3 ms·

No description on how this is achieved? I figure it must be creative since the N64 has a scant 4kB of texture cache. The textures must be streamed directly fr

No description on how this is achieved? I figure it must be creative since the N64 has a scant 4kB of texture cache. The textures must be streamed directly from ROM somehow, but in the real world this didn't work so N64 games were mostly Gouraud shaded with textures used sparsely.

djmips 3y ago
watch the "how" video linked in the other comment
rasz 3y ago
by running SUPER SLOW code in an emulator. There is a reason every single N64 game was either sparsely textured or looked like blurry mess - 4KB of texture cache.
- PaulBGD_ 3y ago
  Check the link, the video, or the title. This is all running on real hardware.
  - rasz 3y ago
    Smooth running video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plh9OGel-lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plh9OGel-lM does 60 fps on emulator. Real hardware video shows 15-20fps in a small room and author himself confirms its unfeasible for anything more complicated (~8 minute mark).
    - mepian 3y ago
      15-20fps is a pretty normal framerate for many games on the real Nintendo 64 hardware, especially the later ones from Rare.
      - anthk 3y ago
        The PAL versions of Zelda ran at 15-20FPS even on emulators in the PC. Yet they were pretty playable.
        cubefox 3y ago
        It probably looked not as bad on a CRT since LCD and OLED have terrible motion resolution. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=z4xgLUdQhKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=z4xgLUdQhKA
        anthk 3y ago
        I emulated it back in the day on a CRT monitor, true.
- monocasa 3y ago
  It's not a texture cache, it's 4KB of texture memory that needs to be manually babysat both in an emulator and hardware.
  - rasz 3y ago
    It might be the same situation as with Atari Jaguar where silicon bug turned texture cache into a fixed buffer you have to load manually.
    - mikepavone 3y ago
      AFAIK, the memory inside the Tom chip was never a cache. The bug you're probably thinking of is one that makes it difficult to run code on Tom's RISC core directly from main RAM. IIRC, jump instructions are pretty bugged when not running from internal RAM, but the homebrew community came up with a workaround. It's still not acting as a cache in that case though. It just fetches instructions from RAM as it goes.
    - monocasa 3y ago
      It's not.
rsaxvc 3y ago
Roughly: 1) 40MB of textures 2) split into mipmaps 3) split into ~32x~32 tiles. 4) streamed in according to camera 5) with the lowest resolution layers always loaded to handle whipping the camera around quickly. 6) and the Z-buffer off to save memory bandwidth. The video is worth watching too.
thelastparadise 3y ago
> Gouraud shaded I thought it was phong shaded?

djmips 3y ago

watch the "how" video linked in the other comment

rasz 3y ago

by running SUPER SLOW code in an emulator. There is a reason every single N64 game was either sparsely textured or looked like blurry mess - 4KB of texture cache.

PaulBGD_ 3y ago
Check the link, the video, or the title. This is all running on real hardware.
- rasz 3y ago
  Smooth running video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plh9OGel-lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plh9OGel-lM does 60 fps on emulator. Real hardware video shows 15-20fps in a small room and author himself confirms its unfeasible for anything more complicated (~8 minute mark).
  - mepian 3y ago
    15-20fps is a pretty normal framerate for many games on the real Nintendo 64 hardware, especially the later ones from Rare.
    - anthk 3y ago
      The PAL versions of Zelda ran at 15-20FPS even on emulators in the PC. Yet they were pretty playable.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        It probably looked not as bad on a CRT since LCD and OLED have terrible motion resolution. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=z4xgLUdQhKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=z4xgLUdQhKA
        anthk 3y ago
        I emulated it back in the day on a CRT monitor, true.
monocasa 3y ago
It's not a texture cache, it's 4KB of texture memory that needs to be manually babysat both in an emulator and hardware.
- rasz 3y ago
  It might be the same situation as with Atari Jaguar where silicon bug turned texture cache into a fixed buffer you have to load manually.
  - mikepavone 3y ago
    AFAIK, the memory inside the Tom chip was never a cache. The bug you're probably thinking of is one that makes it difficult to run code on Tom's RISC core directly from main RAM. IIRC, jump instructions are pretty bugged when not running from internal RAM, but the homebrew community came up with a workaround. It's still not acting as a cache in that case though. It just fetches instructions from RAM as it goes.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    It's not.

rsaxvc 3y ago

Roughly: 1) 40MB of textures 2) split into mipmaps 3) split into ~32x~32 tiles. 4) streamed in according to camera 5) with the lowest resolution layers always loaded to handle whipping the camera around quickly. 6) and the Z-buffer off to save memory bandwidth. The video is worth watching too.

thelastparadise 3y ago

> Gouraud shaded I thought it was phong shaded?