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

[Sogun]

zoinkity wrote:

[...] Actually, TWINE uses color images almost exclusively, even when the color image only displays black and white. Downgrading them automatically conserves anywhere from 32 to 512 bytes, and depending on formatting may also halve the filesize. [...] Why they didn't use hardware antialiasing is anyone's guess when the game runs fine with it on.

Seems like TWINE has many weird decisions regarding graphical issues. I haven't played it and doing so in an emulator probably won't be the same as in real the hardware (for performance, I mean). Making the black and white textures as greyscaled instead or colour ones sure would help with performance (heh, sounds logical but I'm not sure about this ), or at least make space for more textures.

I know Perfect Dark has many 64x64 greyscaled textures, then used vertex colouring to make it look great (like the mountains on Area 51). GE does this in Aztec and Egypt but it isn't that common in the rest of the levels.
What makes PD look so great is the fact that they did a wonderful job with textures. Probably someone can explain it better than me, but it's like they designed the textures without the N64 limit in mind, then split the textures in 2 or 4 parts and created as many polygons as they needed to fit those multi-textures. Of course, having the expansion pak to increase the total number of textures and a powerful engine to display lots of polygons on screen, helped. It was really a huge step from GE when they mostly used one texture to fill long surfaces.

Speaking of textures... I was checking PD textures while writing this and some of them are bigger than what I thought was the N64 limit. I have seen some 64x128 greyscaled textures that hardly fit in the 4KB texture cache (64x128x4/8 = 4096 B, then those textures shouldn't have mipmapping) and 80x51 coloured textures (80x51x8/8 = 4080 B, no mipmapping either). I thought mipmapping was a "native" N64 feature and it couldn't be disabled. Seems that Rare used some new tricks for PD.

[SubDrag]

Any of the type 87 textures in the Image Tools have I think essentially disabled mipmaps, and are drawn manually. They manually encoded each mipmap in the image, so really for the bond character pics they're 65 x 65, 33 x 33, 17 x 17, 9 x 9, 5 x 5 and 1 x 1 images all in the one file. The editor automatically generates them. I'm assuming ingame they are separate draw calls and are not mipmapped.

[SATURN_81]

that's a great discovery was the true PD.por textures strings play well with an emulator recommend project1.6 but the patch for the emulator, it emulates the game pretty well, performance is adequate for almost 80% of games, the only problem you'll have to "TWINE" maybe it's the sound of the voices of the characters or actors that is altered from time to time. so anyone who plays "TWINE" is sure to'd just like it. Many will think that this game had passed into the hands of rare?

[zoinkity]

mistamontiel wrote:

zoinkity wrote: Instantly make TWINE look better, set the antialiasing flag in the VI Status register. Which plugin ?

Original hardware.

Mipmapping is only generated if you set it to do so within the display lists. What they really mean is that mipmapping and antialiasing is built right into the graphics processor. PS1 had to do that stuff in memory instead, and when it isn't handled by dedicated hardware is much less efficient--though admittantly it does allow you to control the results.
There are several cases in GE where an image already has its mipmapping generated. First and most obvious would be the Rare logo.

The 'texture limitation' in N64 games is not based on dimentions but instead how much data you can stuff into the data memory segment (dmem) of the RDP. That said, there's a lot of workarounds, some more elegant than others. You can directly draw to the video buffer, you can overload dmem and use very careful pointer direction in instruction memory (imem), you can set tile commands to only read the blocks or strips out of an image that will be mapped within sets of triads, or you can do creative stuff in rdram.

As case-and-point, the Pokémon Stadium games uses 320x240 images and Ogre Battle 64 uses even larger ones, tiled in the same way as the Killer Instinct coin-op to make shifting backgrounds. Actually, it also uses detail images and masks for layered foreground/background effects, each of which can span a quarter or even a half of the screen.

Actual block size is computed not just from dimentions but also from format. A 4bit pixel takes 1/8th the room of a 32bit one, which is why when you can get away with using a 16ci image versus a 32c you should.

Rare's games are a bit unique in that they use predominantly smaller image sizes but mapped closer to a 1-to-1 ratio between pixels in the image and vertices in geometry. The closer this ratio is the less distortion the image is under. Also, splitting larger surfaces into smaller images avoids pixelization. A combination of those is why PD doesn't just have images than GE but a crisper look. Plus, avoiding downgrading larger textures into smaller ones avoids the jpeg-look you often see in this generation of games.
That said, the best quality in any game goes hands-down to Factor 5. They pushed N64 graphics past what you saw on PC at the time.
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[Sogun]

zoinkity wrote:

That said, the best quality in any game goes hands-down to Factor 5. They pushed N64 graphics past what you saw on PC at the time.

Heh, that reminds me some conversations I recently had with Subdrag about which would be the best N64 engine. Of course the main focus was on Perfect Dark and Factor 5 games, being Rogue Squadron the only one I ever played of the F5.

Rogue Squadron has lots of technical achievements: beatiful skies (specially in the Jade Moon and Talooran missions), a landscape made of countless polygons, lasers that iluminate the background as they move, an insane amount of voices. The textures where all great but it seemed to me that the variety wasn't that high, and models for spaceships and other vehicles where good but not at the same level of the rest. Subdrag didn't like the fog at all but I think the drawing distance with no fog involved is very good (it's like they concentrated all the fog just at the end to camouflage popping).
Battle for Naboo seems to have even greater drawing distance, more texture variety and weather efects. I've only seen videos about it but it looks even better than Rogue Squadron.
On the other hand, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine it's said to be the most advanced Factor 5 game for the N64, but I didn't see anything that made it better than the other games (again, I've only seen videos).

Another aspect we need to know is the hi-res resolution. It's not like all games went from 320x240 to 640x480 when using this feature. What resolution have PD and RS/BfN/IJ-IM in hi-res mode?

[zoinkity]

There's a lot of custom resolutions. 544x??? was one, and 480x320(?) was another. Plus, very few N64 games ever use 32bit video output, even though it works perfectly fine (even in GE ;*)) I'll have to check the code reference for PD, but I seem to remember its highest resolution was the hi-res GE resolution.

Battle for Naboo is their big highlight. The huge claim-to-fame was that it had more graphical features than its PC counterpart, and you certainly see it with the lighting. When I played it last there was no lag whatsoever regardless of speed or clutter, despite proper shadows and lighting. If you ever do get the chance to play the real thing, do so--especially if you have a PC reference. It's amazing how much more detailed the N64 game can be.

These specialized engines set their microcode so the RSP can select what triangles can and should be drawn in any given situation based on probable visibility. That means, effectively, more detail is possible with little to no lag. They also select when and how to apply any modifiers (such as lighting) to the surfaces.
You'll notice that the list of specialized microcodes (most haven't been emulated) almost exclusively corresponds with racing games. They'll render only complete triangles within the visible 'TV box' and clip any that won't completely fit, while simultaneously selecting what visual depth should be used for distant objects based on how clearly visible they potentially are. So, distant geometry is less complicated with simpler textures when you are distant, as well as when fog is obscuring it.
Banjo Tooie used a similiar system, although they did that in ram.

Another huge feat was the mpeg microcode used for Resident Evil 2. It's timed against the CPU and plays a very dangerous game with cycles. That easily has to be the biggest technical marvel, even if it is only jpeg quality video.

Incidentally we're entirely discounting audio, which is yet another microcode unto itself. The premium for that on N64 was the mp3 stuff, and Factor 5 and Rare both made their own codec. Difference was that Factor 5 sold their implementation to Nintendo, and it became available to the general N64 programming community from there.

You could say the Quagmire engine is amazing because it is effectively cross-platform, or that one of the best FPS engines was in Turok 3. The whole argument about what makes one engine superior to another is a moot point when you concider that each is designed for a purpose. Zelda's engine is amazing and a perfect fit for many titles, but you certainly don't want to use it for a high-speed racing sim or even certain puzzle games.
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[Dragonsbrethren]

I never realized what a technical achievement the Rogue Squadron engine was. I never owned the game, just borrowed it, and this was back when the N64 was a current gen console. Never even saw Battle for Naboo. I wouldn't mind picking both games up one of these days if I ever get a decent controller again.

Good point on Perfect Dark using texture sizes similar to geometry. I never really understood why so many devs would stretch their textures to ungodly sizes on geometry instead of splitting them. It looked horrid back then and it especially looks horrid now.

[Rey]

You know,if weapons from TWINE were to be ported to Perfect Dark,most guns would look nice. For instances the Raptor and the weapon you start out in the Midnight Departure level would look nice. Perfect Dark has the laser sight for the Falcon 2's so if the laser were to be put for those weapons should look nice.
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[Jedi QuestMaster]

What I always liked about TWINE multiplayer was its survivor mode. It was disappointing that PD didn't have anything like that. GoldenEye had the "You Only Live Twice" thing.

Would it be feasible to implement something like that?
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And I'll leave it at that!

[SilverEye]

well, TWINE 64...
hehe, i remembered just lasering every one in that first level and stun the guards, steal their weapons...Yes i didn't understand engilsh at the time
I thought I had to kill evryone or so
Importing weapons to GE seems no good idea to me. Those weapons have different feeling, and there's something about them i don't like, but I can't explain exactly. It's just the feeling.
TWINE was little fun, but I don't see anything in importing to GE. I even don't talk about PD.
And last, where can you find that super mario 64 editor and does anyone knows if it isn't too hard since I am NOT a professional like SubDrag or so