Wii Virtual Console (Improved graphics?)

[Fox5]

I remember at least two interviews with Nintendo executives in which they that no improvement will be made to the games. So definitely no.
They might bump they resolution though, as they did with the Zelda emulation on GCN. But as somebody already mentioned you can't improve the framerate with emulation.

Bumping resolution alone doesn't do much for those old games (especially bumping it only up to sd resolutions). Nothing for 2d games, little for those low detail 3d games.

Now better filtering would be nice. Trilinear + anisotropic + 6xAA for 3d games, and something like a super eagle mode for 2d games. No way they'll put in any 2d filtering modes though. (even for snes games which don't have the flickering problem of the nes)

If I wanted to play Mario64 or Zelda64 at high resolutions and tons of AF & AA I would just use my PC. There are already perfect emulators for these games.

Don't think they're quite perfect yet, or ever will be. They generally still have small glitches here and there, I'd imagine that the Virtual Console will have perfect emulation. Could be wrong though, Nintendo may go the Midway Arcade Treasures route with tons of glitches in the emulation.

I'm interested to see if they can get Star Wars: Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo running on the VC, as currently these two games are completely impossible to run on any PC HLE-based emulator.

Doesn't the latest version of PJ64 support them?

N64 stuff is harder and probably all you can hope for is higher resolution.

Some enthusiastic individuals have achieved texture replacements however. Polygon model replacement may be possible too?

The latter was not uncommon in the N64 era (all my N64 games do it), and it presents a problem for increasing the resolution of games. The issue is that there is nothing special about the backbuffer to let you modify adress calculation and writes to scale up the UI.

I believe the Zelda emulations on the cube had reworked UI's, some higher res elements, some stretched out elements. (like the maps)

 

[fearsomepirate]

Going from 320 x 240 -> 640x480 gets rid of the "vaseline on the screen" look that plagues N64 games. It's a bigger leap in resolution than going from 480p to 720p.

 

[Fox5]

Going from 320 x 240 -> 640x480 gets rid of the "vaseline on the screen" look that plagues N64 games. It's a bigger leap in resolution than going from 480p to 720p.

In my experience, it does almost nothing for the 32x32 and 64x64 textures the n64 used.
And I'd say proper bilinear filtering support may be more of the reason for getting rid of the vaseline look.

 

[fearsomepirate]

In my experience, it does almost nothing for the 32x32 and 64x64 textures the n64 used.
And I'd say proper bilinear filtering support may be more of the reason for getting rid of the vaseline look.

Yes, but the edges of everything look all smeary, and anything in the distance of any reasonable complexity just looks like a blob. In games that don't use any antialiasing, such as Ridge Racer 64, moving up to 640x480 adds a lot of image quality because you can simply see more clearly in the distance and it makes the jaggies less of a total eyesore.

 

[Fox5]

Yes, but the edges of everything look all smeary, and anything in the distance of any reasonable complexity just looks like a blob. In games that don't use any antialiasing, such as Ridge Racer 64, moving up to 640x480 adds a lot of image quality because you can simply see more clearly in the distance and it makes the jaggies less of a total eyesore.

How effective was the edge AA of the n64 anyway? (and wasn't it, along with the fake bilinear, often blamed for n64's blurry graphics?)

Oh, how did that Indiana Jones game look? Supposendly it bypassed z-buffering...

 

[Squeak]

How effective was the edge AA of the n64 anyway? (and wasn't it, along with the fake bilinear, often blamed for n64's blurry graphics?)

Oh, how did that Indiana Jones game look? Supposendly it bypassed z-buffering...

Actually I just think the N64 had a blurry output. Intentionally blurry that is, so as to lessen aliasing or at least make it more bareable. That worked I think, but with the downside of making some accuse the N64 of having blurry IQ, when in fact you could easily make out the induvidual pixels if you wanted to.
The Edge AA was very effective, when it worked, but like with the DSs AA, it only worked with certain combinations of overlap. E.i. some kind of sorting of the polygons is taking place.

 

[I.S.T.]

Don't think they're quite perfect yet, or ever will be. They generally still have small glitches here and there, I'd imagine that the Virtual Console will have perfect emulation. Could be wrong though, Nintendo may go the Midway Arcade Treasures route with tons of glitches in the emulation.

Perfect emulation IS possible, but n64 emulation is far from it.

The reason why is simple: 90% or more of emulators in general use a less accurate emulation method. plugin systems are a mess for accuracy, and generally tro get 100% accurate emulation you have to do things in a slow as **** manner.

http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com/sdp/?page=cpu/cpu_methods here is a link that will help. it is SNES focused as the guy is a fan translation hacker/author of the most accurate SNES emulator out there, but in general you should find it helpful.

 

[Powderkeg]

I'm interested to see if they can get Star Wars: Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo running on the VC, as currently these two games are completely impossible to run on any PC HLE-based emulator.

Sorry for going slightly off-topic here, but...

Why would you want to emulate them on the PC when both games have dedicated PC versions with improved graphics?

 

[darkblu]

Sorry for going slightly off-topic here, but...

Why would you want to emulate them on the PC when both games have dedicated PC versions with improved graphics?

you may not. but that neverteless would indicate very potent emulation caps on the part of the VC.

 

[ERP]

FWIW none of my later N64 titles run on any of the existing emulators.
N64 Emulation has concentrated on HLE, so games with custom microcode just don't run.

Nintendo likely doesn't want 100% emulaiton anyway, they can just pick and choose titles that work on whatever mecahnism they choose.

 

[fearsomepirate]

FWIW none of my later N64 titles run on any of the existing emulators.
N64 Emulation has concentrated on HLE, so games with custom microcode just don't run.

Nintendo likely doesn't want 100% emulaiton anyway, they can just pick and choose titles that work on whatever mecahnism they choose.

What games did you work on besides World Driver Championship? I'd like to pick them up if I find them at the local game shop.

 

[ERP]

What games did you work on besides World Driver Championship? I'd like to pick them up if I find them at the local game shop.

I believe I'm creited on every one of the Boss Game titles.

 

[Iron Tiger]

There's one definite enhancement we can look forward to in every VC game, and that's progressive scanning. It should give a more arcadey feel to the arcade ports, and any other enhancements are just icing to me.

 

[Fox5]

There's one definite enhancement we can look forward to in every VC game, and that's progressive scanning. It should give a more arcadey feel to the arcade ports, and any other enhancements are just icing to me.

Most arcade games I played were on interlaced monitors.

 

[Iron Tiger]

I took this pic, and saw the game with my own two eyes but didn't bother to spend any time analyzing it. But I just came across it and it seems to me as if this game is running at a much higher res than on the N64. For reference, here's a pic of a Wii game, so you can see how the degree of aliasing appears similar. Also, you will notice that the rendering is at an obviously higher resolution than the HUD and other 2D elements were originally designed.

And here's yet another Mario 64 pic.

 

[Guden Oden]

I believe I'm creited on every one of the Boss Game titles.

With that experience in mind, would you say overall that the N64 was a good piece of hardware - for it's time, and for the money it cost to produce/sell, or maybe not so good?

Was it in your opinion overall a powerful piece of kit (again considering), or weak? Fun to develop for, or a pain in the unmentionables? Generally speaking, I mean.

Do you believe the N64 had untapped potential, unused features etc that the public never saw, for whatever reason - Nintendo narrowmindedness, developer unwillingness to develop/wariness of the expensive cart format etc?

It's always cool when competent devs share of their experiences you know...

 

[Fox5]

I took this pic, and saw the game with my own two eyes but didn't bother to spend any time analyzing it. But I just came across it and it seems to me as if this game is running at a much higher res than on the N64. For reference, here's a pic of a Wii game, so you can see how the degree of aliasing appears similar. Also, you will notice that the rendering is at an obviously higher resolution than the HUD and other 2D elements were originally designed.

And here's yet another Mario 64 pic.

Most likely 640x480 with the better texture filtering that comes naturally when moving away from the n64.