IIRC, and I probably don't, Kojima and his team were down to the last few k of free mem come release.
However, you're overloking the fact the level geo has to be in memory anyway, so it wouldn't take up extra memory, just cpu time.(I.e for tri=0 to leveltris step 40 : doSplash(tri,Centre_of_Tri) : next)
That would explain the slowdown on xbox,as xbox/dx = vertex buffers, not that fast at all to read from, yet ps2 = software vertex processing, so to read the geo data = much faster.
Just a guess..
However, you're overloking the fact the level geo has to be in memory anyway, so it wouldn't take up extra memory, just cpu time.(I.e for tri=0 to leveltris step 40 : doSplash(tri,Centre_of_Tri) : next)
That would explain the slowdown on xbox,as xbox/dx = vertex buffers, not that fast at all to read from, yet ps2 = software vertex processing, so to read the geo data = much faster.
Just a guess..