🧵 origin thread
In 2018 I started a thread on Twitter (later renamed X 🙄) where I shared some game development tricks devs used to get around bugs, software, hardware and/or time constraints. Later I kept adding more posts to that thread, and there’s some cool information there. But because I now went through the process of replicating that thread on both Mastodon and Bluesky; it got me thinking, I should probably put this on my own blog, a single post, which is easier to read, also in case those websites are ever gone. If I find more I’ll add them later. This page may take a bit to load due to images, gifs videos etc.
👾 Skyrim shelves
Skyrim small tables are actually shelves buried. If you can’t see it …
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👾 Jak and Daxter loading
In Jak and Daxter if by any chance the Area/assets ahead aren’t fully loaded the game will make you trip to give it more time to load in background.
👾 Super Mario 64 infinite stairs
In Super Mario 64 this is how Nintendo got the infinite stairs effect working, teleport. Mario keeps getting teleported to a prior point on the stairs which makes it impossible to progress in a normal way. But this is also the reason why Speedrunners can glitch the effect and skip it using the backwards jump trick.
👾 Wing Commander memory exception
There was a memory exception in Wing Commander on exit, because of the deadline they left it but change the error message to “Thank you for playing Wing Commander!”
👾 Undertale NPC pathfinding
This one is from Undertale, to prevent NPCs to walk on pits, developer added Magic glass so that way “it works”.
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👾 Fallout 3 trains are hats
In Fallout 3 all the trains are actually a character wearing a train model as a hat. Source.
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👾 Donkey Kong 64 memory crash (myth)
This one was later proved as a myth by developers on my thread, but I’m leaving it here since you can still find it in tons of places, so this way here it has a correction that it was in fact a myth.
Internet theories says that Donkey Kong 64 had a memory crash/limit bug on standard N64. Unable to identify the cause of the crash they decided to ship the game with the memory expansion bundled with game.
👾 Super Mario Bros. reuse of grass/clouds
In Super Mario Bros. because of memory limitations clouds and bushes are the same sprite but using a different color palette.
👾 Kirby Dream Land memory saving
In Kirby Dream Land for Gameboy, to save memory some enemies have the same “back” part of the sprite and only change the face.
👾 Zelda A Link Between Worlds fake perspective
This is one of my fav, in Zelda: A Link Between Worlds because a true top down view in 3D had some issues, they purposely tilt the objects so the perspective looks good to the player.
👾 Duke Nukem mirrors
Duke Nukem 3D mirrors reflection were achieved by duplicating the room on the other side. If you deactivate clipping you can go to the other side. True reflections are computational intensive even today.
👾 NBA Jam: T.E. cartridge day one “patch”
In NBA Jam: T.E. for Genesis/Mega Drive devs only found out after making the 250k cartridges there was a save bug. Playing game in a certain order fixed it so it got a day one patch in the manual saying how to initialize memory.
👾 Mario Galaxy drown animation
In Super Mario Galaxy when Mario drowns in a swap his hand reaches out, because of the size of the head they have to shrink it so only the hand is visible to the player.
👾 World of Warcraft rest bonus
World of Warcraft rest bonus was made to encourage breaks, half XP gained after a few hours. Players hated, so they made everything take 2x as much XP to achieve but you start at 200% XP and gradually back to 100%. Same thing & players are happy. source
👾 Resident Evil 4 radio billboards
This one is not as unknown or hard to imagine but in Resident Evil 4 during the radio chat cutscenes it’s actually a 2D panel with the 3D models behind. Many other games do this too.
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👾 Duck Hunt Zapper
In Duck Hunt the NES Zapper worked by blacking out screen & drawing white blocks around targets when you fire, for a couple frames. The diode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer if it’s pointed at a lit target.
👾 Metal Gear Solid PS1 reflections
In Metal Gear Solid 1, another reflection trick. Water puddle in 1st mission map is just a transparent texture with the geometry of ceiling and walls duplicated below the ground. That’s why you can’t see Snake reflection.
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👾 Prince of Persia animations
In Prince of Persia (1989) animations looked fluid & realistic because Jordan Mechner used Rotoscope, he filmed his brother doing the stunts, took pictures with camera, had them developed at Fotomat and then traced them, frame by frame.
👾 Tomb Raider Sega Saturn
Sega Saturn used Quads instead of triangles (the industry norm) for rendering, which is good for 2D but not as practical for 3D, devs had to work around that, so games like Tomb Raider had to be built to support quads on Saturn and triangles on PlayStation.
👾 Pong
Original Pong had 0 lines of code.
👾 Paper Mario shadows
Paper Mario uses a transparent mesh to simulate door shadows.
👾 Dead Space UI
Dead Space UI is all made with particles so it can sort in render, glow and be more immersive. source
👾 Katamari Damacy spawns
Katamari Damacy only has support for closed, circular paths, so how they make boulders travel beneath the ground, back to the original place, so that it seems like they are spawning and despawning!
👾 Elder’s Scroll Morrowind Xbox memory management
This is easily one of the best, on OG Xbox, Elder Scrolls III would occasionally reboot the Xbox if they ran out of memory. The user would just see a longer then usual loading screen.
👾 Grand Theft Auto tanks
In GTA the tanks were made with pedestrians that were on top of a car to use the existing shooting mechanics and also the driving code.
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👾 Kirby and the Forgotten Land game feel
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a 3D game, but will fake the hit collisions for better game feel depending where the camera is, in certain angles as long as in camera it “looks” like it hits it will consider it a collision even if it’s not.
👾 Skyrim NPCs inventory system
Skyrim handles each NPCs inventory by having it on a unique chest hidden under the map. Most are impossible to get unless clipping is used, but sometimes you can find them.
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👾 Doom 3 volumetric glow
Doom 3 fakes volumetric glow by folding vertexes with camera movement. source
👾 Lord of the Rings engine reuse
Lord of the Rings game was made by reusing Tiger Woods golf game because they needed large areas with a goal/castle at the end, a golf game is just that. I think it’s quite funny how far apart they are but it works.
👾 Metroid Prime noise texture
In order to save memory, Metroid Prime fullscreen static texture effect is generated using random live RAM data, which is just the game itself running, GameCube only had 24MB. source
👾 Titan Quest action delays
On Titan Quest, because there was no way to script timed delays actions, developers created ambient creatures like Squirrels and used their animations as a way to count time to trigger the events.
👾 Journey shadows
Journey doesn’t have a real-time shadow system so they are hand painted and baked later. The results are impressive but the amount of work involved wow. source
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👾 Silent Hill 2 mirror
Another duplicate room mirror trick, this time Silent Hill 2, in the beginning of the game, the mirror reflection is just the entire bathroom duplicated.
(to be continued …. maybe)