Super Mario 64 Online

After checking one of my older e-mail accounts that I haven’t been using for years, I have noticed an uprise of many messages via the e-mail system of this (long outdated) blog regarding the connection of SM64O M:X and Net64+ as well as questions regarding the connection of the SM64O source code and the sm64 decompilation project (aka sm64-decomp). Since no one else here responds to them (Tarek701 has long since abandoned this project here; especially after TechTools stopped selling and supporting FlexROM III), I would like to elaborate on a few points and clarify some things to avoid future misunderstandings. I also disabled this blog’s e-mail system since we no longer support this project. So consider this article the ultimate capstone.

SM64O M:X and Net64+

First of all, there is no connection whatsoever between SM64O M:X and Net64+. Furthermore, SM64O M:X has long been abondoned. Even though both had more or less the same purpose, Net64+ is a completely separate project to which we have no connection. In addition, SM64O M:X was a much more advanced and complex project than any other project in this direction. On closer inspection, the newer Net64+ 2.0 seems to be closer to what we had already achieved years ago. Unfortunately, this project has probably been discontinued indefinitely as well, but there are many more that allow you to play Super Mario 64 online with others. For example, there is currently sm64js. A very ambitious project that I am very excited about.

SM64-decomp and SM64O Source Code

As for the leaked source code for SM64 (also known as SM64-decomp), again I would like to stress that we have no connection to this project. We had already decompiled SM64 years ago, documented where necessary and created our own mods for it. In fact, the decompilation process itself was the easiest part, but the most difficult part was the documentation and naming, which we never fully completed. SM64-decomp is therefore, as far as that is concerned, much further along than our project ever was. I just want to dispel the rumors that we “stole” anything. This is not the case. We had decompiled SM64 first, and documented this decompiled source code extensively where we found it necessary. But we decided to make the decompiled source code only available to a few users, and wrote an additional program, so that the source code was only accessible through this program and otherwise remained encrypted.

This guaranteed that the project could not be easily copied and completely modified or the source code leaked. We developed our own game engine that served as a framework for our SM64O project and had made the source code available to some users. Basically it was intended to make modding for SM64 easier, but was mainly explicitly tailored to SM64O. It had a so called “Mission Editor” which allowed placing, moving, removing, etc. of objects, a “GUI Editor” which allowed to create customized GUIs for dialogs, etc. It also had its own scripting language, Mario64Script, which can be compared to “Tweaks” in Skelux’s Level Importer, except that Mario64Script was much more advanced. Also, the SM64O engine had an animation editor, GFX editor and palette editor, as well as a physics editor, which allowed changing certain physical aspects in the game. These included gravity, wind, as well as physics components we programmed ourselves, such as weather (snow, rain, etc), soil, etc.

All in all, SM64O M:X was probably the most complex SM64 online hack ever built. I am not aware of any SM64 hack that has modified the core functions as extensively as we did with SM64O M:X. Unfortunately, our project never gained the notoriety we had hoped for, mostly due to miscommunication on our part. Tarek701′s native language was German. In his earlier days, his English skills were not sufficient enough to adequately express the technical terms and contexts in English. This made it sometimes very difficult to follow his trains of thought, nevertheless he always convinced us with the results (which we understood even without language). Unfortunately, most of the project’s source code is lost and was privately hosted on Tarek701′s repo server, to which I no longer have access to and only responds with an 404 error.

Closing Remarks

Of course this website will remain as a piece of Mario 64 hacking history and since I still have access to the FTP server and the original host provider, it will stay that way for a long time. We can rightly and proudly say that SM64O M:X was the first online hack for SM64 ever, which at the same time was also the first ever successfully modified recompiled proper decompilation of SM64. (even though our decompiled code was only sparsely documented). Thank you to everyone who was involved, played or helped with this project back in the day. It was a great time back then and I’m glad that I met a lot of nice and funny people while working on this project!