r/GamingDetails • u/ScootSchloingo • Sep 14 '26
🔎 Accuracy In the main menu of Star Fox Adventures (2002), the gameplay clips on Fox's laptop are reflected in real time on his eyeballs
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u/radicool-girl Sep 15 '26
God, Rare would've done some incredible things with the Gamecube hardware
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u/CryptidHunter91 Sep 16 '26
Funny thing is, the majority of their post-Nintendo output before 2008 was originally planned for GameCube hardware, specifically Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Viva Piñata (Banjo-Kazooie team), plus Kameo: Elements of Power (DK64 team).
Rare was notoriously constantly behind schedule and missing deadlines, despite being among the first of Nintendo's partners to receive development kits for the GC: Donkey Kong Racing was literally just a pre-rendered trailer with no actual work having been done on the game itself, Ghoulies and Kameo were both shown to gaming journalists behind closed doors at Spaceworld but nowhere near ready to release at the time, Conker's OBD was cancelled/put on hold indefinitely before even being officially announced due to severe burnout after BFD's 5 year dev time, Viva Piñata was being planned out because the B-K Team was very sick of platformers (after making 5 of them in a row, hence why a third B-K game didn't happen until N&B), and Perfect Dark was in a weird limbo state due to the team leaving Rare.
During a time when Nintendo was not only needing strong early support for their new console, but also seeing Rare more like a liability because of poor financial returns on the last few N64 titles they developed plus a new interest in instead partnering with Japanese developers and studios, the constant deadline misses was the last straw and Nintendo would soon sever ties with Rare to the point of outright rejecting all of their "hey you should buy our company" offers, despite owning 49% of it.
StarFox Adventures was really the only thing Rare had far enough along to release for the GameCube before being acquired by Microsoft, and even then it was very evidently rushed to be done and out the door before that deadline.
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u/Jazzdude93 Sep 15 '26
Rare, Retro Studios and GameCube era was peak. Incredible, what these guys pulled out of the little cube!
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u/GlaDOS-311 Sep 15 '26
That's not real time reflections, its reflection mapping.
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u/ElegantEchoes Sep 15 '26
What's the difference?
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u/Rpbns4ever Sep 15 '26
So imagine how a reflection in the real world works, you move a mirror around, the reflection shifts and stuff.
Reflection mapping means that a certain area is hard coded to show an overlay of another thing. So in this instance if you were to move him around, his eye would always reflect that virtual monitor or whatever is being displayed on that region of the screen depending on how they coded it.
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u/GlaDOS-311 Sep 16 '26
Reflection mapping is a specific, pre-calculated technique used to approximate reflections, while real-time reflections refer to dynamic systems calculated frame-by-frame as the camera and environment move. Real time reflection is way more resource heavy meanwhile reflection mapping is a clever trick that in most cases pull it of.
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u/joyrexj9 Sep 15 '26
Nothing, no difference. Reflection mapping is one way to achieve realtime reflections. Also I doubt this is reflection mapping, not in the generalized sense, it's likely a hard coded trick in one specific sense. It's still insanely cool and I'm all for this
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u/EsrailCazar Sep 15 '26
I had always wondered what his expression was supposed to be here, it looks to me like he was zoned out thinking picking at his lip but the way his eyes are made it seem as if it was just awkward programming.
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u/TacosAndBourbon Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
Fun little detail!
In games, if you have reflections enabled and a smooth enough surface nearby, it will automatically reflect objects around it. Not sure this was planned, but if not - always a happy discovery!
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u/fluffynibs09 Sep 15 '26
Why is this getting downvoted
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u/DeMe413 Sep 17 '26
Bot comment that makes no sense
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u/fluffynibs09 Sep 17 '26
If I'm missing something about the comment I replied to let me know but I think my post history would easily disprove that I'm a bot
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u/TacosAndBourbon Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
Bot comment that makes no sense
Here's a simple example using Unreal 5. I've placed a checker-patterned cylinder beside a white cylinder. I've also exposed a material parameter called "roughness" that allows me to adjust the white material in real time. You'll notice that as I reduce the cylinder's roughness, the objects in the scene become reflected.
This example is using Screen Space Reflections (SSR), one of the most common reflection types, but there's a host of alternatives. Regardless of the engine or reflection type, smooth surfaces will automatically reflect objects.
Theis is over simplified, and I'd offer to explain more... but if the core concept "makes no sense" then I don't think it's worth getting more technical.
I'm not a bot, just a game developer :)
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u/littlehutch24 Sep 14 '26
Also having been reminded of this I think that some of the places that had wet floor also reflected the world accurately to what was in the proper reflection.
Also this is the best design for Fox