The news archive. This should be everything, save for things that got lost when the old version of the site went down.
It's only been, like,
three and a half years since Ultra Reality
left. It's like it never went anywhere!
Besides the snazzy new look, anyway. I
decided to reinstate the site because with
the release of Pyrite64 there's been a
surge of new interest in Ultra 64
homebrewing, and I want to help newcomers
flourish in their pursuits. This isn't hosted on Neocities like I thought it would be (as you can see in the note below that missed the mark by nearly a year), though I haven't tested it on an old computer. It should run if you're using IE 5 or Mozilla 1 at least, since there is an http-only version, though we'll see about that and that version won't have access to the forums.
This is just a shell for now, but eventually there will be tutorials, starting with 3D modelling and texturing as that's what I have the most experience doing, both in general and for Ultra 64 homebrew, then after that I'll probably focus on music production, though I'm definitely less handy with that than I am graphics. Starting off will be a tutorial specifically for Pyrite and I'll do one for from-scratch games later on, but most of it should transfer over, the main differences will end up being in the process of exporting and importing the models.
Well, it's been a
while since I dusted Ultra Reality off
and gave it that long-overdue makeover
I'd always been planning before its
official release. Technically, the old
ultrareality.info
test run was some sort of
public release, but that was just a test
phase. I suppose this is, too, but it's
one that's not coming out of my own
pocket so it should be more permanent,
at the cost of not running on older
computers (anything that doesn't accept
a TLS 1.3 connection; Power Macs and
Windows XP machines are just on the cusp
of that). That's alright. While I would
still prefer that
everyone be
able to access this site, most people
are using libdragon now anyway, so it's
not something I feel pressure to do
anymore.
July-August News Roundup Libraries and Utilities --strat has been developing an SD card reader library for flash cartridges as part of libcart. There's video of the library streaming in Super Mario 64 here, effectively making games as theoretically large as an SD card can be. Personally, I think that's a very exciting development, but I also wonder how complex a game can realistically be to take advantage of all the extra space. Especially with single developer projects. Still, I'd definitely be fine being proven wrong, I'd definitely love to see a 30 or 40 hour game be released on the console. I think the greatest single thing that this allows for though is much easier and faster development thanks to not needing to recompile for every single change.
You can find it here (HTTPS).
UNFLoader has been receiving plenty of love and attention recently, with maintainer Buu342 readying it for a new, updated 1.1 release. Improvements include scrolling the debug window for a thousand lines with the page keys, fixing the fake debug_printf in debug.h, adding automatic save detection for EverDrive ROM headers, and hitting the escape key to close the program.
New releases and demonstrations -- Updates to the Commander Keen ports by Ryzee119, using LibDragon's new rdpq rendering technique. You can find that here (HTTPS). Also, a port for Cosmo as well (HTTPS). These look like some pretty good DOS classics, now playable on your TV. If you're the kind of person not to use composite mode for your DOS games, that is. Seem very competently ported, with a smooth framerate (you'd hope so, they're 16-bit games!) and accurate looking physics.
Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud has gotten its final trailer. Link is here (HTTPS); it looks awesome! It's surprisingly feature-packed for a joke game, to the point I'm very excited to play it myself. Goes far beyond the base Super Mario 64 experience, it's the perfect example of a game that can only come out in these post-decompilation times.
James Lambert's Portal port is going well, with the portal visual effect coming through well on the hardware. It's looking to be shaping up to be a very competent version of Portal. Link here (HTTPS). Longer-form gameplay footage here (HTTPS).
Arthur Carvalho has made one of the most impressive demonstrations of the Ultra 64's sheer hardware potential I've ever seen by faking refraction convincingly, even the chromatic aberration of light through a lens. Highly recommended you check the video out here (HTTPS). This is a truly stunning display of the hardware's capabilities and I have to give a round of applause.
Remute has released a record on an Ultra 64 cartridge. The link to buy it is here (HTTPS). Seems to be pretty technoey stuff. This is pretty typical for Remute's style -- prior to this, there were records released on other cartridge formats -- like SNES and Game Boy.
