Kazza
Member
A really interesting deep dive into the N64 hardware from Modern Vintage Gamer:
One of the biggest issues apparently is the limited amount of texture cache (TMEM) on the RDP (Reality Display Processor). Even for 1996, 4kb sounds small. This explains the blurry textures in many N64 games. Interesting that the main RAM was shared between code, graphics and audio, leaving it up to the developer to decide how to utilise it. With the Jaguar and Saturn both being notoriously complex too, it sounds like the Playstation was the only easy to devlop for console that gen (maybe the 3DO too?)
There's much more in the video, well worth a watch.
The Nintendo 64 was an impressive console. Silicon Graphics and Nintendo pulled off the unthinkable - the precision of accurate 3D hardware on a $199 consumer home console. Yet developers complained that the system was too complex and overly difficult to develop games on. In this episode we take a closer look at some of the complexities developers faced when making games for the N64.
A few points. - I didn't talk about DMA in this video as i the main focus was on the graphics side. However if you want to understand how DMA worked on the N64, check out Rodrigo Copetti's blog (link in description). tl;dr - the implementation is NOT good - at 1:54 i meant to say 16 and 8 kilobyte instead of bit - stay safe!
One of the biggest issues apparently is the limited amount of texture cache (TMEM) on the RDP (Reality Display Processor). Even for 1996, 4kb sounds small. This explains the blurry textures in many N64 games. Interesting that the main RAM was shared between code, graphics and audio, leaving it up to the developer to decide how to utilise it. With the Jaguar and Saturn both being notoriously complex too, it sounds like the Playstation was the only easy to devlop for console that gen (maybe the 3DO too?)
There's much more in the video, well worth a watch.
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