I hope this eventually also works for Linux so that N64 games can be reliably played on very low end portable handhelds. N64 is notoriously tricky to emulate, but building them for the platform natively removes all performance problems.
Huh, I wouldn't have expected that. I don't know much about the specifics of N64 emulation, but I've had N64 emulators running perfectly since the early 2010s. I played mostly the big classics, so I'm unfamiliar with more niche title performance.
The N64 had a fully unified memory architecture, and weird custom silicon that also happened to be a fully programmable GPU kinda device. For decades, all N64 emulation was done by translating calls to that GPU (called the RDP) to openGL or DirectX calls, and that works horribly, but anything else would have had awful performance. Several years ago however, someone decided "Fuck it" and created a fully emulated version of the RDP that you could run, ie feed it real N64 instructions and it spits out pixel values. It was significantly slower than the translation approach, so you had to have like a powerful 8 or more core CPU to run it well.
Some other madlad then took that approach, and ported it to a GPU Shader, because fuck yeah thousands of cores! It actually greatly improved the situation, as you didn't need a super powerful GPU, just a somewhat modern GPU.
That development means devices like the steam deck actually have zero issues running awesome N64 emulation, including allowing for upscaling to much higher rendering resolutions without artifacts because you are literally telling a virtual RDP to do it, and it happily complies.
Before AngryLion and ParaLLEl, we were stuck with basically the same graphics plugins, glitches, and tweaks as the late 90s.
You'd be surprised, even Nintendo doesn't get it perfect themselves. When N64 games were first made available on the Nintendo Switch Online platform, there were several problems with graphical effects and input lag. Here's an MVG video from the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSyBMSOfPxg
Haha I remember this launch and how awful it was an thinking about how a bunch of fans have done such a better job. Hell, even Nintendo did a better job for the Wii's Virtual Console.
Yeah it's an interesting pattern. Even the GameCube had decent N64 emulation early in its lifecycle. But the Wii U Virtual Console also had issues with N64 emulation. Specifically it added a dark filter for no reason, which could be removed with homebrew thankfully. You'd think Nintendo would have the best emulation of their own systems on their systems, considering how long people stick around you probably have people who developed for the N64 still there
Homebrew emulators will almost always work better than first-party ones which need to avoid copyleft code, and can be content with a small subset of games being "playable", or "good enough".
Console makers will often hire lead developers of open source emulators to sew something up for them, like what was used for the mario 35 collection (part of galaxy was recompiled too) or the "ps2 classics" software emulator for the ps3.
I think part of the issue is that some purists believe anything less than pixel perfect fidelity is unacceptable. I recall reading a report on N64(?) Wii(?) about how the flame flicker in one level of one game was off.
Inaccurate emulation can also result in stuff like altered physics, invisible objects, stuttering animations, etc. resulting in a different experience from the original.
I watched the youtube video this article links to the other day and it mentioned that it supports Linux, specifically mentioning that it should be usable on Steam Deck.
The steam deck has way more than enough resources to power through any and all N64 emulation so that wouldn't change much there. I'm specifically talking about something $50 retro handhelds and the like.
For example Mario64 and Ocarina of Time are completely reverse engineered and have native support for Windows and Linux and they run perfectly on those systems as where they really struggle when trying to emulate.
That will likely require full decompilation. This is akin to wrapping the emulator up with the rom, with a few common functions (found via decompilation) being updated to support more modern rendering approaches. This isn't so much "native" as it is a patched container in an executable form.
EDIT -
But hey, you can always just add another layer of emulation via Proton to run it in Linux.
I don't think that's true, it really does recompile the N64 games into native executables, you can compile them using any C compiler like msvc, gcc and clang.
