HLE implementation of microcodes for "Indiana Jones" and "Battle for Naboo" completed.

Hello!

The long-awaited implementation of Factor5 microcodes for "Indiana Jones & the Infernal Machine" and "Star Wars Episode I - Battle for Naboo" completed. It was a long road. We started that work last December and finished it only now. It was incredibly hard task. Until December the hardest task we completed was our previous work, microcode for Star Wars - Rogue Squadron. We worked several months on Rogue Squadron. It is very large and very complex microcode. Resulted source code has circa 1300 lines, much larger than implementation of any other microcode. Microcodes for Indiana and Naboo are almost as large as the one for Rogue Squadron, and much more harder to decipher. Factor5 programmers really pushed RSP chip to its limits. We spent six months on decoding and implementation. The microcode has very tangled code flow. Debugging was very long and painful process. Many times I wished to stop that work and never return to it. It was huge relief when we finally squashed the last bug and completed reverse engineering stage. The result is circa 2300 (sic!) lines of source code after all cleanups. Hardest part of work - microcode deciphering - done entirely by olivieryuyu. He wrote tons of excel sheets with explanations how things work. I wrote the code.

I recommend to read interviews with Factor5 developers on IGN for technical details: Bringing Indy to N64 and Battling the Naboo. Cite: "Our new microcode allows almost unlimited real-time lights and a much higher polygon count than the original". It is true. Real time lighting system is amazing. Particles system, which can output thousands particles per frame is very impressive. Microcode for Indiana is true masterpiece. Microcode for Naboo is an extension of the one for Indiana. It extends original microcode with command for explosions (very similar to the one for Rogue Squadron) and with commands for terrain polygons. Landscape generation code has almost nothing in common with landscape code in Rogue Squadron. The result is very impressive. Open air levels have very large draw distance with no need to hide horizon in fog.

I recorded few videos during that long work. You may watch them to see how the project progressed:

Links to test builds can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/issues/1259

To help the project:

• Patreon: www.patreon.com/Gliden64
• PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/SergeyLipskiy
• Yandex money: banner atop.