Patreon: / kazestuff 🎥 / kazesm64 🐦 / kazeemanuar MERCH: kazemerch.myspreadshop.com/all 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…
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.
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
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!
@@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.
@@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!
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.
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
@@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.
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!
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! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9ieLW58wuCE.html&ab_channel=KazeClips
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!
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.
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!
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 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
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 :)
Way to go, pal!😎😎😎 This was one of the best optimizations I've ever seen in your channel history. I can't await when the system could handle it with full 60fps. 😁😁 But just take your time in order to make sure to get the best results in your development. Keep going. We love your work. 👍👍🏻👍🏿
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.
It's possible that Kaze is the single most skilled N64 coder out there, and possibly one of the few people left in the world who is completely proficient in it's inner workings. Absolutely astounded with everything you do Kaze.
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)
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've made 3 other mods! Ocarina of Time - The missing Link (this is a great 2 hour long game, 1 dungeon, probably my favourite romhack ive made) Kirby 64 - double speed mod (just the game with kirby walking faster) Dk64 - switch kong anywhere mod
Thanks for all your hard work Kaze!! Wanted to ask you something. I just got through playing The Missing Link and enjoyed the hell out of it!! I was wondering if you will be creating any more new Zelda n64 romhacks for us in the future?
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.
