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For what it's worth, Wikipedia says that some official N64 games did use custom microcode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64#Graphics https://en.wikiped
by Wowfunhappy 5mo ago
For what it's worth, Wikipedia says that some official N64 games did use custom microcode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64#Graphics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64#Graphics
> Nintendo 64 games running on custom microcode benefit from much higher polygon counts and more advanced lighting, animation, physics, and AI routines than its competition. Conker's Bad Fur Day is arguably the pinnacle of its generation combining multicolored real-time lighting that illuminates each area to real-time shadowing, and detailed texturing replete with a full in-game facial animation system.
- xgkickt 5mo agoProbably more accurate to say the custom microcode tools were not given to third party developers. From what I remember, you had to list the microcode used on your submission form, and Nintendo checked for it in your ROM. Did some third parties make custom microcode? Highly probable, but I do not know how many were able to ship with it.
- Wowfunhappy 5mo agoHuh. Well, Conker's Bad Fur Day wasn't first party, but I guess Rare probably got special treatment?
- tadfisher 5mo agoFactor 5 famously customized microcode in essentially all of their N64 games. According to some emulator devs, the F3DEX source was available in the SDK and intended to be customized [1], so it's interesting to hear a different account . 1: https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/wiki/The-masterpiece-graphic-microcode-behind--the-Nintendo-64-version-of--Indiana-Jones-and-the-Infernal-Machine-and-Star-Wars-Episode-I:-Battle-for-Naboo https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/wiki/The-masterpiece-grap...
- xgkickt 5mo agoInteresting. I was on PlayStation so I only heard about N64 dev at lunch. Factor5 were much closer to Nintendo than we were, and also known to be a bit good. Plus SDKs change over time. Take PS1 for example. We didn’t get GTE register details and inline functions initially, just libraries, and the more open it became the more we wrote in assembly.