Dominic Szablewski

@Sosowski The N64 doesn't have a programmable pipeline. What you describe would require drawing with the CPU or RSP. The RDP's fixed function pipeline is way faster for drawing - even at 32bits.

@phoboslab Oh no, it’s a waste of bandwidth. You can just zero out the lowest bits of each component for both colors, then shift both one bit right and sum the 16bit values. Then you can clamp and shift back. It’s not ideal but running out of bandwidth is less ideal.

Failed experiment for the N64: runs with 60fps in emulator, but fails to hit 30 on real hardware. The N64 memory bus is a bitch.

@Sosowski It's described in the linked blog post – short version: we basically pretend to render 16bit colors into the 32bit buffer to prevent overflow. We can then safely throw away the top 3 bits of each color component. This is (to my knowledge) the fastest workaround.

@phoboslab Why do you need 32bit for additive blending?

Fluid sim in the background is 64x64 and also runs on the RSP. The required memory access for this and the rendering into the 32bit buffer makes this tool slow for real hardware.

To allow additive blending (something the N64 RDP cannot do natively, see phoboslab.org/log/2026/05/n6…), this renders into a 32bit buffer then clamps to 16bit on the RSP vector co-processor for presentation.

FMVs on the Atari ST! I have dabbled a bit with video compression (mostly MPEG1) and I'm amazed by how far you can get with much simpler compression schemes.

@indyjonas @chrono_000 Oh right, 2048 tiles would need 11bit - guess bit twiddling is too expensive/not worth it, hence 2byte? And audio is straight 8bit PCM? Would love to see an in-depth article about the whole thing at some point! <3

@phoboslab @chrono_000 So what’s in a frame: - 32 new tiles (each 32B plus a 2B codebook index to update) - 40 columns, with each: - one 4B bitmask encoding which tiles follow (say N bits are 1, 0<=N<=25) - N 2B indices into codebook (0..2047) - 834B of audio samples

In my Atari ST video codec, the decoder maintains a codebook of small tiles out of which the video frames are composed. A certain number of tiles, here 32, are updated every frame, replacing less useful ones. This approach allows for high performance and decent compression.

@indyjonas @chrono_000 I'm amazed that it works in real time *and* looks that good!

@indyjonas @chrono_000 Really cool! With 32 8x8 tiles with 4 bit colors + a 6bit tile index and a 40x20(?) tile map - again with 6 bit tile indices - that works out to 1648 byte per frame or ~40 kbyte/s at 24 fps. So on some frames you're updating less than 32 tiles? Or tile updates w. delta encoding?

@TylerGlaiel @Jonathan_Blow I'll do the port!

@Jonathan_Blow NINTENDO 64

Hey everyone. Let's not get too excited, but purely as a **HYPOTHETICAL**, if we were to announce tomorrow that Order of the Sinking Star is launching on another platform, What platform should it be? Please reply soon so we have time to make the trailer and all that stuff.

Link to first part: youtube.com/watch?v=HSRuu1… – well worth watching!

This guy on Youtube took the leaked wipEout source and made it run again. I know some of it is video magic, but man, it looks so much more effortless than to how I did it. I often feel that what I lack in expertise, I just make up in persistence...

I’ve had this a few days now and it’s certainly a blast! 👀 Full review coming soon on #ReCollect64

Review of Xibalba 64 youtu.be/aG3JP3Britw?t=… Interesting that many people seem to prefer the texture filtered look. I mostly added the option as a gimmick, but I don't judge!

@gamrjerome @yoshinokentarou I added mouse invert later: phoboslab.org/q1k3/

@yoshinokentarou Can't invert mouse

FPSの名作「Quake」のファイルサイズを、約1/1000まで圧縮し、ブラウザに移植するハッカーが登場!! 1996年に公開された「シェアウェア版 Quake」が9MBだったのに対し、「勝手移植なブラウザ版 Quake」は、たったの13KBで動いているのが凄いんだ!! ※リンク先でプレイ可能 js13kgames.com/games/q1k3

On top of that, he is releasing another title that supports this control scheme. Ask me how I know :]

@miami9352_rca @modretro I quite like the pixelated look and it's kinda the intended style of the game. Still, there's a setting in the pause menu that lets you toggle texture filtering: x.com/phoboslab/stat…

@phoboslab @modretro Plays phenomenal, but I'm a little curious, is this game finished? Will this use bilinear filter on the M64 like Doom 64 all the other shooters? no offense, but this looks pixelated like original PlayStation games!

As teased by @ModRetro, Xibalba 64 will be published as a launch title for the M64! It's a complete physical release, including cartridge, packaging and manual. Exciting times! I saw some discussion about the game already, so let me clarify...

@M0RD3N I should've said "worked around on Apr. 11". The bug is in 8bitdo - and apparently they also fixed it with a firmware update. Can you try to update the controller firmware? It "should" then work with Junkrunner and Cathode Quest.

@M0RD3N Did some digging. Apparently it has been fixed on Apr. 11: github.com/DragonMinded/l…

@M0RD3N I also have this 8bitdo Controller (BT version) and tried it on a pre-production M64 - and it worked just fine. The libdragon version I build against is about the same as for Cathode Quest & Junk Runner. Maybe just a problem in conjunction with orig N64 and/or the dongle!?

@phoboslab I figured it's worth asking you because you're using Libdragon and it could potentially affect your game. Analogue 3D ships with this controller and 8bitdo is generally quite popular. I guess it's more of an 8bitdo problem than a Libdragon one, but commercial games work fine.