u/r_retrohacking_mod2in r/GraphicsProgramming • Recommends
MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware
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#nintendo64#megatexture#texturestreaming
How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware
James Lambert
86K subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 4 people: 2 on Hacker News and 2 in engineering communities.
- Presented by James Lambert
- Linked in the descriptionlambertjamesd/n64brew2023
Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.
398K views3 years ago4 recommendations
Graphics and audioGame developmentRenderingBuilding a game engineRetro games and consoles
James Lambert explains how he implemented a MegaTexture-style texture streaming technique on the Nintendo 64.
This demo showcases a technique I came up with for the last N64Brew gamejam. You can download the ROM here github.com/lambertjamesd/n64brew2023/releases The stain glass windows were created by Caitlin G Cooke caitlingcooke.art/ The music for the demo was done by Jeff Nichter @jtn191 instagram.com/jtn191/Why it's here
4 people recommend thisWhat people say. Recommended as an impressive demonstration of implementing modern texture streaming techniques on retro console hardware.
u/corysamain r/GraphicsProgramming • Recommends
How James Lambert implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware
echelonon Hacker News • Recommends
On “VR Powered by N64 [video]”
This is what James Lambert does as a follow up when Valve shuts down 1 his "Portal in N64" project 2. James is like Kaze 3 and builds incredible N64 demos 4 and technical videos about them. 1 link 2 link 3 link 4 link to this video
cubefoxon Hacker News • Recommends
On “I Built an Open-World Engine for the N64 [video]”
The same guy, James Lambert, also implemented texture streaming (which would not be invented until two console generations later) in an N64 demo. The textures look uncharacteristically high res: link to this video
u/PhonicUKin r/embedded • Mentions
I ported James Lambert's N64 Megatextures to the ESP32 S3 (with source!)
I suspected this might be possible, and - it is. Running at between 35 and 60FPS interlaced at 480x320 on a standard ESP32 S3 (albeit one with 16MB of flash instead of 8 which is needed to store texture data)
Megatextures are a technique where the entire scene uses just 1 shared texture atlas, which is re-populated on-demand from a slower source. In this case from flash storage.
James Lambert famously implemented it on the N64 and very graciously shared the source code for it. So I decided to take a crack at getting it working under Jet on the S3.
I've taken a slightly different approach, because Jet can do a few…
JohnBootyon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Demo of megatextures running on n64 hardware”
Appear to be videos of this project in action: "How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware" - link to this video "Megatextures Tech Demo - N64brew Summer Game Jam 2023 Submission" - link
kmeisthaxon Hacker News • Mentions
On “RPG Engine for the Nintendo 64”
Prerendered cutscenes ate up the lion's share of the disc. If you sacrificed on those and used lots of compression, you absolutely could build an RPG on the N64 that would stand up to whatever you could do on PlayStation. However, nobody wanted to do that. The only RPGs we got on the N64 were Quest 64 and Paper Mario. The reason why requires diving into the development history of what would have been a third RPG for the system: MOTHER 3. To put it bluntly, they ran out of storage space, and pivoted to the N64 DD to get more. The custom floppy disks the N64 DD took could hold 64MB0. Even then, this wasn't enough, so the game was then broken up into two parts: an N64 cartridge plus a DD expa…