noclip.website is a website that allows users to explore 3D game environments in a noclip mode. Noclip is a term commonly used in gaming to describe a cheat or debug mode that enables a player to move through walls and other obstacles, essentially allowing them to “noclip” through the game world. Taking the camera to places that developers never intended for players to go.
The project was created by @JasperRLZ and is designed to be a celebration of video game-level design and art. It’s a chance to explore and deepen your appreciation for some of your favorite games. This site is amazing for fans of Nintendo growing up in 1990s and 2000s. There is a ton of Nintendo content from consoles like the N64, Gamecube, and Wii. Those expecting a ton of variety from Xbox and PlayStation may have to wait for other inclusions.
“My dream is that the site contains fully accurate versions of each game, and I try to get closer to that goal when I can, but the effort and time involved to make an accurate recreation can sometimes be far too much, or would push me more into recreating large parts of the original game’s engine, which I’m less interested in doing myself.
I’ve always had an appreciation for the incredible worlds that game developers make. Sometimes staring closely at levels might help you understand the challenges the designers were facing, and what problems and techniques they used to solve them. You can learn a lot about a game by looking in the places they don’t show in the game itself. It’s also a ton of fun to test your memory, seeing if you can remember how a level is laid out, or where two rooms might connect to each other.” –Jasper
The important thing to note here is that this project is a one man passion project. While it won’t contain a lot of the games, those that already are included will be enough to satisfy long time fans of 3D environments. Exploring these worlds on your own can be a hard task as developers have done a good job of disabling the textures off screen of the player camera, referred to as culling. This practice of removing parts of the map when unseen by the player is done to help save on console resources. Unloading textures is important to maintain framerates and level of detail to a game without compromising performance. Projects like these are awesome as they display the maps in their entirety without this problem. Noclip website is completely beginner friendly, as opposed to having to learn coding and cheats for emulating the same results. This website has been amazing for looking at worlds I spent hours in. Checking out the layouts for Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo Kazooie in a fully displayed map was awesome!
The project is open source with code available on GitHub. but noclip.website is primarily designed by a single person with a passion for preserving video games. Users on the internet can make suggestions to Jasper on what games should be added, but implementation of each title takes time for Jasper to code.
“In order to put a game on the website, I first need to take apart the game, extract the data, and then figure out how to put it back together. Some of these games, especially the newer ones, are really complex with their levels and their models, and that often means it takes more work to make it look correct. The line between “game engine” and “game data” is only getting blurrier and blurrier.
[Jasper comments about a potential DMCA takedown in the future.] Companies take down fan projects when they’re competing with their in-house projects. I don’t see noclip.website as competing with any game out there — it’s more of a museum, not a game. The worlds on display are incredible and I hope they encourage you to go out and buy a copy of the game itself.
That said, I have enormous respect for the developers and dev teams and if I received a take-down request, I would honor it. It is their work on display, after all.
Developers are only able to make these fantastic worlds if we collectively support them. noclip would not exist without their hard work and dedication. To ensure that they remain healthy, please try to buy games instead of pirating them. I also put in extra effort to ensure that all assets available on this site cannot be used to pirate the game itself.” –Jasper
It’s worth pointing out that term Noclip is a reference to a console command original starting with Quake games. Jasper does not have affiliation to the Noclip documentary project that curates video game documentaries.
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