this was always possible, not sure why people are just now freaking out about it.
I remember someone doing the same thing with NES back in 2013: https://andrewkelley.me/post/jamulator.html
It was always possible with tons and tons of work; the news is that some dude made a tool that makes it a piece of cake to recompile the games directly from a ROM.
I wonder how much talent is wasted because of jaded programmers that think it’s dumb (to them) to make something simple even if it would become very popular and maybe profitable
This is very similar to something we did in engineering school in like 2008. For a reconfigurable computing project we translated machine code into HDL.
This is something you could have done for a while if you had a few million dollars to pay a team of computer engineers to do it. The new part is the classic “some dude figured out an efficient way to do it in his garage over the summer.”
can be done as a school project
needs a few million dollars
which is it?
Yes
The cost of hiring a team of programmers the size of a large class can easily cost millions of dollars. There’s a long history of school projects accomplishing things in computer science that would have cost millions. Look at BSD for example.
unironically all you really need is one or two neurospicy individuals that are passionate about your project and just about anything can be done in a matter of weeks.
You could say that about basically anything: it only takes one or two passionate people to [write a great novel, build a house, invent something new, prove a scientific theory, advance the field of mathematics] in a matter of weeks.
Those are rare and impressive exceptions, it’s not so simple in practice. The Mythical Man Month has some good insight on this. Big projects cost big money, and don’t necessarily get the job done faster.
Just so you know, the actual source code for this project mentions both Jamulator and another project that did this for the N64.
Nintendo right now: Get Boeing on the line
Nintendo’s execs calling Boeing’s execs: “Hey, can you refer us to your…fixers? You know…rhymes with shmassassin…yeah you know, those guys.”
Smash Sassin*
Change it to “Boeingman” lol
If they want the job done, he’s not taking a 747
No thats how he kills them
“You’re asking about our Garbage Men?”
“No, I mean… Wait, actually maybe…”
sends the QA department
Quality Assassins, what did you think it stood for?
so. For dumb people like me (or just for me to be clear), how do I play those games? i watched the video and read the site. there’s a link to the MM gamefiles on GitHub, but the video said you still need the ROMs? or this RT64? I’m old and apparently at some point, you just lose tech savvyness… :( can I get a step-by-step?
Yes you still need the ROMs since these PC ports contain no copywritten code. Like the other person said, you will need to compile the game yourself, but there are tools that automate the process. It’s simply a matter of getting all the files you need in one place, and clicking a few buttons. The hard part is obtaining all the files (well, more tedious than hard, especially if you’re not a programmer or a Linux user).
Ok I answer her without watching the video or any knowledge:
I assume you need to download the github project and compile it yourself (except there are releases on the right side)
You should follow the readme in the project.
There should be an information about where you should put the roms.
The roms can be (legally) download on different websites. It’s legal for archive reasons (afaik).
From what I could see, the releases are specifically for Majora’s Mask, and not the tool used to recompile N64 games in general.
Someone fucking message me when we have a working Battle for Naboo ROM.
Battle for Naboo actually had an official PC version all the way back in 2001. No idea if it works on modern PCs, though.
The keyboard controls are very janky. You’d have to do custom button mapping with a controller, and there’s no analog input. At least not without some mods that I’m not sure exist.
IIRC, the original cartridge had an extra chip in it that emulation hasn’t been able to use. I’m not sure if any progress has been made on this and a few other games that used these.
Probably a lot of work for a single game.
Nah it didn’t have an extra chip – but large portions of the game were written in microcode for the N64’s processor specifically. It’s part of what makes it and Rogue Squadron kind of a pain to emulate – along with using their own audio drivers (MoSYS/MusyX that were later used as the basis for the GameCube sound systems).
IIRC there was an official Windows port at some point though. Not sure how well it worked or works on modern systems.
Wait… Y’all are talking about X-Wing: Rogue Squadron and Star Wars Episode 1: Battle for Naboo, right?
I owned those windows ports!
They worked great back in the day - I had such a blast with them that I begged my parents to get me a shitty Logitech joystick! If you want to check them out, it looks like Rogue Squadron is only $10 on Steam; and Battle for Naboo seems to be abandonware, but it seems to be hosted on a lot of “better spread than dead” game sites.
SuperFX SNES games can be emulated, right?
I’m pretty sure that has been able to be emulated and run through most emulation software now. These Star Wars games had specific code and drivers that, when I looked up why it wouldn’t emulate years ago, had not been cracked open to get the source code to enable people to program it into emulation software.
Higher FPS? Classical Ninendo games don’t use FPS as timer?
I don’t think n64 did. They even had major frame drops in many games.
I thought there were many aspects of the games directly tied to fram rate.
I know that, at least in the case of mario 64, Speed runners abuse game mechanics tied to frame rate to perform tricks such as backwards long jump and other door hacks. Marios eyes blinking are tied to frame rate, they used this to identify faked speed runs in some cases.
I imagine there must be other things aswell.
Yes. I know Zelda Ocarina of Time has many things, including walking speed, tied to framerate because of ZFG. Also, the 3DS remake reused a lot of the code and several things tied to framerate got quicker because it ran at 30 fps instead of 20. Items despawn quicker because they despawn at a set amount of frames.
According to the video, game logic is still opperating at 20hz and the GPU uses frame interpolation to tripple the FPS.
Thanks! Didn’t saw the video.
Perhaps they add code to split physics and grsphical fps.
This is what they do in the manual decompile projects (like is happening for Majora’s mask now), but this tool can only preserve logic.
Nintendo on their way to file a DMCA C&D letter.
You’re not wrong and I’m shocked this hasn’t been shut down yet. Not to mention, the Nintendo 64 has been discontinued for years, but I have a feeling that won’t stop Nintendo.
When that older DX game port was released, I think it took like 3 or 4 days for them to take it down. Probably even like a
patchstomp tuesday situation when the interns hand off the script detections off to the lawyers.It might take a bit longer if people stopped using sites like Youtube and Github, and tried not to include trademarked terms (or super-identifiable audiovisual content) anywhere.
I wonder if online multiplayer mods could be made for multiplayer games.
I saw a Ocarina of Time one a while back. There is also some tool that can link randomizers of different games togther.
That would be awesome. My guess is yes but it would probably take a lot of work. Can you imagine N64 Smash online multiplayer that actually works?
You can already do this with some N64 emulators with built in netplay like, Project64KSE. There is a small community dedicated to it with a website here.
Smash Bros Melee is much more popular to play online nowadays, and there is a great update for online play called Project Slippi. It works with the dolphin GameCube emulator and makes it very quick and easy to find games against similar skill level players. It also adds rollback netcode, stats, and other QOL features.
If Nintendo, themselves, put out an online Smash Melee remake, it would never be as close to good as Project Slippi already is.
Well holy shit. Nintendo’s frankly terrible online for the last several Smash games has always been particularly offensive to me. As I’ve grown older all my friends stopped caring about Smash so online play was the only way I’d get to play with anyone. Even with gigabit internet not once did I get a match I would describe as good. The closest to tolerable was at least half a second of input lag. That’s for the last 2 games. It made me so mad, like why fucking bother putting online play in your game?
Netplay isn’t exactly ideal, as from what I understand it generally requires the syncing of all players emulated console hardware simultaneously (basically, every emulator tricks the game into thinking they’re all being played on one single console), which is a lot harder to reliably achieve than having native netcode to handle multiplayer
Slippi, in particular, has rollback netcode built on top of the emulator. It is way less laggy than Smash Ultimate and most other fighting games on the market, for that matter.
It is used for high level tournament play by players who have played the game in person since its release, with no complaints. It’s really impressive how smooth it is.
I think you are right about general netplay. Some emulators are better about it than others, and fighting games are of the type where the lag differences will be especially noticeable.
Easily. That works even in an emulator cough cough netplay cough cough
Support would be way better if implemented within the game itself (although I think that goes without saying, 😝)
Didn’t read the article, did Nintendo pay to develop this to be able to preserve the games history and release them for free so they can get some new fans for these retro games and IPs to maybe encourage them to buy some newer released games in the same series?
Exactly, with Nintendo’s existing IP and old gamers dying, they need a way to get younger generation exposed to what kids in the 80s and 90s grew up with and make sure that it’s plastered on all the streaming websites to get maximum exposure.
Maybe read the article to find out.
The was a long sentence. I imagined you gasping for breath at the end.
Maybe it was written that way to make you read faster as you get toward the end to convey a sense of facetiousness because I didn’t need to read the article to know none of that’s true, who knows. I’m probably just spending too much time online lately.
When Conker’s Bad Fur Day is available with unlocked resolution and widescreen, let me know.
🎵 I am the grrreat mighty poo… 🎵
Shame the sequel was just dlc for an unrelated game and only lasted a year before Microsoft pulled the plug
Fuck it, F-ZERO X at 240 FPS. Why not?
Can confirm that 60fps Perfect Dark goes hard on the SteamDeck.
How did you get it to work? Any guide specifically you would use?
I just used the i686-linux steps here:
https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/perfect_dark
As with most of these decomps there is no copyrighted material included in the link and you have to provide your own ROM (and a very specific version of it) in order to build and get it to work.
After that I believe I just copied the folders to the Deck, mapped it as a non-Steam game, added updated artwork with the steamgriddb plugin etc.
I might have messed with the controls a bit but I don’t recall. There is probably a more detailed Steamdeck-specific guide somewhere if you care to dig.
Hi, dumbass here, I’m vaguely unclear what’s being discussed here. So you made Perfect Dark 60fps on steamdeck.
But what is raytracing, and can these improvements be done over retroarch?
Broadly speaking, ray-tracing is a graphic rendering technique that produces more accurate light reflections (and realistic looking graphics) but is demanding of rendering hardware and therefore associated with modern games and consoles/PCs.
The project I linked is a decomp specific to Perfect Dark that uses existing ROMs. Basically it builds you a standalone runnable Perfect Dark with more modern enhancements, but I don’t think it supports ray tracing.
The project in the original Tom’s Hardware article appears to include a separate tool that is generic and could potentially be used on various N64 games with user-supplied ROMs. I don’t see a list of games that are supported so I can’t speak for Perfect Dark.
I know there are raytracing plugins for n64 emulation but I’m not sure which Retroarch core and settings would support that. Probably requires experimentation to see what works and what doesn’t.
This is all I need in life.
Man, now the PS1 needs to catch up!
Would the recompiled games effect how ACE works in some games? I’d assume since the machine code is different the exploits used to trick the pointers would be different.
Most likely. The documentation says it can change what was a single instruction on the N64 into multiple instructions, so those values will potentially be very different. It will probably close off some exploits, change others, and even introduce new ones.
100%
Nintendos already preparing their ninjas
Damn perfect dark would be amazing with online play it was such a good game, and Microsoft pretty much killed it on Xbox
It would also be great at something above 20 fps.
