Facility - Footsteps Mod (GoldenEye 007 N64)

Channel:

Immorpher

Subscribers:

877

Published on February 2, 2023 5:00:03 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-RCQDPLPlc

Game:

GoldenEye 007 (1997)

Duration: 14:37

80 views

4

Footsteps Mod: http://n64vault.com/ge-misc:footsteps-v18
Rerelease Comparison: https://youtu.be/xwpjgkHjLG4
1964 GEPD: https://github.com/Graslu/1964GEPD/releases
Doom 64 Discord: https://discord.gg/Ktxz8nz

So having played the Xbox rerelease of GoldenEye 007, it made me want to go back to the original on N64 hardware. But I can't do anything normally, so I am playing the Footsteps mod (linked above)! This adds too many features that I can't begin to list.

One thing I am curious about was comparing the graphical glitches of the Xbox rerelease to the original. The developers of this release have said the bugs were present in the original GoldenEye 007. For the most part I think they are correct in saying that, as I have seen plenty of flickering with decals. But I haven't noticed any seams between polygons. Now these seams come about because the rerelease is rendered in high-definition, so to me its a bug introduced by them going to high definition. For example, I have made a mod for Doom 64 where I add vertical looking, but it introduces a bug where you can see black voids above and below you (for un-rendered sectors). I could say these bugs were in the original too, but I introduced that bug by adding that feature, so I haven't released that mod. Unfortunately the rerelease is running on an emulator, so not much was done to natively port it to the Xbox and properly add features.

I should mention that the Footsteps mod of GoldenEye 64 is a bit sharper than it likely originally was on the N64. It has an option to disable the so-called "dither filter", not to be confused with dithering, in the options where its labeled as antialiasing. What the dither filter does is it takes 15 bit color graphics and smooths it out at 24 bit, which can give the effect of antialiasing. This is the characteristic "vaseline" look of many games, and this filter seems proprietary to the N64 itself. Without it you get to see the bare, this time actually dithered, output of GoldenEye 64. Interestingly Quake 64's output has no dithering, just 15 bit color bands, but then it uses the "dither filter" to partially smooth out some of the bands; its a very interesting effect there. Then with Doom 64 it natively outputs at 24 bit color, so no dithering or "dithering filter" or any sort was used. So even with texture filtering, and due to its consistent texture resolutions, Doom 64 looks sharper than other N64 games.

Now one thing they did get wrong on the rerelease is some of the music reproduction. Check out the rerelease comparison linked above, you can hear the high frequency cymbals wavering and becoming noisy. It is not like that at all on the N64, where the cymbals come out smooth. N64 emulation is notoriously difficult, and unfortunately they had to go this route. Did Rare truly lose the source code after getting bought out by Microsoft? Anyway, if you want to play GoldenEye 007, I recommend 1964 GEPD linked above which is capable of 60 fps, mouse and keyboard input, and has some nice fonts!

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