Comment by dietrichepp

2 months ago

I’m not sure the N64 would be easier. The graphics hardware in the N64 is complicated.

In some ways the console is really modern (perspective-correct texture interpolation, z-buffering, subpixel positioning). On paper, it seems a lot like a more modern system. But the hardware complexity is a beast. and the design is permeated with bottlenecks. Half of the graphics pipeline is taken up by the RSP, which is a fully programmable vector processor--sounds cool, but in practice it is unapproachable. 4 KiB of texture memory (and if you use a palette, half of it is the palette). RAM bandwidth is barely fast enough to handle 3D scenes.

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/

The folks working on LibDragon have done a lot of work to make homebrew a better experience, but you’ll note that support for 3D graphics is still only in a preview branch.