18th November 2003, 6:45 PM
Quote:Then why the problems with MM if it's simply being emulated?
Uhh... I must assume that you haven't exactly got much experience with emulators, or you'd know that thats a dumb question. Emulators have to be so complex... compatibility is a huge problem and getting it high, especially for 3d systems, is hard. Then getting it to run well is even harder... there aren't any perfect N64 (free) emulators yet, after all... now I'm sure Nintendo could do a good job making a OoT engine-specific emulator if they wanted, but I bet they didn't put huge resources on something they are giving out for free like this, so some problems are to be expected...
Quote:You know, most people are going to think that we're arguing since we're using quote boxes.
Definitely.
Quote:So the problem is that players would be able to zoom out further? That doesn't make any sense. If you increase the resolution in a 3D game then all it does is stretch the textures to fit the higher resolutions. Sort of like using a 640x480 resolution wallpaper on a monitor that's set at 1600x1200 and stretching it to fit the screen size. Of course it's great if there are different images for the different resolutions, but most developers don't do that. Well, it's a lot more complicated than that but I forgot the details.
Before I continue, please go play Age of Empires, Command and Conquer (any that allow you to change resolution), Diablo II, Baldur's Gate II, Homeworld, or a hundred other games. Go to 640x480. Then go to 800x600 and higher if allowed. You should immediately notice that with the increased resolution, everything shinks... that farm that in 640x480 is 'x' in area is now '1/2x' or so. You can also see farther on the screen (in a topdown game, 2d or 3d -- the art, 2d or 3d, is shrunk by the increased resolution since everything takes up a static amount of space on the screen and when you shrink it you shrink the amount of space things take up, so you can see more stuff on the screen...). Argh... just go play Age of Empires or C&C (Red Alert 2 works well) and look at two resolutions, then go check Warcraft and do the same. You'd immediately see what I mean about how what Blizz did removes unfair competitive imbalance.
Now, of course, the issue is different for first-person or third-person behind the character games... I'm not sure exactly what happens there. Yeah, it just seems to stretch the textures osnto the same sized polys, which is why PSX/N64 textures look even more awful in high resolutions...
Quote:Boot up the game and keep the framerate counter on. See if you notice a difference in actual running speed if it gets above 30 fps.
I will. Later, after I reboot and I don't think stuff will crash if I try to open PJ64...