Zelda - A Link to the Past

[floppyD]

The rain/night effect in the beginning doesn't seem to be in the right layer, it renders behind sprites like trees.
Audio stutters a little bit when FPS drops.

Footage is from Rokuyon, but it looks close to the original hardware. (disregard sound/speed)

rokuyon.-.35.FPS.2024-09-17.15-30-05.mp4

Snes9X

Legend.of.Zelda.The.-.A.Link.to.the.Past.USA.-.Snes9x.1.62.3.2024-09-17.15-44-49.mp4

[Hydr8gon]

This is because blending isn't supported; the rain layer is pushed to the back so that it doesn't cover up the entire screen. The Z button can also swap priority in cases where you need to see the other blend layer.

[awesomez]

I wonder how they did blending back then. Out of curiosity, is the N64 unable to do this kind of thing natively? Was it the hardware front that did this or a software layer thing? - I've seen the blended sprite layers from Zelda and saw they were solid colors.

Thanks to your efforts on this emulator, I realize now how common this effect actually was back then. This was pretty fancy for the time! - I really wish I had appreciated it more back then!

[Hydr8gon]

The SNES has hardware blending, but it doesn't work the way it does on N64. The options are to either do it in software (which would be too slow) or figure out some hardware approximation (inaccurate and still possibly slow).

[awesomez]

I think the blending on N64 hardware acceleration would be the way to go.

Even if inaccurate and potentially slow, I think it would be worthwhile.

The effects aren't used as a part of any popular games' gameplay loop that I can recall. Therefore any slowdown would be a non-issue because it wouldn't be game-breaking, but not having them in any form - especially in 'cinematic' cases (e.g. Zelda - A Link to the Past or Super Metroid) is a far worse experience (in my opinion) than them being simply inaccurate and/or slow.

The fact that we can play SNES games on N64 hardware at all is a godsend -- I just think that if you nail down a couple of basics like the ones I've poked at lately (SFX, control-configuration, and blending), your hard work on this emulator would make it more than usable for playing first-party nintendo games at the very minimum (and probably a lot of other games too)!

That said - I (and I know others) really appreciate your hard work on this emulator. I'm definitely looking forward to playing a few mainline games (and 2P mods!) with my 12-year old on real nintendo hardware using the everdrive! :D