Why Beam Lighting Was Removed In Metroid Prime Remastered
Why Beam Lighting Was Removed In Metroid Prime Remastered
by KAYPENZ
6 Comments
artmudala
TLDW: The GameCube hardware allowed for dynamic lighting at low cost but the Switch’s largely mobile hardware probably had to sacrifice dynamic lighting to allow for improved environmental lighting effects to maintain a frame rate of 60.
Jonesdeclectice
Fascinating!
suedehelpme
Anyone care to explain what’s going inside morph ball pipes? There are some you can shoot your beam into, and the dynamic lighting 100% happens in there. Is the effect somehow preserved in these low-poly environments or something? I’m also curious how they managed to preserve the dynamic lighting on those glowing insect and enemies, but couldn’t do so with the beam.
BCProgramming
Jack Mathews here explains how the lighting worked on Gamecube. On that, he is an “expert”- he was there and part of the team that developed it!.
However, it is worth noting that he left Retro Studios after Prime 3: Corruption, so what he is saying about the remaster and why lighting was removed is speculation; it is not “word of god” in this case on that matter for that reason.
“on modern hardware you basically have to render lights to a separate buffer, and you render them as big bubbles of light, so you have to do full-screen passes for every light active in the game, so when you have a situation where you might be creating 4 lights all over the place, you either need to account for that or not have lights and *I think they opted for the latter* …”
Italicized the speculation.
I seem to remember the fireflies in that room in the Chozo Ruins done with dynamic lights? Don’t remember if that caused framerate issues in that room. If it did it rather supports his speculation.
midwaterboi
Speaking of the graphics and the remaster, I wonder how much they can realistically improve MP3 on the switch. If they throw in 1080p and HD textures I’m curious if the switch could handle that alone at 60FPS.
DeusExMarina
It actually wasn’t removed. The light radius was just drastically reduced, presumably for performance reasons. You can test it by firing beams close to a wall, I suggest the corridor at the entrance to Magmoor Caverns, as it gives you a long straight wall to shoot the beams alongside of.
6 Comments
TLDW: The GameCube hardware allowed for dynamic lighting at low cost but the Switch’s largely mobile hardware probably had to sacrifice dynamic lighting to allow for improved environmental lighting effects to maintain a frame rate of 60.
Fascinating!
Anyone care to explain what’s going inside morph ball pipes? There are some you can shoot your beam into, and the dynamic lighting 100% happens in there. Is the effect somehow preserved in these low-poly environments or something? I’m also curious how they managed to preserve the dynamic lighting on those glowing insect and enemies, but couldn’t do so with the beam.
Jack Mathews here explains how the lighting worked on Gamecube. On that, he is an “expert”- he was there and part of the team that developed it!.
However, it is worth noting that he left Retro Studios after Prime 3: Corruption, so what he is saying about the remaster and why lighting was removed is speculation; it is not “word of god” in this case on that matter for that reason.
“on modern hardware you basically have to render lights to a separate buffer, and you render them as big bubbles of light, so you have to do full-screen passes for every light active in the game, so when you have a situation where you might be creating 4 lights all over the place, you either need to account for that or not have lights and *I think they opted for the latter* …”
Italicized the speculation.
I seem to remember the fireflies in that room in the Chozo Ruins done with dynamic lights? Don’t remember if that caused framerate issues in that room. If it did it rather supports his speculation.
Speaking of the graphics and the remaster, I wonder how much they can realistically improve MP3 on the switch. If they throw in 1080p and HD textures I’m curious if the switch could handle that alone at 60FPS.
It actually wasn’t removed. The light radius was just drastically reduced, presumably for performance reasons. You can test it by firing beams close to a wall, I suggest the corridor at the entrance to Magmoor Caverns, as it gives you a long straight wall to shoot the beams alongside of.