#34640 - NobleXenon54 - Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:28 am
Hey everyone,
I want to know what the ultimate difference is in graphics when comparing the Nintendo DS and the N64.
If you guys can, please explain to my why the graphics are better. If it is, is N64 emulation possible on the DS?
Thanks in advance!
#34642 - Abscissa - Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:23 am
| NobleXenon54 wrote: |
| I want to know what the ultimate difference is in graphics when comparing the Nintendo DS and the N64. |
I don't think anyone knows specific details of the DS's graphics yet, but from what I can tell it probably pushes a few more polygons/sec than the N64, and it doesn't appear to use any texture filtering such as bilinear filtering.
| NobleXenon54 wrote: |
| is N64 emulation possible on the DS? |
I doubt it, at least at full speed w/ sound. To correctly emulate another system you need to be on something that's at least a few times faster than the machine you're emulating. The DS is faster than the N64, but I doubt it's *that* much faster.
#34643 - TJ - Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:26 am
N64 emulation isn't possible.
You need a machine much more powerful than the machine you are trying to emulate. The DS has only a slight edge over the N64, and even then, not in raw computational power.
Which means you could port N64 games to the DS without too much difficulty, but you could never emulate one.
#34650 - ravuya - Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:10 am
I really don't feel the DS has an edge over the N64; just look at the CPU.
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#34652 - Darkain - Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:10 am
emulate the N64? how much RAM did that system have? and in terms of rendering, it supports texture filtering and AA, which seems to be lacking on the DS. ;)
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#34653 - Sebbo - Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:25 am
i believe the DS is more capable than the N64 in graphical terms...compare Mario 64 DS to the original. all the characters are smoother, and the coins which were just textured planes in the original are now cylinders with roughly 12 faces. true, the textures aren't filtered and can look pixelated at times, but on such a small screen it hardly matters most of the time.
i have also heard that mario 64 DS is running at 60 fps, not sure tho
#34657 - EaDS Milliways - Sun Jan 23, 2005 2:25 pm
I really couldn't believe all the hype about how the DS looked better than the 64 until I saw the screenshots side by side. Compared to the DS, the game on the 64 didn't look very mario-ish at all (round googly eyes in some places where they don't fit etc.).
So, now I'm not certain if a large part of the "looks better" isn't related to the fact that this design team seems to be a lot better than the one that worked on the 64 version (of course, if they're the same team, then the yolks on me ^_^!)
#34659 - abilyk - Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:54 pm
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
I really couldn't believe all the hype about how the DS looked better than the 64 until I saw the screenshots side by side. Compared to the DS, the game on the 64 didn't look very mario-ish at all (round googly eyes in some places where they don't fit etc.).
So, now I'm not certain if a large part of the "looks better" isn't related to the fact that this design team seems to be a lot better than the one that worked on the 64 version (of course, if they're the same team, then the yolks on me ^_^!) |
Even if they're the same exact people (which I consider unlikely), they're not the same team they were 8-or-so years ago. That was a long time ago, and Mario 64 was likely their first 3d game. By now they'd be more experienced and should be reasonably expected to produce a technically better game.
#34660 - Dwedit - Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:05 pm
The Corn N64 emulator used static recompilation to run at full speed on a Pentium II. Could a similar product run at full speed on the Nintendo DS?
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#34671 - tepples - Sun Jan 23, 2005 11:03 pm
N64 emulators with a recompiler engine, such as UltraHLE and Corn, needed a PII machine such as my 333 MHz PII laptop. That's at least five times as fast as the Nintendo DS's main CPU.
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#35009 - khan - Sat Jan 29, 2005 10:17 am
I am newb, while reading this thread i just had to register so to shed some light on n64 v ds graphs i have got some pics for u guys which compare the both super mario vers.
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
hope that helps
#35017 - Wriggler - Sat Jan 29, 2005 1:06 pm
Honestly I don't think there's much in it. We just know better now what colours look nicer in texture maps, how to squeeze the most out of a few polygons, and things like that... technically all of those comparisons are pretty similar. The DS version just has a cleaner style IMO.
Ben
#35032 - Gatchers - Sat Jan 29, 2005 4:44 pm
I read in the Edge review a few months back that they deliberately toned down the colour schemes in some areas - and made it look more 'pastel' and less 'primary colour', so the textures are different by design.
#35033 - Gatchers - Sat Jan 29, 2005 4:52 pm
By the way, maybe slightly off-topic, but over here in Europe, they are making the DS available early for Europe (before March 11th) to members of the VIP club as a limited edition pack - for 1000 sars (apparently for postage and packing) and 129.99UKP you can get a European DS now, and it comes with the Metroid Hunters: First Hunt Demo, a Wario Ware Touched! demo and also a 'Mario 64 DS pre-release verion' - what is this!? It might be interesting, possibly nearer the N64 version and possibly not all the levels perhaps? Maybe nearer what it was like at E3? It might be interesting to compare and contrast - may hold some clues into what they took time trying to get right...
Also, It mentions that the Metroid Hunters: First Hunt demo (probably same as the US one) will not be compatible multiplay-wise with the final European release of the game.
3000 were available - at the time of writing, 514 are left...
When I get mine I'll try to wireless play with my other DSes.
#35045 - ampz - Sat Jan 29, 2005 8:04 pm
11th march... Think I will have to preorder, or will I be able to buy one in the store when it is released?
Sure, I already have one, but I need one more. And at least one decent game for it. (metroid just does not cut it...)
When will mario kart be released for the DS?
#35064 - tepples - Sat Jan 29, 2005 11:50 pm
| Gatchers wrote: |
| for 1000 sars (apparently for postage and packing) and 129.99UKP you can get a European DS now, and it comes with [three games] |
SARS? I wonder if the offer is valid in China.
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-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#35290 - timmeh - Wed Feb 02, 2005 5:42 pm
| Sebbo wrote: |
i have also heard that mario 64 DS is running at 60 fps, not sure tho |
all DS games run at 60fps, 30 per screen. if you go any lower than that, it starts to generate serious problems (ie the graphics on both screens get mixed together)
for anyone interested in the hardware and graphics capabilites of the DS, i highly reccomend this:
http://www.cs.usm.maine.edu/~cargile/DS_related_blog_entries.html
it gets really techncial at times (i dont even understand it all), but its actually sort of entertaining hearing about the guy fighting with his stupid boss and everything.
#35294 - dagamer34 - Wed Feb 02, 2005 6:54 pm
| timmeh wrote: |
| Sebbo wrote: |
i have also heard that mario 64 DS is running at 60 fps, not sure tho |
all DS games run at 60fps, 30 per screen. if you go any lower than that, it starts to generate serious problems (ie the graphics on both screens get mixed together)
for anyone interested in the hardware and graphics capabilites of the DS, i highly reccomend this:
http://www.cs.usm.maine.edu/~cargile/DS_related_blog_entries.html
it gets really techncial at times (i dont even understand it all), but its actually sort of entertaining hearing about the guy fighting with his stupid boss and everything. |
The earlier part of the blog is the most interesting part of it. Though, him ranting about his boss is somewhat distracting, the information in there qill be quite valuable to us later down the road.
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#35296 - Wriggler - Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:15 pm
Quick question: What's an MMU? It's a term I've never come across before, and I swear I read on this forum that the DS doesn't have one. But this guy says it does. Is it important? ;)
Ben
#35300 - EaDS Milliways - Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:43 pm
Memory Management Unit.
#35317 - timmeh - Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:12 am
The way I understand it (they way that I understand things is in no way guaranteed to be accurate), the MMU keeps track of where everthing is in the memory (ie. its address, expressed in those weird numbers that darkfader uses sometimes like 0x08000000 (hex numbers)).
It is usually part of the cpu, and when a piece of code wants some data, it asks the MMU for it. I believe "memory" is defined as "any accessable storage medium", and applies to hard drives (and flash cards) as well as RAM.
If the DS did not have an MMU embedded in the CPU (which apparently it does?), it would be up to the software to handle memory management, which, as always, is slower.
all this was revealed with a quick google search, something that is not outside the capabilties of most forum members ;)
----
on a related note, did anyone actaully look for specs to see if the DS ARM9 has an MMU? because some ARM9's do -->
MMU supporting Windows CE, Symbian OS, Linux, Palm OS (ARM920T and ARM922T)
(link)
I am definately pushing the limits of my limited knowlege here, but shouldnt there be some sort of serial number associated with the chip that you can look up? or is Nintendo using its own "special" version of the chip?
#35320 - Gatchers - Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:46 am
ARM9, or ARM7, never has an MMU, because it refers to the core microcell. ARM9xx or ARM7xx can have an MMU, cache, Thumb support, Jazelle, etc.
Does anyone know if the ARM9 core in the DS definitely doesn't have an MMU?
An MMU is nice for things other than just virtual memory etc support - sometimes you want to run code with a small amount of RAM and a large amount of NAND flash which you can't execute from directly, etc, etc. ALso, it can help with debugging.
#35321 - Kali - Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:56 am
| Quote: |
| Another interesting thing is that the hardware pretty much forces developers to make sure their games run at 60fps. If you've ever programmed the Copper chip in an Amiga you'll understand the reason. |
How do you understand this ?
Oh and
| Quote: |
| specially for transparency and shadows, and some features even make it easy to cast shadow volumes onto transparent surfaces, which isn't even possible on standard OpenGL hardware |
I have a hard time imagining true shadow volumes on the DS... They're definitely fill rate eaters (the DS has plenty of fill rate given its resolution so I suppose that's ok) and they need the mesh silouhette which is particularly expensive to compute. And since the DS doesn't even have a frame buffer I guess we shouldn't count on a stencil buffer neither ;) so I don't see how shadow volumes could be implemented...
#35323 - Wriggler - Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:04 am
| Quote: |
| since the DS doesn't even have a frame buffer |
Is this the truth then? Seems strange to me. How do certain DS games (like Feel the Magic), do special screen effects? In Feel the Magic, there are certain mini-games which have a wave effect over both screens. Now if I were to do this on the GBA, I'd simply setup a hblank interrupt and offset the drawing. But obviously I'm drawing the image line by line, so it makes sense. But 3d on the DS wouldn't be drawn line-by-line would it? So how would they achieve a wavey effect without some kind of buffer to edit?
Or have I missed the point here? Is the DS display drawn line by line?
Ben
P.S. Apologies for abducting the thread a little bit!
#35349 - ector - Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:55 pm
If it really is rendered line by line, it can easily do all kinds of weird shadow volume tricks, just like the Dreamcast did modifier volumes with its tile based rendering. Fill rate is basically infinite (except when using trasparency) since it will do clipping of spans to only draw what's visible.
#36398 - Teasy - Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:45 pm
| Quote: |
| all DS games run at 60fps, 30 per screen. |
Are you suggesting that no DS game can actually run at a true 60fps? Or just that Mario 64 DS doesn't?
#36405 - MumblyJoe - Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:48 am
| timmeh wrote: |
| Sebbo wrote: |
i have also heard that mario 64 DS is running at 60 fps, not sure tho |
all DS games run at 60fps, 30 per screen. if you go any lower than that, it starts to generate serious problems (ie the graphics on both screens get mixed together)
for anyone interested in the hardware and graphics capabilites of the DS, i highly reccomend this:
http://www.cs.usm.maine.edu/~cargile/DS_related_blog_entries.html
it gets really techncial at times (i dont even understand it all), but its actually sort of entertaining hearing about the guy fighting with his stupid boss and everything. |
I'm pretty sure the colors of that site just broke my eyes.
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#36407 - Mchart - Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:58 am
It would have been fine if he made the text white, like a normal person would do, but he didnt.. It doesnt make sense either, because he stares at a computer screen all day.. Why would he make his own site so hard to read?
#36426 - Gatchers - Sat Feb 19, 2005 2:56 pm
I take it Fluffy is talking about 'Sprung'.
#36439 - Mr. Ploppy - Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:33 am
Yes, so it would seem. Actually the blog strikes me as being quite authentic. Did anyone else get the impression that "Fluffy" is female? It's not really anything I can put my finger on, just a hunch I got when I read.
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#36440 - Sebbo - Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:37 am
yes, fluffy is female (from what i can remember ne way, memory is fading already) and was working on sprung. she's been posting on DSLinux for a little while now
Last edited by Sebbo on Mon Feb 21, 2005 7:02 am; edited 1 time in total
#36444 - Gatchers - Sun Feb 20, 2005 12:46 pm
Interesting. I pulled out my copy of Sprung as a result of reading all that (I had found the blog by chance during a search when I was in the US and picked up my first DS last November), the credits show the names being referred to in the blog (Jason etc) but it appeared that the blog had been written by someone who had been working on aspects of the user interface, the person creditted for that is called Joshua.
I don't know if I'd entirely agree with the comments made that it obviously looks like it's making full use of the DSes CPU bandwidth, and having played the game I can't really see why it seemed so crazy to make it use the touchscreen as an input either...
Does anyone know the original location of this blog - I can't for the life of me find it anymore, I'm sure a search for 'DS dev kit' or something found it for me before... either way, I think they should post here :-)
#36448 - sandymac - Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:55 pm
| Gatchers wrote: |
| Does anyone know the original location of this blog |
http://trikuare.cx/mt/
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