Why not try port Super Mario 64 without vfx?

[LordKraken]

8 hours ago, Atariboy said:

No, it's reverse engineered source code built from scratch that doesn't infringe on any of Nintendo's copyrights. It's why it hasn't been killed yet.

 

It's also why to compile it you need to provide your own Super Mario 64 rom to extract the copyrighted assets necessary to turn it into a playable port of Super Mario 64. It's the finished effort that's illegal to distribute, not the source code that was independently created that doesn't infringe on any Nintendo copyright.

 

Same concept with this new Ocarina of Time port. 

It's not that simple. Reverse engineering is legal in some circumstances but not always. It needs to be done for a good reason like interoparibility for instance. So it's a grey area, and I wouldnt bet on Nintendo closing its eyes forever on that.

 

[Atariboy]

The gaming press has widely reported that it's legal, so I'll stick with that.

 

Plus if Nintendo thought they even remotely stood a chance at eliminating it, a cease & desist would've came out. Yet despite regularly shutting down infringing projects, Super Mario 64 HD's source continues to be hosted unhindered by Nintendo and Ocarina of Time HD so far has also been immune. They even seemingly realize that they don't have a leg to stand on, despite the competition it has created with Super Mario 3D All-Stars and their Switch Online service.

 

I suppose it doesn't really matter in the context of this thread though. I think most everyone responding in this thread can agree that the least of the roadblocks in the way of Super Mario 64 being ported to the Jaguar are legality issues. 

[LordKraken]

If I had the technical capacity to do that kind of programming magic (which I don't) I would be really really careful when touching anything Nintendo related.

 

Now that legal aspect set apart, let's go back to the interesting part. Doable without texture and vfx or not?

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

On 3/23/2022 at 1:22 PM, Zerosquare said:

It is? That's news to me.

I digged through the description of the registers. The different modes make this a little complicated. Gouraud cannot render behind color keyed backgrounds. Why did they have to reuse registers? Anyway in Gouraud mode you need the GPU to set the first 4px in the registers. So for small spans this is almost like writing directly to RAM (but the blitter uses WE to not need to read the pixels!). But longer spans run at the full memory / bus width. It is so fast that I would place page boundaries out of the scanlines. Z buffer is an option and does exactly what you expect. You can read z-buffer, write, or do both. All operations cost one memory access.

I could say that Mario consists of spheres. As last layer I draw the front facing triangles of this sphere and don't need a z-buffer for this: Bam! Three times more fillrate than the rest of the level. Anywy the new Mario64 build on N64 shows off at places with large view over the level.

I think colors can be used, too. For 4px you do the interpolation on the GPU anyway. If aftre rounding there is an integer part >0 for color increment over 4 px, why not write it the specific register? So phong shading: White highlight on red hat should be possible.

[+CyranoJ]

Well get on with it then, we're all waiting. Typing stuff here isn't speeding the process up. 

[+Stephen]

Wow - we haven't heard this level of philosophical number-wanging since the almighty VladR graced us with his awesome Wipeout port.

[42bs]

22 hours ago, ArneCRosenfeldt said:

I digged through the description of the registers.

Please give us a break until you've done your first code. I'd say most of us coding on the Jaguar did read the documentation.

But maybe you understand this better: "Alle Theorie ist grau - entscheidend is auf‘m Platz"

(For those English speaking: Theory is grey, important is what happens on the (football) playfield. And for those US natives: Football means the game with the round not eggy ball)
?

[+CyranoJ]

1 hour ago, 42bs said:

Football means the game with the round not eggy ball)

Got it!

[roots.genoa]

There are indeed feet in the picture. That must be correct, then.

[saboteur]

7 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

Got it!

Pfft - Real men got wood(s)

 

Edited April 26, 2022 by saboteur

[42bs]

10 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

Got it!

German saying: Are you playing Golf, or do you still have sex?

[+CyranoJ]

23 minutes ago, 42bs said:

German saying: Are you playing Golf, or do you still have sex?

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/shocked-golfers-spot-topless-man-12295967

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, 42bs said:

German saying: Are you playing Golf, or do you still have sex?

Is it an equivalent to "Do you have a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"?" ?

[42bs]

1 minute ago, roots.genoa said:

Is it an equivalent to "Do you have a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"?" ?

Not quiet, as the German saying applies to the fact, that mostly elder (wealthy) men play Golf. (At least in the past.)

[j1mp4ck]

On 24/3/2022 at 17:21, LordKraken said:

Si tuviera la capacidad técnica para hacer ese tipo de magia de programación (que no tengo), tendría mucho cuidado al tocar cualquier cosa relacionada con Nintendo.

 

Ahora que aparte el aspecto legal, volvamos a la parte interesante. ¿Se puede hacer sin textura y vfx o no?

I find a special demo similar with fps counter.

https://youtu.be/yi69CwTJ074

[JagChris]

Reposted for convenience

 

https://youtu.be/yi69CwTJ074

 

 

err it won't link.

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by JagChris

[Punisher5.0]

You have to paste it as plain text to embed it

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

I don't care, it just bugs me when people don't know how to link......?

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[JagChris]

Thanks. I tried to edit it for plain text but it didn't take.

[Jag64]

4 hours ago, JagChris said:

Thanks. I tried to edit it for plain text but it didn't take.

No wonder the community's had 25 years to make the Jaguar reach its potential and gotten nada. We're still mastering copy and paste as plain text. ?

[j1mp4ck]

Take it easy, dreams is free. If You can see the vídeo, is great.

[philipj]

Don't know man... I've learned a great chasing the Jaguar dream despite the longevity of time; things I was totally clueless about in my teens... back then I wanted to program the "Sega Genesis" with no way of even knowing where to start. If anything the reading up on Jag related tech stuff has been quite the learning experience having to do research on things trying to understand how the darn thing works especially having no education in any of sort of thing. I know it's late in the game, but having hacking it out this long I certainly won't give up on it now.

Edited May 3, 2022 by philipj

[+Gemintronic]

The N64 was made to run Super Mario 64.  The Jaguar was made to run Cybermorph.

 

In order to avoid the ground one must design for the hardware you have.  So, a 3D platformer is going to look and play radically different.

[Jag64]

8 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

The Jaguar was made to run Cybermorph.

I did not know this. See, I would have thought the SDK(s) would have been better if software was considered more during development. In fact, I swear I read several times where Jack Tramiel had not even thought about software with the Jaguar early on, creating one of the biggest problems for the console.

 

I agree with your point; why try to make a Ford rearend work with a Chevy transmission on a Dodge engine? It serves little purpose than for someone to say, "I did it." And humans love doing things they're told they can't. Is it a waste of time? To me, but I can't define how others enjoy spending their time.

 

And anyway, back to the point - while Nintendo software was designed parallel with hardware (making your statement about SM64 and the N64 true), Atari's software, or lack there of, is well-documented.

 

tl;dr Was the Jaguar really made to run anything in particular? Because it feels like every single title, to this day, has been shoehorned onto the thing, usually working around multiple design problems.

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

23 hours ago, Jag64 said:

And anyway, back to the point - while Nintendo software was designed parallel with hardware (making your statement about SM64 and the N64 true), Atari's software, or lack there of, is well-documented.

N64 video hardware was created by US companies (one for graphics, one for Rambus) and was intended for military flight simulators. Famously, it is not really suited for games. SuperFx was purpose build for StarFox in Britain -- like the Jag -- same year .

Tell me, whats wrong with Jerry ? I think, it came with a great library. Also Jerry can read audio data just fine. The problems on the bus are pure hardware. Every hardware devs knows that more bandwidth is better. The manual even states that if you need to use Jerry together with slower hardware on the same bus, you need to switch the data rate. So the interface to Jerry was considered fast.

 

Blitters were always a shitshow: Amiga cannot do colorKeys, Atari STe is even slower . The Jaguar is actually a vast improvement, but sadly not an improvement over the Lynx. The Lynx blitter became OP it seems.

 

Have you seen all the special instructions in the DSP and GPU ? And how carefully CRY was chosen to allow for the uncolored lights in Doom ( Ultima Underworld ) and Tie fighter ?

 

If you want to read from the DSP, you have to request the address and read back data exactly after 6 cycles because there is no latch. If this speed does not suit the 68k, then halt it? Also I think 6 cycles for a request which enters Jerry, goes through the tranceiver into the DSP, sorts priority with DSP, reads back, goes through system bus and into Tom all in 6 cycles is okay. I still think that it is funny that you can read out the sine table in ROM without such delicate timing. Probably, the DSP kicks you out of its local SRAM, while the ROM is there to serve you.

Edited May 4, 2022 by ArneCRosenfeldt
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