So when can we expect to start seeing homebrews for the N64?

Nintendo will just shut them down, like that Zelda 3D recreation a few months back

maybe in 10 years?

Wouldn't be too surprised if someone wrote a c library for common shit like camera control and polygon parsing sometime in the next few years.

>>3272270
Why does Nintendo hate fangames so much anyways?

>>3272295
They only have a problem with fangames that recreate a whole damn game they've already made.

Shit like Mario ROM Hacks and the sort get a free pass because they're entirely different

you mean so it finally has some good games?

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>>3272306

>>3272260
BARF

>>3272260
Probably never.

Despite the N64's popularity nobody has been able to get proper homebrews running on it. The most we've gotten is a few simple demos.

I think that says volumes about how much we understand the hardware.

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Any homebrew N64 stuff will never move past demos.

The reasons being:

1) Notice how in the credits of games artists have exponentially increased with each generation, while programmers stay the same? That's because it takes a shit ton of work just to generate content for 3D games. Try to generate even modest 3D assets and you'll see what I mean.

2) 2D graphics are pretty intuitive, but not nearly as many people have a solid grasp on the linear algebra needed for 3D. It's not difficult stuff, but math is a big hurdle for lots of people. Moreover, good 3D draws from a much wider breadth of math than just the necessary linear algebra.

3) As an SNES hacker, there is no appeal. If I was going through the trouble of making a 3D game, there is nothing distinctive about N64 hardware that would make me want to program against it, instead I'd just use OpenGL. At least with the SNES the PPUs got some character. All the N64 has going for it is bad hardware.

Honestly, I don't even see this happening even if somebody was funded off kickstarter. The interest just isn't there, and neither is the money (as in the money needed to keep bread on the table, not trying to make a fortune).


All of this being said, do you have any interest programming the N64 OP?

>>3272260
Never. 99.9% of the homebrew is just HD textures for Ocarina of Time. The reason for this is because barely anybody actually gives a shit about all the cool and weird shit in the N64 library.

>>3272260
There are tons of homebrews for Goldeneye/Perfect Dark ever since Subdrag and co released the level editor 5-6? years ago

You can literally make levels from scratch and place in any single game item you want.

>>3272751
N64 hardware is actually very interesting and non-standard 3D rendering (of course it was before any standards). It has tons of advanced features implemented in special ways (vertex shading / audio processing via microcode) (pixel shading via color combiner). Since homebrew developers aren't bound by Nintendo quality assurance restrictions like real developers were and are gifted with the benefits of hindsight, some really
good shit could be developed. It's clear you don't understand the 3D hardware if you think it's just the same as modern 3D hardware except 'bad'.

The real reason there isn't more homebrew is that most developers would need a library to assist them. The official leaked library is still copyright Nintendo, while an open source library Libdragon only supports 2D software development at the moment.

>>3273293
Writing that library is part of homebrew.
No matter how "interesting" the hardware, the problems >>3272751 mentioned still exist

>>3273293
I don't pretend to actually know the N64 hardware well, so it was somewhat disingenuous of me to compare it directly to modern hardware. It most certainly was a pioneering design, but at the end of the day you have a frame buffer you are drawing into. Personally that's a little too similar to modern graphics for me. But I know the hardware is quirky, and that's part of the draw for hacking the SNES for me, so others may feel differently.

While I think libraries would help, if the machine is well documented (which must be the case because we have fairly accurate emulators), then writing libraries boils down to an NMI routine to update the screen, decompression, some memory management routines, joy reading routines, and a music tracker. Out of all of those, the music tracker is by far the most complicated. A decent programmer could whip up all of these in assembly in a few weeks.

I really think the biggest hurdle is simply content creation. And it's not making geometry and textures, but all the programming that goes into making good 3D graphics. That's been addressed with modern 3D design studio software, but it still is a HUGE effort.

N64 is just beyond what I think a single person can do in a reasonable amount of time. SNES and before can be mastered by a single soul. Since the hacking scene is notoriously ego-centric, it's not surprising that there are so few N64 hacks. It takes a shit ton of work, probably a few people, and some serious technical knowledge on several different levels of computer graphics, hardware, and mathematics that few people possess.

>>3273360
got some portfolio/examples of your SNES hackery?

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>>3273368
I was working on this last summer, but school happened and it got put on hold. I'll start it back up after I've reprogrammed my assembler. I posted the source at

github.com/gewballs/graviton

but without my assembler it's doesn't do anyone else much good except to see what goes into a program. In time I'll make the assembler available when it hits v2.0

>>3273379
how come you write your own assembler?

>>3273379
>when it hits v2.0
Beware the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

>>3273382
When I first started hacking as a wee lad I couldn't find a descent 65816 assembler, so I made one. I then passed it off as an independent study, and programmed my first game. That was ages ago.

>>3273385
Indeed. I learned that my assembler had a lot of shortcomings after programming a lot of non-trivial code with it; it doesn't print the output in a human readable format, it doesn't have math, the memory mapping was amateur. I have (nearly) designed a new assembler from the bottom up that covers these deficiencies. I also checked out the Gnu assembler for inspiration on anything I missed, and added in a feature or two. Overall it's not too complicated, conceptually cleaner, and probably better than the Gnu assembler in some ways.

The only snag I've hit is some low level grammar stuff that I want to get 100% right, while keeping the language intuitive and extremely simple.

It really bothers me that 99% of all the fanmade stuff for the N64 will only run on shitty-ass Project64 and not on real hardware. The Goldeneye/Perfect Dark mods are the only exceptions that come to mind. I don't mind if they don't want to learn the entire console inside and out but having so much shit still rely on an unstable, ancient emulator when so many have flashcarts now just seems a shame.

>>3272260
Then there's assholes like zoinkity that take down every N64 hacking project they can b/c butthurt.

You need special tools and some mathematical knowledge to create 3D graphics that most of us don't have.

>>3274778
Blender and Algebra.

>>3272260
Hopefully never. It's a terrible system that only '00 kids care about.

>>3274581
Cool. When are you going to buy me one? Or better yet, when are you going to step up to the plate and put your money where your mouth is by doing your own hacks and showing everyone how its done.

>>3272260

Super Donkey Kong 64 already happened.

>>3274852
I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke, but they're talking about homebrew projects built by the community themselves, not hacking of games already made. There have been plenty of hacks for many years, some of high quality.

>>3272260
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFo91pDiBn4
https://youtu.be/wmsgULnVgN4

It's already here.

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>>3275430

>>3274881
Could they put those hacks on carts if they had the power to do so?

Hell there's a bunch of websites dedicated to selling NES hacks on carts