The glEnd() of Zelda: Automatic 3Dification of NES Games (2016) | Hacker News Reader

The glEnd() of Zelda: Automatic 3Dification of NES Games (2016)

tom7.org

244 pointsakeck39 comments

Tom7's content is always very interesting and funny, he has a YouTube channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3azLjQuz9s5qk76KEXaTvA His "Harder Drive" video is especially a favorite of mine.

I'm also a long-time fan of Tom7 - I got into him after seeing the video about his reverse-emulation work to get Doom working on a NES - what I like about it is how subtle it is: using the same technique you could play Halo or GTA 5 on a NES, but by using a game that's almost contemporary with the NES it has some kind of je ne sais quoi aspect to it that I appreciate, even if I can't describe it.

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All of his videos are about very distinct projects - not only demonstrating his high level of skill in those areas, but that he's very imaginative and creative. When I introspect myself I can tell that as I've gained technical skills that enable me to (say) recreate his work, I've simultaneously lost most of my imagination and huge chunks of my creativity as I've gotten older: I can certainly try my own hand (working from scratch, without using his work even as a reference) at a robust NES-to-3D render system, but I guarantee that the idea never would have come to me. My question is, how does he do that?

I'm hoping I'm not the only one experiencing this kind of creativity-deficit-disorder?

Not only that, he actually completes all the projects, or at least some of them (because who'd know how many shelved projects are there). I too have a long list of personal projects accumulated over last 2 decades, and none was that impactful compared to Tom's in my scale. And he seems to do all of that while having a daily job (Google) and a family (seen from the PAC-TOM video, specifics unclear) and time to play all the games. How is it even remotely possible???

Yeah this is one of those weird cases where if I was his manager I'd ask "bro, do you need more interesting things to do at work?"

Tom7 is probably my favorite creator on the web, so I guess I'm glad that whatever he's doing at Google isn't scratching all the itches.

And running long distances!

In costume!

I think he's just a complete genius, honestly. I don't think it's possible for a vast majority of us to be on that level

Keep in mind that- as far as I can tell- Tom7 doesn't need to work for a living. He has a _lot_ of free time.

You sure? I remember him being an engineer at Google. See this from July

https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/pac-tom-pittsburgh-proje...

I'm sure that someone running around city as a pac-man have plenty of free time, job or no job

did you miss the part where he had been working on running every street during 17 years?

Eh, at least I had periods over the last 15 years where I had a lot of free time and could've done a lot of things I always wanted to do, but just about got some basic things done. Nothing of the scale of some of Tom's projects. He says he's not working on that stuff constantly, but still, he always eventually gets back to these things and finishes them. That's pretty impressive to me regardless of free time.

This is the difference for me. There are many things I could do, but far fewer it's worth spending my time on. If I didn't have to make bank the calculus would be very different.

Love Tom7, his video "Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper" [0] is my favorite but most of his stuff is super interesting.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA

My favorite is still the generic NES "AI". And I just realized that was ten years ago. Wow.

Harder Drive is truly a masterpiece.

My dream is a swap file on the hardest of drives.

I like "reverse emulating the NES"

This is similar to a drop-in mod for pico8 games that can turn 2d games into 3d games instantly: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=37982

I'm luckily, fairly good at thinking outside the box, but when I see content like this... WOW

I guess a logical next step in the 2020's is to render a nice sky and fitting surroundings with AI.

I wonder if tom7 has worked with or is aware of the people at geodstudio working on 3dsen. 3dsen is what this video reminded me of.

Very cool! Slightly different though in that 3dsen seems to be adding depth to sprites and a camera view outside the player, while tom7's puts you in the game on the level either top down or side view, walking in it as the player.

I suppose it depends on where you place the camera, on the player like tom7 "WolfNEStein 3D" or from a viewpoint far enough back to view a portion of the level like 3dsen.

3dsen approach is more playable and is really neat for depth in 3d and VR. Could be cool in AR as well.

Wow, this is very cool. I hope to see this early concept refined and improved upon!

what a pun

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