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Noclip.website – A digital museum of video game levels
  • nness
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  • 3 hours ago
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Every time I stumble upon this I end up losing an hour.

The Rare era Nintendo 64 games are particularly interesting from a graphical stand-point, as Rare really got the most out of the N64's limited texture cache by blending textures with vertex colours.

In Banjo-Kazooie its mostly for used as a primitive baked-lighting (Mad Monster Mansion being a great example of this.) But by the time you get to DK64, they're really working overtime to leverage vertex colours to add variety to the textures and help blend texture edges.

People refer to N64's blurry textures as its signature look, but I think what Rare did with vertex colours is really what most people think when they remember back to the N64.

(Would love to see GoldenEye or Perfect Dark maps added to this site.)

I also enjoy how WELL most Nintendo games' levels render in browser, because unlike the other two (Sony and Microsoft), their render pipelines are incredibly simple. This of course isn't a complete win, you obviously miss a lot of features of bigger/beefier GPU's like advanced shaders, but at the same time it really draws attention to how the artists developing for those platforms, at least first party, are continuing those traditions of covering a lack of technical ability to, for example, render real caustics in real time, and instead simply make water textures that are so evocative of water that they appear as good as, if not better, then technically superior water effects.

I say this as a slight graphics nerd who loves this shit and plays some games solely to see the visuals they can pull off: I mad respect artists who go the complete other direction, who barely use any "real" graphics tech, to make absolutely beautiful things.

  • mohas
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  • 3 minutes ago
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Just WOW
In a similar vein, but for Old School RuneScape, is https://osrs.world/

This one is kept up-to-date with the state of the game world. Even includes full NPC locations and animations.

This is so sick. I've been playing OSRS on and off for a while but for some reason never heard of this.
One of us! That site is dope. Super useful for creating b-roll footage for videos.
  • sph
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  • 1 hour ago
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There's also https://old.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1lof9k2/creators... to animate scenes in-game.
I started learning Blender recently to have a play with throwing something on my blog with Three.js (we're a long way from that), but I appreciate now how you want to remove as much geometry as possible that isn't visible to the user to give the impression it's all very much there and solid, but presents the actual bare minimum to look right[0].

Anyone got example of levels with cool stuff hidden outside of the player area that can't be accessed while clipping is enabled? I remember some stone tablet with credits, in some game, in an "Aztec" area/level many, many years ago, don't remember which game though.

[0]https://noclip.website/#mkwii/beginner_course;ShareData=APu}e9y:oa8[qXpUFsE~WAK4bQ!l|bUooMfUPaItV]lVR9GC@bT{ZRK936MkWP

This is actually wild. I have no idea how this works. Does it somehow emulate the rendering engine of each of these games to render the map? The water in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is just how I remember it. Very cool.
It's open source: https://github.com/magcius/noclip.website

I wouldn't say it emulates so much as implements a renderer for each game. It's totally nuts.

I contributed one earlier this year! The community's a great bunch and I learned a lot.

Always remember, folks: the best feature request is a pull request ;)

If you're lucky you might hear from the author - his handle is Jasper_ here on HN.
Noclip's creator Jasper has some great deep-dive video essays on game deconstructions over on their yt channel, as well: https://www.youtube.com/@JasperRLZ
Hey it's even got Infra! An underrated gem I imagine many on HN would love.
I wish there were some of the Metal Gear or Monster Hunter maps.
Wow. Just... wow. Didn't think I'd get to head back to Pilotwings 64 and fly around those maps anytime soon. Or TF2, or HalfLife. Very, very cool.
Oh, that is SO cool. I love that, I love that! This was everything I hoped it would be. Thank you for this amazing stuff. Truly immersive imagination inspiration :)
I have to say i really love this :D damn i could spend hours here ! I really hope nintendo will not end up suing the living s** out of them.

Great project !

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  • 2 hours ago
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Wow, what a throwback!

Interesting to see the speed at which levels load.

The old N64 levels are almost instant, and still look amazing.

  • zdc1
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  • 6 hours ago
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The Portal 2 renders were genuinely surprising. Crazy what we can do in a browser today
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe -> Bell Cup -> GBA Ribbon Road is my favorite, you can see how small the track is compared to the whole room and how much detail there is out of bounds!
  • 4ggr0
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  • 2 hours ago
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genuinely laughed out loud when i saw the t-posing NPCs in the Half-Life levels. really sells it.
This brings back soo much nostalgia.. cool website.
  • proc0
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  • 6 hours ago
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Amazing resource for game dev! Specifically level design. So many great titles in there.
Now, that's something where I would consider dusting off the old VR headset if it had such a mode.
wow incredible job ! it's a very nice idea.
Yeah I know this website! Its one of my favourites.
Enabled webgl/webgpu and it still doesn't work on my end with Librewolf
Works fine in Waterfox
Working fine in Firefox
AMAZING WEBSITE