There is something very charming about low poly, low resolution art styles. I've thought about it seriously for a while now and what I think is going on isn't nostalgia, it is the participation of the brain in the imagining of the world. In modern games there is nothing left to the imagination in terms of scope or scale in the graphics, its either there or it isn't. But your trees have leaves, even though none can distinctly be seen. The forest is dense, dark, and full of mystery as to its size, even though it's a single plane with a texture. The engagement of the brain in imagining the world is more satisfying that simply showing all of it. For when we clearly see all of it, most often, we are disappointed.
I agree with you there. I would add that the game design also makes a lot of difference. Why a Legend of Zelda is so good is because you know there's nothing like it. In real life, there are no zora, gorons or fairies. It's fun to explore such worlds, because you don't know what's waiting for you behind the next hill. In modern (AA-AAA) video games, there is too much orientation to existing facts. Except for robots, a few more exotic weapons and movement, they don't dare to do too much. The game has to be suitable for the masses and there they only look at graphics and everything has to be simple, therefore leaning on the real world. Also, the world is becoming more and more irrelevant, as you run from one marker to the next without exploring, as it has no advantages. The "old" gameplay can work equally well in modern video games like Subnautica, Breath of the Wild, Raft, Portal 2, ...
It could also be similar to how the brain remembers things, if you don't have photographic memory, your brain uses your memory of an amalgamation of a thing to recognise a future one of those things you encountered in the past, and this art style with low res/low poly might be how our brains compress information to be able to quickly recognise things. I think it's kind of like how we can interpret sentences of words with jumbled letter order with little effort, as long as the first and last letter of each word are correct, part of our brains has this compressed information that we access to recognise things faster, and this art style directly accesses it along with enabling our imagination to fill in the blanks from our past experiences.
About the kisaragi station thing, I found an archived version of the original 2ch thread and found the line (my Japanese isn't that great either so I had to use the English as reference). Here is the line: 鬼って書いて、きさらぎって読めるのね。。。 The 2 things of note are the kanji is 鬼 (oni) which is more of a japanese style devil, and the station is referred to as きさらぎ, which is hiragana (a phonetic spelling), not as 如月. I would write it in the hiragana if you want to write it in japanese, but if you wanted to use the kanji I would suggest making sure to have the hiragana as well, either as ruby text or just an alternate spelling. Because, as you noted, it's not a normal reading for 鬼.
I love how much effort you put into these devlogs, hearing about all the little details and decisions behind seemingly simple parts of the game is fascinating.
I've always wanted to make my own game, but asset creation and coding always seemed so overwhelming. My interests and experience lay in level design, and world building. This was actually quite inspiring, as it shows even very basic geometry and textures can make a very compelling environments.
I love the sound of your inspirations for this game. Seems like it's really gonna bring that mysterious atmosphere that some of the best N64 games have.
I’m a 2D background artist for animation, but I’ve been very interested in getting into more 3D art and I just love your passion and skills for your project. It’s so inspiring, you make me want to create something of my own! So happy to follow along your journey, I’m having so much fun seeing the process!
Thank you so much for your videos on Legend 64! I am 25 years old and have only a minor in computer programming, but I am trying to learn how to make my own game for the first time as well! And videos like yours are super helpful and inspiring.
BLESS THE ALGORITHIM! Fellow low-poly nerd here - this vid/channel is great! Though, right at the beginning when you said you couldn't talk about your current professional project, the clip of Banjo Kazooie got me very giddy very quickly. That gem deserves a remake. GUH-HUH!
I love the ideas you come up with, I really believe if you make a full length game it will gain lots of traction I don't think I've seen anyone make their own fully fledged N64 game before.
Just a few seconds in and I can tell you, you smashed the look, amazing. I see so many "PS1 style games" and people exaggerate one or 2 features of the system like pixellation and ignore everything else that was distinctive to that look, but you captured so much of what makes an N64 game look the way it does.
Always love to see an update on this project, and interesting to see you branch out into a somewhat different type of video. The real-world arch definitely has a strong game-like feel to it, I'm not surprised you took inspiration from it.
You can use "walking (or was it flying?) mode"in blender to explore the model as a character ("tab button", I think, turn on gravity) it's just like in game engine, two meter high and has collision. It's because Blender used to have a game engine once.
I saw gameplay of the ps1 Harry Potter game recently. And the forest textures in that game were BEAUTIFUL. Really impressive how much they got out of the low resolution.
I am really enjoying this series. The game and all of it's contents are looking incredible. I've always been a fan of retro graphics and have only recently gotten into incorporating them into my art. Thank you so much for the wonderful content and inspiration.
God these blogs are the best. I wish you could upload more regularly, because I lose myself in this game. These are VERY inspiring, and I love hearing where you get your references from.
I would love to keep seeing these devlogs of Legend 64, Even If I haven't played any old titles games like Legend Of Zelda, I find old games like these nostalgic or cool for how they're able to make games in the first place. I love Level Designing, but I often sometimes lack the motivation to keep going, but when I found these videos on your youtube channel, it inspired me and gave me more knowledge about the old ways Level Designers had to detail each level. Hope you have a great day and keep on game creating👍😁
As a fellow game dev and freetime unreal engine user I love the series ! really nice :) Love to learn new things ! I never knew you could change the visual size of colliders, or to use a delay for looping stuff for example! But there are a few small things I'd like you to know. (I just got to this video, bingewatching the others. The tips have nothing to do with this devlog in particular) Using shape keys for your main character is a bit of cheating I feel like, since as far as I know this wasn't used in the N64 era. It would be more true to the original to just match the topology of the skirt with the topology of the leg. This way skinning the skirt will not clip anymore. When you're casting something in a blueprint you can save that to a variable (quick tip, just drag out the output and then "convert to variable"). This way you can avoid the big spiderweb of strings coming off of the "cast to gameinstance" node for example and instead use the variable wherever you want directly. On that note, when you cast to something you know will be of a certain type, you can right click the cast and right on the bottom it says "convert to pure cast" this way it doesn't need to be hooked up to the main execute line. I think that's it from me, don't want to backseat develop too much :D keep up the good work !
repost from patreon: Looking sick my dude! Always excited to see you pop up in my notifications. I'd love to see more texture "tuts". I've been struggling to mimic the n64 texture look. I like the slightly enhanced definition from the 3ds versions due to the actual screen resolutions allowing for more pixel density. Also, because VR let's you can stick your face really close...
it's always interesting to see how you deal with the limitations of this artstyle, especially seeing the process of the arch texture was pretty fun. The only critique I have is that using unreals atmospheric fog might be a bit too high tech but that's pretty much just a nitpick.
This forest area really reminds me of Gaul from Asterix & Obelix XXL, I used to stare at the ominous woods for hours as a kid, very awesome work you did here :^)
This is great example of why you should always do grey-box testing for environments. You can't really tell if your level "feels right" for your gameplay without testing it. They author of the video does incremental testing through-out to make sure everything works.
I love this era, it came after the Final Fantasy 7 era when 3D just was not really ready yet, and before obviously all the newfangled tech. It does everything you would want it to do almost, and does it beautifully.
I've been watching and keeping up with your n-64 inspired project. Indie devs are obsessed with voxel graphics but the n-64 graphics are so much better! So I really appreciate an in-depth video on the environment. Also, I'd love to see an the logic for your fairy!
This is absolutely fantastic! I love how you leveled up the production on these videos and bringing us outside. It’s also interesting hearing about your backbround
I'm so glad the algorithm blessed me with this video. I've been making small indie games off and on over the past decade and have always struggled with 3d. Seeing an actual industry professional go through their process of blocking out an area and doing texture work helps me realize what I've been doing wrong and is a big inspiration. Thank you for making this channel!
Your devlog videos are always so fun and insightful to watch! You completely nailed the style and the game is looking extremely promising. Always excited to see your next video!
Oh man this is special, now im in my mid 30's and played lots of 64 late 90s early 2000's i love thinking of the idea of creating a 64 game because its actualy possible
I found the correct Japanese for Kisaragi Station! It took a little digging, but it’s 鬼駅 (Kisaragi-eki) “Kisaragi station”. The first character is 鬼(oni, or kisaragi) meaning “devil” or “spirit”. It’s strange because whenever I searched the name in Japanese, it didn’t show up anywhere with the kanji 鬼. “Kisaragi” must be an old reading or for 鬼 or something…
That OOT forest temple music fits so well with the mood board forest pictures you showed. It just comes to show how well that Zelda music was composed, it hits the mark perfectly.
Just discovered your channel, this looks awesome. I can't wait to play it. I grew up playing N64, Star Fox64 was my favorite, but I put in plenty of hours in OoT and others as well. You have done an excellent job of recreating the style and charm of those games. Keep it up, man.
Fantastic video. Ever since first seeing your environment work, I've hoped you would showcase the more practical elements of your workflow, and this absolutely delivered.
I've been trying to find modernized versions of how older games were built, and this emulates it pretty greatly. I think I've learned a bit from your thought process and I'm going to be experimenting with this. Thanks a bunch.
Man, this is looking fantastic! If you add support for low resolutions and a 4:3 mode, playing this on a CRT will the icing on the cake. Keep up the great work!
Really loved seeing your process on environment design! It's something I struggle a lot with and this has really helped inspire some new techniques. Keep up the great work!
