Introduction

Welcome to N64 Educator — a course for writing 3D games for the Nintendo 64 using open-source tools.

Who this is for

You should be comfortable with C (structs, pointers, headers, Make). You do not need:

• Prior game-engine experience
• Prior 3D math or graphics API knowledge
• Blender or art skills (we teach a minimal pipeline and ship reference assets)

If C is rusty, spend a weekend on a short refresher before Module 0.

What you will build

By the end you will ship Starshard Cove: a small third-person collectathon on a single island. You walk an animated character, follow a camera, pick up starshards on a vertex-painted landscape, and hit a win screen with HUD and audio.

Curriculum map

Module	Focus
0 — Foundations	Toolchain, ROM, loop, input, assets, N64 mental model
1 — 3D Literacy	Vectors, matrices, cameras, meshes, lighting, vertex color concepts
2 — Tiny3D	First 3D draws, lights, models, vertex colors on console
3 — Blender for N64	Modeling, UVs, vertex paint, Fast64, rig + idle/walk
4 — Gameplay	Move, drive anims, camera, collision, entities, states
5 — Capstone	Audio, HUD, juice, full Starshard Cove (8 shards)

How to use this site

1. Complete Setup once.
2. Work lessons in order under Module 0, then onward.
3. Each lesson has a folder under lessons/ with a Makefile — build a .z64 and run it in Ares.
4. Canonical assets live in assets-src/; you may replace them with your own art as you learn.

Stack (high level)

• libdragon (preview branch) — modern N64 SDK in C
• Tiny3D — high-performance 3D pipeline (RSP + C API + glTF import)
• Blender + Fast64 — models, vertex colors, materials, animation export
• Ares — accurate emulator for day-to-day development

See Pinned versions before you install anything.

Open source

Code is MIT, docs are CC BY 4.0, with third-party notices in NOTICE and assets-src/ATTRIBUTION.md. See License & credits. Contributions: CONTRIBUTING.md.

Next: Setup & toolchain.