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There's Turok Remaster on Steam where you can reduce fog distance (not sure if this is via mod or in game, though). But to me it looks like the fog add to the challenge of navigating the levels, so not sure I'd remove them myself if I ever play this game. As I enjoy the challenge of navigating some games a la Shining in the Darkness.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
I'm on about playing it back in the day on the original hardware and like 90% of N64 games. Turok had blurry graphics, lack of detailed texture mapping, washed out colours and horrible fogging. It did had fab effects on the weapons though, it was doing a lot in terms of huge open levels and full polygon characters, but truth be told I much rathered the gfx in Duke Nukem 3D, Exhumed on the Saturn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief
Putting "Fog" in an entire game to make it a challenge seems more like lazy programming then anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief
Team Silent must have been the laziest devs then :DQuote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
Whoever designed Extreme-G must have been the laziest of them all. You couldn't see more 10 feet of track in front of your vehicle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSbm...em-uploademail
This guy think the N64 version of Road Rash is the best, this is a surprise if true. Love the Genesis Trilogy.
Thankfully for me the N64 was at its prominence (ya right) during my college days so my gaming drastically shrunk. This was a forgettable generation at least for Nintendo.
I understand 100% that the N64 had serious limitations with Draw Distance so I'm not even considering the fog in Turok as a challenge but more of an example of how they hid the pop-ups in the game. I was fine with this in the game seeing as it was just the hardware limitations more then anything but to say the fog is there to make the game harder is asinine to say the least. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulis
You're getting it backwards, they didn't add the fog to make the game harder. It's there to hide system limitations which in turn also affects the difficulty in navigating massive maze like areas.
Was going to reply like this originally awhile back, but didn't think I had to so I scrapped the post.
See, this is the thing. You make it sound like this problem was 100% N64 exclusive. All systems had this weakness back then, it's not like the PS1/SAT didn't have games plagued by fog or pop-up (already mentioned some prominent titles in this thread). And it's not like the N64 didn't have it's own share of games that had no pop-up or fog.Quote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
This issue is game related 100%. Sure, the hardware was weak (i ALL three consoles) but it was up to the developers skill and design choices in how to deal with this weakness.
Turok's level design didn't leave much of a choice. At best you could have the fog pushed back a few meters away assuming the game wasn't that early and had the maximum possible optimizations (not all devs are as good with this). The other option would be to simplify the design. Make the levels smaller, less expansive, less sprawling, mostly linear with less verticality. Then maybe the fog would be away enough for you to not notice it but the game would not be the same. Personally, i loved the level design and size of the levels so i'm glad they did what they did.
To that i agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
However, devs used fog to mask pop-up but in some cases they tried to take advantage of this by creating some atmosphere. If Silent Hill wasn't a horror game and if the devs didn't promote the low draw distance as an "effect to make the game feel claustrophobic" most people would bash the game because it's fog/popup is the worst there is. But because they did, the game is considered a classic masterpiece. I never heard of anyone who has a problem with this game's low draw distance fog, in fact most people would bash any Silent Hill game without fog. They even made it animate in Silent Hill 2.
Btw, i love both Silent Hill games. I didn't mind the fog. In fact, i don't think pop-up/fog was ever an issue for me except in some racing games during that gen.
Same people who made Turok.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
See? Some devs were worst than others when it comes to draw distance in their games. Acclaim/Iguana games suffered more from this issue compared to other big developers on the system.
Though haven't played any Silent Hill games yet (but want to these days), I bet the fog in the first one helps increase the game's difficulty by hiding enemies better and once again making it trickier to keep track of where you are, been and going. Though wouldn't consider hiding enemies better a design flaw (classic RE series does this too but with camera angles), just design choice like the knockbacks everyone loves to complain about in retro games.
I thought it was Prope who did Extreme G. Iguana were one of the few none NCL, Rare Teams that could work wonders on the N64. Forsaken and their Sport games look really good as does Turok 2. Buck bumble as some of the worst fog I seen in a N64 game. It was clear the N64 hardware wasn't that great, thank GOD SOJ turned it downQuote:
Originally Posted by Soulis
They didn't really work wonders though. Others like BOSS studios and Factor-5 were the ones that really pushed the system. Also RARE with the most balanced/optimized looking game on the system (Banjo-Kazooie) but later on they went overboard. The only Acclaim game i can agree that pushed the system properly (without frame rate issues like Turok 2) was the very good Shadowman port. That looked great and moved smoothly even in Hi-res mode. It was the only game i played in hi-res for this reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Yes, the N64 wasn't that great. Neither was the Saturn, so SOJ turned one system down and got an even crappier one. I don't see how it's something to be happy about. The PS1 had the best balance overall but that wasn't great either. None of the 5th gen consoles were "great". All were just barely capable of running 3D textured games at acceptable speeds. It wasn't until the Dreamcast where i felt i could enjoy 3D games at home without huge compromises (excluding the PCs at the time of course).
That's like saying the 8-bit era wasn't fit for sprites. There are plenty of examples of solid 3D and 2D games from that era that are still very playable today. It was also the generation when any sound a game designer wanted to use could now be done with over 90% accuracy.
I was playing Manx TT Superbike the other day. It runs blazing fast with acceptable pop up.
Is that an example of "little pop-up" to you?
Edit: I saw you changed it to "acceptable". I still think it looks like a good example of bad 5th gen era pop-up in racing games.
N64, SAT, PS1 aren't the equivalent of the NES, MS when it comes to sprites. 8-bit covers a wide range of systems. From powerful arcades with custom hardware to PONG home machines.
I would say they are more like the equivalent of a Colecovision.