendo made this amazing and critically acclaimed game that people still play to this day? That was BABY GARBAGE compared to what I'm doing."
The baked-antialiasing trick is super powerful for games on older hardware like this -- we did the same thing for menus and level load screens in Newer Super Mario Bros. DS, and I think it's one of the biggest reasons why they look as good as they do!
I cant believe Ive just stumbled across a madman obscessed with improving SM64, I should've been here sooner! Good work! And are those your mods being showcased in the backrounds? Those look like they were made by the modern mario team, they're actually tempting me to finally break into modding sm64
I’d love to see a video on how the animations work under the hood! I would guess there is key frame data for every animation. Do the animations blend at all? Doesn’t seem that they all do - ledge grabs and dives seem to snap into the pose immediately - but jumps and running seems to have interpolation between states. Would be curious to learn how it works. Tibia also probably isn’t something you’d be able to decipher from the code but I wonder how they did the original animations, what software they used etc. Keep up the great work
that's exactly what it is! the game simply has 30 keyframes per second. there are transitional animations, but no blending. my engine runs 60fps, so i calculate extra inbetweens. something like that could be done to blend animatinos into each other, but imo you'd lose too much snappiness doing that.
@@KazeN64 Cool thanks for the response! Wow it is super impressive then how smooth things look when Mario is jumping, landing, changing directions etc. I guess having animations for "Standard Jump Land" "Triple Jump Land" etc. allows them to not need to blend and still get good results.
Part of me feels like this video should say "optimized" or "enhanced" instead of "perfected" but let's be real, from one RUclipsr to another, that wouldn't have gotten as many views, lmao. Amazing work tho! All I'd say is Mario's eyebrows are a liiitle funky, maybe they should've been more line-like instead of crescent shapes and the eyes could have been rounded a bit more but it looks more like you we're going more for staying closer to true to the original which I can appreciate tbh. Considering this was the first N64 Mario and how Mario looks in much later N64 Mario games like Mario Party, I'm really curious how much better Mario could have looked had it been made later. I guess that's why we got SM64DS, lol
This rom hack you're working on is starting to really look like a true sequel to Mario 64, like if Nintendo worked on a Mario 64 2 some time near the end of the N64's life and were much much more efficient with coding and art style, kinda like the difference visually between Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie, but coded to run super efficiently. It's the kind of thing that can only be accomplished by someone who's just a hobbyist who has no obligation to finish a game within a few years so it can be out by Christmas and is deeply passionate about their work! Great job and I'm very much looking forward to playing the full version when it's finally released!
This is VERY interesting. In a world where CPU Cycles are wasted you perfecting the engine in modern times for the official N64 is INSANE! Keep it up man!
Love this! I do question a couple things like the hue change for the shading, but overall these techniques are very interesting to learn about and see how they benefit the game as well as how they work overall!
Overall I think it was better to keep the eyes as close as to the original The other pitches looked fine but didn't fit the N64 model's original style and chibi aesthetic
Great job. Actually Rare used similar methods when they created less blocky looking characters for Perfect Dark while using reduced amount of polygons on them than Goldeneye 007. I understand your will to learn more about Mario 64 source code. But if you want to outperform all other N64 games, you really should eventually study how Indiana Jones And The Infernal Machine 64 works.
the eyes could have been mirrored AGAIN horizontally right at the pupil level, just have a seperate texture for the eyebrows, which is MUCH smaller than any of the eye segments :)
I'm amazed how you made the character design for Mario look so much better! I Also love the color pattern with the new blue and red shades, for some reason I really like those new shades you made for Mario. It's sad that you can only abuse the vertex and buffers with the N64. But still, Good Job Kaze!
You probably wont see this but, this work is very impressive. Thank you. Living my dream by watching you. Please consider the Atari Jaguar, the guys at atariage could use someone who thinks outside the box. NO ONE has ever pushed that system close to its limits and I think you could.
![Tee Grizzley - Blow for Blow (feat. J. Cole) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wNLN5xsx5dc/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm in the process of remaking the entire SM64 source code to be more efficient on N64. Check out my other videos and patreon to find out more or support this endeavor!
www.patreon.com/Kazestuff
The textures remind me of 3D All Stars. For me I love 3D All Stars textures because they're more cleaner and smoother. Off topic but still relevant to Super Mario 64: In my opinion we don't need a remake from the ground up for Mario 64 cuz Super Mario 64 is too iconic to get a remake anyway. But that's just my opinion
This is hardly a ROM hack at this point.
Is it possible to make your mod run at a higher resolution than SM64's default 320x240?
Absolute hero
@@carltheshivan it is, but that'd be a huge performance tank. Rendering pixels on n64 is pretty expensive. it is probable though that this engine could run sm64 at 30fps 640x480.
you're like another rareware at this point with how much you're able to optimize for the n64. truly amazing
if he traveled back in time to 1990s he would be paid $200k+ by any N64 game studio. obvious 10x he would sound like an omniscient god in the interview
@@tacokoneko yeah but it would be hard to program and make 3d models with 90s pcs and softwares
@@Neko9123 Exactly, he isn't doing this shit on Windows 95 lol.
@@tacokoneko …you realize that everything seems “obvious” in retrospect, right? 3d game dev was still new then and resources for programming were unbelievably scarce. this is also rom hacking, not game dev. rom hacking is significantly easier. not to discredit kaze, of course, but you sound clueless lol
@@w1l1 saying rom hacking is easier than game dev is like saying amateur sports is easier than pro sports. yes more people can do it but there is not a clearly defined objective technical difference between those two things or the skills required to be great. one of the most famous modern counterexamples to what you're saying is Sonic Mania which was developed by a former rom hacker and sold over 1 million copies. what games have you developed care to show us?
This is insane. The fact that you were able to to run it that well and and make so many improvements is very impressive. Also I can't beleive nintendo didn't mirror the eye texture.
They had very little time......
Half the team of Mario 64 gave up video game after it. It was surely very very rough.
I think they might have planned for him to look left and right in cutscenes originally, so they planned the textures to allow for it.
@@MintyRoot You can still look left and right with mirrored textures.
In game dev you first design a working solution and after game is fully playable you start to optimize things if they're not looking good or are slow. In this case Mario model was good enough and low texture quality was irrelevant since game runs at 320x240 on N64.
Better model is noticeable only when were using emulators that can do 1080p or higher.
@@Leeki85 not exactly. the number of tris adds to performance results and affects the FPS the game has. to accommodate for it they have to either remove scene objects or optimize what they can. guess which is easier.
They were just constructing 3D games for the N64 for the first time, it was a whole new jump into the future of gaming, so they were going to have to use a lot of time, even sacrifice some content like Luigi so that we had more areas.
Kaze has shown how Nintendo scripted their N64 games, and they scripted it kind of odd, I wondered why they were all stacked with bunch of binary values, the way they could’ve fixed these things wasn’t going to be possible until someday later when programming languages would be so much better understood with how to create games, you’ve got to give Miamoto credit, he made one of the best titles for Nintendo in their companies history by pushing out Mario forward with future dreams to mold him with more of a life in many games.
With the failure to launch the N64DD in the US and with that of so many N64DD’s we’re made in Japan, it was sad to see that they somehow flunked in giving the N64 a add-on with more memory, more uses.
We could although get together and give them back the stuff like the Nintendo mouse, keyboard, developer units, programming cartridges, they’d sadly however still today, decline on reviving the N64 because their in a pool of money now with the Switch, dozens of other game consoles, the Switch is moving towards 100 million units being sold, that’s going to make all the Nintendo’s flip with excitement and sadly though, they’ll figure it’s time to still keep going on with more and more to give it, so they’ve long term recycle binned the N64’s console for to see into the future…
WHY DID YOU NERF MARIO’S ASS 😭
So players don't get easily distracted
This is amazing. Since you mentioned you're reading trough the source code, have you considered optimizing the vanilla mario 64 game?
if i had the time to do so, i would. but i have 3 major hacks to work on. there is no free time in my life right now.
@@KazeN64 Would love to see it some day after those major hacks are done, but yeah, not now, that is so much on your plate I don't know how you even do it!
If I may make a suggestion, the original eye gave the impression of the whole blue oval going up and then down at the border, while your newer HD version is missing that curve that goes back down. That (along with the dark part now being tilted) kind of merges both eyes into one big circle for me, Duskull style.
Overall though, impressive work as always. I never liked how sectioned the original model was and the yellow skin, so it's interesting to see this.
I see like one big eye. I was thinking like sonic but Duskall (Pokémon) is a much better comparison. Still great work though.
First thing I noticed.
The cursed image that this comment produced into my head is nightmarish. I didn't notice this before and now i can't unsee it. lmao
@@ImAbokai same
@@ImAbokai nightmariosh*
The eyes look crossed; there needs to be an extra inner line of blue pixels. Currently, the pupil is pressed right up against the inside of the eye, looking crossed. The huge model improvements though are incredible imo
I think they are just a tiny bit further apart from each other
Yeah I agree. It's a bit too much inward.
Like he said, humans have evolved to be so picky about eyes
@@thainsgreatesthits4550 In this case, I'm more picky about being faithful to the original
Came here to say exactly this. The irises are too close together, should be slightly further apart, so that you can just barely see the iris on the inside edge, too. Not only is it more accurate to the original, but this just looks weird and cross-eyed.
This is beautiful. It just sounds impossible, because better quality could not possible run better, right? Amazing
work smarter… not harder
It's hard to be smart...
A higher texture resolution will (mostly) never affect performance, only VRAM usage.
Model is lower poly 2:30
@@JC20XX over 100 less vertices as well.
imagine if all the assets were optimized, this game would be incredible.
Yeah! I really wish in future that Kaze Emanuar complete and share a rom hack of Super Mario 64 just the original but with all the optimizations and improvements maybe also widescreen 60 FPS. That would be the best version of Mario 64 running on real hardware so far!
I’d also add the extra content from 64DS
Madman actually goes and does it
The higher resolution textures on the low resolution model, the weird color changes, and the slight edits to the head geometry make this mario model look really weird. The real improvement here is the polygon count. Definitely a good performance improvement but I wouldn't really say you made it look better.
This man is out here remastering SM64 better than an entire team of Nintendo engineers ever could.
dev-specialization is one hell of a drug
Nope
Well, the actual devs had limited time while Kaze has all the time in the world to work on this. So, kind of an unfair comparison 🤔
@@CrazyMetroid all they had to do was spend more actual time and effort on it. Kaze has been reverse-engineering and optimizing stuff he didn't exactly understand from the get-go for years. Nintendo has the tools; the source code; the assets, and everything they could possibly need to properly remaster the game at a display ratio of 16:9, better visuals, and overall optimized performance on the things that weren't done to the best possible extent. Yet all that came out of it was the same damn product but on a """special""" emulation software.
Keep in mind, Kaze is also just one person who does pretty much everything. Nintendo had a _team._
@@aerodynamo4874 a team with limited time and budget. I'm not hating on the dude believe me, what he's done is great. It's just an unfair comparison is all.
You are the first person I have so far seen talk about the weird "camera-angle-dependent shading" used in Mario 64. It's been driving me crazy that seemingly nobody is wondering why they implemented the shading in such a strange way. It's almost like they have a bug in their light transformation code (very common rookie OpenGL programmer bug), where the light rotates with the camera.
maybe so the lighting doesn't seem like it's baked? or maybe so dark parts are less dark?
It’s a very computationally cheap surface- and view normal based trick that helps increase 3D readability without requiring actual light sources and shadows
1:08 i am guessing it wasnt mirrored because of the unused eyes looking in other directions
that would be a really good theory!
@@KazeN64 Yeah, and honestly even if from a game dev standpoint it was less efficient, it ended up unintentionally being really good for machinimists down the line because it allows us to do way more complex facial expressions like raised eyebrows, pissed twitching eyelids, looking left and right, etc, in just the vanilla game without locking them behind some more advanced modding not all of us can do. It's good you've made this change for your game but I'm also very glad Nintendo happened to not do it for the original.
I actually like the original more! It has a better feel to it y'know?
Perfected until you find more ways to perfect it, and knowing you, that might _just_ be a thing that happens again some day.
All this effort put into optimizing SM64 and Nintendo would just go "pIrAcY"
It takes all of Myamoto's strength to not dmca games they full on didn't make. Like dark souls or resident evil.
Making eye textures is complete aids
I'd like to think that if Nintendo actually made ''Mario 64 2'' back in the day it would had been something like this, lol. amazing work!
Your devotion to real hardware is admirable. Ive played plenty of 64 on emulator but it never feels as natural as with an everdrive. The full release of this is one of my most anticipated games.
Loving this work. By the time you are finished you will have the most optimised engine that could be used to make so many original games that aren't even Mario ones.
I don't get you. I understand loving a game so much you want to expand it but you have gone above and beyond to make insane moderations to this game. Why not try a project of your own? You clearly have talent. Maybe even try to get involved with nintendo! I enjoy the thing's you release but I just don't get why you've done it so long and still enjoy it so much.
i plan to move on to making my own games eventually, but i want to leave behind a great sm64 hack that I can be proud of before i do that.
Because modding games is the best way to learn how to make games. You can also learn the mistakes that were made and find ways on how to optimize and improve on it
@@KazeN64 I have to ask, are you going to use an n64 style or some other more limitations to the game you want to make or just use modern methods?
i intend to use some modern lighting effects on low poly assets. it'll probably look like an inbetween of n64 era and gc era polygon wise.
@@thelegendofzeina1707 True that. Many older programmers out there usually say they started out with BASIC, and then went on to play around with other people's code. That way you also don't get stuck in Tutorial Hell.
maro
Holy shit dude. That video at the beginning with the jungle looks like an entirely different game. Insane, amazing work.
Can't wait to see more models in the game optimized like this.
Great work!
i do this to every model i use! well i usually leave textures untouched and only optimize the limbs and bone counts. (that usually reduces their processing requirements by 30% to 60% )
i have a video about the birds for example up on my kazeclips channel!
ruclips.net/video/9ieLW58wuCE/видео.html&ab_channel=KazeClips
@@KazeN64
i would love to see how applicable this would be to all the games. especially the earlier titles!
i don't know if this sounds douche-y but i think perfecting and optimizing models like this is a lost art on newer, faster hardware. like, they don't need to do this anymore but it's really, really impressive to put this much effort in every little corner of the game
Doesn't sound douchey and it really is true. Feels like optimization isn't even an afterthought nowadays.
Gta v
+1
Console development back in the days was an art form when done right
@@TheBestBrawler
yeh, reading the system specs for something that *should* be graphically attainable on retro hardware being "high-end strongly encouraged!" is just...
this still needs to be done. games are too big and too slow
nay, software is too big and too slow
modern hardware is blazingly fast and modern code/data completely undermines those improvements
He is going to make the fabled SM64 2
Nintendo needs to hire you because this is amazing
he maek da graffic smoov so derefore nintendo shud hire him
I know that's mostly just a saying, but just to put it out there, I don't think the big game companies cares about optimization. If they did, there wouldn't be so many problems with AAA titles today. Sadly, the only things they care about are deadlines and gatcha-mechanics to squeeze pennies out of the players. That's why games run like sh*t, but they all have an in-game store where you can spend real money to buy stuff that should have been in the game from the start. Or in the case of EA. Sell the games in parts, and call them DLC:s
I don't think Nintendo has any need for N64 developers nowadays.
Amazing! But then you have to give Nintendo some credit it was 1996 the old model probably wowed as many people as the new one but still, impressive
Remember, we've got 25 years of reverse engineering and research that Nintendo didn't have, plus, we have no deadlines. Granted, Nintendo knows a lot about the N64 considering it's their console, but they didn't know every last trick at the time.
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire fair enough
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire yeah 3d game development and animation were still quite new back in those days. If you go back and look at Shrek, which was stunning at the time, you'll see how the art form was still evolving. And Shrek was bigger budget and made after this game.
I do remember the intro to 64 being a big deal at the time, though. We'd never seen anything like it.
3:50 Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast used a very similar technique
there are times where the system actually bugs out allowing you to see the gaps ingame too
Kaze, you've done an amazing job! As a graphic designer, let me simplify your process. Take the Mario texture set and run it through the upscaler Remini (iPhone app). It isn't perfect, so you clean it up using vectors. Import the upscale in to Inkscape and trace over the top, adjusting the layer you are working on to 60% opacity, so you can see through. Start with the skin colour as a square, then deduct the ellipse from it to give the white of Mario's eyes. Then add a blue ellipse as a layer below (handles the overlap). Then a black ellipse. Then a white circle. Finally, after the easy stuff is complete add the eye brow, which will be a 4 node drawing, making the two middle nodes curved and adjusting the curve to match the raster image behind it. I think Remini + Inkscape should hopefully reduce the difficulty of upscaling for ya. Seriously loving the stuff you're doing. Very fun to be following allow watching your progress!
NINTENDO HIRE THIS MAN
2:10 out of context: sKiNniNg
You mod fully looks like an early PS2 game at this point.
I ready for people saying dumb things
“no YoU diDnT NintEnDOe upDaEt dA moDeL tO bE BeTr tHen U!” -some random kid
I would LOVE to see a Conker model, even if just analyzing it, I love that model and l the amazing animations they accomplished with it
Yeah, you finally perfected it. Even the eyes finally work for me. Fantastic job.
And with this alone, the Mario 3D All Stars version was put to shame. Nice work.
4:28 I honestly can't see a difference between the old and new shades, what is the difference? I am watching this on mobile maybe it is the smaller screen
Love the content, keep it coming. Would like to see you give Turok 3 a facelift seeing how impressive the realtime cutscenes and facial animations were back in the day but it always felt a bit unfinished to me.
Hello, you've probably answered this plenty of times but are there instructions I can find how to implement your optimizations on the rom file? I'd like to play your version on an emulator :)
Can't wait to play with this model someday
Tip for eyes as a 3D artist. One you never going to make them perfect so give up on that. Second, remember the style you going for and ignore any other nagging voices. Third, accept any good results because perfectionism in you will always exist if you listen to it though too much it will lead to your downfall more than anything good. Most good art is made at the 80 percent/good enough area. If we go beyond that we end up hating ourselves, our piece, and the world and never release anything. Lastly, you will always hate your piece in some way, or find something that is nagging you congrats you reached perpetual hell. Bonus only others in this field will notice the faults including you, however, normal humans well they want to be fooled so they will always probably see a better result than even you hoped for. Want proof go UV seam hunting in video games. You will end up with a long ass list of how did I miss seeing these. Congratulation you now made games worse for yourself and will always randomly notice an obvious UV seam (Though you may break free from this. However, if you are a 3D artist, or work on games you are stuck here.). Other normal people well they want to be fooled so they will be.
Do you think you could please create a Super Mario 64 Final Fantasy 7 mod of some sort? Thanks :)
I really hope to play a super optimized version of SM64 on real hardware some day
I didn't want to say it when you first showed the model, but since you said you'd understand it being more of a preference, I do think the color of the pants looks a bit weird in some of the darker parts. That's my only complaint though. Everything else is great.
yeah that's fair. it'd be an easy adjustment to fix if i should change my mind luckily.
@@KazeN64 It reminds me of Star Road, which made Mario paler for some reason.
Umm... I think I recalled that the Super Mario 3D All-Stars already did had the SM64 Model of Mario got polished when it was first released.
When i patch the roms they don’t run on my ED64 ! What is the problem? Anyone have help please
for some people this probably seems like black magic, better looking model but runs better?
well SM64DS had the same goal as a result it uses a better lower poly Mario that looks nicer while being able to maintain a playable framerate with a second screen rendering a rotating map of the world.
This is a typical showcase on how a late Nintendo 64 game might have looked like.
Recently, I am finally able to play Conkers Bad fur day. I got the N64 version of the rare replay collection on Xbox One, and I am playing this game on my Xbox Series X. While I do keep in mind that the resolution for the port has been bumped up, I am soooo impressed with how this game looks! Lots of dynamic light and if you progress further, there are even some really beautiful areas in this game.
I am curious to what you are going to show us next! :)
conker cheated a little bit on the performance side. they ended up making the resolution of the game about half as big, so they could get away with more polygons and stuff
Do you know the amazing rom hack "B3313" ?
It’s funny because the eyes were the only thing I had a small complaint about lmao
Im nachhinein betrachtet, war alles was Nintendo als Lösung präsentiert hat ein Workaround, welches sie nicht anders lösen konnten.
Mit heutiger Technologie und dem Wissen könnte man zwei- bis dreimal soviel Gameplay in SM64 packen ohne an Power zu verlieren.
Aber ne, anstatt zu optimieren wird alles der Engine überlassen, die wahrscheinlich nicht hochoptimiert ist.
Respekt Kaze, einfach fetten Respekt
- Sincerly, ein C#-Entwickler... (und ich rede von optimieren lul)
If Nintendo's Mario model looked like this in 1996, the game would be even more mind blowing!
Got to ask, when are you and Simpleflips going to bench press eachother?
No you didn't, the original is perfection. Extra thicc
No matter how much you perfected Mario it will never be as good as the original model it’s just too good
I still respect it though
it's super uncanny..
will there be an option to revert back to the original mario model in this?
Pity Nintendo does the opposite of applauding these kind of efforts.
Magic of optimization that has been forgotten
How about we all just empty our bank accounts so that Kaze can just make us all the best new N64 game ever made 👍
Agreed!
"You know when Nintendo made this amazing and critically acclaimed game that people still play to this day? That was BABY GARBAGE compared to what I'm doing."
Unfortunatelly, I still don't like how the eyes look, but everything else is amazing so, good job!
I was honestly just expecting a video about the hot tub streamer Mario model you made.
could you technically use the sm64ds mario model if you wanted to? because I heard that that model uses less polygons
yeah that model wouldnt be too hard to import. i think fazana has something very similar to it.
The baked-antialiasing trick is super powerful for games on older hardware like this -- we did the same thing for menus and level load screens in Newer Super Mario Bros. DS, and I think it's one of the biggest reasons why they look as good as they do!
I cant believe Ive just stumbled across a madman obscessed with improving SM64, I should've been here sooner! Good work!
And are those your mods being showcased in the backrounds? Those look like they were made by the modern mario team, they're actually tempting me to finally break into modding sm64
seeing mario like this just doesn't sit right with me, i just don't like it
Can you make Super Mario Galaxy 64?
This looks extremely cursed, not gonna lie.
i dont like it
Can we get this model for DynOS? That'd be cool
Will this hack include split-screen multiplayer, by any chance?
I’d love to see a video on how the animations work under the hood! I would guess there is key frame data for every animation. Do the animations blend at all? Doesn’t seem that they all do - ledge grabs and dives seem to snap into the pose immediately - but jumps and running seems to have interpolation between states. Would be curious to learn how it works. Tibia also probably isn’t something you’d be able to decipher from the code but I wonder how they did the original animations, what software they used etc. Keep up the great work
that's exactly what it is! the game simply has 30 keyframes per second. there are transitional animations, but no blending. my engine runs 60fps, so i calculate extra inbetweens. something like that could be done to blend animatinos into each other, but imo you'd lose too much snappiness doing that.
@@KazeN64 Cool thanks for the response! Wow it is super impressive then how smooth things look when Mario is jumping, landing, changing directions etc. I guess having animations for "Standard Jump Land" "Triple Jump Land" etc. allows them to not need to blend and still get good results.
you can imagine Kaze working on Rare in the n64 era?
Part of me feels like this video should say "optimized" or "enhanced" instead of "perfected" but let's be real, from one RUclipsr to another, that wouldn't have gotten as many views, lmao.
Amazing work tho! All I'd say is Mario's eyebrows are a liiitle funky, maybe they should've been more line-like instead of crescent shapes and the eyes could have been rounded a bit more but it looks more like you we're going more for staying closer to true to the original which I can appreciate tbh. Considering this was the first N64 Mario and how Mario looks in much later N64 Mario games like Mario Party, I'm really curious how much better Mario could have looked had it been made later. I guess that's why we got SM64DS, lol
This rom hack you're working on is starting to really look like a true sequel to Mario 64, like if Nintendo worked on a Mario 64 2 some time near the end of the N64's life and were much much more efficient with coding and art style, kinda like the difference visually between Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie, but coded to run super efficiently. It's the kind of thing that can only be accomplished by someone who's just a hobbyist who has no obligation to finish a game within a few years so it can be out by Christmas and is deeply passionate about their work! Great job and I'm very much looking forward to playing the full version when it's finally released!
i still have self imposed deadlines. That doesn't mean i won't try to make it the best game i can within that time.
they did work on a Super Mario 64 2 but it got canned
This is VERY interesting. In a world where CPU Cycles are wasted you perfecting the engine in modern times for the official N64 is INSANE! Keep it up man!
Love this! I do question a couple things like the hue change for the shading, but overall these techniques are very interesting to learn about and see how they benefit the game as well as how they work overall!
what n64 emulator did you use
Overall I think it was better to keep the eyes as close as to the original
The other pitches looked fine but didn't fit the N64 model's original style and chibi aesthetic
Wow, that’s really cool! I kinda wish the 3D All-Stars version did stuff like this.
Great job.
Actually Rare used similar methods when they created less blocky looking characters for Perfect Dark while using reduced amount of polygons on them than Goldeneye 007. I understand your will to learn more about Mario 64 source code. But if you want to outperform all other N64 games, you really should eventually study how Indiana Jones And The Infernal Machine 64 works.
I like the blue colors of the new model. The new model is really pleasing.
This is cool, but I like the shading on the old one.
Question from return to Yoshi's island 64 save state man crashes my game how to fix
Ok
I'd love to see this Mario model running in the 3DS port.
Man, I love to see the progress on this kind of small details, keep them coming!
the eyes could have been mirrored AGAIN horizontally right at the pupil level, just have a seperate texture for the eyebrows, which is MUCH smaller than any of the eye segments :)
you are such a super N64 dev at this point. even if its only just for Mario64, its still beyond impressive.
Lookin' hella cursed 😳
This looks, fucking awesome. It's like you made a Majora's Mask HD texture or System shock 2 object replacement
this is crazy!!!
I'm amazed how you made the character design for Mario look so much better! I Also love the color pattern with the new blue and red shades, for some reason I really like those new shades you made for Mario. It's sad that you can only abuse the vertex and buffers with the N64. But still, Good Job Kaze!
I Like The Old One Better Though
That Mario is more creepy
Looks worse
You probably wont see this but, this work is very impressive. Thank you. Living my dream by watching you. Please consider the Atari Jaguar, the guys at atariage could use someone who thinks outside the box. NO ONE has ever pushed that system close to its limits and I think you could.
I'm in love with his brighter color scheme! It really fits the world you've shown off too!
I bet Mario's model would've had a lot of improvement like that if SM642 was made, just like Link and Banjo in their sequels.