View Full Version : This proves that when programmed properly the Sega Saturn...
SegaR&D
23-Dec-2004, 00:22
...was far more powerfull than the PlayStation. Far far more powerful.
http://www.sega-saturn.com/videos/Shenmue_Saturn.mpeg
Well... I don't exactly get that from this video.
What did you see here that couldn't be done on PSX ? Polygons, texturing, animation... I think in all these respects, the old gray box could have one-upped the footage shown in this video.
Evil_Cloud
23-Dec-2004, 00:46
...was far more powerfull than the PlayStation. Far far more powerful.
http://www.sega-saturn.com/videos/Shenmue_Saturn.mpeg
Welcome to 1998 - 2001!
Just a reminder, this footage did not make use of the RAM expansion.
Eh, well sega certainly put a lot of work into shenmue, but who's to say if they put that work in a psx version it wouldn't look just as good or better.
And even still I'm not really seeing anything that destroys the psx...maybe the faces, but just about everything else looks well inferior to what was seen in psx games.
Red1234
23-Dec-2004, 03:39
Well...does it matter now...even Shenmue with so called Playstation-destroying graphics could not have saved Saturn.
see colon
23-Dec-2004, 05:41
if a tree falls in the forrest and noone is around to hear it, did it really fall?
if a tree falls in the forrest and noone is around to hear it, did it really fall?
Yes and No! :lol:
see colon
23-Dec-2004, 05:59
sriously, though. i'm a huge sega fan, and have a pretty immpressive number of saturn games both domestic and import. some games have a much higher level of graphics quality than psx games, but really... does it really matter? if i bothered to look hard enough i could dig up some 3do or jaguar games that look better than similar games on either the psx or saturn, but in reality it doesn't matter. not only is it ancient history, it's artistic vision and direction that makes games stand out, not technical merits. any game on the saturn was technicly impressive if you look at the amount of work developers needed to put into a project to get comparable results to what they were achieving on psx.
otoh, take a cool at tobal #2 on psx. let me first state that i think tobal is rubbish for a game, but t#2's graphics are astounding. better looking than anything on the saturn in a technical way. it just goes to show, if you program properly the psx was more powerfull than the ss. see how easy and fun this is?
Megadrive1988
23-Dec-2004, 07:09
the Sega Saturn has many technical advantages over PS1, yes. but I would disagree with someone saying that Saturn was far, far more powerful than PS1. the PS1 has quite a few advantages over Saturn and vice versa.
a console of the same generation as PS1 that i would concider to be far, far more powerful, would be the 3DO M2, not Saturn.
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 10:07
M2 wasn't really the same generation, and anyway it was never released so...
Errrmmm Why is there another thread about Shenmue on Saturn, after it has been debated to death when the last generation was still interesting?
Evil_Cloud
23-Dec-2004, 10:23
M2 wasn't really the same generation, and anyway it was never released so...
Errrmmm Why is there another thread about Shenmue on Saturn, after it has been debated to death when the last generation was still interesting?
And when this footage was still 'new'. ;)
Crazyace
23-Dec-2004, 11:54
I was always more impressed with Virtua Cop 2 as a showcase for the Saturm. It's a complete game running at a good frame rate - rather than a fixed animation playback running between 5fps and 20fps
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 11:59
Saturn was meant to be THE 2D system. And it was excellent at that. Can we just leave it to rest now? It's 2 generations of dead consoles away afterall!
Its sega ..... How i miss thier quality games. Hopefully one day they will release a new system and bring balance back to the land .
2 systems of crappy games and 2 systems of quality games .
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 12:36
2 systems of crappy games and 2 systems of quality games .
Which ones do you mean?
2 systems of crappy games and 2 systems of quality games .
Which ones do you mean? Please u know me well enough to know which two i think would have quality games 8)
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 12:42
2 systems of crappy games and 2 systems of quality games .
Which ones do you mean? Please u know me well enough to know which two i think would have quality games 8)
... No i mean, there were 2 systems with crappy games and 2 with good ones? or there will be?
Oh u mean there would be Revolution and the new Sega system with good games and, well, we know the rest?
Good job danniel son , now wax on and wax off !
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 12:58
Good job danniel son , now wax on and wax off !
But.. How is that gonna help me in learning new techniques?!
...was far more powerfull than the PlayStation. Far far more powerful.
http://www.sega-saturn.com/videos/Shenmue_Saturn.mpeg
Of course, and on a related note PS2 is OBVIOUSLY far far more powerful than Xbox.
/sarcasm
Old stupid debates never die.
PS: Nice Christmas touch :D
see colon
23-Dec-2004, 18:14
the saturn has NO floating point units
psx has floating point units
the saturn's VDP1 has no hardware support for translucency
psx has hardware translucency
the saturn rendered all 3D using 4 sided polygons dispite the industry using 3 sided polygons
psx uses industry standard 3 sided polygons
the saturn's VDP1 only supporteded 16bit color
psx supports 32bit color
the only REAL hardware advantage (out of the box) the saturn had over the psx was in sound (technicly), amount of memory, faster INT. performance, larger and more colorful sprites, and a more powerful I/O proccessor. i'm a sega fanboy but i can't sugercoat the past.
the saturn has NO floating point units
psx has floating point units
the psx had no floating point units
Panajev2001a
23-Dec-2004, 18:25
the saturn has NO floating point units
psx has floating point units
the psx had no floating point units
Oh come on, the GTE is so fast we should grant it FP status honoris causa ;).
Arnie Pie
23-Dec-2004, 18:29
psx has floating point units
Nope.. Playstation 1 had no FPU, And the GTE was fixed point only.
the saturn's VDP1 has no hardware support for translucency
Saturn did have hardware support for translucency, but the source-based rasterising system it had meant that you'd often get multiple writes of your blended pixels. So it was next to useless. When no scaling of source->destination was involved, it worked perfectly well.
psx uses industry standard 3 sided polygons
Well.. it did have quad primitive types too.. Infact, seeing as PS1 didn't have strip support (or index support), using quads saved a reasonable amount of memory..
PS1 was nowhere near as good as Saturn when it came to 2D stuff, but considering Saturn went through most of its initial design as a follow up to the Genesis (with no 3D capabilities), this isn't too surprising.. :)
Cheers,
Arnie
see colon
23-Dec-2004, 18:53
Nope.. Playstation 1 had no FPU, And the GTE was fixed point only.
well shit, i was under the understanding that while the r3000 had no fpu the gte did
Saturn did have hardware support for translucency, but the source-based rasterising system it had meant that you'd often get multiple writes of your blended pixels. So it was next to useless. When no scaling of source->destination was involved, it worked perfectly well.
well... i guess i should rephrase that then. VDP1 has no useable hardware translucency support. VDP2, OTOH, had a pretty rediculous feature set for it's time.
the Sega Saturn has many technical advantages over PS1, yes. but I would disagree with someone saying that Saturn was far, far more powerful than PS1. the PS1 has quite a few advantages over Saturn and vice versa.
a console of the same generation as PS1 that i would concider to be far, far more powerful, would be the 3DO M2, not Saturn.
What were the advantages in the saturn's 3d graphics over psx?
I heard at one point that the saturn could do more polygons, however I heard that was actually counting one of the saturn's rectangles as 2 psx triangles, plus the saturn's polygons were harder to work with.
Saturn was meant to be THE 2D system. And it was excellent at that. Can we just leave it to rest now? It's 2 generations of dead consoles away afterall!
If you gave the n64 and psx equal ram setups to the saturn how would they compare in 2d?
Refreshment
23-Dec-2004, 20:13
Really enjoyed the video.
I cant believe the Saturn was doing that, i just cant.
So acording to Suzuki Shenmue on DC was using a port of the Saturn engine, if this is the case how much better the DC version could end up looking?
No, bith the N64 and Playstation would still do worse at 2d if they had the same amount of memory as the Saturn.
Dont remember seeing a 2D game on the N64.
How did the machine compare to the Saturn in 2d?
Im sure hardware support for anti aliasing and filters etc would make even 2D look better on the 64.
Dont remember seeing a 2D game on the N64.
How did the machine compare to the Saturn in 2d?
Im sure hardware support for anti aliasing and filters etc would make even 2D look better on the 64.
Yoshi's Story, Mischief Makers(some nice scaling effects in that), and some Goemon game. There were many 2d games in Japan. Bangai-O, Legend of the River King, and more. There was a 2d scrolling shooter in America, but I believe it sucked.
mkillio
23-Dec-2004, 22:37
Sorry to go a little off topic but I didn't think that it was worthy of its own thread.
Which was more technically powerful Genesis or SNES and how? I have friends that say Genesis and I totally disagree but I have no facts to back my self up.
SegaR&D
23-Dec-2004, 23:15
Sorry to go a little off topic but I didn't think that it was worthy of its own thread.
Which was more technically powerful Genesis or SNES and how? I have friends that say Genesis and I totally disagree but I have no facts to back my self up.
Genesis was far, far more powerfull than the snes, the only thing snes did better was have more colours available to it and Mode 7, aside from these two things, it was raped by the Genny.
I think some insiders have suggested that the Genny was some 3 times faster and more powerfull than the snes.
london-boy
23-Dec-2004, 23:21
Genesis was far, far more powerfull than the snes, the only thing snes did better was have more colours available to it and Mode 7, aside from these two things, it was raped by the Genny.
I think some insiders have suggested that the Genny was some 3 times faster and more powerfull than the snes.
Deadmeat, if the Genesis was far far more powerful than the SNES like the Saturn was far far more powerful than the PS1, then we know the story.
3 times faster? hardly. it had way less features, inferior sound, and only supported a limited color pallet. sure it's main processor was faster than the snes, but it couldn't hold a candle graphically to the snes hardware.
Genesis was far, far more powerfull than the snes, the only thing snes did better was have more colours available to it and Mode 7, aside from these two things, it was raped by the Genny.
I think some insiders have suggested that the Genny was some 3 times faster and more powerfull than the snes.
Err NO.
The Megadrive has a more powerful processors (an 8 MHz 68000 + a Z80 sound chip), but the SNES had massively more powerful graphics processor (more colour on screen, more sprites, more playfields and more effects (translunecy and playfield scaling/rotation (Mode 7)).
So its was basically a draw... Some games worked well on Megadrive others on SNES,
Tagrineth
24-Dec-2004, 04:15
What were the advantages in the saturn's 3d graphics over psx?
I heard at one point that the saturn could do more polygons, however I heard that was actually counting one of the saturn's rectangles as 2 psx triangles, plus the saturn's polygons were harder to work with.
You can "twist" quadratic primitives to create real curved surfaces. Technically this is caused by a flaw in Saturn's edge detection, but hey, the flaw ends up looking pretty damn good. For an example, look at the terrain in Shining Force III, especially the corners of mountains.
Not necessarily an advantage, but it can look very cool and give a more 'natural' look to some kinds of surfaces.
If you gave the n64 and psx equal ram setups to the saturn how would they compare in 2d?
Saturn doesn't even have a full usable MB more than PS1 does, and they both have exactly the same WRAM - 2MB. IIRC Saturn has 4.5MB whereas PS1 has 3.5MB; it's been a while, so I can't remember the exact counts offhand anymore, but those numbers should be right (Sat - 2MB WRAM, 512KB each for the VDP's, 512KB for the SH-1, and 1MB for sound - PS1 - 2MB WRAM, 512KB graphics, 1MB sound).
N64 has stock 4MB unified, and can be expanded to 8MB. Saturn can be expanded to 8.5MB with a 4MB RAM card.
IIRC, while N64 does have a functional 2D ucode available, not one single game actually used it, favouring 'faked' 2D using textures on screen-aligned polygons.
Fafalada
24-Dec-2004, 04:49
PS1 was nowhere near as good as Saturn when it came to 2D stuff, but considering Saturn went through most of its initial design as a follow up to the Genesis (with no 3D capabilities), this isn't too surprising..
The same argument is brought up all the time - and I always wonder what 3d capabilities are people talking about?
PS1 rasterizer is just a simple 2d accelerator, quite similar to Saturns "sprite renderer" (although with slightly different interpolation approach).
IIRC it was faster then Saturns renderer (higher fillrate and polygon setup), but it wasn't 3d in any real sense.
The only really "3d" advantage PS1 has, is the fast vector math capabilities that GTE provided.
And on that note I dunno why PS1 is dubbed to be weak in 2d either, absurdly enough, sometimes even compared to older machines.
I don't know what fillrate equivalent both VDPS combined amounted to, but I doubt it was that big of a difference either, even if they were faster then using PS1 GPU strictly for 2d fill.
Tagrineth
24-Dec-2004, 05:13
And on that note I dunno why PS1 is dubbed to be weak in 2d either, absurdly enough, sometimes even compared to older machines.
I don't know what fillrate equivalent both VDPS combined amounted to, but I doubt it was that big of a difference either, even if they were faster then using PS1 GPU strictly for 2d fill.
Well if you use fullscreen flat background planes, VDP2 effectively does 4-5 full screen layers, even transparent, at 60FPS... and if you use "Mode 7" effects you can still do 1 3D and 2 2D layers, or even 2 3D (bandwidth, more than computation, prevents 5 full planes from being used in most cases, especially when 3D planes are concerned).
VDP1 has enough sprite-generation power to fake full, damn good looking 3D worlds on its own (Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon II and Saga, QUAKE/Duke3D/PowerSlave(Exhumed in Europe), and of course the unreleased Shenmue appears to be doing next to nothing on VDP2 as usual). Lobotomy's three FPS games for Saturn really show off how much VDP1 can render - look at Quake, it's more or less an exact conversion of the PC game.
Basically, the whole reason Saturn is so much "better" for 2D is that it has two pools of memory for frame buffer (more bandwidth), can fill its frame buffers to the maximum while only sacrificing colour depth, which isn't that severe in 2D if you use pallettes well (results in very high-res output), and the load balancing allows it to manage much more "stuff" in real-time compared to PS1.
PS1 can do niftier tricks, though - for example, look at Castlevania:SOTN (Nocturne in the Moonlight in Japan)... while KCEN did indeed do a horrific job of porting it (tons of extra load times despite Saturn having more RAM and a far and away better disc loading mechanism), there are scenes were NitM does legitimately over-tax the Saturn with its mixed-mode 2D and 3D, forcing the VDP1 to work "too hard" within the scope of a 2D game.
Basically, in my opinion, "which is the more powerful system" is a toss-up... both can generate, at their maximums, about equal graphics quality, with each having advantages in different areas. I feel that Saturn is a "superior" architecture because of the extreme versatility inherent in its design, however that of course hinders it in the real world due to the difficulty in coding. PS1 can push out the same graphics with half the effort... which is why PS1 obtained much more mind-share from developers, which resulted in Saturn's premature demise. :(
--
By the way, I hear that an updated SDK was released by Sega within a month of Saturn getting the axe, officially - which was capable of more than doubling Saturn's max poly count - but it was never used by any games because devs weren't interested anymore, and Sega's plans to nix the hardware were already final... (IIRC, Virtua Fighter 3 was being developed using the techniques included in the SDK) Not sure on this info, of course. Sonic?
see colon
24-Dec-2004, 06:40
No, bith the N64 and Playstation would still do worse at 2d if they had the same amount of memory as the Saturn.
And on that note I dunno why PS1 is dubbed to be weak in 2d either, absurdly enough, sometimes even compared to older machines.
I don't know what fillrate equivalent both VDPS combined amounted to, but I doubt it was that big of a difference either, even if they were faster then using PS1 GPU strictly for 2d fill.
the saturn can display sprites with up to 64 colors while the psx can handle a mere 16 colors/sprite (just like the snes). this, combined with the saturns dual VDP solution (one for backgrounds and one for sprites) and extra overal memory gave the saturn a nice advantage in 2d.
PS1 can do niftier tricks, though - for example, look at Castlevania:SOTN (Nocturne in the Moonlight in Japan)... while KCEN did indeed do a horrific job of porting it (tons of extra load times despite Saturn having more RAM and a far and away better disc loading mechanism), there are scenes were NitM does legitimately over-tax the Saturn with its mixed-mode 2D and 3D, forcing the VDP1 to work "too hard" within the scope of a 2D game.
arg, don't get me started on the shoddy quality of this port, though. seriously, there are so many effects missing from the saturn version, even some simple 2d effects, that it almost feels like playing the atari vcs version of mario brothers (the game is a generation higher than the system). to me, and it's been a while since i've fired up either the psx or saturn version, it looked like they faked several effects using screen facing poly's and never re-worked them into sprites when the ported it to the saturn.
I heard at one point that the saturn could do more polygons, however I heard that was actually counting one of the saturn's rectangles as 2 psx triangles, plus the saturn's polygons were harder to work with.
i think the saturns maximum poly count (listed at 500,000) was largely inflated by sega to combat marketing form sony. seriously, i think they added the polygon throughput they each sh-2 could transform and added them together to come up with the number. the reason the number was unatainable, besides the normal limitations of SMP, was that the saturns 2 sh-2's shared a single memory bus.
This proves that when programmed properly the Sega Saturn... even if it was ever released. the effort can easily be trashed by bastard reviewers. i can still remember how gamespot thrash soukaigi ps(by yuke for square) in their review back then. it was a great game with a very good soundtrack and nice graphics/art. how they came out with poor tex and control etc blah.. beats me. and if i'm not wrong, the game is even badly previewed during tokyo game show. :cry: just some of my thoughts..
sytaylor
24-Dec-2004, 09:20
RIP saturn, my favourite gaming system ever.
Mulciber
24-Dec-2004, 09:23
saturn certainly had some of the best advertising.
the saturn can display sprites with up to 64 colors while the psx can handle a mere 16 colors/sprite (just like the snes). this, combined with the saturns dual VDP solution (one for backgrounds and one for sprites) and extra overal memory gave the saturn a nice advantage in 2d.
The PSX could use any of its texture formats for its sprite mode. We definately supported 256 colour CLUTs and I think true colour (sure we had a true colour static background). PSX had 66 MPixel fill rate in sprite mode. Thats was enough for a fair few background layers.
The biggest limitation was the 512K VRAM, you could upload from main RAM in the OT but it was tricky and fairly slow. Still it was handy for backgrounds.
cthellis42
24-Dec-2004, 11:25
I like hearing info on all the old systems, so feel free to keep it up. ^_^ Just "consider the source" on the more trollish comments and keep the structured informational flow the way it should be. :)
london-boy
24-Dec-2004, 15:12
saturn certainly had some of the best advertising.
The Saturn had an advertising campaign?
marconelly!
24-Dec-2004, 15:33
Lobotomy's three FPS games for Saturn really show off how much VDP1 can render - look at Quake, it's more or less an exact conversion of the PC game.
Coincidentally, the main programmer from Lobotomy claims that their games ran much faster on PS1 then they did on Saturn :P
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14992
Ezra: The most striking thing about the PSX port was how much faster the graphics hardware was than the Saturn. The initial scene after you just start the game is pretty complex. I think it ran 20 fps on the Saturn version. On the PSX it ran 30,but the actual rendering part could have been going 60 if the CPU calculations weren't holding it up. I don't know if it would have ever been possible to get it to really run 60, but at least there was the potential.
Other than that, it would have looked identical to the Saturn version. Except for some reason the PSX video output has better color than the Saturn's.
So I know something about the PSX. And really, if you couldn't tell from the games, the PSX is way better than the Saturn. It's way simpler and way faster. There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
Sorry to go a little off topic but I didn't think that it was worthy of its own thread.
Which was more technically powerful Genesis or SNES and how? I have friends that say Genesis and I totally disagree but I have no facts to back my self up.
I say SNES. Multiplatform games always looked best on SNES, SNES could actually compete graphically with the Sega CD and Sega 32x, and the best SNES games look better than the best Genesis games. Vectorman is no match for Donkey Kong Country, and I think the SNES 3d games looked better too.
I've heard people say the Genesis has a more powerful cpu, but the only evidence I've ever seen for this is mhz. Assuming that's true then you could say the SNES would be like a 486 with a voodoo compared to a pentium with software rendering.
BTW, did Genesis even have stereo sound? I don't recall any of my genesis having an option for it in the menu, while many of my snes games did. Not to mention I don't ever recall anything on the genesis sounding as good as what squaresoft did on the snes, and the mario games sounded better than the sonic games by far.
N64 has stock 4MB unified, and can be expanded to 8MB. Saturn can be expanded to 8.5MB with a 4MB RAM card.
Did the saturn have more texture ram?
IIRC, while N64 does have a functional 2D ucode available, not one single game actually used it, favouring 'faked' 2D using textures on screen-aligned polygons.
Not even the 2d puzzle games like Pokemon whatever and Dr. Mario? Puyo Puyo Sun? Star Soldier(the crappy early 2d shooter on the n64)? The New Tetris? Worms Armageddon? 64 Wars(come on, this one had to have)? The emulated Pokemon games in Pokemon Stadium?
And on that note I dunno why PS1 is dubbed to be weak in 2d either, absurdly enough, sometimes even compared to older machines.
Does it lack some hardware effects like sprite scaling and rotation, mode 7, etc? Powerful but not well featured, sort of like the genesis?
VDP1 has enough sprite-generation power to fake full, damn good looking 3D worlds on its own (Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon II and Saga, QUAKE/Duke3D/PowerSlave(Exhumed in Europe), and of course the unreleased Shenmue appears to be doing next to nothing on VDP2 as usual). Lobotomy's three FPS games for Saturn really show off how much VDP1 can render - look at Quake, it's more or less an exact conversion of the PC game.
So what was the point of having the VDP2 if it wasn't used? Why wasn't it used?
I've heard people say the Genesis has a more powerful cpu, but the only evidence I've ever seen for this is mhz. Assuming that's true then you could say the SNES would be like a 486 with a voodoo compared to a pentium with software rendering.
The Megadrive has a 8Mhz Motorola 68000, the 68000 was a stunning processor for its age. Internally 32 bit, it had a 16 bit bus so considered 16 bit. 8 general purpose data registers, 8 address registers. A nice CISC instruction set, it was great little processor (I learnt how to program on it).
An Atari ST or early Apple Mac were basically just this processor on its own. The CBM Amiga, SEGA Megadrive and X68000 were this processor with extra custom chips. It was a close to being in the IBM PC as well.
The SNES has a 3.58Mhz 65812, is the 16 bit version of the venerable 6502. It really isn't in the same class as the 68000, the main reason it was used was for backwards compibility with the NES (yes it was always the intention to ship with NES compatibiltiy). It has 16 bit registers, 3 of them! The accumalator and the X and Y registers (actually it has 2 memory segment registers to allow it to address up 24 bit addresses).
Megadrive wins hands down on the CPU stakes.
I've heard people say the Genesis has a more powerful cpu, but the only evidence I've ever seen for this is mhz. Assuming that's true then you could say the SNES would be like a 486 with a voodoo compared to a pentium with software rendering.
The Megadrive has a 8Mhz Motorola 68000, the 68000 was a stunning processor for its age. Internally 32 bit, it had a 16 bit bus so considered 16 bit. 8 general purpose data registers, 8 address registers. A nice CISC instruction set, it was great little processor (I learnt how to program on it).
An Atari ST or early Apple Mac were basically just this processor on its own. The CBM Amiga, SEGA Megadrive and X68000 were this processor with extra custom chips. It was a close to being in the IBM PC as well.
The SNES has a 3.58Mhz 65812, is the 16 bit version of the venerable 6502. It really isn't in the same class as the 68000, the main reason it was used was for backwards compibility with the NES (yes it was always the intention to ship with NES compatibiltiy). It has 16 bit registers, 3 of them! The accumalator and the X and Y registers (actually it has 2 memory segment registers to allow it to address up 24 bit addresses).
Megadrive wins hands down on the CPU stakes.
What happened to NES compatibility? Genesis had Master System compatibility.
BTW, I thought the SNES had a sony cpu. Ok, so the genesis does have a much faster cpu, but it still doesn't have the graphics abilities of the snes.
SegaR&D
24-Dec-2004, 19:44
You have to realize though, the Genny was released in Q4 1988, whilst the snes was released in Q4 1990.
Thats a 2 year technological gap.
Yet the Genny still had a radically superior CPU.
If it was released alongside the snes, then it would've had radically superior graphics hardware aswell.
Sega System 32 level.
It would've been no contest.
akira888
24-Dec-2004, 20:45
Yes, and had it been launched last year it could have had Radeon 9800 level graphics. That system would have really smoked Super Nintendo's worthless backside good and hard. What's your point? It launched in 1988, not 1990 or 1888 or 2088.
Dean:
Do you know why Famicom/NES compatibility was not included on the SFC/SNES? Did the fact that the 6502 had some illegal opcodes that returned meaningful results (which were later mapped into legitimate [albeit different] instructions on the 65816) play any part?
You have to realize though, the Genny was released in Q4 1988, whilst the snes was released in Q4 1990.
Thats a 2 year technological gap.
Yet the Genny still had a radically superior CPU.
If it was released alongside the snes, then it would've had radically superior graphics hardware aswell.
Sega System 32 level.
It would've been no contest.
What did the System 32 do? Sega had addons for the genesis which weren't huge leaps in 2d graphics over the snes, and could system 32 outperform the snes in fake 3d? Perhaps snes would have had tons of mode 7 games or fx chip games if sega had a more powerful system.
BTW, was the faster cpu of the genesis the reason why I the sonic games had non flat terrain and loops and bridges that moved when sonic ran on them while I don't think the mario games(and maybe not even any snes games) had anything like that? I don't think any snes games matched the speed of the sonic games either.
Also, there's...
http://www.armchairempire.com/images/classics/yoshis-island/yoshis-island-super-mario-world-2-3.jpg
http://kurtzme.free.fr/games/Sonic%20and%20Knuckles.jpg
A noticable difference in quality between super mario world 2 and sonic and knuckles. Super Mario World 2 has better special effects(like transparencies), and higher resolution, but sonic and knuckles looks better overall and has a better looking background, though that may be largely due to art design which sonic team was always great at.
Super Metroid would probably be a better indication of the pinnacle of non prerendered snes 2d though, or were the sprites in it(and the sonic games as well) prerendered while mario was handdrawn?
Do you know why Famicom/NES compatibility was not included on the SFC/SNES? Did the fact that the 6502 had some illegal opcodes that returned meaningful results (which were later mapped into legitimate [albeit different] instructions on the 65816) play any part?
I'm not sure anybody knows outside Nintendo why they shelved it (as such an obviously late date) but the urban legend has always been that it would cost a few cents more...
Tagrineth
24-Dec-2004, 22:01
Do you know why Famicom/NES compatibility was not included on the SFC/SNES? Did the fact that the 6502 had some illegal opcodes that returned meaningful results (which were later mapped into legitimate [albeit different] instructions on the 65816) play any part?
I'm not sure anybody knows outside Nintendo why they shelved it (as such an obviously late date) but the urban legend has always been that it would cost a few cents more...
I believe the quote was, out of the box it would've cost Nintendo $75 more per unit, thanks to cartridge slot differences, additional hardware such as sound, fixing the 'fixed broken opcodes' issue, etc.
Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
Admittedly it was dumb that Saturn didn't support triangle primitives at all, but this statement leads me to believe that he never looked into twisted quads... quads aren't totally idiotic - the primary issue with them is that triangles are simply more efficient in every way.
Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
Admittedly it was dumb that Saturn didn't support triangle primitives at all, but this statement leads me to believe that he never looked into twisted quads... quads aren't totally idiotic - the primary issue with them is that triangles are simply more efficient in every way.
It wasn't really quads that was the issue but the use of forward texture mapping rather than the much more useful backwards texture mapping.
To those who prehaps haven't heard of the issue (all hardware today uses backwards) I'll try and explain.
Backwards texture mapping.
You iterate across the triangle or quad in screen space, calculate a UV coordinate and lookup that into the texture. You hit a texel only if it appears on screen and you only hit each screen pixel once.
Forward texture mapping.
You iterate across the texture, for each texel calculate the screen position it hits and put the texel on the screen. The problem is when you minify the texture onto the screen, you hit a screen position several times. That breaks transparency and wastes fillrate. One advantage is that because you are iterating into screen space, you can produce non-linear screen segments (i.e. curves) but in practise is very hard to use as there are only a restricted set of curves surfaces you can produce.
Forward texture mapping comes from thinking about scaling and distorting sprites. 3DO and SEGA Saturn used it, just about everybody does backward texture mapping.
I may have got the forward and backwards the wrong way. Its been a long time.
SegaR&D
24-Dec-2004, 23:15
You have to realize though, the Genny was released in Q4 1988, whilst the snes was released in Q4 1990.
Thats a 2 year technological gap.
Yet the Genny still had a radically superior CPU.
If it was released alongside the snes, then it would've had radically superior graphics hardware aswell.
Sega System 32 level.
It would've been no contest.
What did the System 32 do? Sega had addons for the genesis which weren't huge leaps in 2d graphics over the snes, and could system 32 outperform the snes in fake 3d? Perhaps snes would have had tons of mode 7 games or fx chip games if sega had a more powerful system.
SYSTEM 32
ALIEN 3
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/alien3_a.gif
GOLDEN AXE
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/ga2_a.gif
RADMOBILE - 1990 (FIRST SYSTEM32 GAME)
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/radm.gif
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/radm_a.gif
SEGASONIC THE HEDGEHOG
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/segasonic_a.gif
OUTRUNNERS
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/outrunners.gif
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/outrunners_a.gif
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/outrunners_b.gif
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/outrunners_c.gif
STADIUM CROSS
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/scross_b.png
HARD DUNK
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/harddunk_a.gif
BURNING RIVAL
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/burnriv_a.gif
F1 EXHAUST NOTE
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/f1en.gif
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/f1en_a.gif
SPIDER-MAN
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/spidey_a.gif
ARABIAN FIGHT
http://www.system16.com/sega/screens/afight_a.gif
BTW, I thought the SNES had a sony cpu.
Sony's involvement was the sound chip, iirc.
Do you know why Famicom/NES compatibility was not included on the SFC/SNES? Did the fact that the 6502 had some illegal opcodes that returned meaningful results (which were later mapped into legitimate [albeit different] instructions on the 65816) play any part?
I'm not sure anybody knows outside Nintendo why they shelved it (as such an obviously late date) but the urban legend has always been that it would cost a few cents more...
I believe the quote was, out of the box it would've cost Nintendo $75 more per unit, thanks to cartridge slot differences, additional hardware such as sound, fixing the 'fixed broken opcodes' issue, etc.
Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
Admittedly it was dumb that Saturn didn't support triangle primitives at all, but this statement leads me to believe that he never looked into twisted quads... quads aren't totally idiotic - the primary issue with them is that triangles are simply more efficient in every way.
Why didn't they just use the same cart slot, or how about some emulation? They had the super gameboy, how about the super....oh wait.
Hmm, system32 looks pretty well superior to the snes. But I have 2 questions...
Did it supports all the sprite scalling and rotation effects that the snes did? I always noticed that arcade games tended to lack those effects.
If it was made into a console version wouldn't it have been more expensive than the snes, had less memory than the arcade variant, and have smaller carts? If so, those could have minimized the graphical difference.(isn't the quality of sprites generally dependent on the amount of memory available?)
Hmm, system32 looks pretty well superior to the snes. But I have 2 questions...
Did it supports all the sprite scalling and rotation effects that the snes did? I always noticed that arcade games tended to lack those effects.
System 32 gave you a shitload (for the time) of scaled sprites, but no rotation. I believe the only Sega 2D board with rotation was the "Y Board" (Power Drift, Galaxy Force II). It only allowed for rotation as a "post-effect" on the whole screen, though. All blitting was made with scaled sprites only.
[On Saturn...]
It wasn't really quads that was the issue but the use of forward texture mapping rather than the much more useful backwards texture mapping.
Hmm, I thought the traditional forward-mapping algorithm didn't allow for enlargement of textures without gaps between texels..?
http://website.lineone.net/~mark.fairman/chaotix_01.gif 32x could put out decent 2d too
see colon
25-Dec-2004, 00:47
Ezra: The most striking thing...
i actualy met dominic (meisner?) and i think ezra (and one or two more, i cant't remember) of lobotomy in an electronics botique near downtown seattle, wa. kinda strange, actualy, had a short conversation about death tank and death tank t-shirts (the home-made ones). this was post saturn quake and pre crave buyout of lobotomy. i was surprised at how "regular guy" they were. i would have pictured them to be much more over the top.
The PSX could use any of its texture formats for its sprite mode. We definately supported 256 colour CLUTs and I think true colour (sure we had a true colour static background). PSX had 66 MPixel fill rate in sprite mode. Thats was enough for a fair few background layers.
was this in "real" sprite mode of in "psx sprite" mode (textured screen facing quads)? not that it really matters, i guess... the difference is purely technical and not important to the end user.
...was this in "real" sprite mode of in "psx sprite" mode (textured screen facing quads)? not that it really matters, i guess... the difference is purely technical and not important to the end user.
The "psx sprite" (really three different primitives: 8*8 and 16*16 scaling sprites plus the free size/no scaling sprite primitive) could be blitted in both 4 and 8 bit CLUT mode. IIRC they all handled the 15-bit direct mode as well.
http://website.lineone.net/~mark.fairman/chaotix_01.gif 32x could put out decent 2d too
32x definetely had a lot of 2d muscle, but in my design knuckles chaotix's art direction sucks hard in comparision to sonic 3 and knuckles by so much that it completely overshadows the technical superiority it has. Knuckles Chaotix did have better sprite scaling and rotation than the snes though, too bad the game was pretty bad. Wasn't that hummingbird game the best looking 2d 32x game though? And NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat 2 both had areas where they were inferior to the SNES versions. I think MK2's was just for some animations(did it use a smaller cart size?) whereas NBA Jam was overall inferior. I don't recall any 32x game with really good sound though, but that may have been due to the low production values on almost all its games.
see colon
25-Dec-2004, 01:31
Mortal Kombat 2 both had areas where they were inferior to the SNES
mk2 has "32x" characters but the backgrounds were rendered in nice genesis 64 color splendor. the characters were actualy pretty good looking, overall, with only a little missing animation and an impressive amount of colors overall. i do remember some of the ending animation looking rather choppy on the 32x, but it's been a while since i've played it. the sound on mk2 was pretty decent, too. nothing spectacular, but much nicer range than the snes (and gen, of course) port.
A noticable difference in quality between super mario world 2 and sonic and knuckles. Super Mario World 2 has better special effects(like transparencies), and higher resolution, but sonic and knuckles looks better overall and has a better looking background, though that may be largely due to art design which sonic team was always great at.
yoshi's island had an fx2 chip in it to help the snes with all of that scaling and rotation.
yoshi's island had an fx2 chip in it to help the snes with all of that scaling and rotation.
The FX chips were still an advantage the SNES had over the Genesis, just as the Neo Geo's advantage was larger cart sizes and the n64 had a disadvantage in small cart sizes, and the playstations a disadvantage in slow access to the game media. I would almost count the genesis add ons as well, except they segmented the user base.
BTW, super mario world 1 and many other snes games had sprite scaling and rotation(often at a lower quality or slower speed) without the use of an fx chip.
BTW, super mario world 1 and many other snes games had sprite scaling and rotation(often at a lower quality or slower speed) without the use of an fx chip.
Nope, just background planes masquerading as sprites. And sprites masquerading as background planes. :o
BTW, super mario world 1 and many other snes games had sprite scaling and rotation(often at a lower quality or slower speed) without the use of an fx chip.
Nope, just background planes masquerading as sprites. And sprites masquerading as background planes. :o
Oh yeah, forgot about that...oh well, it still worked well enough for me. Sprite scaling and background rotation or background scaling and sprite rotation? I'm guessing the former, hmm, so bowser in super mario world was a background...and a sprite since I think the system used scaling and rotation so it alternated between the two?
function
25-Dec-2004, 02:06
A noticable difference in quality between super mario world 2 and sonic and knuckles. Super Mario World 2 has better special effects(like transparencies), and higher resolution, but sonic and knuckles looks better overall and has a better looking background, though that may be largely due to art design which sonic team was always great at.
I seem to rember that most Megadrive games ran at a higher resolution than most SNES stuff. 256 x 224 (or thereabouts) was the standard SNES-res (as seen in the Marios and Zelda), and while the MD used this sometimes too, the majority of it's games used 320 x 224 (like the Sonic games). Both machines could go higher, but I can't rember more than one example for either machine where this was the case.
Regarding sound, I think the MD only had a single stereo sound channel that had to be shared for music and sound effects.
I personally think the MD was a more impressive machine for it's time than the SNES, though both machines were home to many years of superb software.
akira888
26-Dec-2004, 07:27
Seiken Densetsu 3 on the SFC runs, as far as I can tell, at 512x224.
Oh yeah, forgot about that...oh well, it still worked well enough for me. Sprite scaling and background rotation or background scaling and sprite rotation? I'm guessing the former, hmm, so bowser in super mario world was a background...and a sprite since I think the system used scaling and rotation so it alternated between the two?
No, just background. Sprites couldn't either scale or rotate, only the mode 7 background. The problem was that the chip didn't allow for any more background planes while using mode 7, so one had to build some (often rudimentary) background graphics from sprites.
Oh yeah, forgot about that...oh well, it still worked well enough for me. Sprite scaling and background rotation or background scaling and sprite rotation? I'm guessing the former, hmm, so bowser in super mario world was a background...and a sprite since I think the system used scaling and rotation so it alternated between the two?
No, just background. Sprites couldn't either scale or rotate, only the mode 7 background. The problem was that the chip didn't allow for any more background planes while using mode 7, so one had to build some (often rudimentary) background graphics from sprites.
So...
http://www.skytopia.com/games/snes/fzero6.jpg
http://pocketmedia.ign.com/media/news/image/otherstuff/gbarock/1/supermariokart_2.jpg
Are there sprites posing as backgrounds here, or did mode 7 games avoid that problem? Perhaps the sky is just a sprite?
Are there sprites posing as backgrounds here, or did mode 7 games avoid that problem? Perhaps the sky is just a sprite?
Straying further off-topic into the land of good ol' raster based coding here... There was no problem to switch between the various graphic modes at any line of the screen. So, the sky here is a normal tiled background plane, then you switch to mode 7 to create some amazing 3D graphics. :lol:
The SNES had a very nifty feature called HDMA, ie. horizontal DMA, which could be used for all kinds of line-based effects by automatically storing new values into various registers each raster-line. For a typical mode 7 racing game you set up the HDMA channels to set the rotate/zoom-registers for the perspective effect, maybe one to do a depth-cue palette effect, and one to switch graphic modes mid-screen. With only the CPU you would have had no chance of accomplishing many of the trademarked SNES effects, so I'd say HDMA is something of an unsung hero of the SNES hardware.
Iron Tiger
28-Dec-2004, 02:55
Are there sprites posing as backgrounds here, or did mode 7 games avoid that problem? Perhaps the sky is just a sprite?
Straying further off-topic into the land of good ol' raster based coding here... There was no problem to switch between the various graphic modes at any line of the screen. So, the sky here is a normal tiled background plane, then you switch to mode 7 to create some amazing 3D graphics. :lol:
The SNES had a very nifty feature called HDMA, ie. horizontal DMA, which could be used for all kinds of line-based effects by automatically storing new values into various registers each raster-line. For a typical mode 7 racing game you set up the HDMA channels to set the rotate/zoom-registers for the perspective effect, maybe one to do a depth-cue palette effect, and one to switch graphic modes mid-screen. With only the CPU you would have had no chance of accomplishing many of the trademarked SNES effects, so I'd say HDMA is something of an unsung hero of the SNES hardware.Is that how the line scrolls were done on the ground in fighting games? IIRC, SFA on the PS1 didn't have that, nor did MKTrilogy on the N64.
eastcore
30-Dec-2004, 23:34
yoshi's island had an fx2 chip in it to help the snes with all of that scaling and rotation.
The FX chips were still an advantage the SNES had over the Genesis, just as the Neo Geo's advantage was larger cart sizes and the n64 had a disadvantage in small cart sizes, and the playstations a disadvantage in slow access to the game media. I would almost count the genesis add ons as well, except they segmented the user base.
BTW, super mario world 1 and many other snes games had sprite scaling and rotation(often at a lower quality or slower speed) without the use of an fx chip.
Not really - the FX chips provided extreme limited performance, especially when it came to 3D.
On the other hand, the Genesis had the SVP chip used in Virtua Racing. Now that was impressive - it was only used once, the 32x was release soon after.
Not including the 32X, Virtua Racing was the single most impressive game of the entire Gensis/SNES 16-bit generation system wars.
Unless someone can think of something better... but that's impossible.
london-boy
31-Dec-2004, 00:24
yoshi's island had an fx2 chip in it to help the snes with all of that scaling and rotation.
The FX chips were still an advantage the SNES had over the Genesis, just as the Neo Geo's advantage was larger cart sizes and the n64 had a disadvantage in small cart sizes, and the playstations a disadvantage in slow access to the game media. I would almost count the genesis add ons as well, except they segmented the user base.
BTW, super mario world 1 and many other snes games had sprite scaling and rotation(often at a lower quality or slower speed) without the use of an fx chip.
Not really - the FX chips provided extreme limited performance, especially when it came to 3D.
On the other hand, the Genesis had the SVP chip used in Virtua Racing. Now that was impressive - it was only used once, the 32x was release soon after.
Not including the 32X, Virtua Racing was the single most impressive game of the entire Gensis/SNES 16-bit generation system wars.
Unless someone can think of something better... but that's impossible.
Mmmm don't know about that, i had the Genesis version of Virtua Racing and while very impressive for the time, being one of the first fully 3D games, i really have played games that made me go "wow" more than VR ever did.
see colon
31-Dec-2004, 01:34
Mmmm don't know about that, i had the Genesis version of Virtua Racing and while very impressive for the time, being one of the first fully 3D games, i really have played games that made me go "wow" more than VR ever did.
more "wow" on a purely technical level?
Tagrineth
31-Dec-2004, 02:22
The SNES's FX chips were limited by the 65816's clockspeed. Nothing is allowed to bypass any of the system's built in hardware.
eastcore
01-Jan-2005, 19:43
Mmmm don't know about that, i had the Genesis version of Virtua Racing and while very impressive for the time, being one of the first fully 3D games, i really have played games that made me go "wow" more than VR ever did.
more "wow" on a purely technical level?
Exactly.
I don't see how any game could be more "wow" than VR.
Donkey Kong Country.
To me, the single most amazing game of the 16-bit era. At the time, it was a revolution in graphics. Even 3D0 games didn't look that good.
And to think it came out on SuperNES... Hell, DKC looked like it was on an entirely new generation of consoles.
I think it still looks pretty good today. :)
Sorry for the double-post. Technical problem; board gave me an error message, but wound up taking my first post anyway.
eastcore
02-Jan-2005, 01:07
Donkey Kong Country.
To me, the single most amazing game of the 16-bit era. At the time, it was a revolution in graphics. Even 3D0 games didn't look that good.
And to think it came out on SuperNES... Hell, DKC looked like it was on an entirely new generation of consoles.
I think it still looks pretty good today. :)
I totally disagree. DKC was all prerendered - that's why it looked nice. It was smooth though, the animation impressive for the level of detail.
But how is it possible to consider a 2D game more impressive than a 3D one?
I just don't get it - but to each his own.
see colon
02-Jan-2005, 02:51
i find yoshi's island to be one of the better snes games from a technical standpoint as well. all of those sprites, all of that scaling, and the "3d" background elements here and there add up to a nice, "next generation" look on the snes.
DKC was nice looking, but there was no real technical achievments. from a pure technical level, virtua racing takes the cake for the 16bit generation, though. it was state of the art for it's time. DKC was just some clever tricks and good art direction.
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