GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[zoinkity]

Several stages - Archives, Silo, Bunker II to name a few - are known to have hanging lamps in beta pictures of the game. Now, this is speculation, but based on what images exist, the various angles and distances they appear at, it may be possible the following is true:

The beta lamps were sprites.

No two beta pictures are taken at the same distance or at the same angle, yet the lamps appear to always look the same - exactly the same - as though perspective is not applied. Lamp images still exist in rom but are always side profile shots, which although could be mapped to a surface would not involve the sort of shading applied to the image edges.

One of the main features of the sprite functions is that the sprite can be set so it is always facing toward the screen, giving the appearance of a round object. The effect can be fairly effective, and it's used in other Rare games. This makes quite a bit of sense really, concidering that round objects suck down many, many tri commands to render. You can have dozens of lamps without any appreciable effect on memory using sprite commands.

Alas, it would also spell the lamp's doom. If you stand under a sprite and look up you can see it's spritiness. Also, it would almost require being included in a secondary or tertiary mapping block to avoid inevitable collisions. Although they look kind of neat, you're looking at the very real possibility that they were out of place in the final enviroment. Shame really.
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[Dragonsbrethren]

The only flaw I can find with your theory is the Depot's lamp, it's the only one remaining in the final and it's a part of the level architecture. However, one can't really argue with these screenshots:



That lamp has clearly turned, if it hadn't Bond would be viewing it almost edge-on in that second shot. Not to mention that'd be a very odd way to place the lamp, I'd expect it to be facing directly forward when viewed from the cell. There's also this one in Silo:



Again, it seems very odd that they'd place the lamp in this direction, when the majority of players would probably run straight through the door rather than to it from an angle.

So if you're correct about this, how hard would it be to recreate a sprite-based lamp? Wreck and I were able to create one as part of the level architecture in the Office:



Mostly Wreck's work, I just created the map, he did all the work getting it to display properly. I plan on having a ton of these in the barracks areas of the Defense Ministry map, if it's possible to create them as sprite I'd rather do that. Not to mention restoring them to all the stages they were cut from.

[SubDrag]

That makes a lot of sense. Rare uses that sort of sprite trick in all their games. Actually they don't have to be sprites, they can be 3d models always facing you too. I tried to do this in the editor but for some reason it never got working, but it's very simple to do, something like always multiply with inverted projection matrix or something.

[Dragonsbrethren]

SubDrag wrote:

Actually they don't have to be sprites, they can be 3d models always facing you too.

That gives me an idea, could objects be made to do that as well? If the lamps were made into objects they could easily be added to any level.

[Wreck]

It does seem highly likely. Judging by the remaining beta screenshots, especially. Even looking at the two on the back of the box from Archives, it appears as though they're facing the player, even though the angles aren't straight on. I suppose the killer would be the fact that viewing them from below would look absolutely ridiculous. That's probably why they were removed from the final game, with only the one leftover being in Depot. However, it's simply mapped onto two tris. When you view it from a side angle, it disappears. So either way, these lamps just didn't cut it. They probably left one in just to say they did it.

DB and myself have been testing out some different textures to use as secondary indices in new rooms made in Hammer. We've gotten a poster, a fake window, a beta lamp, and even a railing to work. Takes a little work to identify the commands they should use, but using the Editor to jump to a level's room which features the same / a similar image helps quicken the pace.
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[zoinkity]

They might not have done all the same, but the silo one definately was the light with a solid lit plane beneath it.

To get the proper sprite commands you'll likely need to borrow them from other games. It's different than just mapping on two tris. It's a whole other op - and one not well handled by emulators. One that uses it abundantly is Rayman 2. Zelda uses it for item pickups, probably other games as well.
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