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

[Dragonsbrethren]

Can't believe I never noticed this before. Depot's recon photo shows a few things that didn't make the cut:



First off, the silo, which is still a part of the background, can be seen easily. They must've redone the visibility information since the shot was taken:



Second, the lights. There are circular light patches on the ground in some areas, but the shot shows actual light fixtures attached to the warehouses. Like the hanging lamps, they were probably completely flat. Given the fact that the bright part appears detached from the buildings, I believe this is the texture used:



I always figured it was intended as a street light for Streets, so it's pretty cool to learn this is where was probably used. Finding out about these now is kind of interesting; I was planning on having similar lights around the Indian seaport, for the Goldfinger project.

Last edited by Dragonsbrethren on Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:27 am; edited 1 time in total

[SubDrag]

That kinda makes sense, and explains the lighting in Depot. Pretty cool. I'm not sure I see the circular containers in that top picture but they should be there according to their locations.

[Dragonsbrethren]

It's there, I've highlighted it in red:

[SubDrag]

Ah yes there it is. Plain as day now.

[Wreck]

Good eye, DB.
I had never noticed the exterior lights before, nor the silo. Certainly does explain the lit areas. I suppose it would look pretty dark and dull if they changed the lighting after removing the light textures, though. Are there other locations around the Depot that features such (now) obvious lamp lighting?
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[Dragonsbrethren]

Oh yeah, all over the place. Just start the mission; there are two bright spots emanating from the building you start next to. Pretty much every warehouse has evidence of having these lights attached to them. It's not that I never noticed the lighting before, but I never realized the actual lights were pictured in the recon photo that whole time. I really wonder how early in development those photos were made, if this was stuff that got pulled out at the very last minute or what.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Oh wow, Streets has something too. Really easy to overlook this stuff, it's not immediately obvious like Jungle or Control:







I knew about these textures, but I never thought they were actually used at one point:



(There are more; didn't feel like posting them all)

If these lights were in, what about all of the other unused streets textures? The clock, the signs, the traffic lights...? I really have to wonder why they cut these! They couldn't have slowed the stage down that much, and if the theory that they were sprites is correct, they wouldn't have looked bad at all. I really don't think they were sprites; I think they were a part of the backgrounds, and they were cut for looking bad from certain angles. Still, I wish they kept them, especially in a bland stage like Streets.

The tank treads look a bit different, too, like the wheels were smaller.

[Wreck]

I had taken notice of that, but always thought it might've just been the tank antenna. Now that you've pointed it out, it does seem to look more like a lamp of some kind. Even the building and ground is lit there...
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[SubDrag]

I never realized that either, but that makes sense. Is it possible they were thinking extensive dynamic lighting like PD and it never made it?

[radorn]

cool findings, guys

[bmw]

With streets and depot being 2 of the slowest levels in the game as it is, I have to wonder if this stuff was removed to improve framerates.

[Dragonsbrethren]

You probably have more experience with it than anyone, including the original designers: Just why is Streets so slow? It doesn't seem all that complicated in terms of geometry. I guess it's a bit more open than most of the other stages, but Surface runs well enough and that's entirely open. Depot is probably slower on hardware (but not on emulators - Streets definitely has it beat there), but Depot has a lot more detail. I'm guessing it has something to do with it being constructed almost entirely out of objects, but I don't know if that actually has a negative impact on its performance or not.

[bmw]

A big part of what slows down depot so much is something that can be fixed - if you look through the setup file, a lot of the garage doors don't have their "behind door not visible" flag checked. So those doors, when closed, are not closing off their portals. A few gameshark codes can fix this on the console and the mission should run a lot smoother (though I've never tried it). I'm really surprised rare overlooked something so simple that could have made the mission run so much smoother.

As for streets - there's more polygons there than you realize. When you consider all the pasted on windows, all the building molding/trim, and then the fact that the buildings are 3 stories high, plus the level is wide open - well you have a TON of polygons loaded at once. I've managed to DRASTICALLY improve framerates in my multiplayer map by deleting probably half the polygons in the entire map.

But there's also an interesting design flaw that I've noticed in trying to track down the sources of slowdown even in my modified map, and it actually comes down to one single room:



Now take a look at the string of 4 portals plus the window portal in the back room. They can all see through each other. If that room I have highlighted were split into 2 separate rooms diagonally and a new portal added (see the red box I drew), I think you could just barely but completely cut off the front portal from the second portal and thus all those rooms beyond the second portal would not load when you're behind the first portal, if that makes sense. Of course the opposite would also be true, when you're beyond the 2nd portal, nothing this side of the first portal would load either. But right now I think its ALL loading at once, causing massive slowdown.

I'm thinking about trying to split that room in half and see if I'm right. Not sure how tricky that will be to do, but if it works, I know it would speed up my multiplayer map even more.

EDIT - I just tested my theory by closing off that second portal. Framerates from the garage yard area improved significantly.

[bmw]

I went ahead and split that room in half - improved framerates by a full 10 to 20 percent in the otherwise slowest part of my level. So now the whole thing is up to acceptable framerates, I hope to be able to release this as a full 4-player map. Got a few final minor bugs to work out then I'll have a release ready to post.

[EternallyAries]

Wow BMW you sem to no a lot abowt this level
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