A Couple PS1/N64-gen questions

Well, to be fair the game being so darn dark wasn't so much a graphical issue as it was a design [strike]flaw[/strike]decision.
 
After reading this I went out and picked up WDC. Nice game. The graphics are great better than Colin Mcrae & GT, but the handling/controls are kinda suspect. The colour palette also looks very saturated in a way similar to Top Gear Rally. Maybe its my... TV I dunno.
 
Speaking of Doom 64, I went back and looked at some of my old files to check, and sure enough, Doom textures are 128x128x8bit, 4x larger than the N64 can draw. That's pretty amazing.
 
Doom ran on the CPU oon the PSX I remember reading somewhere. Using the same technique as the PC (scanline render I think it's called).

Maybe it is doing that too on N64. I don't know I never owned that game.
Peace.
 
Doom ran on the CPU oon the PSX I remember reading somewhere. Using the same technique as the PC (scanline render I think it's called).

Maybe it is doing that too on N64. I don't know I never owned that game.
Peace.

I doubt it. It's using bilinear filtering, so it must be using the graphics hardware. It also doesn't have any of the elaborate textures I remember from Doom, such as techdoor.
 
The entire scene could be bilinear filtered and maybe the UI isn't. That's the impression I received when paying Doom on the N64 a while back. I am probably wrong on this, I just remember the game being super blurry.

Graphically speaking I think in terms of hardware wise the N64 is far better than the PSX when it comes to the technical side. I remember R4 on the Playstation and being amazed at the detail Namco was able to get, it put GT2 to shame.
 
I'm pretty sure the UI is filtered, too. It's no blurrier than any other FPS running in low-res mode on N64, at least not until you've cranked the brightness on your TV to the max. What the heck was Midway thinking?
 
Doom64 is almost a totally different game than other Doom games. It has some neat lighting and fog effects. It was really the only port that was quite different than the original PC game. Definitely went for a more disturbing gameplay than the rockin' style of regular Doom. I would be rather surprised if it used the PC Doom engine in any significant way. Look more to N64 Hexen for that kind of disaster. Talk about blurry nasty w/ chop. lol
 
If only it were floating point...
Even fixed point W wouldn't have been bad in retrospect.

i agree, it was stupid to not use a w-buffer for the n64.

all of that damn fog, i think, would not have been an n64 trademark.

i remember back in the day when i got doom 64 the day it came out, i was in grade 4, and nintendo's greedy assses charged their 3rd parties so much for royalty fees (in addition to expensive rom chips) that I paid 79.99 ($80) for doom 64.

it was pretty damn impressive, and it's still kind of nice to look at and play.

it's so hard to say whether the n64 or ps1 was more powerful. the playstation could display a lot more colors at once, had faster audio (the n64 had way too cpu overhead for audio), and could push more polys/sec, probably had more flops,
but the n64 had filtering which made a huge difference.

i don't know if it's just me or the n64 had excessively slow controller ports.

it would've been interesting had the n64 used cd's and had a version of symphony of the night.

they should've made more 2d games on the n64.
 
and could push more polys/sec, probably had more flops
Neither are true. The N64 could reportedly push around a half-million polys/sec without bilinear filtering or perspective-correct texturing. However, Nintendo didn't allow games to be released without those things. A lot of N64's computational power went toward its superior image quality.
 
it's so hard to say whether the n64 or ps1 was more powerful. the playstation could display a lot more colors at once, had faster audio (the n64 had way too cpu overhead for audio), and could push more polys/sec, probably had more flops,
but the n64 had filtering which made a huge difference.


I doubt it : Playstation used fixed-point if I remember well :p
 
I always thought PS1 games looked rather horrible. The texture perspective problems were easily the biggest peeve to me, just after the awful pixelization. I had a hard time figuring out what I was looking at in PS1 games, at times. I was sorta of the opinion back then that N64 was the only machine really capable of passable 3D, while PS1 and Saturn were just not quite there. I preferred SNES 2D games to the 3D stuff on the other consoles (and the various horrid N64 games). I also upgraded from my 'ol AMD 5x86 PC to a Voodoo-powered Pentium II PC around '97 and that thing just demolished the consoles....

N64 was definitely superior, but like ERP has said numerous times, the devs at more than a few companies were rather disappointing. There are certainly plenty of examples of amazing games on the system tho.

I still greatly enjoyed Gran Turismo and a few others on PS1 tho. I always wished someone had put that effort into a N64 racer. Too bad about them going with cartridges, too. That was a backwards decision, for sure. Audio processing was a bummer, too. And the memory architecture. And that texture memory/cache doodad. Coulda used some L2 for the CPU... Ah well, the imperfections are the charm, right? ;)
 
Neither are true. The N64 could reportedly push around a half-million polys/sec without bilinear filtering or perspective-correct texturing. However, Nintendo didn't allow games to be released without those things. A lot of N64's computational power went toward its superior image quality.

i had thought the ps1 could do 180,000 real world, and that the n64's real world performance was 160k polys/sec.

the saturn actually wound up having 200,000 real world, and in ways that kind of makes sense. it was just so hard to take advantage of.

didn't the saturn also have like dual 256KB texture cache buffers to make up for lack of polygon processing power?

of course, everything i write could be biased against nintendo and a little bit to sony, so I could always overestimate the saturn.

too many people underestimate it.

also, i make a lot of typos, so not everything i say will make sense. i've bad adhd.
 
The Saturn was horrible for 3D (for the devs to get it to work good) but great for 2D, so I was very happy with it as an upgrade from the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive. Lots of imported games from Japan really pushed the 2d capabilities of the system.

I remember Tekken 3 coming out for the PS1 and it looked really great for its time. Sure, there was pixels all over the place but I can't recall a single N64 fighting game that looks as good. Then again, I'm also of the opinion that VF2 on the Saturn looks excellent with its resolution of 704*480.

Art direction plays a big part in the graphics of a system. Shenmue videos on the Saturn is an example of that. Somehow they are able to put in all that detail on such a difficult machine to get anything out of with 3d.
 
From what I recall the N64 was able to push more polys than the PSX. There was a dev on this forum who all but confirmed this a few years back. I'm not sure if it was ERP or someone else. I think the important thing with the N64 is that it could do better looking graphics while using less polygons. Bilinear filtering on it was really awesome for its time.
 
The Saturn was horrible for 3D (for the devs to get it to work good) but great for 2D, so I was very happy with it as an upgrade from the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive. Lots of imported games from Japan really pushed the 2d capabilities of the system.

I remember Tekken 3 coming out for the PS1 and it looked really great for its time. Sure, there was pixels all over the place but I can't recall a single N64 fighting game that looks as good. Then again, I'm also of the opinion that VF2 on the Saturn looks excellent with its resolution of 704*480.

Art direction plays a big part in the graphics of a system. Shenmue videos on the Saturn is an example of that. Somehow they are able to put in all that detail on such a difficult machine to get anything out of with 3d.

I've never been into the fighting games so that didn't affect me much. Undoubtedly though, that was one genre N64 lacked sorely in. It does have a few interesting fighters tho, just not really "serious" Japanese games. My friends and I had a blast with the Xena fighting game, believe it or not. lol.

Art is definitely the foremost consideration if you want your game to look good, however. EQ2 is my favorite example of a failure there.

I remember all the dream team bull nonsense that Nintendo spouted about N64. In the end, it is the console with the most pathetic library in my memory. Easily. It taught me just how much companies will lie/boast/BS to protect their product.
 
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I remember all the dream team bull nonsense that Nintendo spouted about N64. In the end, it is the console with the most pathetic library in my memory. Easily. It taught me just how much companies will lie/boast/BS to protect their product.
I know this is OT but could you clarify why don't think games like:

Mario 64
Zelda: OoT
Zelda: MM
Pilotwings
Rocket: Robot on Wheels
Resident Evil 2
Sin and Punishment
StarFox 64
Ridgeracer 64
Exitebike 64
1080 degrees Snowboarding
Waverace 64
Rakuga Kids
F-zero X
Mario Kart 64

(just to mention a few of the top of my head) are great?
In my mind the N64 had more AAA games than either Saturn or PSone.
 
I remember all the dream team bull nonsense that Nintendo spouted about N64. In the end, it is the console with the most pathetic library in my memory. Easily. It taught me just how much companies will lie/boast/BS to protect their product.

I wouldn't call that a lie or BS, it was their vision, but it just failed miserably. Most of the so-called Dream Team members were not top of the line developers in the first place. Cruisin' USA... uck.
 
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