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Exclusive: A fully functioning Zelda 64 PC port is ‘90% complete’ | VGC
The fan-made PC port could release as soon as next month, its developers have told VGC…
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A fully functioning Zelda 64 PC port is ‘90% complete’
- Thread starter JordanMiddler
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www.videogameschronicle.com
Very excited to see where that goes. I never messed with it myself but my understanding is the Mario 64 one is pretty good.
I dont even know why they publicize any of this until it's done. Stealth release it then it's out forever.
Nintendo's lawyers have done literally NOTHING to the SM64 decompilation or the PC Port. They've taken down precompiled .exes (just like they take down N64 ROMs) but they have taken down ZERO repositories. Stop spreading this misconception please.
nintendo cant do anything about it, as long as they don't couple it with the roms or give precompiled exes.
Alvis put it better than i did.
Yup. These things always get so close to the finish line and then start teasing and then Nintendo goes 'yeah no' and the whole thing gets shut down. I don't know why they keep making the same mistake.
Yep. People shouldn't be doing Nintendo fan projects at all, considering the stance that Nintendo takes in regards to shutting them down, but if someone does a fan project, they shouldn't announce it until it's actually done unless they want all their hard work taken away from them before it even has a chance to see the light of day.
They've done some interesting stuff to (hopefully) avoid the same DMCA's the super Mario 64 project ran into. Which were rather minor since it was on the .exe if I remember correctly
People are real quick to jump on the Nintendo lawyer train without any actual knowledge.
It'll be fine and I can't wait until we get stuff like Render96 for Ocarina of Time. It'd also be nice for them to implement some of those QoL mods like SM64 has received as well.
It'll be fine and I can't wait until we get stuff like Render96 for Ocarina of Time. It'd also be nice for them to implement some of those QoL mods like SM64 has received as well.
This is really surprising to me!
The article is a bit vague on the legality, writing
But the screenshots in the article look near-identical to the N64 original - it's clearly not just a reimplementation of the mechanics and maps, it "looks" just like OoT.
Is it really the case that if you just redraw something, IP law doesn't apply? Or does this project dodge IP law by requiring people to bring their own OoT assets through a ROM or cartridge, or something similar? It seems baffling to me that this would pass muster and I'd love to know more about why!
if it's similar to the M64 port, you need to source the rom with the assets.
lol this i will never understand why ppl just dont stfu and release it anonymously finished...? what will nintendo do then lol...
So this is essentially a project based on the reverse engineering to make it run as an application right?
This is exactly how it is legal.
The repositories released online contain nothing of Nintendo's assets and must be provided separately, theoretically from your own cartridge but most likely from illegally obtained means. The backing up of games has been deemed legal and using assets from a game without actually including the game itself has also been deemed legal, so they have no grounds upon which to DMCA the repositories because there's nothing there that's copyrighted.
'Zelda 64' is a name that I haven't heard in a while...
It's actually a little confusing in this context because this is about Ocarina of Time while there is a fan led recreation of the Spaceworld Zelda 64 demo being worked on thanks to the big leak.
So Zelda 64 is being worked on but this story isn't about that Zelda 64 demo, it's about an Ocarina of Time port.
I am nothing if not a pedant.
Buzzing for the potential of this though. The dream of 60fps, widescreen Ocarina is amazing. Tons of detail in the article, got me excited!
It's actually a little confusing in this context because this is about Ocarina of Time while there is a fan led recreation of the Spaceworld Zelda 64 demo being worked on thanks to the big leak.
So Zelda 64 is being worked on but this story isn't about that Zelda 64 demo, it's about an Ocarina of Time port.
I am nothing if not a pedant.
Buzzing for the potential of this though. The dream of 60fps, widescreen Ocarina is amazing. Tons of detail in the article, got me excited!
Yes, it runs as a native executable. The SM64 repository has actually been converted to a number of other platforms including Android and even the Switch.
My understanding is that it's like this:
Nintendo made ocarina of time by writing code, let's say 2+3=5
These coders are making a system that says x+y = z but pull the x and y values from this ROM.
So there is nothing in the actual code, all appearances that it looks like the original come from the ROM.
That makes sense, thanks! I think I was confused by the article saying "it's legal because they've recreated the game from scratch" - I understand how that's fine for the engine etc, but it didn't seem right to me that you could recreate the *assets* from scratch. If you need to bring your own assets from the original game, that squares with my understanding of what's ok.
In terms of raw coding, no, I imagine many instances are pretty much identical to the original code. Take your 2=3=5 example...there's literally no other way to express that exact equation, so it could not be considered proprietary and as such would not be copyrightable.
I'm not even sure they're referencing the ROM itself in the code so much as they rip the assets from the ROM via a separate process before compiling the executable.
This is all that has to be said.Once again, I beg of you...
Majora's Mask fanatics upon hearing "Zelda 64"
This.
OOT on PC like this will be exceptionally cool and I'm excited to see where the mods take it. But Majora's Mask is the vastly superior game.
Yes, that's the letter of the law. If they're not (re)distributing something Nintendo has copyrighted, they're fine.
Nintendo can't do anything about emulators for similar reasons: Unless they're being distributed with copyrighted content like a system's BIOS files, an emulator is just re-implementing Nintendo's hardware digitally, which has a fair amount of legal precdent supporting it, even if the emulator itself is sold as commercial software. The PSX Bleem! emulator helped cement a lot of this. They won most of their important cases against Sony even if the company didn't survive in the long run.
This is doing something similar, but on the level of a specific piece of software rather than an entire system, a re-implementation of the game's code to make it run on another system. It's like a recipe where you have to supply your own ingredients, which in this case is a ROM image of Ocarina of Time, and the end result is OoT running on Windows.
Who would ever consider Majora's Mask to be Zelda 64? I get OoT since it was Zelda 64 pre-release, but Majora's Mask was never considered that. Ura Zelda, maybe...Majora's Mask fanatics upon hearing "Zelda 64"
For real.
"Developers have told VGC"
Yo, shut up! Just shut up! Don't tell anybody anything, when it's done, just release it and hide. Once it's out, it's out.
It's going to be a while until any MM port since that hasn't been decompiled yet and is only ~40% of the way there.
Also another development name.
I think there's a shift from OoT to the DD expansion (Ura Zelda) to beta MM (Zelda Gaiden) to the final MM.
On the plus side, a lot of the work in terms of things like up-resing assets will move to Majora's Mask pretty seamlessly since there's a lot shared between the two games.
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