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

[Kerr Avon]

By the way, Sogun, has there been any progress on your porting of the Classic Nintendo Maps pack to Perfect Dark, yet?

[Trevor]

I cant believe I missed the grass stuff all the way from April...
anyway, 3D textures look awesome, but yeah, high poly-count - although less than actually modelling every brick.

I think that reducing the layers and using tile tricks might achieve a better result at faster fps.

it would probably require ucode altering though to have a top layer only render for a set distance and then use tile effects for the rest.

so, for example, under your feet could be 3 layers of grass
2 of dots (the blades) 1 base.
then as the distance increases the top layers fade to alpha and are then clipped while the base layer transitions to tile2 which is a combined texture showing the grass from the side.

Since tile2 is already made for distance you wouldnt nee mip-mapping because you pre-bake that in.

you could increase the "shift" on the tile so it covers more area than the initial tile. (see TMEM doc for info on tiles and shift)

BUT, for doing this in vanilla GE....

Trev
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[Sogun]

Kerr Avon wrote:

By the way, Sogun, has there been any progress on your porting of the Classic Nintendo Maps pack to Perfect Dark, yet?

Sorry, I only worked on it a little last year. I run out of steam in a week.

I made some changes in Peach's Castle's background in order to expand the level a little and improve navigation so it fits better with all the PD mutiplayer modes. But I was doing it in the GE rom and haven't even tested it on console.

I couldn't keep my word and focus on this project. The few times I worked with the Editor was to test some ideas I had like the skybox or the grass effect.

Trevor wrote:

so, for example, under your feet could be 3 layers of grass 2 of dots (the blades) 1 base. then as the distance increases the top layers fade to alpha and are then clipped while the base layer transitions to tile2 which is a combined texture showing the grass from the side.

Many years ago, when creating custom mipmaps began to be possible on Editor I thought of many different ways to use them and have cool looking effects. One of those ideas was to have grass with mipmaps that slightly tilted the blades until you see it sideways, but the result was horrible XDD. I was using a 32x32 8bit color texture so maybe with 64x64 GS you could get better. That's why I switched to the fur shading approach.

Heh, if we could make teselation like in Rogue Squadron things could look waaaaaay better. We need a custom N64 graphic engine, hehehehe.

[Kerr Avon]

Sogun wrote:

Kerr Avon wrote: By the way, Sogun, has there been any progress on your porting of the Classic Nintendo Maps pack to Perfect Dark, yet? Sorry, I only worked on it a little last year. I run out of steam in a week. I made some changes in Peach's Castle's background in order to expand the level a little and improve navigation so it fits better with all the PD mutiplayer modes. But I was doing it in the GE rom and haven't even tested it on console.

No problem, mate.

[Sogun]

Hi guys. It's been a long time since my last message.

Today I finally tried something I had in mind for a long time: replicating toonshadin on N64 using envmaps. It didn't turn out as I expected, though.

I'm not sure how to improve it. Maybe I used wrong settings when calculating the normals. I tried different angles but this is the best I could get. I think pavarini experimened with this too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80IkolKr1AI

I'll quote the video description:

Quote:

Just experimenting with envmapping in order to obtain something similar to toon-shading as featured in games like Jet Set Radio. Link's model is from The Legend Of Zelda Windwaker (erased some unseen polygons inside the hands) retextured for my N64 test (that's why eyes and mouth are wrong). A scaled up version of the model with reversed surfaces and black texture makes the outline, although this secondary model doesn't have an optimal position and the outline can't be seen in some parts. The prop is 5090 triangles in total as seen at the end of the video (way too much for original hardware!!!). I don't know why the mouth texture's transparency doesn't work, since it's the same kind of texture than the eyes. Envmapping looks cool at some angles and it's similar to toon-shading, but at other angles it looks like your usual goraud shading. There's also a general metallic feel to the model that I suspect is how the GoldenEye engine manages envmaps. Haven't tested on console. Second part of the video shows how the model looks in the GE Setup Editor. The color transition is much greater and there's no goraud shading look. This is how I though it would look ingame. Later you can see the wireframe and the triangle normals used for the envmap effect coded in colors. Abrupt cuts in color transitions are bad and need to be fixed manually, but it would only fix small visual glitches and not the big issues I have

[HackBond]

Sogun wrote:

Hi guys. It's been a long time since my last message. Today I finally tried something I had in mind for a long time: replicating toonshadin on N64 using envmaps. It didn't turn out as I expected, though. I'm not sure how to improve it. Maybe I used wrong settings when calculating the normals. I tried different angles but this is the best I could get. I think pavarini experimened with this too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80IkolKr1AI I'll quote the video description: Quote: Just experimenting with envmapping in order to obtain something similar to toon-shading as featured in games like Jet Set Radio. Link's model is from The Legend Of Zelda Windwaker (erased some unseen polygons inside the hands) retextured for my N64 test (that's why eyes and mouth are wrong). A scaled up version of the model with reversed surfaces and black texture makes the outline, although this secondary model doesn't have an optimal position and the outline can't be seen in some parts. The prop is 5090 triangles in total as seen at the end of the video (way too much for original hardware!!!). I don't know why the mouth texture's transparency doesn't work, since it's the same kind of texture than the eyes. Envmapping looks cool at some angles and it's similar to toon-shading, but at other angles it looks like your usual goraud shading. There's also a general metallic feel to the model that I suspect is how the GoldenEye engine manages envmaps. Haven't tested on console. Second part of the video shows how the model looks in the GE Setup Editor. The color transition is much greater and there's no goraud shading look. This is how I though it would look ingame. Later you can see the wireframe and the triangle normals used for the envmap effect coded in colors. Abrupt cuts in color transitions are bad and need to be fixed manually, but it would only fix small visual glitches and not the big issues I have

Welcome back!

MRKane is trying the same aethestic for his Perfect Dark mod, Dark Noon.

EDIT: More the black lines around characters for a comic look rather than celshading
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Last edited by HackBond on Sun Feb 06, 2022 9:33 am; edited 1 time in total

[Morrigan Aensland-Hill]

Welcome, Sogun! You may not know who I am, but I appear to be one of the GE mod contributors.

Oh, and his name is not "pavarini" anymore, he now goes by the name "Carnivorous" in case you were wondering.
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[Sogun]

Hi guys. Here's another demo I've been working on the last couple of weeks.

Half-Life 64

There's only what you see in the video. Many years ago I planned to port the prologue to Perfect Dark but, just like other ideas of mine, it didn't happen.

Based on the original level geometry and textures, I had to tweak everything in order to keep as much detail as possible from the original source. My goal was to make it look as the PC game more than something that would look good on the N64, so many of the textures lack mipmaps and the image is very aliased on the original hardware.

The map only has 4 rooms but it's already 1,200 triangles and 110 textures!

Here are some hi-res images from my N64:
https://i.postimg.cc/JnL3n0ZM/Half-Life-64-01.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/hjsmtrK1/Half-Life-64-02.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/Bbw1xnL8/Half-Life-64-03.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/kJQFHNP4/Half-Life-64-04.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/tybzxcFV/Half-Life-64-05.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/cs8cRyDf/Half-Life-64-06.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/TGcJqccN/Half-Life-64-07.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/NBJ8ZfS1/Half-Life-64-08.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/0P2dtJWk/Half-Life-64-09.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/rq71FZ8s/Half-Life-64-10.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/ZJWPmzzX/Half-Life-64-11.jpg

[Wreck]

I'm not personally familiar with Half-Life, but this looks really nice. That's a crazy amount of textures in use.

[HackBond]

Wreck wrote:

I'm not personally familiar with Half-Life, but this looks really nice. That's a crazy amount of textures in use.

The TLDR is it's fairly large, fairly diverse and fairly long. Not to mention jumping is required
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[MRKane]

That is crazy impressive that you've managed to squeeze so much texture information into GE and not have it break on you - which is something I've struggled with in the past!

I can't wait to see the alien levels that nobody talks about (or remembers!) lol
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[HackBond]

MRKane wrote:

That is crazy impressive that you've managed to squeeze so much texture information into GE and not have it break on you - which is something I've struggled with in the past! I can't wait to see the alien levels that nobody talks about (or remembers!) lol

If you haven't, I suggest checking out the Crowbar Collective's excellent remake of the Xen levels in Black Mesa (the game).
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[Sogun]

I keep doing performance tests to the GE and PD engines and I want to try with polygons and textures with less features. I used the 'Advanced Options' in 'Replace Triangle/Group textures/Details' but it doesn't render correctly on console. All I get is a white screen or some weird wireframe (funny how you can see in this wireframe mode how the engine cuts and creates triangles on the edges of the screen).

If I'm not mistaken, the N64 has basically 4 ways to render stuff on the screen: FILL, COPY, 1-CYCLE1 and 2-CYCLE. They increasingly use more fillrate and resources.
FILL is used to paint all the screen in one color, while COPY is used mostly for 2D objects. 1-CYCLE and 2-CYCLE are the ones used in triangles. 2-CYCLE allows for more complex graphic effects and a greater number of simplier effects, while 1-CYCLE is twice as fast. So theoretically, if you sacrifice some features (like trilinear mipmap interpolation, fog or antialising) things would run faster.
Even better. You are not limited to use one way to render everything. You can choose to use COPY, 1-CYCLE and 2-CYCLE per triangle. So it gives a lot of flexibility (if you learn how it works).

So I wonder if someone can guide me on the basics of the 'Advanced Options' or just tell me what configuration I need to use.


Firstly, I want to know how limited is 1-CYCLE.
My idea is to only use vertex shaded polygons and simulate dramatic lights. It should look like this -> https://youtu.be/DFYjSkUdfb4?t=524
It looks cool, but proper vertex shading needs high color depth to avoid color banding and the N64 doesn't have that strenght (you need 24 bit and the N64 outputs 15 bits I think). But you can use dithering and some pixel blending the N64 does when scaling the final image to 640x480 in order to output it on the TV (it also acts like antialising). This process blurries the image, but since there aren't any textures it should be alright. I'm more concerned about the performance loss of this pixel blending and the artifacts the dithering creates when it's not used.

Continuing with 1-CYCLE, I want to know if fog is possible in this mode. Fog is often critizised but I think it does a fundamental job to provide more sense of depth and scale to the scene (as seen here -> https://youtu.be/mznc8dhijTo?t=1560).

Perspective Correction for textures is also a feature I think it's possible in 1-CYCLE. Can someone confirm it? Same with bilinear filtering. Can we have both in 1-CYCLE?

Secondly, I want to know what features are exclusive to 2-CYCLE. I think Trilineal Mipmap Interpolation, Environmental Mapping, Detail Maps and some short of advanced Z-Buffer for alpha textures are the more important ones. Also, the more features you stack (texture, transparency, antialising, fog, shading, other filters...) the more mandatory using 2-CYCLE gets. What would be the best looking polygon you can get with 1-CYCLE?

Finally, to make things simple I'm assuming that once a triangle uses 1-CYCLE, no matter what features or effects it has, it always takes the same amount of time to render. And a 2-CYCLE triangle would take twice the time. But that probably isn't right at all and depending on the configuration you can get faster or slower.


In summary. Can someone post how 'Advanced Options' should look if I want these kind of triangles?

1) Vertex shading. No textures, no antialising, no dithering, no fog, no transparency.
2) Vertex shading and fog. No textures, no antialising, no dithering, no transparency.
3) Vertex shading, fog, antialising, dithering. No textures, no transparency.
4) Vertex shading, fog, antialising, dithering, transparency. No textures.

5) Just for fun. PS1 like polygons: Vertex shading, textures, alpha, transparencies, dithering. No fog, no antialising, no perspective correction, no Z-Buffer, no texture filters.
6) Same as above but with Z-buffer.

7) The better good-looking 1-CYCLE triangle possible. Perspective correction is a must if it can be done in this mode. I don't care about other texture filters, or antialising. Even fog.


I won't experiment with the Z-buffer for now, although I might try in the future. I think you can avoid it in backgounds arranging the triangle rendering order and with rooms partitions, but I'm not sure how it will behave with props and NPCs.


Thanks.