Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2018 - 2020]

Would be intresting to see a coverage on Doom 3 og xbox port, it still amazes how they got that running on a P3 733, 64mb total ram, and a GF3/4 equalivant gpu. I remember needing quite a beastly pc for doom 3, guess optimizations for pc back then where much worse then today, but still. The xbox version even had dd5.1 i think, some effects where missing and some areas in maps where cut, but it still lived up to the pc version rather well. It also included doom 1 and 2. In my opinion it was one of the best pc to console ports back then, HL2 and FC being not as great ports as Doom 3 was. Not to talk about Unreal 2 xbox port.
Unsure if the xb version had dynamic shadows like the pc version?
 
Ye Doom 3 on Xbox was quite a faithful port, whereas Far Cry Instincts and Evolution were completely different games from the PC version. Never got around testing HL2 on the OG Xbox but I read it had alot more loading screens, which supposedly were there even in the 360 version.

I did prefer the gameplay in Far Cry on consoles though. Evolution was a bit more "open" than Instincts though IIRC, at least early on.
 
Ye Doom 3 on Xbox was quite a faithful port, whereas Far Cry Instincts and Evolution were completely different games from the PC version. Never got around testing HL2 on the OG Xbox but I read it had alot more loading screens, which supposedly were there even in the 360 version.

I did prefer the gameplay in Far Cry on consoles though. Evolution was a bit more "open" than Instincts though IIRC, at least early on.

Yes that port was amazing, even today it holds up considering the time of the release on a early 2000's console.
I played through HL2 on og xbox, while it holds up to HL2 pc rather well, the framerate dips rather much when things going on, but still the havok physics are there and so are most of the effects, and as far i can see, no levels are cut. Far Cry on og xbox was a totally different game, i think it even had effects not in the pc version. Cool 4 player split screen also.
Those where the best looking games of the 6th gen, running on ancient hardware even for the time. og xbox had low level api access compared to pc's at the time, which helped alot.
 
On a sidenote, it'd be cool if they started analyzing Nintendo DS titles as well. Talking of Doom 3 made me think of Dementium 2 on the DS, which I thought was a good portable horror-themed game back in the day.
 
Yes, some intresting ports happened there, MGS3 made it to the 3DS, even with some things improved i recall. I actually played it for abit on the 3DS, i can't stand such a small screen to play such a great classic though, but still, it's portable.
 
Would be intresting to see a coverage on Doom 3 og xbox port, it still amazes how they got that running on a P3 733, 64mb total ram, and a GF3/4 equalivant gpu. I remember needing quite a beastly pc for doom 3, guess optimizations for pc back then where much worse then today, but still. The xbox version even had dd5.1 i think, some effects where missing and some areas in maps where cut, but it still lived up to the pc version rather well. It also included doom 1 and 2. In my opinion it was one of the best pc to console ports back then, HL2 and FC being not as great ports as Doom 3 was. Not to talk about Unreal 2 xbox port.
Unsure if the xb version had dynamic shadows like the pc version?
It was an incredible experience on a humble Xbox back in the day, I couldn't believe it when I played it and saw those graphics, although Carmack noted that it was a painful port, iirc.

Doom 3 also had a + campaign with the soul thingy that completely changed the game, so I finished it twice. Missed the typical hordes of Doom, but then it'd be an impossible game to make..
 
Would be intresting to see a coverage on Doom 3 og xbox port, it still amazes how they got that running on a P3 733, 64mb total ram, and a GF3/4 equalivant gpu. I remember needing quite a beastly pc for doom 3, guess optimizations for pc back then where much worse then today, but still. The xbox version even had dd5.1 i think, some effects where missing and some areas in maps where cut, but it still lived up to the pc version rather well. It also included doom 1 and 2. In my opinion it was one of the best pc to console ports back then, HL2 and FC being not as great ports as Doom 3 was. Not to talk about Unreal 2 xbox port.
Unsure if the xb version had dynamic shadows like the pc version?

Doom 3 I think has fewer vertex shadow volumes, simplified lighting and textures, but most of the important stuff is still there. Any footage I've watched of HL2 on Xbox makes it out to be a sub-30 FPS mess with much worse texturing.

And Far Cry [Instinct] is altogether a very different game in terms of art, level design and story reworking. The basic premise is still the same though. I was most impressed by it's global shadowing system that only Fable likewise replicated IIRC. There was a heavy blockiness to it, but it used a very good precomputed baked shadow that faded into a realtime shadowmap closer to the player. The PC version totally lacks this feature altogether, and is probably a Ubisoft specific customization that characterizes Ubisoft's software fork of CryEngine. Ultimately it was developed into Dunia for Far Cry 2 and later FC titles. You can sorta see and feel the CryEngine-ness in Far Cry 2 especially. I will also always remember my insane disappointment for Far Cry: Vengeance on the Wii and what a mess that was. Don't get me started.

As for the Pentium III, a 1 GHz Pentium III was the stated system requirements for a good number of games (Far Cry & Tribes Vengeance). Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were in the ballpark....sorta, with a 1.5 GHz P4 required for Doom 3 (which means a slower P3 would've probably been on par) and a 1.2 GHz P3 for HL2. I also firmly believe FEAR and Call of Duty 2 would've been doable on the Xbox with the right concessions, and I'm kinda surprised it never happened for FEAR. CoD2 not being on Xbox was obvious with the consoles still having their own series. There were some damn impressive things done on the Xbox though. I was supremely jealous of Xbox owners in 2005 when I saw the fantastic games that were either not available on my PS2 or were flat out superior on Xbox. It wasn't until I became a PC gamer later that year that I'd get my hands onto alot of those fantastic games.
 
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Those where the best looking games of the 6th gen, running on ancient hardware even for the time. og xbox had low level api access compared to pc's at the time, which helped alot.
Chronicles or Riddick was king for me, despite a few graphical glitches here and there. It's been a while since I fired it up on Xbox but I remember the lighting being every bit as good as Doom 3 but with better textures. Also, I don't remember your character having a shadow in Doom on Xbox.
 
It was an incredible experience on a humble Xbox back in the day, I couldn't believe it when I played it and saw those graphics, although Carmack noted that it was a painful port, iirc.

Doom 3 also had a + campaign with the soul thingy that completely changed the game, so I finished it twice. Missed the typical hordes of Doom, but then it'd be an impossible game to make..

I also played Resurrection of Evil on Xbox only, a year or two after having played D3. I haven't really seen much about it being more/less different on PC than Doom 3. The grabber gun was criticized for being a copy of HL2's gravity gun but I simply thought it was a cool addition.

I was so impressed by Doom on the Xbox that I remember thinking wtf when reading about how poorly Quake 4 ran on the 360.
 
new DF Retro video on Streets of Rage 4. The video is a masterpiece. From the 16 minutes mark on, they talk about the AI, reflections and many other technical features of the game.

The SoR series has a place in my memory, forever, 'cos I completed SoR 1, 2 and 3 at my best friend's house who had the Megadrive. My favourite of the bunch is Streets of Rage 2. (maybe 4 is going to be my favourite ever now, who knows)


Btw, got this game on gamepass today. Best of all, it's crossplay! So this is a new game of the series I can play with my best friend, who has the Xbox One S.
 
Bizarre, when you can use something like Parsec. Do they not have the expertise to roll their own netplay instead of using (I presume) Steam’s and Xbox (for Windows) offerings?
 
new DF Retro video on Streets of Rage 4. The video is a masterpiece. From the 16 minutes mark on, they talk about the AI, reflections and many other technical features of the game.

The SoR series has a place in my memory, forever, 'cos I completed SoR 1, 2 and 3 at my best friend's house who had the Megadrive. My favourite of the bunch is Streets of Rage 2. (maybe 4 is going to be my favourite ever now, who knows)


Btw, got this game on gamepass today. Best of all, it's crossplay! So this is a new game of the series I can play with my best friend, who has the Xbox One S.

Minor technical inacuracy: When Linneman briefily mentions streets of rage 2 Master System port he mentions the 30fps as a possible choice to reduce sprite flicker.

That is an inpossibility. 8bit and 16bit conlsoles generaly did not work with a frame-buffer. Each scan-line is rendered as it is being sent to the screen, and the results are discarded as soon as the signal is sent and the next line starts to draw. That's why many of the limitations described in these sytems spec are per-line based rather than per-frame.

That's a very heavy-handed memory saving optimisation usually called "racing the beam" that was very popular in console and arcade hardware up until 3D graphics became standard. That's why 60fps was so popular, the hardware was hard-wired to to render a conpletely fresh new frame at every update no matter what.

No matter if your game code is is only updating sprite positions and animations at 30fps, each one of those frame pairs are gonna be rendered and re-rendered twice anyway.

So halving the framerate on a Master System or Mega Drive does not open up more available sprites per line, and thus does not reduce flicker. 30fps 8/16bit games were a result of unoptmized game simulation code, and not a rendering issue, graphic potential is just being wasted at non-native refreshes on those machines.

The only exceptions were games that used software rendering to get some early 3D games out on those machines, like wolfeinstein console ports or Elite on NES.

John made that mistake because he is thinking in terms of modern tech which has ample memory to told a full fat framebuffer in there. As a techno-phile, I assume he'd like to be corrected on that missconseption. He made the same mistake in a video he talks about NES ninja turtles and there were youtube comments pointing his missconceptions out but it seems he did not get to read them. Alex, @Dictator please be a pal and inform of your coleague.
 
The GOG version has no online multiplayer :(
bummer! Multiplayer, local or online, is perfect in this game. Too bad the netcode can be a bit fragile, but when it works and no lag.... I managed to combo an enemy in the air with my best friend when playing online -he was on his Xbox One S, I was on PC-.

Btw, I have fond memories of this series, my fav brawler series 'cos as a child I completed the 3 games with my friend on his Megadrive, and the soundtrack is top notch. But the music of SoR4 in the main menu gives me the chills like no music in SoR gave me.

Also, this song, beats every song of the original. Go to the 2:45 mark on, :oops::oops: please, trust me on this one.

 
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DF Retro Play: Super Bubsy - The 'Lost' PC Game Finally Working!
I think I played a demo of this in 1996 or so, and Pitfall -the graphics looked amazing to me on the PC-. Bubsy is a game that evaporated because in the end, it became a bit mediocre, iirc, it received a second game. Even the music in the original game is bad.
 
I cant believe this was released in 1984.
Have they actually paid for an aircraft with a camera to fly on these areas to make this game?
Sounds extremely expensive
sooo, they used a movie to add those images to the game in real time. Nowadays I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few movies used Flight Simulator to add aerial views and save themselves thousands of euros in special effects.

Gtb8ldm.gif
 
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