Palette lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64
21 comments
·May 17, 2025accrual
somat
Note that the N64 was designed by SGI, And seeing as how influential SGI was for 3d graphics, I sort of assume the reverse, that the n64 probably has the most standard hardware of it's generation. I would be vaguely surprised if there was not an opengl library for it.
However there is a large caveat, 1. you have to think of the system as a graphics card with a cpu bolted on. and 2. the graphics system is directly exposed.
Graphics chip architecture ends up being a ugly hateful incompatible mess, and as such the vendors of said accelerators generally tend to avoid publishing reference documents for them, preferring to publish intermediate API's instead. things like OpenGL, DirectX, CUDA, Vulcan, mainly so that under the hood they can keep them an incompatible mess(if you never publish a reference, you never have to have hardware backwards compatibility, the up side is they can create novel designs, the down side is no one can use them directly) so when you do get direct access to them, as in that generation of game console, you sort of instinctively recoil in horror.
footnote on graphics influence: OpenGL came out of SGI and nvidia was founded by ex SGI engineers.
heraldgeezer
Shadow of the Colossus... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
reidrac
I love how the post, about N64 graphic tricks, ends with the question: "Is this the future?"
echelon
The amount of indie N64 development happening right now is wild. The platform is flourishing.
The system has seen a dozen of its most popular games decompiled [1] into readable source files, which enables easy porting to PC without an emulator. It also enables a ton of mods to be written, many of which will run on the original hardware.
There are numerous Zelda fan remakes [2]. Complete games with new dungeons and storylines.
The Mario 64 scene is on fire. Kaze has deeply optimized the game [3], and is building his own engine and sequels. If you like technical deep dives into retro tech, his channel is literally golden.
Folks are making crazy demos for the platform, such as Portal [4], which unfortunately brought Valve's lawyers' attention.
Lost games, such as Rare's Dinosaur Planet [5], have leaked, been brought up to near production ready status, been decompiled, and have seen their own indie resurgence.
[1] https://wiki.deco.mp/index.php/N64
[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bZl8xKDUryI
[3] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
The whole channel is gold. He has dozens of deep dives like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DdXLpoNLywg
And his game and engine are beautiful: https://youtu.be/Drame-4ufso
dejobaan
While I'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.
HN folks are probably familiar with raster interrupts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_interrupt) and "racing the beam." I always associated this with the Atari 800. You weren't "supposed" to be able to do stuff like https://youtu.be/GuHqw_3A-vo?t=33, but Display List Interrupts made that possible.
What I didn't know until recently was how much Atari 2600's games owed to this kinda of craziness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc
It's stuff like this that makes me think that if hardware stopped advancing, we'd still be able to figure out more and more interesting stuff for decades!
typeofhuman
It blows my mind how genius these game engineers were. They dealt with so many limitations and created such imaginative and brilliant solutions.
90s_dev
Limitations demand and produce extraordinary creativity. That's the secret behind pico8 and Animal Well and so many amazing games.
I wish I didn't think of a significantly better architecture for my 2d-pixel-art-game-maker-maker this weekend. Now it'll be another month before I can release it :(
jebarker
What were the limitations for Animal Well?
90s_dev
- 320 x 180 screen size for starters
- Limited map size
- Limited color palette I think
- and more!
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Limitations, and, popularity
90s_dev
Popularity comes from utility. Utility comes from the right trade offs. Limitations demand careful trade offs.
Dwedit
This is new stuff, not stuff done during the reign of the N64.
bob1029
Only recently did we figure out how to make Mario64 run at 30fps.
corysama
Around the end of the PS2’s lifetime, some engine dev friends of mine figure out to do palletized spherical harmonic lighting on the PS2. That was pretty straightforward.
What was tricky was a separate technique to get real cubemaps working on the PS2.
Unfortunately, these came too late to actually ship in any PS2 games. The SH trick might have been used in the GameCube game “The Conduit”. Same team.
Sharlin
I'm sure they were but, as noted, this specifically is 2025 stuff, and demoscene, not gamedev.
heraldgeezer
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.
GT3 heatwave summarizes it well.
"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."
https://old.reddit.com/r/ps2/comments/1cktw88/gran_turismos_...
https://youtu.be/ybi9SdroCTA?t=4103
It's not trying to emulate a real heatwave as new engines like UE5 does, that just tanks fps. It does "tricks" to do it instead. And honestly, looking at RTX tanking frame rates, I would rather have these cheap tricks.
A 299MHz MIPS runs this:
Shadow of the Colossus... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
GoW2 https://youtu.be/IpKLwIIdvuk?si=TjifKmlYsUuvhk0F&t=970
FFXII https://youtu.be/NytHoYOs_4M?si=jE1Fxy40khEvV6Bn&t=51
GT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6lZIxk_h9g (THE BOOTSCREEN crying)
Black (Renderware was a crazy engine) https://youtu.be/bZBjcwyq7fQ?si=Pev5ifpksJm4X6Oi&t=356
Valkyrie profile 2 https://youtu.be/9ScjO4NuUtA?si=Z29cR-hLsT2pnP2I&t=38
Rouge Galaxy https://youtu.be/iR1evzyl-7Q?si=fldm3-NnuFxOITMn&t=624
Burnout 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r5r0nE1sA4
Jak and Daxter, Ratchet.
For GC - RE4, Metroid, The Zeldas... ofc. Looks crazy good.
I kneel.
It's very impressive to see "realistic" graphics on the N64. The demo reminds me of "ICO" for the PS2.
I'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:
https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/