Homebrew Question Mario 64 port?

[Deleted User]

all my cheats were off and toggleable from getgo. not sure about draw distance but it looks fine to me.
works fine on sx 3.0.0 as well lol.

you may have a different build. Minor draw distance issues is what i observed with some coins and chomp chomp. Sounds like you didn't have a conf file before installing so that's why it worked for you. Hope that makes sense.

Guys found a nifty tool to check md5 http://code.kliu.org/hashcheck/ it's pretty awesome. But we may want to start comparing what we end up with to help others.

 

[Razor1993]

What do I need to search for the texture packs? I searched texture pack, and did not see any.
Thanks in advanced

You need to find the Discord channel of the Mario 64 PC Port. They have up to date texture packs there and they even have higher poly versions for the NPCs like Gumbas etc

 

[Smoker1]

Camera needs to get Worked on. Times where it goes too far back. Least now, HD Texture Packs can be used, though.

 

[TheCasualties]

Camera needs to get Worked on. Times where it goes too far back. Least now, HD Texture Packs can be used, though.

For the camera going too far back, a temporary workaround is to press either D-pad Up or R, then do it again (R or D-Pad Down I think) to revert to 'normal' camera. It may or may not work depending on the situation.

You can also try messing around with that "scaler" option in settings. It may help but I've not experimented with it much. Not even the people in that Discord server seem to know exactly what it does.

Really wish they would just let us toggle that better camera mod, but it's "never getting added". :/

 

[FanNintendo]

01e8ce73321b2f5c6fa7fa6646f5ece8 is what i have and it seems to have issues with draw distance. All my cheats were on by default but a nice fellow taught me to delete my sm64.conf and it fixed that issue...

is this PC texture?

 

[Deleted User]

is this PC texture?

not sure what you mean. But if you watch the video i show various texture packs like mollymut grego etc running on the switch. It also has hd mario but i am unaware what other textures were added.

 

[Smoker1]

Would love for the ability to Load any of the Hacks. Missing Stars and SM64 (2) would be awesome

 

[FAST6191]

Would love for the ability to Load any of the Hacks. Missing Stars and SM64 (2) would be awesome

Depending upon what the hacks do that can get tricky. It is certainly not going to just be a matter of finding the new address and decrypting or decompressing a ROM like it might have been for the various official emulated versions or other N64 emulators people are injecting things into.

If they are just assets then chances are it can be ported out, or maybe remade, in reasonably short order as these things often still want the original assets to build the code. Might even be reasonably doable (especially as we technically have the source code to the ROM) to make a tool that is aware of things to know where something else exists now -- we have seen a few things like this before (pokemon tools often will read all the various pointers down the line to find something that has been relocated, and atrius' golden sun tools also provide an example of some more content aware stuff) so it is not unbroken ground. The further the hacks get from the original ROM in terms of general overview (as in the stages can be entirely new but if it is still the original notion of 15 stages going off similar layout to the original ROM then that is not much of a change for this sort of analysis) then the harder this gets (Someone starts expanding this to dozens of levels beyond what the original had and that gets trickier by far. I don't have the most experience with Mario 64 hacks but I have seen what I consider amazing hacks do things that would be fairly minimal changes to the ROM, and have seen new kids rock up and play with a GUI editor to in turn radically change things despite the end result being junk and also not that apparent in normal play. Good hackers making good hacks have good reason to make radical changes as well though, and it is far from unexpected for such a thing to happen.).

If the hacks start messing with code (different jumps, functionality and what have you, like I have seen a few go in for) then that gets far harder again -- any such hack made before this likely was an assembly hack laid on top of the original and thus won't likely decompile to anything useful. You would then have to figure out what the assembly tweaks did and port or remake it accordingly in the source code. Now you do have the added bonus that you can probably map the source code to the resulting parts of the ROM (indeed if the statement from the people making the decompilation is anything to go by this was the original intent of such a thing).

Short version. I would probably start this sort of thing off by building essentially the ultimate Mario 64 hacking tool. Something that starts at the very heart of the ROM and with an awareness of all the general pointer layouts from the start right through to general 3d models and locations of any binary code (this tends to be moved far less by hackers as it is a nightmare and gains little). Having the original ROM's source code will help here as well as you know you will not be missing anything.
With that you will know what is where and what is changed.
It will also want to do a comparison with the original ROM to see what is changed in general for the binary (as in what the CPU runs, not the whole ROM) and then alert you to do any further analysis.
It will however also be useful for anyone looking to smoosh together hacked ROMs in general, cut things down to run on say the Wii emulator, port them out to source ports, possibly some of the speedrun/TAS/romhack speedrun set, and possibly also those seeking to make them in the first place (assuming people are going to continue making "traditional" mario 64 hacks at this point).
If you can program (literally any language that can read files and manipulate them should do here) then if you skip any 3d viewers, sound playback, 3d editors or general graphics editors it is not the hardest thing; it is little more than a very crude database or archive unpacking program.

edit.
Forgot to note. Now N64 hackers still working on the N64 have source code to play with that might make creating an "ultimate" tool even harder still. However said ultimate tool will work for both the base ROM and likely any hacks made the "traditional" ROM hacker way.

 

[Smoker1]

Depending upon what the hacks do that can get tricky. It is certainly not going to just be a matter of finding the new address and decrypting or decompressing a ROM like it might have been for the various official emulated versions or other N64 emulators people are injecting things into.

If they are just assets then chances are it can be ported out, or maybe remade, in reasonably short order as these things often still want the original assets to build the code. Might even be reasonably doable (especially as we technically have the source code to the ROM) to make a tool that is aware of things to know where something else exists now -- we have seen a few things like this before (pokemon tools often will read all the various pointers down the line to find something that has been relocated, and atrius' golden sun tools also provide an example of some more content aware stuff) so it is not unbroken ground. The further the hacks get from the original ROM in terms of general overview (as in the stages can be entirely new but if it is still the original notion of 15 stages going off similar layout to the original ROM then that is not much of a change for this sort of analysis) then the harder this gets (Someone starts expanding this to dozens of levels beyond what the original had and that gets trickier by far. I don't have the most experience with Mario 64 hacks but I have seen what I consider amazing hacks do things that would be fairly minimal changes to the ROM, and have seen new kids rock up and play with a GUI editor to in turn radically change things despite the end result being junk and also not that apparent in normal play. Good hackers making good hacks have good reason to make radical changes as well though, and it is far from unexpected for such a thing to happen.).

If the hacks start messing with code (different jumps, functionality and what have you, like I have seen a few go in for) then that gets far harder again -- any such hack made before this likely was an assembly hack laid on top of the original and thus won't likely decompile to anything useful. You would then have to figure out what the assembly tweaks did and port or remake it accordingly in the source code. Now you do have the added bonus that you can probably map the source code to the resulting parts of the ROM (indeed if the statement from the people making the decompilation is anything to go by this was the original intent of such a thing).

Short version. I would probably start this sort of thing off by building essentially the ultimate Mario 64 hacking tool. Something that starts at the very heart of the ROM and with an awareness of all the general pointer layouts from the start right through to general 3d models and locations of any binary code (this tends to be moved far less by hackers as it is a nightmare and gains little). Having the original ROM's source code will help here as well as you know you will not be missing anything.
With that you will know what is where and what is changed.
It will also want to do a comparison with the original ROM to see what is changed in general for the binary (as in what the CPU runs, not the whole ROM) and then alert you to do any further analysis.
It will however also be useful for anyone looking to smoosh together hacked ROMs in general, cut things down to run on say the Wii emulator, port them out to source ports, possibly some of the speedrun/TAS/romhack speedrun set, and possibly also those seeking to make them in the first place (assuming people are going to continue making "traditional" mario 64 hacks at this point).
If you can program (literally any language that can read files and manipulate them should do here) then if you skip any 3d viewers, sound playback, 3d editors or general graphics editors it is not the hardest thing; it is little more than a very crude database or archive unpacking program.

This one is heavy Modification. You start in the Basement, certain Enemies are in different Places, Coins can be in different places, you name it. The Sky one (Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow, and whatnot), that can be Accessed by outside the Castle. LOL. YoshiParty made that for the Wii back in the Day.

 

[Deleted User]

Personally playing last impact would be my dream. That game is amazing.

 

[FAST6191]

This one is heavy Modification. You start in the Basement, certain Enemies are in different Places, Coins can be in different places, you name it. The Sky one (Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow, and whatnot), that can be Accessed by outside the Castle. LOL. YoshiParty made that for the Wii back in the Day.

That may not be that heavy modification in terms of differences in the ROM for the purposes of this discussion, or at least I can see a path to it being within the general original nature of the ROM.
Most games will have say a level layout, and then various extra "layers" for enemies, pickups, possibly hazards if they are not level geometry. Very possible to create a superb "more of the same but different/harder" type mod working within such a paradigm as well (indeed a well executed hack like that I would rather play than a fancy we thought these mechanics needed changing but still messed it up). Most of the space likely taken up with this as well so if you did the hex compare and it said 80% bytes different or different location then it could still be fine for porting out.
The castle layout being different is not necessarily anything drastic either -- most of the pictures and whatever are little more than glorified door teleports or rooms to load as far as the underlying game is concerned.
It really is the more levels than stock, behaviour changes and assembly mods to mechanics that make porting out hacks to such a thing a harder task.

On the other hand it could be rather more radical (can be easier in some ways as a hacker to do such things) so really is time to investigate.

 

[M7L7NK7]

Cant wait til the goldeneye decompilation is done

 

[zerox521]

Cant wait til the goldeneye decompilation is done

Unfortunately, even if they actually finish doing so I highly doubt that anyone would even dare to port it somewhere like it happened with Mario 64 just to avoid legal issues.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Unfortunately, even if they actually finish doing so I highly doubt that anyone would even dare to port it somewhere like it happened with Mario 64 just to avoid legal issues.

If at all, Goldeneye is the best option for such a project.
Unlike Mario, which is entirely handled legally by Nintendo, Goldeneye is screwed up between Nintendo, Rare and 007 for licensing.
None of them own the 100% rights to redistribute nor claim full ownership of the N64 original, that's why it hasn't seen a proper rerelease since its original runprint.

So it would have more of a room to breathe if a Goldeneye PC port were to happen, more so given how there have been already some attempts at recreating it in modern FPS engines, without much legal repercussion (from what I know, correct me if I'm wrong).
Besides, FPS games are widely available, so such a decomp for its engine to add mouse look or right analog stick support would be the superioir way to play it.

 

[FAST6191]

If at all, Goldeneye is the best option for such a project.
Unlike Mario, which is entirely handled legally by Nintendo, Goldeneye is screwed up between Nintendo, Rare and 007 for licensing.
None of them own the 100% rights to redistribute nor claim full ownership of the N64 original, that's why it hasn't seen a proper rerelease since its original runprint.

So it would have more of a room to breathe if a Goldeneye PC port were to happen, more so given how there have been already some attempts at recreating it in modern FPS engines, without much legal repercussion (from what I know, correct me if I'm wrong).
Besides, FPS games are widely available, so such a decomp for its engine to add mouse look or right analog stick support would be the superioir way to play it.

I would imagine it is fairly clear cut and while Rare (these days Microsoft) would not be in the open to release it I imagine they still own the code to it all (I doubt the code would have reverted with the branding rights) and that would be enough to scupper that one if they wanted.
How litigious Rare/Microsoft might be in this compared to Nintendo I don't know -- Microsoft have some fun lawyers but I have very few examples of them going after modders and such like.
What, if any, leg Nintendo have to stand on in this fight I don't know but it would be minimal and they would be limited to maybe an amicus brief/amicus curiae or if the sale to Microsoft left some options then that.

That said while distribution of binaries is tricky source diffs would be a different matter. I doubt anybody is likely to face legal issues for making and distributing a diff.

 

[Deleted User]

Cant wait til the goldeneye decompilation is done

We either get a decompilation or the Unreal engine remake.
https://twitter.com/007GoldenEye25

 

[sorabora]

Cant wait til the goldeneye decompilation is done

Unfortunately, even if they actually finish doing so I highly doubt that anyone would even dare to port it somewhere like it happened with Mario 64 just to avoid legal issues.

If at all, Goldeneye is the best option for such a project.
Unlike Mario, which is entirely handled legally by Nintendo, Goldeneye is screwed up between Nintendo, Rare and 007 for licensing.
None of them own the 100% rights to redistribute nor claim full ownership of the N64 original, that's why it hasn't seen a proper rerelease since its original runprint.

So it would have more of a room to breathe if a Goldeneye PC port were to happen, more so given how there have been already some attempts at recreating it in modern FPS engines, without much legal repercussion (from what I know, correct me if I'm wrong).
Besides, FPS games are widely available, so such a decomp for its engine to add mouse look or right analog stick support would be the superioir way to play it.

I would imagine it is fairly clear cut and while Rare (these days Microsoft) would not be in the open to release it I imagine they still own the code to it all (I doubt the code would have reverted with the branding rights) and that would be enough to scupper that one if they wanted.
How litigious Rare/Microsoft might be in this compared to Nintendo I don't know -- Microsoft have some fun lawyers but I have very few examples of them going after modders and such like.
What, if any, leg Nintendo have to stand on in this fight I don't know but it would be minimal and they would be limited to maybe an amicus brief/amicus curiae or if the sale to Microsoft left some options then that.

That said while distribution of binaries is tricky source diffs would be a different matter. I doubt anybody is likely to face legal issues for making and distributing a diff.

Wait...were more games involved in that leak? For some reason I thought it was only Mario 64. Hence that’s being worked on.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Wait...were more games involved in that leak? For some reason I thought it was only Mario 64. Hence that’s being worked on.

What leak?
Super Mario 64 was never leaked.
This project has nothing to do with the Nintendo leaks.

The PC port was being worked on for months based on the decompilation source code at Github, which has been going on for years already.
Please, do some research before making such claims.

Only coincidence was the leaks happened at the exact time the PC port was released, but they have nothing to do with each other aside from poor timing.

 

[sorabora]

What leak?
Super Mario 64 was never leaked.
This project has nothing to do with the Nintendo leaks.

The PC port was being worked on for months based on the decompilation source code at Github, which has been going on for years already.
Please, do some research before making such claims.

Only coincidence was the leaks happened at the exact time the PC port was released, but they have nothing to do with each other aside from poor timing.

Ah...thank you for the clarification. I conflated them.

Also, pro tip: no claims were made. Neither good faith questions nor statements containing the subjective "I thought" have any veracity towards statements of assertions, or as you put it, "claims."

 

[Asia81]

Is it possible to get a better 3D model of mario?
Like using the one from Odyssey for example.