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Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

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Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#31

Post by sharpneli »

madsohm wrote: post #30
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I love these discoveries but I dislike the guaranteed follow-up by game conspiracy theorists who don’t appreciate how games are built. For any game, the odds are that it has unused assets or partially completed systems that hit the cutting room floor.

Please tell us more. Why are the assets not simply deleted when the developers realize it's not needed, especially on a N64 cartridge to save space?

The model is not in the cartridge. It was only in the game assets in the source code dump.

Why delete it? You never know if they might reinstate it (before release that is, and why bother deleting on release day?) or the model could be used in another game, making them costs money, storing them not that much.

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#33

Post by badlucklottery »

madsohm wrote: post #30
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I love these discoveries but I dislike the guaranteed follow-up by game conspiracy theorists who don’t appreciate how games are built. For any game, the odds are that it has unused assets or partially completed systems that hit the cutting room floor.

Please tell us more. Why are the assets not simply deleted when the developers realize it's not needed, especially on a N64 cartridge to save space?

> especially on a N64 cartridge to save space?

The space obviously wasn't needed during development (this is leaked source, I don't know if it made it to the gold version) so there's two likely possibilities:

a) They knew about it but didn't have the dev/tester time to vet the change. This is coming from an era when most game testing was done manually and the N64 toolchain had some big issues around launch. Higher priority fixes might have just pushed a cleanup task like this off the list.

b) They just didn't know. This is also from an era where DCVS weren't particularly common in the games industry and CVS was still black magic in some circles so auditing changes or doing code reviews were very rare.

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#34

Post by RetroSpark »

noodlesUK wrote: post #24

It’s so interesting to see what didn’t quite make it into such culturally important works. It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. I get that’s kinda how copyright was meant to work with books and similar, but the code is never published, so nobody has it to preserve it for poste…

> It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released.

Unfortunately, many game companies lost the source code for their classic games years ago. They couldn't release it even if they wanted to.

One of the big surprises coming from this leak is simply the fact that Nintendo's source code still exists. The company seems to have been very thorough in archiving material related to its older games.

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#35

Post by huffmsa »

RetroSpark wrote: post #34
noodlesUK wrote: post #24

It’s so interesting to see what didn’t quite make it into such culturally important works. It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. I get that’s kinda how copyright was meant to work with books and similar, but the code is never published, so nobody has it to preserve it for poste…

> It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. Unfortunately, many game companies lost the source code for their classic games years ago. They couldn't release it even if they wanted to. One of the big surprises coming from this leak is simply the fact that Nintendo's source code stil…

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has the source code for most everything they've made. You don't become a 150 year old company without fastidious bookkeeping.

Now if they'd just pay the emulator people a bucket of cash to make officially supported emulators that run on the Switch and all future hardware (without having to rebuy the titles), they'd make so much money they'll be around for the next 300 years.

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#36

Post by app4soft »

marmshallow wrote: post #32

Is there a rendering of Luigi 64 yet?

Guess your mean "in game render"? Here is one from 2016.[0]

And here is its 3D model loaded in Blender with textures preview mode ON.[1]

[0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_o...

[1] https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#39

Post by SifJar »

huffmsa wrote: post #35
RetroSpark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. Unfortunately, many game companies lost the source code for their classic games years ago. They couldn't release it even if they wanted to. One of the big surprises coming from this leak is simply the fact that Nintendo's source code stil…

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has the source code for most everything they've made. You don't become a 150 year old company without fastidious bookkeeping. Now if they'd just pay the emulator people a bucket of cash to make officially supported emulators that run on the Switch and all future hardware (without having to rebuy the titles), they'd make so much money they'll be around for the next 300 years.

> pay the emulator people a bucket of cash

> without having to rebuy the titles

How does this lead to making "so much money"? Purely from hardware sales?

Re: Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

#40

Post by jbeam »

SifJar wrote: post #39
huffmsa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has the source code for most everything they've made. You don't become a 150 year old company without fastidious bookkeeping. Now if they'd just pay the emulator people a bucket of cash to make officially supported emulators that run on the Switch and all future hardware (without having to rebuy the titles), they'd make so much money they'll be around for the next 300 years.

> pay the emulator people a bucket of cash > without having to rebuy the titles How does this lead to making "so much money"? Purely from hardware sales?

> How does this lead to making "so much money"? Purely from hardware sales?

Yeah, hardware margins for gaming systems are often not great. The point is that you also have to buy games for it. Similar to how printers are priced (it's the ink that makes the money).

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