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on Gopher (inofficial)
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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Palette lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64
paulryanrogers wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Demo scene and work like this is impressive. Yet I can't help but
notice that it tends toward simpler more empty scenes. The kind of
stuff one might expect in the background or as only a part of a game
mechanic. It's as if there's just not enough resources to really make
complete experiences with most of the techniques.
What I find more impressive are efforts like FastDoom or the various
Mario-64 optimization projects which squeeze significantly better
performance out of old hardware. Sometimes even while adding content
and features. Maybe there is a connection between demo sceners and more
comprehensive efforts?
dejobaan wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
While I'm really happy we have faster systems now, there was something
fun about about having to subvert constraints in games, and so
satisfying and lovely when you did it right.
HN folks are probably familiar with raster interrupts ( [1] ) and
"racing the beam." I always associated this with the Atari 800. You
weren't "supposed" to be able to do stuff like [2] , but Display List
Interrupts made that possible.
What I didn't know until recently was how much Atari 2600's games owed
to this kinda of craziness: [3] It's stuff like this that makes me
think that if hardware stopped advancing, we'd still be able to figure
out more and more interesting stuff for decades!
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_interrupt
URI [2]: https://youtu.be/GuHqw_3A-vo?t=33
URI [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc
heraldgeezer wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
I miss the PS1 and PS2 optimization. Most of them look amazing uprezzed
to 1080p or 4k or more with emulation. Halo 2 era graphics in 4k is all
we need imo. Yes that one is xbox but try Halo MCC Halo 2 in classic
graphics. Still looks incredible.
GT3 heatwave summarizes it well.
"I showed a demo of GT3 that showed the Seattle course at sunset with
the heat rising off the ground and shimmering. You canât re-create
that heat haze effect on the PS3 because the read-modify-write just
isnât as fast as when we were using the PS2. There are things like
that." [1] [2] It's not trying to emulate a real heatwave as new
engines like UE5 does, that just tanks fps. It does "tricks" to do it
instead. And honestly, looking at RTX tanking frame rates, I would
rather have these cheap tricks.
A 299MHz MIPS runs this:
Shadow of the Colossus... [3] GoW2 [4] FFXII [5] GT4 [6] (THE
BOOTSCREEN crying)
Black (Renderware was a crazy engine) [7] Valkyrie profile 2 [8] Rouge
Galaxy [9] Burnout 3 [10] Jak and Daxter, Ratchet.
For GC - RE4, Metroid, The Zeldas... ofc. Looks crazy good.
I kneel.
URI [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ps2/comments/1cktw88/gran_turismos_cr...
URI [2]: https://youtu.be/ybi9SdroCTA?t=4103
URI [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
URI [4]: https://youtu.be/IpKLwIIdvuk?si=TjifKmlYsUuvhk0F&t=970
URI [5]: https://youtu.be/NytHoYOs_4M?si=jE1Fxy40khEvV6Bn&t=51
URI [6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6lZIxk_h9g
URI [7]: https://youtu.be/bZBjcwyq7fQ?si=Pev5ifpksJm4X6Oi&t=356
URI [8]: https://youtu.be/9ScjO4NuUtA?si=Z29cR-hLsT2pnP2I&t=38
URI [9]: https://youtu.be/iR1evzyl-7Q?si=fldm3-NnuFxOITMn&t=624
URI [10]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r5r0nE1sA4
MegaDeKay wrote 51 min ago:
> A 299MHz MIPS runs this:
Sorta. The GoW2 video was captured on PCSX2 and likely benefited from
upscaling and other niceties in that clip. Didn't look through the
rest of them. Either way, GoW2 was an incredible achievement on PS2.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
I still think halo 3 looks a lot better than some modern games. Stuff
like blur bloom and all that grass and foliage pop in does not in
fact look good. It looks worse than just turning all of that off. And
I canât appreciate a high polygon count model when the game is a
high speed fps so whats the point of that either. Halo 3 texture
resolution to my eye is fine. I donât think I would notice twice or
4x the size textures. Only thing I notice is the hardware demands.
anthk wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
With the PS2 you are right. With the PSX... so-so. Yes, it could
match maybe a Pentium 90 almost 100, but a MMX pentium with 3DFX
would stomp it and be on par of the N64 if not better.
MIPS CPU's are amazing, they can do wonders at low cicles. Just look
at the PSP, or the SGI Irix.
Also, the PS2 "GPU" is not the same as the R4k CPU.
BTW, on the PS2... the Deus Ex port sucked balls against the PC port,
it couldn't fully handle the Unreal engine.
Yes, the PS2 did crazy FX, but with really small levels for the
mentioned port; bear in mind DX was almost 'open word' for a huge
chunk of the game.
rasz wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
> With the PSX... so-so. Yes, it could match maybe a Pentium 90
almost 100, but a MMX pentium with 3DFX would stomp it
Pentium much faster than MIPS CPU for game logic, 3dfx 50 MPixels/s
fillrate matches Playstations 60 MPixels/s, Pentium FPU tho is no
match for Playstation GTE 90-300K triangles per second meaning you
would have to rely on CPU power alone for geometry processing (like
contemporary Bleem) resulting in 166-233MHz Pentium minimum
requirements. MMX would be of no help here, it was barely used in
few games for audio effects.
reidrac wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
I love how the post, about N64 graphic tricks, ends with the question:
"Is this the future?"
echelon wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
The amount of indie N64 development happening right now is wild. The
platform is flourishing.
The system has seen a dozen of its most popular games decompiled [1]
into readable source files, which enables easy porting to PC without
an emulator. It also enables a ton of mods to be written, many of
which will run on the original hardware.
There are numerous Zelda fan remakes [2]. Complete games with new
dungeons and storylines.
The Mario 64 scene is on fire. Kaze has deeply optimized the game
[3], and is building his own engine and sequels. If you like
technical deep dives into retro tech, his channel is literally
golden.
Folks are making crazy demos for the platform, such as Portal [4],
which unfortunately brought Valve's lawyers' attention.
Lost games, such as Rare's Dinosaur Planet [5], have leaked, been
brought up to near production ready status, been decompiled, and have
seen their own indie resurgence. [1] [2] [3]
The whole channel is gold. He has dozens of deep dives like this: [4]
And his game and engine are beautiful: [5] [4] [6] [5]
URI [1]: https://wiki.deco.mp/index.php/N64
URI [2]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bZl8xKDUryI
URI [3]: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
URI [4]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DdXLpoNLywg
URI [5]: https://youtu.be/Drame-4ufso
URI [6]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXzoZ2AfWwg
URI [7]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s0QSiPRmWaI
anthk wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
I'd love Perfect Dark backported to GL 2.1, but sadly some effects
require GL 3.3 at minimum.
echelon wrote 6 hours 30 min ago:
A 60 fps Perfect Dark with online play would be fun.
Curious - why the desire to have it run on GL 2.1?
accrual wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
It's very impressive to see "realistic" graphics on the N64. The demo
reminds me of "ICO" for the PS2.
I've always wondered if it would be possible to create an SDK to
abstract the N64 graphics hardware and expose some modern primitives,
lighting, shading, tools to bake lighting as this demo does, etc. The
N64 has some pretty unique hardware for its generation, more details on
the hardware are here on Copetti.org:
URI [1]: https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/
somat wrote 9 hours 59 min ago:
Note that the N64 was designed by SGI, And seeing as how influential
SGI was for 3d graphics, I sort of assume the reverse, that the n64
probably has the most standard hardware of it's generation. I would
be vaguely surprised if there was not an opengl library for it.
However there is a large caveat, 1. you have to think of the system
as a graphics card with a cpu bolted on. and 2. the graphics system
is directly exposed.
Graphics chip architecture ends up being a ugly hateful incompatible
mess, and as such the vendors of said accelerators generally tend to
avoid publishing reference documents for them, preferring to publish
intermediate API's instead. things like OpenGL, DirectX, CUDA,
Vulcan, mainly so that under the hood they can keep them an
incompatible mess(if you never publish a reference, you never have to
have hardware backwards compatibility, the up side is they can create
novel designs, the down side is no one can use them directly) so when
you do get direct access to them, as in that generation of game
console, you sort of instinctively recoil in horror.
footnote on graphics influence: OpenGL came out of SGI and nvidia was
founded by ex SGI engineers.
phire wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
> that the n64 probably has the most standard hardware of it's
generation
The Reality Coprocessor (or RCP) doesn't look like any graphics
cards that previously came out of SGI. Despite the marketing, it is
not a shrunk down SGI workstation.
It approaches the problem in very different ways is actually more
advanced in many ways. SGI workstations had strict fixed function
pixel pipelines, but RCP's pixel pipeline is semi-programmable.
People often call describe it as "highly configurable" instead of
programmable, but it was the start of what lead to modern Pixel
Shaders. RCP could do many things in a single-pass which would
require multiple passes of blending on a SGI workstation.
And later SGI graphics cards don't seem to have taken advantage of
these innovations either. SGI hired a bunch of new engineers (with
experience in embedded systems) to create the N64, and then once
the project was finished they made them redundant. The new
technology created by that team never had a chance to influence the
rest of SGI. I get the impression that SGI was afraid such low-cost
GPUs would cannibalise their high-end workstation market.
BTW, The console looks most like a shrunk down 90s SGI workstation
is actually Sony's Playstation 2. Fixed function pixel pipeline
with a huge amount of blending performance to facilitate complex
multi-pass blending effects. Though, SGI wouldn't have let
programmers have access to the Vector Units and DMAs like Sony did.
SGI would have abstracted it all away with OpenGL
------------------
But in a way, you are kind of right. The N64 was the most forwards
looking console of that era, and the one that ended up the closest
to modern GPUs. Just not for the reason you suggest.
Instead, some of the ex-SGI employees that worked on the N64
created their own company called ArtX. They were originally
planning to create a PC graphics card, but ended up with the
contract to first create the GameCube for Nintendo (The GameCube
design shows clear signs of engineers overcompensating for flaws in
the N64 design). Before they could finish, ArtX were bought by ATI
becoming ATI's west-coast design division, and the plans for a PC
version of that GPU were scrapped.
After finishing the GameCube, that team went on to design the R3xx
series of GPUs for ATI (Radeon 9700, etc).
The R3xx is more noteworthy for having a huge influence on
Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 standard, which is basically the start of
modern GPUs.
So in many ways, the N64 is a direct predecessor to DirectX 9.0.
midnightclubbed wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
The RCP was actually two hardware blocks, the RDP which as you
say did the fixed function (but very flexible) pixel processing
and the RSP which handled command processing and vertex
transformation (and audio!).
The standard api was pretty much OpenGL, generating in-memory
command lists that could be sent to the RSP.
However the RSP was a completely programmable mips processor
(with simd instructions in parallel).
One of my favorite tricks in the RDP hardware was it used the
parity bits in the rambus memory to store coverage bits for msss
phire wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
> The standard api was pretty much OpenGL
Good point. It is the software APIs are where you do see the
strong SGI influence. It's not OpenGL, but it's clearly based
on their experience with OpenGL. The resulting API is quite a
bit better than other 5th gen consoles.
It's only the hardware (especially RDP) that has little direct
connection to other SGI hardware.
anthk wrote 8 hours 56 min ago:
Super Mario 64 has been decompiled an ported to GL 1.3.
heraldgeezer wrote 10 hours 58 min ago:
Shadow of the Colossus...
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
rightbyte wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
That is very impressive for a PS2 game.
HideousKojima wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
And a sequel (prequel?) to ICO, from the same devs
typeofhuman wrote 12 hours 58 min ago:
It blows my mind how genius these game engineers were. They dealt with
so many limitations and created such imaginative and brilliant
solutions.
Sharlin wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
I'm sure they were but, as noted, this specifically is 2025 stuff,
and demoscene, not gamedev.
90s_dev wrote 12 hours 13 min ago:
Limitations demand and produce extraordinary creativity. That's the
secret behind pico8 and Animal Well and so many amazing games.
I wish I didn't think of a significantly better architecture for my
2d-pixel-art-game-maker-maker this weekend. Now it'll be another
month before I can release it :(
jebarker wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
What were the limitations for Animal Well?
90s_dev wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
- 320 x 180 screen size for starters
- Limited map size
- Limited color palette I think
- and more!
jebarker wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
Were those imposed as artistic choices rather than due to
hardware limitations etc? I just asked because it shipped on PC
and the major consoles, so any limitations seem like they were
by choice.
90s_dev wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
Yeah he talks about how it was a choice he made simply so he
could get stuff done and have some end in sight.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
Limitations, and, popularity
90s_dev wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
Popularity comes from utility. Utility comes from the right trade
offs. Limitations demand careful trade offs.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
The tradeoff was that the N64 was cheap and had Pokemon on it
ninjin wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Cheap? In its generation the Nintendo 64 was the expensive
choice. Maybe not because of the console itself (price varied
across its lifetime relative to the competition) but because
of the cost of the games (and nearly complete lack of
piracy).
As for Pokémon, the Nintendo 64 launched in June 1996 and
the first Pokémon game was Pokémon Snap released nearly
three years after the console in March 1999.
amaranth wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
The N64 is older than Pokemon.
bonki wrote 7 hours 16 min ago:
Not true, the N64 was released a couple of months after the
first Game Boy games.
Dwedit wrote 12 hours 52 min ago:
This is new stuff, not stuff done during the reign of the N64.
corysama wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
Around the end of the PS2âs lifetime, some engine dev friends of
mine figure out to do palletized spherical harmonic lighting on the
PS2. That was pretty straightforward.
What was tricky was a separate technique to get real cubemaps
working on the PS2.
Unfortunately, these came too late to actually ship in any PS2
games. The SH trick might have been used in the GameCube game
âThe Conduitâ. Same team.
OCASMv2 wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
> What was tricky was a separate technique to get real cubemaps
working on the PS2.
Any details on that?
corysama wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
If you lay out a cubemap as a 2d texture that looks literally
like [1] it's not hard, given the VU1-based triangle processing
(like proto-mesh-shaders 25 years ago), to set the UVs of
triangles independently to use the correct square even in the
case of dynamic reflections. This doesn't do per-pixel
spherical UV normalization. But, with a dense enough mesh, a
linear approximation looks good enough.
Except... The triangle UVs will often cross over between
multiple squares. With the above texture, it will cross over
into the white area and make the white visible on the mesh. So,
you fill the white area with a duplicate of the texels from the
square that is adjacent on the cube. That won't work for huge
triangles that span more than 1.5 squares. But, it's good
enough given an appropriate mesh.
Probably would have been better to just use a lat-long
projection texture like [2] Or, maybe store the cubemap as
independent squares and subdivide any triangles that cross
square boundaries.
URI [1]: https://www.turais.de/content/images/size/w1000/2021/0...
URI [2]: https://www.turais.de/content/images/size/w1600/2021/0...
OCASMv2 wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
Interesting, thanks!
bob1029 wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Only recently did we figure out how to make Mario64 run at 30fps.
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31075622
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