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[Starlight Lotice]

there is a debate about it, there is this idea that the cartridge allowed fast access to game assets like other rom based systems and as mentioned in the video, this is supported by an interview with factor 5 for the indiana jones game where they mention they did it in that game but offer no furter details of the process or if was something special in the cartridge, but a dev in beyond3d forums(he was a developer for n64 games at the time) mentioned that is a bad idea, he mentioned something about very limited bandwidht like 8 bit interface or something like that(I remember he clarified he dont remember everything about it but that it was bad idea ) makes sense as most dev didnt used that and the general consensus is the BW problems, maybe is bad idea but can be used along other things to alleviate the problem and maybe it depends more how the game works so what F5 did cannot be applied to every game, I suspect that what you say is correct but just like nes that extra hardware was very costly and most publishers didn't want to pay so as a result devs had a hard time with the console, in the nes era the extra features in the game required a particular mapper chip that can trigger interrupts for special functions that was expensive

Thanks for the additional information! It's always nice to learn new things about these systems and whether expandable mappers were possible.

True, the UK prices for Cartridges got to £70 at one point!

 

[polybius80]

Texture wise, i think DOOM 64 and Banjo Kazooie are the best looking N64 games. Especially Banjo:

textures cache a lot but try to not and

yes, a good sign of good developer is those that can overcome the limits with clever tricks, in banjo textures they apparently use a lot of repetition in clever ways it seems they use small textures pieces that can be used in conjunction with other small pieces to create a bigger textures by not repeating them evenly, so they try to not update the texture cache as often and instead maximize what they can do with 4 kb texture cache, for example the small wood planks in the image are repeated in the large wood planks and the stone walls tiles but they dont use the tiles in the same order so it gives the illusion that they are using a very big texture when in fact is lot of small textures cleverly ordered to look like a bigger texture, also they appear to use variations of the same color in the textures so they try to focus on a particular color and try to use different texture when they require other colors so there is a lot of variations of each color instead of lot of colors and few variations, the end result is very colorful scenes without using bigger(more bits) textures

also mirrors help a lot, this is from brutal but doom64 has lot of billboard/sprites that can be easily stored just half of it and then mirror the other side

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Read Revolutionaries at Sony for the bigger pro CD argument of all (Nintendo’s cartridges cost to devs, minimum order volumes, turnaround time for additional orders/reprints, etc... massive massive headache for publishers and much bigger costs).

Also, I would not use SM64 as the ultimate judge of storage requirements and pre-rendered cutscenes and backgrounds (see RE games) were essential when consoles could not hear real-time 3D of a comparable level to the story telling they wanted to create. Audio tracks, high quality ones, were also important too.

Oh, but I agree. Nintendo tried all they could to keep their grip around devs for one more gen, and failed. That was the main reason behind they going with cartridges again, of course. CDs were so much better to devs on all fronts.

My point was simply that storage space for actual game data was hardly a concern when the generation launched. If RE2 - albeit with heavily compressed videos - could fit on a N64 cart when it took 2 CDs on the PS, RE1 and Tomb Raider (arguably two of the most significant titles to the PS's success) could have too. FF7, though? Maybe the game data; surely not the videos.

 

[H4ze]

MVG is the YT saviour, love his stuff

 

[stranno]

World Driver Championship runs at 30FPS (not 60), 320x240 (not 640x480) and it lacks Z-Buffer, not Mip-Mapping.

MVG always do a fine job with XBOX stuff, but when it comes to other platforms he makes quite some mistakes.

Its still an entertaining channel.

 

[Team Andromeda]

PS2 definitely got a lot of heat for being difficult to develop for, especially early on, and you saw it with ports like DOA2 and Crazy Taxi that were a step down from the Dreamcast versions.

The problem with the PS2 was that it was like a blank slate, all bandwidth, and took time to figure out. But it was figured out. I'm no expert on coding for 90s systems but the issue with the N64 is more like no matter what its bottlenecks always got in the way and it was easily noticed on the screen. It's more analogous to the Genesis color palette, where no matter what, that limitation was there.

I think that was more SEGA fans pointing out, that the PS2 wasn't quite this amazing system it was made out to be. It was very early to point out that a lot of PS2 games run in a lower res, than the DC or how the early games had issues with AA

I never saw many forum debates say the PS2 was a hard system to programme for or than many developers TBH. It always seems the Jag and Saturn are brought up.

 

[disap.ed]

Found this on Beyond3D, really interesting insights by RDP's system engineer

Interview with one of the N64's system architects: Phil Gossett

He was responsible for designing the RDP. He gives some insight into the reasoning behind some of the design decisions they made such as the trilinear filtering implementation, the texture cache and the choice of Rambus memory. Also get to hear about other influential Nintendo hardware designers...

forum.beyond3d.com

Skip to about 41:12 to hear the N64 stuff