Texturing in the demo game was handled by contributions from fellow developer Pyroxene, using a technique called baking. This is implementing lighting and material details directly into the textures, particularly on low-detail models.
Additionally, Pyroxene worked on a new kind of N64 fog: implementing RGB color-mixed fog gradients in the distance, plus locally colored fog. This further enhances open-world visuals.
(Image credit: James Lambert ) (Image credit: James Lambert ) In Junkrunner 64, the map starts hidden, as in many modern open-world games, and exploring the environment reveals the map little by little. Thankfully, there’s a super-fast 180 mph hovercycle that can be acquired and upgraded to get you around. Towards the end of the video, we see a small segment of gameplay demonstrating map exploration on a hovercycle.
Lambert closes the video by teasing a new (unnamed) full game that will be coming to the N64, ModRetro , and the Analogue 3D . It will, of course, use the above-mentioned technologies.
You can grab the code for the Junkrunner 64 demo, which was the main topic of the video. Version 2.1 is now on GitHub as a 16.5MB z64 file for your emulators, flash carts, etc. The source code is there too.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-19/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
bigdragon This is great! They did a lot with limited resources. This is the kind of development tinkering that gets me excited about gaming. Making some things work requires thinking outside-the-box and serious problem-solving. It's also why I think console generations should be longer. There's so much untapped potential in older systems! Reply
bit_user The article said: memory constraints and performance considerations remain. This is why I found the headline of "zero loading screens" unsurprising. With so little memory and processing power capable of rendering only a rather small amount of geometry, the potential for long loading times is rather small. I'd guess the main factors behind it were things like read speed from cartridge ROMs and decompression time. However they're doing this development, they probably have faster access to a lot more data than would fit on those old cartridges. The workaround to the Z-buffer precision problem was indeed clever. It does mean potentially clipping your geometry twice – at least the parts that you can't depth sort via map tiles. So, it doesn't come totally for free. I'm much less interested in what these techniques can do on a N64 and much more interested in what potential they have for gaming on much more prevalent iGPUs and low-end phones. I think that's the greatest value in exploring such techniques. Reply
usertests bit_user said: I'm much less interested in what these techniques can do on a N64 and much more interested in what potential they have for gaming on much more prevalent iGPUs and low-end phones. I think that's the greatest value in exploring such techniques. "Every game should run on the i5-6400T" Challenge Reply
bit_user usertests said: "Every game should run on the i5-6400T" Challenge I wouldn't say every game, but there are probably lots of games that could be implemented more efficiently. Lots more that could be made to fit, if it were a first-order design consideration. In other words, you literally design the game around the limitations of the hardware, which is what's happening in the scenario described by the article and in many (at least older) console games. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/dev-showcases-seamless-massive-world-with-zero-loading-screens-on-n64-hardware-30-year-old-nintendo-retro-console-coaxed-into-draw-distances-matching-the-scale-of-skyrim#main
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