[HN Gopher] Palette lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64
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Palette lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64
Author : ibobev
Score : 174 points
Date : 2025-05-17 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (30fps.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (30fps.net)
| typeofhuman wrote:
| It blows my mind how genius these game engineers were. They dealt
| with so many limitations and created such imaginative and
| brilliant solutions.
| Dwedit wrote:
| This is new stuff, not stuff done during the reign of the N64.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Only recently did we figure out how to make Mario64 run at
| 30fps.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31075622
| corysama wrote:
| Around the end of the PS2's 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 "The Conduit". Same team.
| OCASMv2 wrote:
| > What was tricky was a separate technique to get real
| cubemaps working on the PS2.
|
| Any details on that?
| 90s_dev wrote:
| 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 :(
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Limitations, and, popularity
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Popularity comes from utility. Utility comes from the right
| trade offs. Limitations demand careful trade offs.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| The tradeoff was that the N64 was cheap and had Pokemon
| on it
| amaranth wrote:
| The N64 is older than Pokemon.
| bonki wrote:
| Not true, the N64 was released a couple of months after
| the first Game Boy games.
| jebarker wrote:
| What were the limitations for Animal Well?
| 90s_dev wrote:
| - 320 x 180 screen size for starters
|
| - Limited map size
|
| - Limited color palette I think
|
| - _and more!_
| jebarker wrote:
| 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:
| Yeah he talks about how it was a choice he made simply so
| he could get stuff done and have some end in sight.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I'm sure they were but, as noted, this specifically is 2025
| stuff, and demoscene, not gamedev.
| accrual wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Shadow of the Colossus...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is very impressive for a PS2 game.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| And a sequel (prequel?) to ICO, from the same devs
| somat wrote:
| 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.
| anthk wrote:
| Super Mario 64 has been decompiled an ported to GL 1.3.
| reidrac wrote:
| I love how the post, about N64 graphic tricks, ends with the
| question: "Is this the future?"
| echelon wrote:
| 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] https://wiki.deco.mp/index.php/N64
|
| [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bZl8xKDUryI
|
| [3] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
|
| The whole channel is gold. He has dozens of deep dives like
| this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DdXLpoNLywg
|
| And his game and engine are beautiful:
| https://youtu.be/Drame-4ufso
|
| [4] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yXzoZ2AfWwg
|
| [5] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s0QSiPRmWaI
| anthk wrote:
| I'd love Perfect Dark backported to GL 2.1, but sadly some
| effects require GL 3.3 at minimum.
| echelon wrote:
| A 60 fps Perfect Dark with online play would be fun.
|
| Curious - why the desire to have it run on GL 2.1?
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| 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 can't re-
| create that heat haze effect on the PS3 because the read-modify-
| write just isn't as fast as when we were using the PS2. There are
| things like that."
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ps2/comments/1cktw88/gran_turismos_...
|
| https://youtu.be/ybi9SdroCTA?t=4103
|
| 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...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
|
| GoW2 https://youtu.be/IpKLwIIdvuk?si=TjifKmlYsUuvhk0F&t=970
|
| FFXII https://youtu.be/NytHoYOs_4M?si=jE1Fxy40khEvV6Bn&t=51
|
| GT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6lZIxk_h9g (THE BOOTSCREEN
| _crying_ )
|
| Black (Renderware was a crazy engine)
| https://youtu.be/bZBjcwyq7fQ?si=Pev5ifpksJm4X6Oi&t=356
|
| Valkyrie profile 2 https://youtu.be/9ScjO4NuUtA?si=Z29cR-
| hLsT2pnP2I&t=38
|
| Rouge Galaxy
| https://youtu.be/iR1evzyl-7Q?si=fldm3-NnuFxOITMn&t=624
|
| Burnout 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r5r0nE1sA4
|
| Jak and Daxter, Ratchet.
|
| For GC - RE4, Metroid, The Zeldas... ofc. Looks crazy good.
|
| I kneel.
| anthk wrote:
| 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.
| dejobaan wrote:
| 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
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_interrupt) and "racing the
| beam." I always associated this with the Atari 800. You weren't
| "supposed" to be able to do stuff like
| https://youtu.be/GuHqw_3A-vo?t=33, 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:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc
|
| 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!
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(page generated 2025-05-17 23:00 UTC)