Palette lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64

It&#x27;s very impressive to see &quot;realistic&quot; graphics on the N64. The demo reminds me of &quot;ICO&quot; for the PS2.<p>I&#x27;ve always wondered if it would be possible to create an SDK to abstract the N64 graphics hardware and expose some modern primitives, lighting, shading, tools to bake lighting as this demo does, etc. The N64 has some pretty unique hardware for its generation, more details on the hardware are here on Copetti.org:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.copetti.org&#x2F;writings&#x2F;consoles&#x2F;nintendo-64&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.copetti.org&#x2F;writings&#x2F;consoles&#x2F;nintendo-64&#x2F;</a>

I love how the post, about N64 graphic tricks, ends with the question: &quot;Is this the future?&quot;

It blows my mind how genius these game engineers were. They dealt with so many limitations and created such imaginative and brilliant solutions.

While I&#x27;m really happy we have faster systems now, there was something fun about about having to subvert constraints in games, and so satisfying and lovely when you did it right.<p>HN folks are probably familiar with raster interrupts (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raster_interrupt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raster_interrupt</a>) and &quot;racing the beam.&quot; I always associated this with the Atari 800. You weren&#x27;t &quot;supposed&quot; to be able to do stuff like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;GuHqw_3A-vo?t=33" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;GuHqw_3A-vo?t=33</a>, but Display List Interrupts made that possible.<p>What I didn&#x27;t know until recently was how much Atari 2600&#x27;s games owed to this kinda of craziness: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc</a><p>It&#x27;s stuff like this that makes me think that if hardware stopped advancing, we&#x27;d still be able to figure out more and more interesting stuff for decades!

Demo scene and work like this is impressive. Yet I can&#x27;t help but notice that it tends toward simpler more empty scenes. The kind of stuff one might expect in the background or as only a part of a game mechanic. It&#x27;s as if there&#x27;s just not enough resources to really make complete experiences with most of the techniques.<p>What I find more impressive are efforts like FastDoom or the various Mario-64 optimization projects which squeeze significantly better performance out of old hardware. Sometimes even while <i>adding</i> content and features. Maybe there is a connection between demo sceners and more comprehensive efforts?

We did similar palette-based lighting techniques in our shareware game in the 90s. Basically, arranging the VGA 256-color palette so that each color we supported would have a gradient of N shades of the color. Illumination within each color could then be easily altered by adding or subtracting color indices.

I miss the PS1 and PS2 optimization. Most of them look amazing uprezzed to 1080p or 4k or more with emulation. Halo 2 era graphics in 4k is all we need imo. Yes that one is xbox but try Halo MCC Halo 2 in classic graphics. Still looks incredible.<p>GT3 heatwave summarizes it well.<p>&quot;I showed a demo of GT3 that showed the Seattle course at sunset with the heat rising off the ground and shimmering. You can’t re-create that heat haze effect on the PS3 because the read-modify-write just isn’t as fast as when we were using the PS2. There are things like that.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;ps2&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cktw88&#x2F;gran_turismos_creator_kazunori_yamauchi_you_cant&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;ps2&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1cktw88&#x2F;gran_turismos_...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ybi9SdroCTA?t=4103" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ybi9SdroCTA?t=4103</a><p>It&#x27;s not trying to emulate a real heatwave as new engines like UE5 does, that just tanks fps. It does &quot;tricks&quot; to do it instead. And honestly, looking at RTX tanking frame rates, I would rather have these cheap tricks.<p>A 299MHz MIPS runs this:<p>Shadow of the Colossus... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8</a><p>GoW2 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IpKLwIIdvuk?si=TjifKmlYsUuvhk0F&amp;t=970" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IpKLwIIdvuk?si=TjifKmlYsUuvhk0F&amp;t=970</a><p>FFXII <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;NytHoYOs_4M?si=jE1Fxy40khEvV6Bn&amp;t=51" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;NytHoYOs_4M?si=jE1Fxy40khEvV6Bn&amp;t=51</a><p>GT4 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F6lZIxk_h9g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F6lZIxk_h9g</a> (THE BOOTSCREEN <i>crying</i>)<p>Black (Renderware was a crazy engine) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;bZBjcwyq7fQ?si=Pev5ifpksJm4X6Oi&amp;t=356" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;bZBjcwyq7fQ?si=Pev5ifpksJm4X6Oi&amp;t=356</a><p>Valkyrie profile 2 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9ScjO4NuUtA?si=Z29cR-hLsT2pnP2I&amp;t=38" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9ScjO4NuUtA?si=Z29cR-hLsT2pnP2I&amp;t=38</a><p>Rouge Galaxy <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;iR1evzyl-7Q?si=fldm3-NnuFxOITMn&amp;t=624" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;iR1evzyl-7Q?si=fldm3-NnuFxOITMn&amp;t=624</a><p>Burnout 3 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_r5r0nE1sA4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_r5r0nE1sA4</a><p>Jak and Daxter, Ratchet.<p>For GC - RE4, Metroid, The Zeldas... ofc. Looks crazy good.<p>I kneel.