Update from the desk of Nerrel: fall upload schedule

A lot of progress has been made on the MM3DHD project, which I'll talk about below, but first let's go over the video content I plan to befoul YouTube with in the coming months:

Pikmin 4 Review

The review is fully edited but (as always) recording the final narration track is holding it up.  The length is about 13 minutes and it should be just a few more days before the upload.  If you're into Pikmin then this should be right up your anatomically correct butthole: 

Blasphemous II Review

I was impressed by the first Blasphemous and want to start reviewing the sequel as soon as it launches this week.  Whether this ends up as a standalone review or part of Metroidvania part 6 will depend on how substantial the game turns out to be, but either way I'm looking forward to it and all the censoring work that will await me when editing for YouTube. 

Halloween Horror Showcase

The indie genre is full of interesting horror games that I'd like to cover and the season for that kind of thing is almost upon us, so I plan to review a handful of them in one video, similar to the Metroidvania series.  

In addition to the four games in the image above I'm also considering Song of Horror, Echoes of the Living, Evil Tonight, and Heartworm (although two of those still have no release date).  If there are any others you think I should be looking at, feel free to make suggestions in the comments.

My homegrown credits sequence pumpkin is nearly ready for harvest, despite the efforts of God to kill it with two record heat waves.  Suck it, Lord!

MM3DHD Update

Citra received a major custom texture rewrite that- among other things- eliminated loading stutter and added support for custom normal maps.  Those who watched the texture drawing tutorial from January will know what that means for the project.

The 3DS natively supported normal maps but they were seldomly used (OoT3D mainly uses them for the Link model seen on the file select screen).  So unlike Ishiiruka Dolphin, which forced maps into games that were never intended to have them, Citra's support allows users to extend the real material mapping systems in these games to enhance more objects.  

Here's a demonstration of how a normal map tells the lighting system to treat the painted-on 2D staircases:

In addition to adding more convincing depth to the textures I've also been redrawing a large amount of them so that they match the quality of the later areas of the pack.  Clock town was the first area I worked on for MMN64HD and most of it looked pretty rough to me when beginning the 3D port, especially the photo based assets, and I think the new drawings are solid upgrades.  

The N64 pack is also being updated with these new versions, so hopefully everyone likes them and I'm not pulling a George Lucas (old left, new right):

Here's a zoom for the difference in detail, which Patreon may or may not compress into junk: 

My plan was to release a demo containing clock town by the end of summer, but taking advantage of material maps fully will push it back a little further.  I still expect to release the next update before the end of the year, at which point I'll gauge whether people are more interested in continuing with the 3D version or focusing on the PC port. 

Mario Wonder

It feels strange to say it, but I've never had the chance to review an all new Mario game since my channel started.  It might be difficult to get captures while doing local multiplayer but I'd like to review the game as both a single player and 4-player experience.  

It's the least I can do to honor the legacy of Charles Martinet, who was unable to do the voice acting for this game after getting arrested outside of the Illumination studio for Wario conduct.  

Wildcard Video Topics

Neil Breen has been threatening to release another movie and in the event that he does I will attempt to decipher it into some sort of review.  No one watched my Twisted Pair video and no one will watch this one.  I don't give a shit.  

Likewise, Konami has signaled that it is preparing to attack Silent Hill 2.  There is no release date set for this one either, but I will try to work in a review whenever it ends up launching.  

That's it for today, hopefully you're pleased with the plans.  Thanks for your support!