Nintendo 64 graphics

[gunrock]

The fuzziness of graphics on the N64 was due to a combination of low resolution, 4kb texture cache, bi-linear filtering, anti-aliasing and texture cache was halved if mip mapping was used.

There was wild variation in the resolution used in games. It could be anywhere from 256 x 224 to 640 x 480.

Games the supported the 4 meg RAM pack did often look far better but as others have pointed out at the expense of framerate.

Some developers, like Factor 5, actually bypassed the texture cache and custom coded things to get more from the system to great effect. Take a look at Infernal Machine, Rouge Squadron and Battle for Naboo for some examples of technically impressive N64 games.

This is it. I worked as a games programmer (PS1 mostly, but with a little N64, Saturn and PC) during that era and confirm that most games ran at a low resolution to make best use of the N64's horrible fill rate (which means it draws into video ram very slowly). The reason that some games looked so much better was due to their expertise, because the N64 had graphics coprocessor firmware (microcode) that was downloaded as part of the game code from the cart to configure the machine. Nintendo provided a number of them that you could use, some emphasised greater accuracy on matrix math over number of calculations per second, others could do more calculations at a lower accuracy. After a while the some of Rare's microcode was available in the SDK (but obviously not there latest and greatest, that allowed their games to look better than most others).

I guess Factor 5 wrote their own (pretty difficult for most software developers), to wring more performance out the hardware.

The game I worked on was CPU bound (for enemy AI, etc) on the PS1 but ran mostly at 60fps for most of the games development, but the N64 struggled to hit 30fps and ran at a lower resolution, but could run all the AI and game code in (from memory) something like 9.7ms! The bandwidth between the CPU and the RAM was so blindingly fast.

Edit: Also, if I remember correctly, if you ran at an odd resolution like 360 x 272, there was a terrible analogue scaler in the N64 that would scale up to (nearly) full screen. That caused a lot of the fuzzyness that you see, too.

Edit2: You also have to remember that bi-linear filtering was new, and probably over used, too.

[elkatas]

This is it. I worked as a games programmer (PS1 mostly, but with a little N64, Saturn and PC) during that era and confirm that most games ran at a low resolution to make best use of the N64's horrible fill rate (which means it draws into video ram very slowly).

Is it just myth that Nintendo demanded in dev docs that games should always use AA to keep graphical advantage against PS1? This is one of those oddball rumours that nobody has been willing to debunk or confirm.

[Link83]

The is even more info on wikipedia:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64#Programming_difficulties

[Flinty]

The is even more info on wikipedia:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64#Pro...g_difficulties

Interesting stuff, I'm playing though Banjo-Tooie (second time) at the moment and the game is beautiful!

Rare are tough bunch of code monkeys!

[gunrock]

Is it just myth that Nintendo demanded in dev docs that games should always use AA to keep graphical advantage against PS1? This is one of those oddball rumours that nobody has been willing to debunk or confirm.

As far as I know there was no AA. Only bilnear filtering on textures which turned a lot of textures to muck, and of course the analogue scaler which obviously messed with the complete frame.

[Team Andromeda]

I just like know why Mario 64 never sufferd from any of the blurry graphics or dull washed out colours , and that was the 1st N64 game , and still imo the best looking

[Matt]

Mario didn't have much in the way of textures. Everything was gourard shaded polygons. Suited the style and looked clean. There's a lot to be said for that - Style seems to get brushed aside in the quest to push the technology. I really like clean lines in artisic, stylish worlds - Exit, LocoRoco, etc.

[elkatas]

Mario didn't have much in the way of textures. Everything was gourard shaded polygons.

Not true. Every surface in Mario 64 does have textures. But you are right about that the game had pretty simple and clean style if compared to other N64 games. Image from project that tried to replace all pre-existing textures in the game with new ones:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3181/2313735216_88794d4923.jpg

[Mofoman]

The Nintendo 64 had amazing graphics for it's time and totally blew the PSX and Saturn out of the window for 3d graphics, well the Saturn was extremely profficient at high res 3d like fighter's due to it's dual core setup.

BUT for 3d platformers and the like the Nintendo 64 was in a class of it's own and just look at what you could create yourself with the mario artist series on the 64DD.

The tosh about the 4kb was only for single textures, and good developers like Nintendo and rare just split the textures up into pieces to achieve some unbelievable effects for it's time, just look at Sin and Punishment, majoras mask, goldeneye, mario 64, Perfect dark, Banjo and kazooie, Ocarina of time etc......

The problems were mainly caused by the filter's which did give a fuzz,blur, but this was only due to the video output, and colour bleed, in s video and compo****e. In RGB, the n64 is gorgeous, and a title like Mario Story in rgb, or Sin and Punishment will really highlight how good the n64 was, in rgb of course, it's well worth hunting down a modded unit, or a board that can be modded.

[Mofoman]

Not true. Every surface in Mario 64 does have textures. But you are right about that the game had pretty simple and clean style if compared to other N64 games. Image from project that tried to replace all pre-existing textures in the game with new ones:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3181/...88794d4923.jpg

Although this picture is obviously a mod, it is a good example of how the good developers worked the n64 and got the graphics to be so good. You see the tiling like appearance underneath mario, this is how they got past the texture size limit, and just chopped everything up into bits, it can be done on the 64DD title Polygon studio, and you can achieve some pretty nice results.

[Team Andromeda]

I love the N64 , its a shame it was held back a bit , by its display , but as a massive FPS fan it was a dream console. What really hurt the system was a lack of a good racer.
But I think its a fantasic console , with one of the best gaming pad ever!. I know I'm on my own , but Mario Kart 64 on the system is somthing else .

[belmondo]

The Nintendo 64 had amazing graphics for it's time and totally blew the PSX and Saturn out of the window for 3d graphics, well the Saturn was extremely profficient at high res 3d like fighter's due to it's dual core setup.

...

The tosh about the 4kb was only for single textures, and good developers like Nintendo and rare just split the textures up into pieces to achieve some unbelievable effects for it's time, just look at Sin and Punishment, majoras mask, goldeneye, mario 64, Perfect dark, Banjo and kazooie, Ocarina of time etc......

The problems were mainly caused by the filter's which did give a fuzz,blur, but this was only due to the video output, and colour bleed, in s video and compo****e...

Saturn was dual CPU, not dual core. Don't confuse it's architecture with the properly designed multi-core systems we have today. Graphics like VF2 were more to do with the talent and resources of the development team, not any hardware advantage. The PS1 managed hi-res 3D fighters as well (Tobal, Soul Edge/Blade).

As for your comments about the N64, I don't see how you can refer to the 4K texture limit as 'tosh'... sure you could break up a surface into multiple polygons and use more than one texture, but that would require more memory reads and more polygons to be drawn which creates a performance hit. Later in the system's life developers found ways around this limitation, but it was obviously a big problem for most.

As for the N64 video output, I have an unmodded N64 and a PAL Wii... N64 VC games through RGB don't really offer much improvement over the originals in s-video IMO.

[CrispyXUK]

Yeah, S-video is a vast improvement, even on the PAL N64, shame it was so hard to get the lead at the time. Not that I was bother, I had an RGB modded NTSC-J unit from launch