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It's a bit of shame, too, because from what I gather, the N64 has a bit of an atypical architecture[1] that's made it hard to get the same quality of emulation

It's a bit of shame, too, because from what I gather, the N64 has a bit of an atypical architecture[1] that's made it hard to get the same quality of emulation that the game cube and wii have. It doesn't have a straight up and down GPU, it has what it calls a reality processing unit, that does graphics and sound. And it can be reconfigured with cartridge specific microcode? It's getting into the weeds on hardware design and I'm not experienced enough to have a strong opinion on the matter. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specifications#Reality_Coprocessor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specific...

coldpie 6y ago
Oh man, Factor 5 is infamous for doing wild things on consoles. A little bit about their custom N64 GPU microcode is discussed here: https://thesolidstategamer.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/playstation-versus-n64-a-hardware-analysis/ https://thesolidstategamer.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/playstat... Edit: Developer interview here https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/02/27/journey-to-the-center-of-the-n64 https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/02/27/journey-to-the-cente... and much more in-depth technical examination here https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor-5-used-to-be-one-of.html https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor... Factor 5 did so many wild things to the GameCube, they have their own tag on excellent Dolphin blog: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/Factor5/ https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/Factor5/
- DanCarvajal 6y ago
  It's because we're all sitting around waiting to play Rogue Squadron II and II again with everything perfect.
Jasper_ 6y ago
The N64 emulation scene has always been heavily drama filled, going back at least 20 years to the original Oman archives. While the system architecture is bizarre, that's fine, we can cope with that. It's always just been a very toxic social space that has pushed a lot of the more talented emulator developers away. As someone who is in "emulation-adjacent" communities, just yesterday I ran into a giant new pocket of N64 drama I was previously unaware of.
- temac 6y ago
  The whole emulation scene (well at least a very good part of it) is full of drama. That's fascinating; they somehow have the time for that after writing state of the art whole system highly optimized emulators, sometimes inventing new techniques on the fly...
  - callesgg 6y ago
    The person that spends the time required to learn about game consoles on a deep technical level to write emulators. Will not have much time left to refine their social skills. It is allot of personal free time they put in to these projects so I guess it is understandable that they want to protect their work.
- Fr0styMatt88 6y ago
  Do you think there was anything in particular that biased the N64 emulator scene to be more drama-filled than some of the others? I never followed it that closely; I just remember that Project64 seemed to go for a really long time without official updates, IIRC. OT but this does take me back - who remembers the drama with Sparcade?
rasz 6y ago
If anything n64 RCP was closer to modern GPUs than anything on the market at the time. You can think of RSP as T&L with programmable shader unit. https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/ https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/

coldpie 6y ago

Oh man, Factor 5 is infamous for doing wild things on consoles. A little bit about their custom N64 GPU microcode is discussed here: https://thesolidstategamer.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/playstation-versus-n64-a-hardware-analysis/ https://thesolidstategamer.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/playstat... Edit: Developer interview here https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/02/27/journey-to-the-center-of-the-n64 https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/02/27/journey-to-the-cente... and much more in-depth technical examination here https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor-5-used-to-be-one-of.html https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor... Factor 5 did so many wild things to the GameCube, they have their own tag on excellent Dolphin blog: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/Factor5/ https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/Factor5/

DanCarvajal 6y ago
It's because we're all sitting around waiting to play Rogue Squadron II and II again with everything perfect.

Jasper_ 6y ago

The N64 emulation scene has always been heavily drama filled, going back at least 20 years to the original Oman archives. While the system architecture is bizarre, that's fine, we can cope with that. It's always just been a very toxic social space that has pushed a lot of the more talented emulator developers away. As someone who is in "emulation-adjacent" communities, just yesterday I ran into a giant new pocket of N64 drama I was previously unaware of.

temac 6y ago
The whole emulation scene (well at least a very good part of it) is full of drama. That's fascinating; they somehow have the time for that after writing state of the art whole system highly optimized emulators, sometimes inventing new techniques on the fly...
- callesgg 6y ago
  The person that spends the time required to learn about game consoles on a deep technical level to write emulators. Will not have much time left to refine their social skills. It is allot of personal free time they put in to these projects so I guess it is understandable that they want to protect their work.
Fr0styMatt88 6y ago
Do you think there was anything in particular that biased the N64 emulator scene to be more drama-filled than some of the others? I never followed it that closely; I just remember that Project64 seemed to go for a really long time without official updates, IIRC. OT but this does take me back - who remembers the drama with Sparcade?

rasz 6y ago

If anything n64 RCP was closer to modern GPUs than anything on the market at the time. You can think of RSP as T&L with programmable shader unit. https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/ https://copetti.org/projects/consoles/nintendo-64/