Since the N64 could handle the DOOM engine so well, could it also handle Build?

[Individualised]

4 minutes ago, Drywtler said:

Quakeworld with a bit of Quake II, and a lot of modifications from Valve actually.

There were only a few fixes from Quake 2, which ended up being removed in a later patch when the netcode was rewritten. Hardly a Quake 2-derived engine, it's mostly still Quake/Quakeworld.

[cybdmn]

On 9/21/2023 at 7:12 PM, TasAcri said:

TLDR: The N64 has a powerful CPU and a not so powerful 3D hardware. DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D are CPU bound games so they could benefit from this. DOOM 64 does because it uses the DOOM engine and it looks/runs amazingly but Duke Nukem 64 goes for the 3D hardware and the port isn't as great.

 

Unfortunately you seem to know nothing about any hardware from that era. The N64 had the most powerful CPU and the most capable 3D hardware of any game console at that era. The bottleneck of that system was the lack of sufficient memory, be it system RAM, video RAM or texture cache.

 

The N64 had an 64-bit R4000 series MIPS RISC CPU, while the playstation had an 32-bit R3000 series MIPS RISC CPU. The  Saturn had two 32-bit Hitachi SH-2 RISC CPUs, which had their own problems, game developers of that time had little to no experience with multiprocessor setups.

 

Every game back then where "CPU bound games", because that "powerful 3D hardware", that can calculate all that fancy geometry stuff of todays GPUs was just future dreams. That started for consumer graphics cards in late 1999/2000 with the release of Nvidias GeForce256, which brought hardware transform & Lighting.

[Redneckerz]

11 hours ago, cybdmn said:

 

Unfortunately you seem to know nothing about any hardware from that era. The N64 had the most powerful CPU and the most capable 3D hardware of any game console at that era. The bottleneck of that system was the lack of sufficient memory, be it system RAM, video RAM or texture cache.

 

The N64 had an 64-bit R4000 series MIPS RISC CPU, while the playstation had an 32-bit R3000 series MIPS RISC CPU. The  Saturn had two 32-bit Hitachi SH-2 RISC CPUs, which had their own problems, game developers of that time had little to no experience with multiprocessor setups.

 

Every game back then where "CPU bound games", because that "powerful 3D hardware", that can calculate all that fancy geometry stuff of todays GPUs was just future dreams. That started for consumer graphics cards in late 1999/2000 with the release of Nvidias GeForce256, which brought hardware transform & Lighting.

To be fair, the N64 could do T&L and was semi-programmable through microcode. I find Copetti's works on consoles a must-read.

[Kinsie]

4 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

and was semi-programmable through microcode

If Nintendo let you. And if you were skilled/insane enough to deal with the lack of documentation, useful tools or even a debugger. If the answer to those questions were "no", then you're using the slow defaults. I'm pretty sure only Rare, Factor 5 and Angel Studios (later Rockstar San Diego) were equipped with that degree of psychosis.

[TasAcri]

16 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

I'm pretty sure only Rare, Factor 5 and Angel Studios (later Rockstar San Diego) were equipped with that degree of psychosis.

 

Add BOSS to the list.

[Individualised]

7 hours ago, Kinsie said:

If Nintendo let you. And if you were skilled/insane enough to deal with the lack of documentation, useful tools or even a debugger. If the answer to those questions were "no", then you're using the slow defaults. I'm pretty sure only Rare, Factor 5 and Angel Studios (later Rockstar San Diego) were equipped with that degree of psychosis.

I don't understand why Nintendo arbitrarily limited their consoles like this. They did the same thing with the DS and not letting devs use the co-processor except to run pre-approved binaries.

[cybdmn]

12 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

To be fair, the N64 could do T&L and was semi-programmable through microcode. I find Copetti's works on consoles a must-read.

 

Yes, this means even more that the hardware was anything but not so powerful. At least in theory, because programming for hardware like this was even more unknown lands for most game developers than programming multi-processor architectures efficiently.

 

At least all these crazy new stuff, which gave developers a lot of room for experimenting were part of what made the 90ies what it was. I mean, really there were so much different game consoles and computer systems, all with their own architecture and little to no standard API.

[MugMonster]

On 9/23/2023 at 11:24 AM, Rudolph said:

Me too, especially since Quake II would later get ported to the Playstation 1.

 

It is like how Blizzard had both WarCraft II + its expansion and Diablo 1 ported to the Playstation, but not StarCraft/Brood War; that one got ported to the Nintendo 64 instead, for some reason. Sometimes, it is really difficult to follow the logic behind those business decisions.

 

and PS1 had Alone in the Dark 2, but not the first one, which somehow got on the 3DO of all things

[Rudolph]

On 9/26/2023 at 2:11 AM, MugMonster said:

and PS1 had Alone in the Dark 2, but not the first one, which somehow got on the 3DO of all things

Well, that one is not quite as jarring, since both consoles used CD-ROMs for their games.

 

In StarCraft's case, especially, I do not understand why Blizzard would opt for a cartridge-based console over the Playstation 1.

[famicommander]

On 9/26/2023 at 12:11 AM, MugMonster said:

 

and PS1 had Alone in the Dark 2, but not the first one, which somehow got on the 3DO of all things

The 3DO was the only console in the US that could actually run it in 1994. The PS1 and Saturn were out in Japan in late 1994, but they didn't hit the US until 1995. There was going to be a Jaguar CD port but it was canceled due to the failure of the platform. And the game was beyond the capabilities of the SEGA CD, Turbografx CD, CD-i, or CD32. 

[Marsguy]

A version of Alone in the Dark was also planned for the 32X, but it was also canceled.

[TasAcri]

5 hours ago, famicommander said:

And the game was beyond the capabilities of the SEGA CD, Turbografx CD, CD-i, or CD32. 

I think the CD32 could probably handle the first Alone it the Dark. How much worse is a 68020 CPU compared to the 386 the game asks to run well on DOS?

[MugMonster]

7 hours ago, famicommander said:

The 3DO was the only console in the US that could actually run it in 1994. The PS1 and Saturn were out in Japan in late 1994, but they didn't hit the US until 1995. There was going to be a Jaguar CD port but it was canceled due to the failure of the platform. And the game was beyond the capabilities of the SEGA CD, Turbografx CD, CD-i, or CD32. 

 

Jaguar was more of a failure than 3DO?

[Marsguy]

42 minutes ago, MugMonster said:

 

Jaguar was more of a failure than 3DO?

 

Units Sold

3DO approximately 2 million units
Atari Jaguar approximately 150,000 units
32X 800,000 approx. units

 

I would say yes

[Individualised]

1 hour ago, MugMonster said:

 

Jaguar was more of a failure than 3DO?

The 3DO was well respected as a platform at the time, but it was so expensive that barely anybody could justify the price. It wasn't really a failure but more of a luxury platform. Though to the 3DO company itself, yes it was a failure. Unlike the Jaguar I'm sure many people wanted to get their hands on a 3DO.

[famicommander]

7 hours ago, TasAcri said:

I think the CD32 could probably handle the first Alone it the Dark. How much worse is a 68020 CPU compared to the 386 the game asks to run well on DOS?

The CD32 is basically an Amiga 1200. It's not even on the level of the 32X and Jaguar, and both of those ports got aborted.

 

Also it never actually hit the US -- just Europe and Canada as far as I know.

[Individualised]

It released in Australia and Brazil too.

[TasAcri]

7 hours ago, famicommander said:

The CD32 is basically an Amiga 1200. It's not even on the level of the 32X and Jaguar, and both of those ports got aborted.

 

Also it never actually hit the US -- just Europe and Canada as far as I know.

 

The 32X would easily handle the flat shaded polygons. Something like Virtua Racing Deluxe and Virtua Fighter looks even more complex than that.

 

The Jaguar doesn't handle flat shaded polygons as well as the 32X, judging from the released games at least. But it does have Highlander, which looks and performs very similar to Alone in the Dark so i have no reasons to believe the console can't handle it.

 

The cancellation of the game might had to do with the business side, not the technical side of things. Plenty of games got cancelled in these platforms for the same reason.

 

The CD32 is a bit weaker. But the original game did run on a 286 CPU. Now, i don't know how the 68020 CPU exactly compares to those PC CPUs but it can't be slower than a 286 CPU at the same Mhz. And the AGA chip can't be worse than a VGA. So again, i don't have any reasons to believe the game can't be technically possible on a 1200/CD32.

 

It's not a complex looking game, it uses a very small amount of polygons. Even a FX-chip SNES version would probably be playable enough.

[Kinsie]

There are unofficial source ports of Doom to the Amiga 1200 and CD32. Doesn't run amazingly.

[Uncle 80]

Doom on the Amiga 1200 (AmiDoom? Can't rememver) was something like playing on a low-end 486 (never tried Doom II on it, though). There was a Quake port for the Amiga as well, but that of course required a custom A1200/PowerPC build which brought the machine in question up towards a Pentium/Pentium II in performance.

 

The CPU of the Amiga wasn't doing everything by itself. It had a graphics processor called the "blitter object chip" that did much of the sprite (or rather, "bob") work, that's why the Amiga had so many shoot'em-up games and platformers - it's basically designed for those kinds of games. Not sure how such a chip would help with rendering something like Doom [edit - or even Alone In The Dark, at 14mhz CPU]

 

As for the CD32's "excellence" you can take a look at the Amiga's "flagship Doom clone" - Alien Breed 3D - it looks even grainier than Doom in

Low-detail mode. Other titles, like Gloom and the like had more in common with Wolf3d than Doom engine-wise.

 

Also, Doom isn't playable on a 286. I forced my way through Doom on a 386 16mhz with 8mb ram, at probably between 5-10 fps on low detail with a half-size window. [edit - I see, we are talking about Alone In The Dark on a 286, I haven't tried that :) ]

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Uncle 80

[viti95]

Doom doesn't run well on any Amiga unless you upgrade your CPU and fast RAM massively. The blitter and other Amiga chips cannot help at all to render Doom, and is even worse as the VRAM layout uses planes, which is totally bad for 3D games (the CD32 has the Akiko chip that helps a bit, but anyway the CD32 cpu is too slow). The conversion from a linear VRAM layout to a plane based takes lot's of CPU time.

[Uncle 80]

7 minutes ago, viti95 said:

Doom doesn't run well on any Amiga unless you upgrade your CPU and fast RAM massively. The blitter and other Amiga chips cannot help at all to render Doom, and is even worse as the VRAM layout uses planes, which is totally bad for 3D games (the CD32 has the Akiko chip that helps a bit, but anyway the CD32 cpu is too slow). The conversion from a linear VRAM layout to a plane based takes lot's of CPU time.

 

Yep, I remembered after making my post that the A1200 i played Doom on was upgraded as well :) Makes sense, as Gloom and AB3D, which are way less fancy than Doom ran on an umodded A1200.

[TasAcri]

There's also FEARS on the 1200, which has a more complex engine than Wolf3D but also has very bad draw distance.

[MugMonster]

On 10/4/2023 at 12:05 PM, Individualised said:

The 3DO was well respected as a platform at the time, but it was so expensive that barely anybody could justify the price. It wasn't really a failure but more of a luxury platform. Though to the 3DO company itself, yes it was a failure. Unlike the Jaguar I'm sure many people wanted to get their hands on a 3DO.

 

On 10/4/2023 at 10:49 AM, Marsguy said:

 

Units Sold

3DO approximately 2 million units
Atari Jaguar approximately 150,000 units
32X 800,000 approx. units

 

I would say yes

 

admittedly I dont know much about the 3DO, I guess I just assumed it was a bad console because it has what's generally considered the worst Doom port (though that likely owes more to the rushed, single person, development than to the hardware) and that the PC version of Killing Time is not just better but essentially a different game.  but I also didnt realize it was 2 years older than PSX.  conversely, I guess I assumed Jaguar was somewhat decent because it produced the Doom port that begat most of the others, and because of Tempest 2000's soundtrack lmao.  had no idea it sold THAT badly

[Marsguy]

The fact that the Jaguar version is so good has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather with John Carmack's programming skills - the same applies to the new Doom port for the 32X Resurrection by Victor Luchits. Both simply know their craft. On the other hand, the 3DO isn't exactly the best hardware for Doom (12.5 MHz CPU) and a talented Rebecca Heineman can't do magic either, she told the bosses at 3DO that she needed at least 6 months for decent performance. She was given 10 weeks to port and had to start from scratch.

 

By the way, me and my brother each had a 3DO, and my brother had a Jaguar and I had a 32X. We played the most 32X...

Edited October 8, 2023 by Marsguy

[TasAcri]

Speaking of programming skills, i wonder who was mainly responsible for DOOM 64. There is a very large gap between it and the PS1 port (which was the best console port at the time) when it comes to graphics, features and performance. The N64 is powerful but not that much more powerful. Playing the game feels like some wiz kid was behind the code.

 

And it's pretty interesting how the same dev team responsible for it was also responsible for Quake 64 (from what i find online). Which was a heavily cut down port with simplified geometry, even more cut down than the Saturn version. Maybe that wizard left the team by then? The Saturn version used a different engine though, which makes me wonder. How would the N64 port look if Lobotomy made it?

[Dark Pulse]

14 hours ago, TasAcri said:

Speaking of programming skills, i wonder who was mainly responsible for DOOM 64. There is a very large gap between it and the PS1 port (which was the best console port at the time) when it comes to graphics, features and performance. The N64 is powerful but not that much more powerful. Playing the game feels like some wiz kid was behind the code.

Doom 64 was done by pretty much the same people as PS1 Doom, so the man most directly responsible would be Aaron Seeler.

 

And in terms of 3D hardware... yes, the N64 is absolutely leagues more powerful than a PS1.

 

Quote

The PS1's system could process 180,000 polygons, while the N64 processed one million. This measurement is one that is not as relevant as it was back then since graphics have graduated beyond polygons. However, it does shed some light on how graphics were perceived back in the 1990s.

 

The N64 CPU was about 3x as fast (93.75 MHz vs 33 MHz), it had 2-4x the RAM (PS1 had 2 MB main system RAM, N64 had 4 MB or 8 MB depending on if you had the expansion pack - though PS1 had dedicated areas for main system memory, VRAM, and sound RAM, while N64 was the first unified memory architecture system that is now common in consoles today), and a lot of stuff that you had to expressly code for if you tried it on PS1 (texture perspective, etc.) was simply "free" with the N64. You didn't have to do a thing for perspective correction, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, etc. The tradeoff is that it was also considerably more complicated to develop for than the PS1.

 

What held the N64 back is twofold:

1. It had a cripplingly small texture cache of 4 KB, which is why you only rarely see high-rez textures - it effectively limited a single individual texture to 64x64, as all textures get written to the cache before being put into main memory, and while more cartridge space and more RAM would let you store more textures, you can do absolutely nothing about that 4 KB texture cache.
2. PS1 games do tend to use more polygons than N64 games, but this is a bit of a gotcha - PS1 had, for example, no sorts of Z-Buffers (N64 did) or ways to tell "which" polygons should draw over others, which is why you see a lot of that characteristic polygon popping, so a lot of PS1 games threw extra polys at the system to try to minimize that. On the N64, that was completely unnecessary, so your polys went more where it mattered. Of course, that extra power came with, as said before, extra complexity - and Nintendo generally kept stuff like custom microcode (needed to really bring the power out of the chips) close to their chest, so relatively few developers really managed to pull it off - a notable one who did is Factor 5, whose devs were full of German Demosceners and rewrote like 80% of the provided default 3D library. Rare literally reverse-engineered the default library and then built their own - apparently shocking Nintendo when they saw what Banjo-Kazooie could do. Nintendo went on to make the GameCube a lot more easy to develop for as a direct consequence of this.

There is also, of course, the one other obvious difference: cartridge space. The N64's biggest games were 64 MB and even this was rare; most games on the system are in the 8-16 MB range. The system was technically capable of capacities up to just a bit under 256 MB, but it would've been prohibitively expensive (we're talking $10-20 for a 128 MB chip - cost which must be passed onto the consumer somehow to make profit). That said, you can always still go higher than that, but then you would need to implement bankswitching.

 

On that note, even though the expansion pack only added 4 MB of RAM, the system was technically capable of having up to 16 MB of RAM - four in the system and up to 12 from the expansion slot. Naturally this is useless though, as games would have to be coded to detect and make use of anything over the 4 MB of system RAM, and naturally, no game ever has. Interesting possibility for a homebrew dev, though - if they can find enough RDRAM chips to make it work.

 

So in short... yeah, the N64 was by far the more powerful system. PS1 isn't even really in its league, technically speaking. It is one of the very few times Nintendo actually went bleeding edge - the other being the ill-fated Virtual Boy. Every other system Nintendo has ever made has used technology that is at least several years old and very mature by the time of its release - even the Switch, released in 2017, is basically the guts of a 2014-2015 smartphone at its core, and the Switch 2 (whatever that turns out to be) will probably be tech that's from a few years ago at this point.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Dark Pulse

[Individualised]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Every other system Nintendo has ever made has used technology that is at least several years old and very mature by the time of its release - even the Switch, released in 2017, is basically the guts of a 2014-2015 smartphone at its core, and the Switch 2 (whatever that turns out to be) will probably be tech that's from a few years ago at this point.

This is a pretty big simplification of how things are and also not necessarily true. Saying Switch 1 is similar to a 2015 smartphone is a stretch too even if it's accurate in a lot of ways, it's certainly much more powerful. In fact, given the Switch's size and price point, the Switch is probably as powerful as Nintendo could have gotten.

[MugMonster]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

It is one of the very few times Nintendo actually went bleeding edge - the other being the ill-fated Virtual Boy. Every other system Nintendo has ever made has used technology that is at least several years old and very mature by the time of its release

 

 

huh, I thought the SNES was the best console of the 16-bit generation?  I feel like the GBA was also somewhat impressive by handheld standards (sure the Sega Nomad beat it to the punch, but the Nomad also wasn't very energy efficient)

[Individualised]

27 minutes ago, MugMonster said:

 

 

huh, I thought the SNES was the best console of the 16-bit generation?  I feel like the GBA was also somewhat impressive by handheld standards (sure the Sega Nomad beat it to the punch, but the Nomad also wasn't very energy efficient)

The SNES wasn't good in terms of raw power compared to the competition, but the PPU was miles ahead.