/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9868291]

How in the hell did they do it?

[Anonymous No.9868293]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qji5x8gBVX4

[Anonymous No.9868296]

unironically one of the most impressive computer tech achievements of that era.

[Anonymous No.9868308]

this game invalidates the "N64 lost because it had no CD" argument. not every game needed tons of FMV, and if they wanted to, many devs could fit their games on a cart.

[Anonymous No.9868309]

By compressing the shit out of it? It's downgraded af.

[Anonymous No.9868312]

>>9868291
proper capable devs(white male)

[Anonymous No.9868327]

>>9868308
But the reason everyone jumped ship was because of the cartridge policy and how it massively favored Nintendo at the expense of third party publishers.

[Anonymous No.9868352]

>>9868327
that was mainly Nintendo being merchants though. but CDs still were cheaper
in the end CD had a lot of indirect consequences, it wasn't the end-all how some people paint it, but it certainly had many advantages.

[Anonymous No.9868357]

N64 version content mogs ps1 RE2

[Anonymous No.9868358]

>>9868308
it was a much shittier version than the ps1 though, lol

[Anonymous No.9868368]

>>9868357
Yeah
You trade high quality CG cutscenes for high quality polys, higher resolution, extra game modes and a ton of bonus content
It's like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Yeah the music is compressed and there are no videos but it looks and plays so much smoother that it's generally my choice for a quick play today.

[Anonymous No.9868394]

>>9868308
>this game invalidates the "N64 lost because it had no CD" argument
N64 lost because it had no good games

[Anonymous No.9868404]

>>9868308
2 points:
FMV or audio playback were impossible until programmers found how to compress video and audio properly. That's because only later games use them.
64MB cartridge were very expensive later in the lifetime of the N64, incredible expensive by 1996.
With proper compression routines and unlimited cartridge space, N64 could do everything any CD console could do and much more since it was more powerful and it had more RAM.

In an alternative world, N64 were launched with the Disk Drive bay instead of a cartridge, Nintendo worked on a FMV compression engine early on and Final Fantasy 7 was a Nintendo/Squaresoft co-production released in 5 disks.
But the console were launched a 399 us dollars...

[Anonymous No.9868414]

>>9868368
>high quality polys
PS1 models are higher quality
>higher resolution
N64 backgrounds are lower resolution so even if you have higher res 3D objects the game is still way more blurry
>looks and plays so much smoother
Smoother as in blurry af

[Anonymous No.9868421]

>Bespoke solutions for background and object rendering were also deployed. This version of Resident Evil 2 is wholly unique - while most of the other ports are more or less based on the PlayStation version, the N64 port handles things differently. It takes advantage of the system's Z-buffer when it comes to depth calculation, for instance, while characters feature entirely new textures designed to fit within the constraints of the system, complete with bilinear filtering. The overall detail level is slightly reduced compared to PlayStation, but N64 users did get the benefit of the system's hardware anti-aliasing.
>Background resolution is reduced across the board with the system basically stretching and filtering assets to fill the screen. What's curious about this, however, is that framebuffer resolution varies based on whether you use the Expansion Pack or not. Without the expansion pack, the game's framebuffer seems to remain locked at 320x240 throughout the game. The artwork is generally of a lower resolution and the eight by eight compression artefacts visible as a result of its JPEG-like compression are super-obvious, but it works. However, with the Expansion Pack plugged in, the game varies its frame buffer resolution on a per-scene basis.
>By varying the resolution, however, the game switches output modes constantly. Within the first few scenes, the game bounces between 240p and 480i output five or six times. This is seamless on a CRT television lending the game a sharper, higher resolution appearance when in 480i but, when playing with today's line doublers and scalers, this is a real problem as it can take time to switch resolutions. Basically, this version of the game is just barely playable on an OSSC and completely unplayable on a Framemeister.

[Anonymous No.9868424]

>>9868421
What a shitshow
>sub 240p backgrounds
>480i resolution that looks like shit even on a good PVM set
This is as bad as 3do image output

[Anonymous No.9868427]

i find it interesting that it's the same technique used to make shit run on Switch nowadays. you just down res everything needed to keep the framerate consistent. it looks like asshole but it runs.

[Anonymous No.9868623]

>>9868291
How did the internet get fooled into believing this was a good version for so long?

[Anonymous No.9868634]

>>9868623
it has a randomizer + additional lore files.
no battle mode though
>>9868309
one of the cutscenes was also removed

[Anonymous No.9868645]

>>9868414
>ps1 models are higher quality

[Anonymous No.9868648]

>>9868645
g'day cunt

[Anonymous No.9868692]

>>9868352
>>9868308
Doesn’t matter. Costly little MB and less games

[Anonymous No.9868745]

>>9868645
Is that Stephen hawking

[Anonymous No.9868851]

>>9868291
What's the biggest N64 cartridge ever made in MB tho?

[Anonymous No.9868873]

>>9868308
>>9868308
>"N64 lost because it had no CD" argument. not every game needed tons of FMV, and if they wanted to, many devs could fit their games on a cart.
They could but still was not worth the effort. Cost of the larger cartridges was high and I can imagine profit margins were already razor thin. Your also forgetting that Nintendo did not want to give developers access to modify the microcode for the N64. They did not give access to that until late in the N64s life and even then the tools were rudimentary with little documentation and they provided no support to developers on how to modify it. While that was more on the graphics side of things that most likely could have helped in someway with fitting in pre-render assets and voices.

Either way until near the very end of the N64 lifespan developers were never able to utilize the N64 hardware to it's fullest because of being unable to modify the stock SGI microcode.

[Anonymous No.9868881]

>convert backgrounds to JPGs
>crop and stretch said backgrounds
>reduce models texture size
>heavily compress the FMV, both in resolution and FPS. IIRC they're cropped as well.
>delete several FMV pieces and other cutscenes, some are just gone like the piece before the helicopter crashing or the true ending credits, in other cases when there were two variants of the same cutscene, one for each scenario, the N64 version just have one which they use for all scenarios but with inconsistency (wrong NPC/voice being used)
>delete several bonus screens, like for bonus weapons, Brad, etc
>does not include the changes/extra content of previous re-releases, outside of the inclusion of a timer for Hunk

They just cut a lot of corners, literally.

[Anonymous No.9869082]

>>9868851
>What's the biggest N64 cartridge ever made in MB tho?

Nintendo never produced a cartridge bigger than 64MB. Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Stadium (1 and 2?), Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Majora's Mask are all 64MB games.

[Anonymous No.9869212]

>>9868291
Someone showed up with a giant bag of money.
You wouldn't believe the things people will do for a bag of money

[Anonymous No.9869253]

>>9869212
doubt
i bet they did it for the challenge or simlpy was tasked to

[Anonymous No.9869260]

>>9868427
that isn't enough usually

[Anonymous No.9869276]

>>9869253
>doubt
yea it's doubtful that nintendo would pay to not get whooped so hard by sony
it's not like they've never done that
and definitely not with capcom

[Anonymous No.9869375]

heavily compressed audio, art, and fmvs (personally I'd say the audio got it it the worst)

the N64 could run better decompression than the PS1 could so they could cram more into less space

a lot of redundant assets and minor things nobody would notice missing were removed

If I remember right the devs literally went scene by scene to compress every background as much as possible until it was barely acceptable in terms of quality. Any time they'd run out of space for something important they'd go back and compress things a little more.

[Anonymous No.9869406]

>>9868851
If use zip formats, produce up 750mb.

[Anonymous No.9870348]

>>9869212
>>9869253
n64 port had a $1 million budget and 1 full year of dev time

[Anonymous No.9870487]

>>9870348
>n64 port had a $1 million budget and 1 full year of dev time

They also said that things like the Factor 5 audio driver took up 10MB of space? Though, I think that would be driver and audio fonts. The audio was done via mod music. People like Chris Hülsbeck worked on resampling everything. The game does have Doulby Surround for all the game sound effects and it does have an effect on sound effects closer or further away from the camera POV. FMV in the PS1 game ran at a really smooth 30fps. Which was pretty impressive for FMV. The N64 game cuts the frames down to 15fps, with interlacing and cutting frames where they can. The devs said that if they could have had a few extra MB's, the video would have looked a lot better. But as it is, they did still manage to get the majority of it in. With an FMV scene being cut from the end.

[Anonymous No.9870512]

>>9870348
A 1 million $ budget for a N64 game is on the lower end of the spectrum (1-3 million), which sounds about right for a port.

[Anonymous No.9870572]

>>9868881
Tendies hiding Your post.

[Anonymous No.9870590]

>>9869276
Not necessarily, we'll never know for sure. Mikami has a history of shitting on Sony consoles and judging by the interviews, even if Nintendo offered more money than Sony he wouldn't agree to direct a game for their platform if he didn't feel like it. Some devs are just like that. Or for example Kamiya and Suda want to work with Nintendo because they are Nintendo fans themselves first and foremost

[Anonymous No.9870601]

test

[Anonymous No.9872425]

>>9870487
>The game does have Doulby Surround for all the game sound effects and it does have an effect on sound effects closer or further away from the camera POV.

Thanks to the factor 5 audio engine that was used in games like Rouge Squadron, Battle for Naboo, Indiana Jones; and a few other games... RE2 benefited from having '3D' audio:

N64 RE2:
https://youtu.be/cOEB3TGQAIc?t=672
PS1 RE2:
https://youtu.be/2hki7ws012A?t=733

In the N64 game you can hear Claires footsteps get louder and quieter as she gets closer or further away from the 'camera'. In the PS1 game, her 'clomp' foot sound effects stay the same volume at every distance. Making the audio in the PS1 game sound 'flater'. The audio in the N64 it does have a more dynamic sound to it. the devs for the RE2 port did say that they purchased a license for the factor 5 audio engine, and even used their audio engineers. I think the music tracks sound really good in the N64 game too. But the FMV audio sequences and the voice tracks do take a hit.

[Anonymous No.9872427]

>>9870590
>Nintendo fans themselves first and foremost

[Anonymous No.9872437]

>>9868427
I'm glad they do this now, most games don't look much better than they did 10 years ago but have way higher system requirements than before

There was a picture going around comparing Redfall to Titanfall 2, kind of sad

[Anonymous No.9872458]

>>9868358
Bullshit. The n64 had cheat codes and better bonus content

[Anonymous No.9874006]

It'd be neat if someone made a mod that said fuck it to the size limit and makes a massive rom file with the original cutscenes and audio