/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10704736
>Proper 2D hardware
Who the fuck cares
>CD add on that costs $200
>Costs $250 so nothing is cut
The PlayStation is $200 in 1996. Great way to commit suicide.

>>10704742
PS1 had no W or Z buffer, plus Nintendo does not produce hardware at a loss (99% of the time).
The lack of 2D hardware is what got alot of N64 games (including 64 Wars and Fire Emblem 64) canceled.
This would've been at least half a generation ahead of the PS1 and Saturn.

>>10704747
>lack of 2D hardware
Then how come games like “The New Tetris” and “Yoshi’s Story” existed?

>>10704747
You don't need "le 2D hardware" to texture some flat polygons

>>10704747
>lack of 2D hardware
This is a myth. gspSprite2D microcode is fully 2D and RDP supports 2D primitives.

>>10704775
Squashed 3D rendering or software rendering. The former is likely what most 2D games utilized for performance and the latter is probably rarely used outside of cases like Mario Artist or those other DD art programs. Utilizing 3D as 2D hardware really isn't a drawback though, the main issue N64 has with 2D graphics is probably the limited texture memory. That would probably hamper the more traditional 2D games of the time that still used pre-rendered frames for animation, though games like Yoshi's Story seem fluid enough.

>>10704736
>All these features that would make it cost more than any sensible parent would want to spend
>N64 saved
You're an idiot.

Who the fuck makes these threads

>>10704956
People who never had sex

>>10704736
The biggest issue with the N64 is its Vaseline smeared graphics.

just use a cd instead of carts

>>10704747
However the PS1 had games people wanted and didn't treat devs like cum tissues which is why it dropkicked Nintendo into the third place until the Wii

>>10704736
>The N64DD never happen but instead a CD add on that uses a 4X CD drive and releases at launch, costs $200.
Retard

>>10704736
Third parties support and CDs, that would have been enough. If you improve the hardware but you still have the worst library of games ever seen in a succesful console, you haven't done enough.

>>10705062
Those games would've just ended up on the N64CD instead if the N64 had a CD drive.

I guess the real question is what would have Nintendo released if they waited around for 1 more year. N64 looks terrible. Has all that weird anti aliasing that destroys it's image. Dreamcast released 2 years after it and looks great. Maybe N64 would've turned out okay if Nintendo released it with 1997's tech.

>>10705996
>Dreamcast released 2 years after it and looks great.
Because: a) it renders at twice the resolution of most N64 games running without Expansion Pak b) it has better video-out options, the pinnacle of which is VGA. It's embarrassing how N64 can't even output SCART RGB when both PS1 and Saturn released 2 years earlier and can do it just fine.

>>10704747
>The lack of 2D hardware
The hardware was powerful enough that it didn't need dedicated 2d hardware. Think of 2d games of PC at that time, they didn't have hardware sprites or backgrounds, but they did fine.

>>10706026
test

>>10706026
It drained system resources especially with the CPU, having dedicated 2D hardware with actual sprites and not textured triangles through the RSP with it's very limited texturing catch would've free up said resources and made 2D games more common.

>>10704794
The N64 also supports additive blending and we all know how that ended...

https://ultra64.ca/files/documentation/online-manuals/man/pro-man/pro15/index15.5.html

>Since the blender does not clamp the final color (all the inputs are clamped and normal interpolation operations won’t under/overflow) the user must guarantee that the results will not overflow or “special effects” may occur.
I'm not a programmer but seems to be that "special effects" is an euphemism for glitches will occur.

>>10706013
The N64 was obtusely gimped, it's like they went out of their way to make the HW the worst possible for little financial savings, and contrary to the Saturn and PS1 its graphics can't be improved in emulation.

>>10707345
But custom RSP microcode could achieve decently powerful 2d support. AFAIK no games did this.

>>10707345
Except that 2D was not something Nintendo liked in that era, same for Sony who cockblocked the release of some 2D games in the west because it didn't show off the system's 3D capabilities.
Adding dedicated 2D hardware is neither needed (system is powerfull enough as it is) nor was it desired by the hardware devs.
Not sure why people are so obsessed with having dedicated sprite hardware, but textured triangles give the same effect
>muh 4kb texture cache!
Doesn't matter, you can load new textures in the cache during frame drawing, same as is done in 3D games. and a 4kb cache still allows for sprites up to 64x64 pixels (and disable texture filtering if you prefer hard texel edges)
Biggest issue is (again) the limited rom storage on carts, although much better than in the 16bit era (and you can use much better compression algorithms) it is still something that developers have to be aware of.

>>10707412
The 4KB texturing catch will bottleneck it however.
The PS1 got away with this by being allowed to use the main video ram as texturing catch, Saturn was designed for 2D, to have the N64 be as officiant as the PS1 when it comes to using textured triangles as makeshift sprites they had to use either 512KB of texturing catch or use much less laggy ram then RDRam (see the SDRam thats been brought up in the OP) and use that under a shared ram bus.

>>10707434
Got anything to backup that claim? I know it's the system's weak spot but is it weak enough to become an actual issue?

>>10707432
Nintendo did care about 2D, otherwise the Super NES would've died sooner then it did and the Game Boy would've died with Pokémon Ren and Green (never making it to the west).

The lack of 2D games was due to the 4KB texturing catch, preventing the N64 to be even like the PS1 in terms of 2D games (using the main video ram to get around it's 2KB texturing catch, the N64's main ram was too laggy to allow for that) and is why 64 Wars and Fire Emblem 64 got canceled.

>>10707458
>Nintendo did care about 2D, otherwise the Super NES would've died sooner
They had to keep the snes alive because the N64 was delayed, afterwards the system was 'just there' and as long as people still bought some they kept selling.
>preventing the N64 to be even like the PS1 in terms of 2D games (using the main video ram to get around it's 2KB texturing catch, the N64's main ram was too laggy to allow for that) and is why 64 Wars and Fire Emblem 64 got canceled.
Sounds like speculation to me, any proof that? Main issue with 2D on N64 is the lack of ROM storage to go really wild.
Look at fire emblem on GBA, it hardly does anything special on screen. How does that do something the N64 could not do?

>>10704736
Shartturd OP here. Nice to see someone making a thread like mine

>Include a proper 32 channel ADPCM sound chip
Well that would make the system more expensive wouldn't it. You would need a separate RAM and dedicated CPU for that. They could've used a 32 channel FM synth to save memory and cost or the 8 channel SNES sound chip to save cost but it wouldn't sound so next gen. I don't know why sounds were handled by the RSP instead of the external MIPS 4300 CPU though. I guess it's because all of the memory bus goes through the RSP so it'd be simpler and cheaper to do so.
>Increase texturing catch to 64KB (much more then 4KB)
That would make the system more expensive too. There's probably not enough space in the RDP socket for more memory as well, which would make production more costly.
>16MB of SDRam under a 64-Bit bus and running at 600MBs as it costs the same as the 4MB of ram the N64 ended up using
Nintendo picked the wrong team when they chose RDRAM, just like intel did back in the day. They just didn't know better. They would've picked DDR SDRAM if they knew how much cheaper it'd be. Anyway, RDRAM was picked because it was fast and the 9-bit bus width sufficed for N64's unified memory architecture (UMA). UMA was preferred due to the lower assembly cost. The bus contention was a problem but the bandwidth was fast enough for good programmers to cope with it.
>AC Adaptor is a power brick rather then a wart coming out of the system itself.
I guess that was nintendo being cheap as well.
>The N64DD never happen but instead a CD add on that uses a 4X CD drive and releases at launch, costs $200.
Yeah 64DD was a huge costly mistake, we can both agree on that.
>Proper 2D hardware
That would be expensive. Very expensive. Using the 3D GPU do the 2D is cheaper just like on the PS1.
>Memory cards can go up to 8MB (needed for the CD add on).
Just use a RAM cart for that.

>>10704736
>>10707489
cont
>Dual analog controller once that becomes the norm (or as early as GoldenEye).
N64's optical analog was expensive to manufacture. They should've gone with the dpad for character movement and a trackball on the right prong for camera control instead in my opinion, but the japanese were too dumb to get the FPS control scheme. They never played Descent.
>Costs $250
That would be insane, considering the PS1 was 200 bucks and had much cheaper games. Even fewer people would buy the N64. If anything it should've been cheaper than $200, perhaps $150, if it really wanted to compete.

>>10707489
>All ram on the N64 is shared.
>Of course the texturing catch would be external at 64KB.
>RDRam was used due to overstock, they would've used SDRam otherwise.
>Using textured triangles like the PlayStation eats up RSP resources and the N64 barely has any texturing catch to begin with.
>The N64 already has a ram expansion pak, if they went with SDRam the ram expansion pak would've doubled the system's shared ram to 32MB.
>>10707506
>A 2X (300KBs) CD Drive is too slow and is the reason why Nintendo used carts in the first place, and 4X (600KBs) while not fast enough (8X (1.2MBs) was the minimum but the drives alone were $200 at that time) will have enough budget to include the drive, internal wiring with PCB, casing, memory card slots, CD drive controller, bios rom, misc chips and packaging/ect. to sell the device (it would've used the system's base AC adaptor just like the N64DD, so just 1 PSU).
>Faster disc drives would be released at later dates.
>The analog stick was a requirement, the one thing Nintendo did right (baring the fact that they tend to ware out) as both Sony and Sega updated their controllers to use a analog stick (and in Sony's case 2).

>>10704736
> posts thread about fixing the shiturn
> gets laughed at by everyone
> posts thread about fixing the n64
> gets laughed at and shit on by everyone
fuck. what a shitshow this board has become. it's literally the home for schizophrenia.

>>10707489
>. I don't know why sounds were handled by the RSP instead of the external MIPS 4300 CPU though
Mixing, pitch shifting, reverbing, ADSR'ing, etc. is all stuff best handled by the RSP. You absolutely can choose to use the main CPU for audio and just stream the results to the sound hardware, Factor 5 did that, but you'll have to be a vector math god to optimise it well enough.
>RDRAM vs. SDRAM
It's an unfortunate thing that the benefits of RDRAM have been lost to time because of so much bullshit out there. Intel wasn't wrong to use RDRAM, they were 100% right because it was the only kind of RAM that made their insane Netburst work. Moving to SDRAM is what killed Netburst, not heat, not inefficiency, not difficulty of manufacturing, it was that SDRAM just could not possibly keep a giant pipeline filled in any reasonable scenario with cache misses and branch prediction fails. The way modern CPUs cope with SDRAM's inherent shittiness is by having enormous and hugely expensive caches. A console can't have such a thing and so the balls-to-the-wall RDRAM is a far better fit. The PS1 and Saturn coped by simply being slower. It was less expensive to get DRAM that worked at 30Mhz. Nintendo was out there on the edge and trying to feed a 90MHz 64bit CPU and a 60Mhz compute unit masquerading as a rasteriser. Yes, overall the PS1 was just the better balance of hardware, but you can't just slap SDRAM on an N64 and call it a day, you need even more hardware at even greater expense.

>>10707458
>The lack of 2D games
Then what were “The New Tetris” and “Yoshi’s Story”?

>here's how we can fix
It's been 30 years, let it go.

>>10707667
>Moving to SDRAM is what killed Netburst
horseshit

Here's how we can fix /vr/:
-Kill OP

>>10707592
Until you invent a time machine, they will continue to be shat on. You're literally this guy.

>>10707696
can we? is this allowed?
>>10707698
>You're literally this guy.
seems accurate.

>>10707458
>The lack of 2D games was due to the 4KB texturing cache
nah. it was designed to do both, just not many releases bothered with 2d games. 3d anything is what was selling the most.

>>10707679
facts.

>>10707679
Textured polygons.
>>10707718
No, just 3D, 2D was half assed just like the PS1.

>>10707698
That guy was based though, probably became a Sony guy after he came back from the jungle.

>>10707743
Nope, moved to Brazil to be a cow rancher after seeing how westernized Japan became after the war, he only came back in 1997 to visit Yasukuni Jinja after people donated money for a plane trip for him but went back to Brazil and spent the rest of his life there, he was berried in his own ranch which is now ran by his kids and their family.

>>10707557
>All ram on the N64 is shared.
It's a design flaw that made game development a lot harder, only because nintendo wanted the assembly cost to be cheaper.
>Of course the texturing catch would be external at 64KB.
An external cache would've needed another bus. As there is only a single bus between all the components, It would've been very tricky implement and halt all the other CPU functions during its access.
>RDRam was used due to overstock
Also this system was supposed to come out in 1995. I guess RDRAM was cheaper than SDRAM back then?
>ram expansion pak
With a CD attachment that shouldn't be necessary. Also the cart socket would be free, so there's no reason not to use it for the additional RAM.
>A 2X (300KBs) CD Drive is too slow
Could've just added more RAM.
>The analog stick was a requirement
A trackball would've been better.
>as both Sony and Sega updated their controllers to use a analog stick
Who cares. They're just mindless trend chasers.

>>10707829
>If that were the case then modern consoles wouldn't be using shared ram.
>The texturing catch bus was already on another bus, this is just getting rid of it's biggest weakness.
>RDRam wasn't cheaper.
>The ram expansion pak was always going to be a thing, by 1998 it would've been needed to play catch up to the Dreamcast.
>Drive catch can only go so far.
>Normies wanted analog sticks, plus a track ball would cost alot more then a analog stick.

OP is a commie freak, he's a giga retard and a mega twink.

Here's how to really fix the N64 and save video games:Reddit spacing edition

Step 1: Currently the N in N64 stands for Nintendo. Change that.

Phase 2. Games are not good, make games less not good.

Phase 2.3. Titties. Put Tomb Raider on the formerly Nintendo 64 so we get triangle titties too.

Phase 2.32. Actually put the naked Lara code in the game.

Phase 2.7. Get square to make us games for the emerging waifu trend, Shitty Gaystation got the waifus before us gaijins new what a waifu was. Instead of just getting furry shit like Star Fox(this is what ultimately killed sega, furfags and appealing to gaijin sensibilities).

Phase 2.8. More violent shit, yeah we got an exclusive Doom game and some other fps but we need more and better(this will be discussed in the next section). We need blood thay's not green unless it comes out of some bad ass alien after you head shot 3 of his 4 heads, or pull off a fighting game combo and detach his arms from his body. More of that shit.

Step 3. Improve hardware, get a cd player or some shit and strap it on there.

3.1. Controller is for fags. Can't whoop someone's ass in Mortal Kombat or shit down a dinosaurs neck in Turdcock with thinking I got extra chromosomes.

>>10708948
tits?

>>10708960
Yeah, and don't you gotta play through a whole game collecting puzzle pieces(not even putting them together) to see them for a couple minutes and they're mostly covered and kinda festishy? And then conker has that Lola bunny knock off which is more fir shit like sonic. Rare made that game and went to shit like sega did.

But yeah, more titties is an obvious solution

>>10708987

>>10704736
I have no idea what all of this KB, MB and SDRam means.

>>10704747
>plus Nintendo does not produce hardware at a loss
This was only true with the Wii, the N64 and especially the GameCube were known to be sold at a loss.

>>10707458
>The N64 is bad. no 2D games But the leap in technology was 3D games.

>The N64 is bad because of texture cache; it was the very first real 3D console. People project it nowadays because they fucking play it on emulators stretched to 50-inch TVs. Back in the day, the TVs had barrely 400 lines of resolution with shitty composite cables. All the imperfections end up hidden by old TV technology.

The other consoles had much more limitations in 3D rendering, but only the N64 is bashed here , there is only one guy making these threads just to provoke console warring!

>>10707434
>The 4KB texturing catch will bottleneck it however.
Why? Let's assume 24-bit real colour (no palette), 4096 bytes, that's 3 bytes per pixel, 1365 pixels. In a square, that's 36x36 pixels. Make it 32x32 and you have some space for metadata. So 4KB is plenty of space for a 32x32 pixel, 24-bit sprite.

>>10709536
NES and all nintendo handhelds were never sold at a loss.

Step 1 throw it in the garbage

>>10709742
Don't forget that's a single channel, single bus 9-bit RAM you're working with. You're sharing it with every single component in the system. There might not be enough cycles to construct the framebuffer with only 4KB of cache while maintaining a good framerate.

>>10709779
Ok, well how many times can it fill the cache per frame assuming 30fps? Do you know? I guess this is why Mischief Makers reused the same sprite so many times and just stretched and transformed it, though they didn't use a custom microcode.

>>10709803
>Ok, well how many times can it fill the cache per frame assuming 30fps?
BTW, the RDRAM had a data rate of 500MB/s, so if you divide that by 4KB you get 128000 per second, 2133 per frame at 60fps. Of course, it needs to do other things, but 32x32 pixel sprites at 24-bit colour depth are pretty big and if you could load 200 per frame at 60fps that would be quite a lot compared with 2d consoles. Of course, you could have 256 colour sprites with a palette and then you only need a third of the data... many optimisations available.

>>10710019
You also need to do the background.

>>10709803
There are hardly 2D (action) games for the N64, but based on the few there are we see that:
The Rampage games are 60fps on N64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbazDtrRhsQ
And a more modern release would be Xeno Crisis which also runs without issues.

>>10709803
>why Mischief Makers reused the same sprite so many times and just stretched and transformed it
Since you have to reload the sprite every frame it doesnt matter if it has 20 frames of animation or 3.
The downside of more animation frames is that it uses more ROM, so you need a bigger cart.
You are way too obsessed over the 4kb texture cache here.

>>10710390
>Rampage
This game doesn't look very crisp. N64 2D games typically look blurry and washed out or lacking colors.
>Xeno Crisis
That's a 64 color genesis game.
>The downside of more animation frames is that it uses more ROM, so you need a bigger cart.
Atari Jaguar and Neo Geo also use carts and their 2D games look more crisp.

>>10710390
>Since you have to reload the sprite every frame it doesnt matter if it has 20 frames of animation or 3.
I assume when rendering a frame, it loads that square face image into texture cache only once and draws it multiple times. Had there been different images for different blocks that would have required more texture cache loads. But, like I said, Mischief Makers most likely used one of the Nintendo provided microcodes, so I'm sure more optimised 2d would have been >>10710336
>You also need to do the background.
possible.
200 sprite characters and 200 bg characters, there's plenty of bandwidth.