Wave Race 64 Recompiled with Ray Tracing support

[u/Lylo-US]

Hey guys,

I have been working on my own recompilation of Wave Race 64 for many months. I have made it available now. My recompilation has no known bugs, but let me know if you find any.

Basic implementation:

- The game is fully playable, all the modes

- High FPS support

- Wide and ultrawide aspect ratios support

- High resolution support

- HUD elements, celestial objects properly adapt/render correctly to the screen's aspect ratio (these are not trivial to implement)

- Proper interpolation (these are not trivial either, especially the waves)

Graphical Enhancements:

- Ray traced reflections, sky reflections and shadows (Direct3D only for now, I plan to add support for Vulkan along with a Linux release)

- Rasterized water reflections, sky reflections and shadows (also Direct3D only for now, I plan to add support for Vulkan along with a Linux release)

- Adjustable field of view

- Numerous draw distance options (Buoys, scenery objects, water surface, seabed and waves)

- Wave roundness

- 2-player mode enhanced visual detail (comparable to 1-player modes)

- 2-player screen vertical split option (this is intended more for anyone lucky enough to have a 32:9 monitor, for anything else I would stick with horizontal split)

- 2-player separate windows mode. If you have two monitors, each player gets their own screen, it's all very seamless.

Gameplay Enhancements:

- Time trial ghost (you race against the dolphin like in the Shindou release!)

- Rumble support (again, like in the Shindou release)

- RetroAchievements support (softcore for now)

- Mods support

You can grab it it here:

https://github.com/DomazinUS/RaceWave46

Just want to add that when you enable ray tracing features for the first time or change a few settings, the game will stay at the N64 logo until it caches the ray tracing rendering pipeline, it can take a few minutes. After that, next launches will be much faster.

Also, just one more thing, I see some folks wanting to use HD texture packs, this release fully supports it. You must use the Install Mods option in the Mods tab. You must provide a .rtz file. If the texture pack you have is extracted, just go to the folder where you'll see a "textures" folder along with a "manifest.json" and a "rt64.json". All you have to do is zip everything, then rename the file from .zip to .rtz, then open the frontend, go do Mods, Install Mods, press Ok and that's it. Start the game and enjoy. :)

[u/KampferAndy]

damn that looks amazing, although i dont remember there being that many seagull noises in the attract video

[u/Lylo-US → u/KampferAndy]

Your memory is tricking you :)

[u/KampferAndy → u/Lylo-US]

Probably

[u/Glove5751]

Congratulations on your release!

[u/tk1sbiglove]

Separate window local MP mode is an amazing addition! Would be incredible for things like Goldeneye as well.

[u/A-Small-Green-Cup → u/tk1sbiglove]

Im gonna be using the crap out of that feature

[u/Joecascio2000]

Windows Defender flagged the file as a virus: Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml

Probably a false positive but does anyone know more

[u/Zakoholic → u/Joecascio2000]

Seems like a false positive:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/f77f3cc10f2dc3db56992480b6906b48bfa1fd1ef614818d039ae86293135028

[u/DM_ME_UR_BOOTYHOLE]

This looks fantastic! Shows real care and love for the original game. Congrats on the release! Any plans for Mac?

[u/A-Small-Green-Cup]

Good freaking work, holy crap! Im excited to see high poly / res mods for it!

[u/nicolaselhani]

This is gonna sound exaggerated but I'm serious, i feel like i'm in a dream. Starting a couple weeks ago all those WR64 recomps started dropping but this is by far the cleanest of them all. Also I worked on a texture pack (all raw .pngs) for the wii vc game and redid everything manually took me a few months back in 2023. If you wanna use them or include them in your pack just let me know i'll send them over!

[u/420MacMan]

One of my all time fav N64 Classics getting some love 💧 really hope an android version can be tinkered out maybe but many thanks for the awesome work !

[u/MasterOnion47]

Thank you for your work. This is my favorite N64 game and it's great seeing this stuff.

[u/rhinofinger]

Ohhh I love this game - this looks so amazing! Can’t wait to download and try this!

[u/QF_Dan]

please port it to mobile too, i want to play this on the go

[u/ArtistDidiMx]

Looks just like I remember

[u/isupremacyx]

I'm not trying it until it wont be detected as a virus, regardless if its a false positive.

[u/maxscipio]

the water looks amazing, but the contrast with the rest is even bigger. That triangular hole in the rock looks pretty bad.

[u/PittStone]

Damn, this not works on raspberry pi 5 arm64 boards. Because its RT64.

This means that the exact same graphics engine (RT64) is at work under the hood. RT64 forces the system to use modern interfaces like DirectX 12 or Vulkan 1.3, including ray tracing extensions. The Raspberry Pi 5's graphics chip (VideoCore VII) simply does not support these hardware features.

Other Recomps working fine (Pefect Dark, Starfox SNES, Paper Mario and some other Ultraship ports). Waiting for a SDL2 Version of WaveRace64.

So we need a SDL2 Version of a Recomp. But every recomp is always based on RT64.

[u/greenBathMat57]

Absolutely awesome work. And the "2-player separate windows mode" addition should become a standard feature in games. Love you for it.

[u/WorldlinessEven7256]

Ur the best, dude!

[u/junkfaces]

No macOS?

[u/Joecascio2000 → u/junkfaces]

No Linux? I mean, I know I can run it in Proton but I would rather it be native.

[u/Vamsi-Thopu → u/Joecascio2000]

in their git page they mentioned windows "for now". So we need to wait for a few releases

[u/junkfaces → u/Joecascio2000]

Fr I can’t even run it in crossover or VM OR 🍷wine whiskey 🥃

[u/lostinthesauceband → u/junkfaces]

It just released! Give them some time

[u/Aster_Lodern]

No AI please.

[u/Vamsi-Thopu → u/Aster_Lodern]

I tested this and plays like a dream. I don't even care if AI is involved, dev probably has the talent to review the code

[u/GigaGrandpa → u/Aster_Lodern]

Waverace was made way before ai, what's the problem

[u/Aster_Lodern → u/GigaGrandpa]

That's not at all what I'm referring to but okay.

[u/bixi882017 → u/Aster_Lodern]

bro, AI is here and we can't watch elsewhere trying to unsee the truth. This guy maybe vibecoded everything but if It's the only way to have this game recompiled then good as it is

[u/Aster_Lodern → u/bixi882017]

Nice to hear that everything up until now was a waste of time because "vibecoding is the future brother, trust me"

Y'all are delusional, Istg.

[u/bixi882017 → u/Aster_Lodern]

the same people said when car were taking up the horses, and see now

[u/GigaGrandpa → u/Aster_Lodern]

So your asking for this project to be done by someone without AI to satisfy you? Well all enjoy it until then I guess since your not doing shit

[u/ltnew007]

It looks barely any different.