I made my N64 render over 8000 Polys (Koopa Karnival)

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Videos Referenced:
Source rewrite: • I made my N64 render o...
Walls: • The Problems with Wall...
Render blows: • Why Mario 64's Render ...

[@KazeN64]

What is your favourite way to boost the youtube algorithm? Leave a comment down below 😍

[@Invaliput]

By commenting, liking the video and sharing it with my frriends :D But for real thats SO impressive :0 I really have to get a flashcard soon and play this on my real N64

[@TheInfamousLegend27]

cooming over kaze's dev techniques

[@daskampffredchen9242]

Commenting is pretty effective But what do you guys think of it? ;)

[@SpykoYT]

by smashing that like button with a mallet

[@nin10doadict]

I'm a fan of the like button. Sometimes I even leave likes on comments.

[@johnclark926]

Bowser making an animatronic ride where he rewrites all of his defeats to be victories is genius and is an excellent use of environmental storytelling lmao

[@iantaakalla8180]

It feels very Paper Mario subseries of him to make an amusement park where he won.

[@somerobloxdude3699]

Best part ngl

[@shufflecat3334]

Is it a rewrite though? What if the Mario games are just Mario boasting about his victories which never happened? I mean, no one was around to witness any of these fights, so.....

[@slickrickstyles]

@@shufflecat3334 yes look at how many lives mario loses on his way to beat Bowser. Bowser's losses may be emotionally heavier but they are much less numbered.

[@cassandra-show]

V much like Super Mario RPG bowser

[@KazeN64]

Quick addendum: I've modelled this level around this efficient rendering technique rather than the other way around. Limitations bread creativity as they say.

[@Caswagna93]

🥖

[@Leymora]

:bread:

[@horsepie1279]

hehe. bread.

[@BlueToad07]

Bread

[@mariolovespillows3838]

Cool

[@TJ-Henry-Yoshi]

As always, great work! This looks fantastic and I'll definitely have to play this when it releases! Also, glad people seem to be liking my cameo

[@iZePlayz]

An a press... (🅰️÷2 ≠ 🅰️)

[@luigifan001]

You are a lil part of the SM64 community

[@luigifan001]

Like a Stan Lee Cameo in the MCU

[@RabbitEarsCh]

Thank you for asking the questions on everyone's minds. I love it.

[@juliewinchester1488]

We stan our ace king

[@Cyranek]

Cannot describe how perfectly these videos match my niche interests within computer graphics programming.

[@Maxatal]

Exactly.

[@pixelatedsethtube1271]

U lucky bastard haha

[@MrGreatDane2]

You're a graphics programmer?

[@thor.halsli]

@@MrGreatDane2 Everyone boy born late 80s early 90s has the computer graphics interest i suspect

[@MrGreatDane2]

@@thor.halsli That might be it

[@Joskilani]

glad to see tj ""henry"" yoshi is still asking the questions we need

[@RADkate]

interesting, even today in modern games overdraw is still the main limiting factor while polycounts are more or less irrelevant

[@shlokshah5379]

Now you have to go out of your way to not get 100 fps in current hardware.

[@SnoFitzroy]

@@shlokshah5379 No, you don't. Modern hardware still struggles with a lot of triple A stuff (You didn't say anytyhing about the bleeding edge. Modern would be, at latest, the 1080ti. Modern doesn't mean the most recent chronologically)

[@drjian6852]

You forgot the part where AAA games are needlessy more than 100gb

[@Mizu2023]

@@drjian6852 all because of the game copying the model/resources like 2000 times

[@mjcox242]

To be fair triangle count can still be an issue Shader passes are split into vertex and fragment Vertex is for every point on a model and fragment on every pixel At 4k there are so many triangles that a character model with 250k tris seems like a joke with the 4Million pixels they are taking up however if you have more triangles than pixels all those skinned mesh calculations on the CPU and vertex passes on the GPU add up it's just as resolution increases the amount of fragment passes run increases exponentially

[@seraph4581]

This is shaping up to be the best hack of all time. Actually at this point it shouldn't even be called a hack. It's a full fangame on real hardware. The level of professionalism and attention to detail is amazing. Simply stunning.

[@xdragoonzero0]

I hope the source code optimizations are something that can be used for other N64 mods going foward. It would be huge for modding scene.

[@Tommy-pv1vh]

Wonder how much mario 64 is actually left

[@johnrickard8512]

I'm pretty sure that he has turned the entire engine inside out at this point, so we can probably say that the only "Super Mario 64" left in this game is perhaps the API calls and file formats. Aside from that this thing is 100% custom and the engine is a freaking work of art. I mean it looks like a Dreamcast game. Need I say more? Looking "next gen" is something only a handful of game consoles have ever managed...But I think we can say that the Nintendo 64 was very much there which is why the Gamecube had to be so overpowered.

[@vergil114]

3:55 that pop in animation is so god damn genius and I'm not sure why this hasn't been thought about for the past 26 years (Unless it has been)

[@Aidea._.]

I mean, this sort of pop-in has been used before (BOTW and pokemon Sw/Sh are two that come to mind) but when you can still clearly see the landscape beyond the pop-in, it tends to look kind of bad. But at the same time, the low fps animations don't look much better... I guess the problem really is that now that our current hardware can handle much larger things, it just feels kind of jarring when we see these signs of technical limitations.

[@Jizzrazz]

If i remember correctly, i think kaze has pointed out in a previous vid that banjo kazooie uses this animation in the load save/new game screen. The coo coo that pops out of the clock does this style but not a distance thing.

[@pastaman64]

Didn't Donkey Kong 64 do something similar with things like Crankys lab?

[@SmashyPlays]

pokemon sword and shield do it

[@ceej5690]

A lot of games do it. though most prefer a fade in which doesn't look as good. A lot of modern games also just place the NPC's in a way where its difficult to see the NPC's before they load in, but that isn't possible sometimes especially in open world games. Still a very neat looking animation tho

[@Sylocat]

Thanks for giving Henry a GOOD question, the poor guy's been through more than enough mockery.

[@stevoisiak]

3:55 That pop-in animation is so cool!

[@inthefade]

Yep it's such a clever way to do it. I'd even like it on the emulator version just because it is so cute.

[@Booksds]

It reminds me of the cardboard cutout enemies in the Cloud Cuckooland level from Banjo-Tooie

[@maxrichards5925]

I laughed when I saw TJ “Henry” yoshi again lmao. These tricks you did to make this level run as well as it does are amazing!

[@maxrichards5925]

I wonder if they’ll be a widescreen option by the time this is finished.

[@TulipQ]

I can never get over the absurdly smooth Mario 64 gameplay in these videos.

[@ticenits1926]

it's almost a good thing the original didnt release like this, no other developer could have kept up!

[@elias0240]

@@ticenits1926 That‘s a hypothetical scenario I think about a lot. What if something like this released instead of Super Mario 64 back then? How would it have affected other companies and what would Nintendo look like today?

[@Chipmunkboy]

3:48 I'm glad you added some sort of Emulator/Console detection for toggling some things on or off.. I just wonder if this function will go any further

[@KazeN64]

Emu detection changes a few things. mainly: 1) Turns on 60fps mode (off by default on N64, consistent 30 flooks better) 2) Turn on widescreen mode 3) Disable draw and spawn distances and, this is not added yet but it might, 4) Audio reverb enhancements

[@Minty_Meeo]

@@KazeN64 How does the emulator detection work, anyway? My guess would be abusing the JIT, but I'm sure there are countless other minor inaccuracies you can use.

[@KazeN64]

@@Minty_Meeo i don't know what a JIT is. I'm using clock cycles and RCP registers for this.

[@Minty_Meeo]

@@KazeN64 Just-In Time recompiler of the emulator. I'll give an example for how I think I would do it in Dolphin Emulator since that's what I know. On real hardware, there is an instruction cache. Dolphin Emulator does not and can not (speedily) emulate the instruction cache. On real hardware, to avoid using stale instruction data, any self-modifying code or relocatable code loading is recommended to use the isync instruction to clear the instruction cache, and 99% of examples do. Dolphin Emulator uses the isync instruction as a signal that it should flush the current JIT output and start fresh. What I think would work would be a self-modifying function written in asm (aligned on a 32 byte boundary) which changes an instruction ahead in the function before it gets cached *without* using the isync instruction to notify the emulator. On real hardware, it would execute the modified instruction. On emulator, it would execute the stale recompiled code instead. Instruction cache emulation is one of those things I think will be an issue for a long time, so it's a safe bet.

[@KazeN64]

​@@Minty_Meeo ah yeah, self modifying could work work to detect this as well on most emulators

[@CAEC64]

this looks like a level you'd see on gamecube wtf, excellent job man!

[@ebridgewater]

Not close but still very impressive.

[@shazmosushi]

Definitely could pass as an early gen Gamecube game. There are some hyper-optimized early gen Gamecube game like Rogue Squadron (and late-gen GC game like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory) which are next level though. Fore sure looks better than the 4 player multiplayer videos of "Red Steel", an early-gen Wii game.

[@lajeandom]

@@shazmosushi haha I have been wanting to play this game for a while. I really miss it as it was pretty fun. Nothing ground breaking but it was a good little game with some nice level design.

[@toastedmatt9387]

@@shazmosushithinking back on it rogue squadron was pretty graphically impressive for a GameCube game

[@-Patali-]

@@ebridgewater Wrong. It is close.

[@j_c_93]

I really love the NPC "pop-in" animation. That is brilliant and more N64 games should have done it.

[@KrazzyKlown]

This man is making a whole full-fledged Mario game and is worried about Nintendo shutting him down. They should offer him a job!

[@fruitsnackia2012]

yeah but knowing nintendo that exactly what they would do. unfortunatly

[@BBWahoo]

NINTENDO HIRE THIS MAN, but unironically. Do it Nintendo, DO IT.

[@TheMamaluigi300]

Maybe he could pitch the game to them

[@tekayo63]

@@TheMamaluigi300 Pitch an N64 game to Nintendo? In 2022?

[@ticenits1926]

he's pretty well protected here. All he has done is written an elaborate patch for the original game. He is not distributing the game itself, any original code or assets. It is as pure to the spirit of a mod as anything can be. Not that nintendo wont try, and im sure they're aware of this and will at least send a few cease and desists because thats just what they do. But the same way nintendo cant pull emulators should apply here as well.

[@Yipper64]

4:04 some games *really* make it work, Kirby for example, I dont know what it is, but in that game it just feels right and looks adorable. But pop in works too. Its just, if you have a lot of characters, and they *all* do this pop in thing, like 3 feet away, it can become very immersion breaking as well. I dont think there is a one size fits all solution.

[@inthefade]

Definitely different solutions are required for different situations.

[@JrIcify]

This feels like Mario Sunshine now, but with lots of little stories and random activities. There hasn't been a really good game like this since Hat in Time.

[@BigNateDoggOG]

Dude this looks like a GameCube game keep up the great work!

[@retrofraction]

Cute pop-in is the correct choice!

[@SleepyAdam]

This straight up looks like a hat in time level. Ridiculously cool.

[@YanntastischGER]

This level is just breathtaking. I just am so amzated how much effort you put into making games for this old beloved console.

[@Gerorgebushsr]

Another TJ “”””Henry”””” Yoshi moment

[@captainnintendo]

I can most certainly agree on that how long distance = low fps thing looking aweful. I remember Nintendo did the same with all the NPCs in Super Mario Odyssey. That pop-in you've gone for has a lot more charm and character to it.

[@michaelfixedsys7463]

Koopa Karnival feels like it should've been in a Mario game by now, you just feel so official.

[@iantaakalla8180]

It helps that Pinna Park exists so an amusement park is not outside Mario imagination, and that Super Mario RPG has Bowser pretending to be successful, so Koopa Karnival is something that could happen.

[@chisecrecy4974]

That pop-in technique is actually a genius idea and fits very well with this course, nicely done.

[@MarsonNG]

"I refuse to go with the low fps animation approach" A very good choice. That's probably the worst optimisation idea implemented in modern games and it always bothers me to no end. In games like Mario odyssey you see objects or NPCs that aren't even too far away just have their frames cut to like 5 fps. It sticks out and it looks so bad it makes the game feel low quality and unpolished. switching to low poly models, low res textures or simply not drawing them at all are all superior solutions.

[@user-TheTrueGibly]

Mario odyssey almost solved it most noticeably in new donk city where before you get there they have seperate hidden citizens that fill and populate the city instead of the usual ais walking around everywhere (except for the couple ais that are still loaded in which tops it all off) except that only works before you get there through the power line and they all disappear onwards. they should've had a check for when your not looking (super high up on a building or something) and spawn back in all the stationary ais instead of that super ugly low framerate animation for such a recent game. super mario odyssey 2 will most likely be a game changer tho, they'll have everything figured out im assuming

[@bethmoth22]

I absolutely love the idea of enemies physically springing up when Mario approaches because it feels more intentional and doesn't really suspend your disbelief as much as thinking "oh I'm breaking the game"

[@angeldude101]

Given some of the final worlds in official games, this seems completely in-character for Bowser. There's a reason he's used in TVTropes' page image for "Egopolis."

[@bloodifang]

This all goes over my head and its extremely impressive, love the level concept, loosk cute and packed

[@weinsim3856]

was that actually tj henry yoshi who read that comment??

[@KazeN64]

YES! I asked him on twitter to help me out.

[@weinsim3856]

@@KazeN64 you are a LEGEND

[@jedhaydney4176]

As many other have said: you are very talented in computing but what I find is impressive as well is how you keep the atmosphere of the world of Mario in your mods; Bowser being egotistical, building theme parks of himself, showing how he 'beat' Mario, just like in 'Paper Mario' and 'Mario & Luigi:' and the enemies getting a laugh out of Mario being squashed. Not mentioning your incredible environments either. You can really tell you have poured your heart into this.

[@SpacePaincake]

Im surprised nintendo never did a mario stage where the enemies thought mario was some bozo dressed as mario

[@rockpixels]

I've been tuning into your live streams on twitch and I absolutely love the progress you've made so far! I can't wait for the final release of this rom hack, I'm very excited to play!

[@sublime_tv]

Seeing Mario 64 run at 60fps on emulator without AI bs really is an amazing feat. It's so surreal. It would be insane to see this kind of treatment for other N64 titles, such as Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64. Great work!

[@grayareagames]

Have you tried somehow adding LOD's to the engine, by just switching between models at a certain distance? I would imagine that would allow you to make much more detailed maps and characters without much of a performance hit.

[@KazeN64]

LODs are already supported but they require an extra matrix multiplication in the basegame. i've gotten it down to just a vector dor product in this engine. the problem with LODs is that you have to split meshes which in our current tooling causes duplicate texture loads, meaning it's almost never worth it unless you have a mesh with unique textures only.

[@hamcha]

THE CUTE POP IN IS SO NICE! I have no doubt this is already in some other game but definitely kudos for incorporating the limitation in the design instead of doing awful workarounds (or pretend it isnt there like many AAA releases do nowadays). As always Kaze, your content is amazing and you're an inspiration, it's such a shame that a certain grumpy company has it in for you.

[@RootVegetabIe]

Oh, it's a similar idea to the one level from Sunshine. Except it's good and has fun ideas.

[@greyfox1127]

This is super impressive once again. Love the pop in animation idea and the level design and art style is all sorts of amazing. The "Bowser's Victories" idea is stunning too. Love it! I'm more into homebrew on the Sega systems but this is so good it has turned my head 🙂 Keep up the great work and keep making the videos - super informative and just brilliant work all round!

[@JohnDuthie]

Such a unique channel!! Awesome storytelling and direction.

[@c.nelson3148]

Great work! This looks so brilliant! The level design and all the clever little touches looks like it could have been produced by a Triple A studio.

[@mylittleparody2277]

A perfect and addictive video. As usual. GG for the astonishingly good work!

[@cousinslim]

Never heard of this project but I really enjoy the work and thought that goes beyond just this video. Great to see people putting in work like this so many years after this platforms end

[@RabbitEarsCh]

What a cool level. I'm glad all your optimizations have come together to allow you to make something this sick. Especially the Wiggler roller coaster!

[@twiistcone9383]

Bro, kaze, you are such a genius not only in developing but also in making original story lines

[@trulyinfamous]

I played one of your hacks recently and while I don't really like the way Mario 64 controls, the fact you made the camera behave was wonderful and let me enjoy it. I'm looking forward to this one.

[@arklima6804]

Cara, é impressionante o trabalho que vc faz, eu fico morrendo de vontade de jogar os jogos que vc cria. Meus parabéns!

[@retiredaccount0]

Aside from your brilliant optimizations your level design ability is also off the charts. Love to see it

[@pipocadocemurcha1001]

You are incredible with this projects and optimizations! You are the best!

[@TheMeowthTeamV2]

bro the stuff you do with this game is really cool can't wait for this to come out

[@bobmalibaliyahmarley1551]

This looks awesome! Can't wait for a full ''walkthrough'' of all the museum set-pieces and attractions!

[@TylerMcVicker1]

So good.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

Love the way that rollercoaster moves lol This is amazing man, very impressed (having seen a couple of your other related videos too). Nice work. Hope you can avoid any interference from....yknow

[@MrUtak]

Excited to play it when it releases! Yesterday I installed Several of your mod hacks on my retropie and we played with the n64 bluetooth controller and it was a blast. Waluigi taco special and Peach's Fury are really great games (haven't played any other). Also SM64 60fps ran amazingly well.

[@Kiwi-fl8te]

Thank you for doing everything you're doing Kaze. You're a fantastic person and we really appreciate you for it.

[@nothanksfools]

This is incredible. The work you've done on mario 64 is inspiring.

[@DevineInnovations]

I don't understand how someone could be such a technical and creative genius AND have so much motivation to do all of this. I wish I was half as awesome as you are.

[@ciennaquidd6486]

I love how this feels like Witchyworld in Banjo Tooie. This looks soo cool. Kaze you're always blowing us away. :)

[@psiga]

Art! The engine rework is art, the level architecture is art, the metanarrative is art, and the authentic aesthetic in the graphic design is art! I am so impressed with this.

[@shanerpressley]

We appreciate these code breakdowns just as much as the romhack itself. I hope you continue to make more great educational breakdown content like this in the future

[@kaiser9321]

The idea behind Koopa Karnival is actually hilarious and genius

[@oshkoshbjoshnosh9306]

That’s like 1 more than like… 7999 tris!

[@gustavo_paganelli]

No way.

[@CAEC64]

@@gustavo_paganelli norway

[@DallinBackstrom]

The level looks very cute and fun! My first instinct for creating a very large area with many triangles would be to heavily subdivide it, probably by using a lot of twisting tunnels and enclose areas. However, the fact that it is much cheaper to fill the sky than to fill textures cause me to think that this naive approach would just lead to smaller areas, which look less impressive, and don't feel as coherent. The way you've subdivided the level both vertically and horizontally, and then allowing the player to "peek" over the walls, creates a very compelling sense of place, despite parts of the map being actively hidden for performance reasons. I also think the pop in animation is very cute! Excellent work as always!

[@Callieforniiaa]

So excited for this release! I’ve played the demo!

[@RhetticusRex]

Incredible!! There's going to be sound engine improvements next episode, my friends! I remember a commenter discussing the GBA's sound computing time, and certain games making optimizations. Kaze then said it would be a distant future improvement - so this is going to be even more special!

[@Golinth]

yo this looks insane! Very much looking forward to it

[@jakegfesser10]

I subbed! Awesome Video I absolutely love it! Cant wait til its released!

[@EasyStreet88599]

You have lots of talent and perseverance bravo it’s amazing!

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

the fact you fixed code issues in this game is amazing, with modern techniques and understanding and of course tools

[@Freshbrood]

Great work. I hope when you finally release your optimized rom you will leave plenty of notes in it so we can use the engine to make our own games.

[@SecretzOfMana]

This is so cool! I love the Squiggler!! Underrated / underused enemy. I don't know why they didn't just call it baby or mini Wiggler but it's so cute

[@PersianImm0rtal]

The art style of the game is so charming due to the technical limitations. It is truly a work of art! Thank you for making this a reality.

[@lunaumbra5179]

magical efforts Kaze. Keep at it!

[@zeromontalvan1514]

This is the proof that the most important thing on the performance of a game it's how much effort you put on it

[@projectazoth214]

Your work is amazing and an inspiration to fan creators everywhere! I have to say, though. That "cute" pop-in animation is giving me PTSD flashbacks from Pokemon Sword and Shield. 😭 Excited to see where this goes! Keep up the fantastic work.

[@ecstaticwooper368]

all of these levels are so creative, can't wait to play this game when it releases

[@blackktieguy]

So clever to use an animation pop-up rather than low-poly models. I remember Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie utilizing something similar to this with certain enemies and I thought that was a very intelligent design choice by the dev team. Amazing work as always!

[@therealseanw.stewart2071]

That's very cool, Kaze! I like this level so far. The pop-in is an interesting solution, like in Pokemon Sw/Sh

[@Anonymouthful]

Pushing the limits of older consoles something I such a fantastic idea, keep up the good job.

[@entropy-cat]

My flash cart is getting wet thinking about this project. Keep up the great work.

[@evanpaulsmithfalconfogolin6147]

Cant wait for this.... truly amazing work.

[@btarg1]

The TJ Cameo was a pleasant surprise! Love the new merch

I always find it interesting to how much more people can take out of old hardware thanks to their better, more modoern understanding. New games developed for old systems are so interesting and stunning in this regard. It reminds me of Micro Mages. A new, recently released NES game on steam that actually runs on original hardware. It is mind blowing what the devs managed to do with just an NES. It is far more impessive than any game I have ever seen on the NES.

[@King_Nipper]

Absolutely beautiful. I look forward to the release in 10~ years.

[@Lugmillord]

The desing of this level is super creative. The victory museum is pure gold. :D

[@RowanFN]

This is great, very excited to see it in the end and play for myself, Will also say if there is ever a way where using these optimisations could provide a HD/High Poly remake of the original, I think that would be good, what the ultimate SM64 game could of looked like :) That would probably get shut down pretty quick though hahaha

[@zcFOOD]

The majority of this video went way over my head. However, I was very engaged ! Great vid

[@soulite2574]

Gives me massive paper mario vibes from the comedy, awesome work!

[@MrEliwankenobi]

It never ceases to amaze me how you have been able to optimize, and create new content for this console! I wish someone would do the same for other consoles like the Sega Saturn!... Though I admit that would be a very difficult task. The Saturn wasn't an easy console to program for...

[@earthsteward70]

This honest to God looks like a late windows 98 game instead of an N64 game! and you didn't even implement frankly insane custom stuff like spyro-esque dynamic LOD, you used humanly reasonable code. I admire your work!

[@Eldoofus]

TJ """Henry""" Yoshi putting up the real questions, gotta love that lad.

[@wicksyboy2273]

I'm amazed by the things you pull off

[@prismavoid3764]

Very interested to see the sound rewrite video whenever it's ready - I remember the attempted 3DS ports of SM64 suffered from heavy lag because of the sound engine (couldn't even hit a stable 30 on the base model with sound enabled), seems like it's pretty inefficiently programmed in the base game.

[@elijahkeay3906]

I don’t think I can say I’ve ever been genuinely excited for the release of a rom hack before

[@TjMastery]

you man are an absolute unit! i could make the joke and ask when u gona implement sw raytracing just for the LOLs

[@budgetcoinhunter]

This course absolutely _oozes_ charm. The lava-platform ride section... just wow. I even love the detail of the 64 scene being the final boss with the star platform (and even two missing bombs?). Only thing I'm not too hot on is how the Shyguy doesn't seem that upset with Mario for popping his balloon.

[@lukeconsumerofcontent]

This is absolutely amazing! You're awesome!

[@movezig5]

Not only are these performance improvements impressive, but the level itself is a brilliant idea. I'm very much looking forward to when this hack is completed. (That said, take as much time as you need.)

[@hauntedsunsets]

I absolutely love the cute pop-in for NPCs, feels perfect for mario characters