Why doesn't Doom 64 have dynamic lighting from weapons/projectiles?

[Koko Ricky]

Although I've already posted a thread about the topic, It's over a decade old and I didn't really word things as effectively as I wanted. Basically what I'm interested in is whether Doom 64 could have had dynamic lights emit from weapons, explosions, fireballs, etc., and if it were possible, why it wasn't implemented. 

 

N64 games were perfectly capable of point lighting via gauraud/vertex shading, including colored and moving lights. Rogue Squadron, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Turok 2 come to mind. Doom 64 wasn't very geometrically dense, so adding vertex shading wouldn't have been a huge performance hit. There's also the fact that the PS1 versions emulated the sector-based dynamic lighting just fine, so that should have been an option.

 

With that in mind, I'm currently concluding that either 

 

1) Doom 64's unique approach to lighting goofed up emulating OG Doom's approach. 

2) Vertex shading worked, but created artifacts the developers thought looked bad. 

3) Vertex shading worked, but did cause a performance hit.

4) Vertex shading simply didn't work and an alternative solution wasn't implemented. 

 

Anyone have insight on this?

 

 

[andrewj]

12 hours ago, Koko Ricky said:

Doom 64 wasn't very geometrically dense, so adding vertex shading wouldn't have been a huge performance hit. There's also the fact that the PS1 versions emulated the sector-based dynamic lighting just fine, so that should have been an option.

I'm guessing you are not a programmer, because this sure sounds like the very common  "but it should be so EASY!!" comments that non-programmers often say about features of a game engine (or any piece of software really).

 

What Kaiser said in the your other thread is probably the best answer you are gonna get, I think.

 

 

[Individualised]

Also keep in mind despite its release date Doom 64 was one of the first games to start development for the Nintendo 64. It might have even been the first third party game to start development for the system though I can't confirm. So some jankiness/limitations can probably be attributed to that, they would have been working with incomplete SDKs for much of its development and it would be the development staff's first experience with the system. I'm honestly surprised Doom 64 came out as polished and great as it did.

[Koko Ricky]

14 hours ago, andrewj said:

I'm guessing you are not a programmer, because this sure sounds like the very common  "but it should be so EASY!!" comments that non-programmers often say about features of a game engine (or any piece of software really).

 

What Kaiser said in the your other thread is probably the best answer you are gonna get, I think.

 

 

You're right, I'm not a programmer. I'm familiar with rendering techniques, but not implementation. I want to say Doom 64's development started in 1995, a full year before the N64's release, so it makes sense that so early in its life cycle, the devs may have been unable to add a new dynamic light system.

 

If you look at early PS1 and N64 games, it's evident that everyone was experimenting with light. Twisted Metal 1 and 2 had no lighting on geometry whatsoever, and arbitrary gouraud shading on vehicles. Same with Waverace 64. Mario 64 had random surfaces that would change brightness dependent on camera angle.

 

With that in mind, it's unsurprising that Midway couldn't forge a dynamic lighting solution. It was early in the days of real-time 3D and very few knew how to handle light. 

 

 

 

[Individualised]

3 hours ago, Koko Ricky said:

You're right, I'm not a programmer. I'm familiar with rendering techniques, but not implementation. I want to say Doom 64's development started in 1995, a full year before the N64's release, so it makes sense that so early in its life cycle, the devs may have been unable to add a new dynamic light system.

 

If you look at early PS1 and N64 games, it's evident that everyone was experimenting with light. Twisted Metal 1 and 2 had no lighting on geometry whatsoever, and arbitrary gouraud shading on vehicles. Same with Waverace 64. Mario 64 had random surfaces that would change brightness dependent on camera angle.

 

With that in mind, it's unsurprising that Midway couldn't forge a dynamic lighting solution. It was early in the days of real-time 3D and very few knew how to handle light. 

 

 

 

It seems like it started development in late 1994. There's a few references to the game from very early 1995 in magazines, Super Mario 64 started development at a similar time and it would seem that the very first development kits were shipped around then.

[Edward850]

There's no insight anyone can give here. As far as it appears, sphere lighting was never even attempted so any technical limitation is neither known nor relevant.

Could it be done? Kaisers original answer stands relevant; maybe. But ultimately no further information is knowable and the question is pointless.

[cybdmn]

18 hours ago, Individualised said:

Also keep in mind despite its release date Doom 64 was one of the first games to start development for the Nintendo 64. It might have even been the first third party game to start development for the system though I can't confirm. So some jankiness/limitations can probably be attributed to that, they would have been working with incomplete SDKs for much of its development and it would be the development staff's first experience with the system. I'm honestly surprised Doom 64 came out as polished and great as it did.

 

You should keep in mind, that development in the beginning started with stock Indy machines, before the developers got real devkits.

[Hebonky]

the game was developed over 3 years, so it's not time... Maybe, nobody in the office really knew, and those that could know never noticed the minor detail when playing on their low res CRT's

[Kyle07]

Does Doom 64 on the N64 run with an software or hardware renderer? Would this be relevant for the theoretical question, if dynamic lights could be possible technical whise?

[Edward850]

22 minutes ago, Kyle07 said:

Does Doom 64 on the N64 run with an software or hardware renderer? Would this be relevant for the theoretical question, if dynamic lights could be possible technical whise?

Hardware.

Edited January 18 by Edward850

[Kyle07]

Ah okay, as I thought. :) But yeah seems unrelevant. It is still interesting how far PS1 Doom and Doom 64 pushed the engine further.