Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn
- Thread starter xaeroxcore
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I am sure they could give as a satisfactory version of it. I have doubts they could retain the visual quality though.
Particle heavy scenes would surely have had a major downgrade.
Also I am curious about the physics heavy parts of the game. I don't remember much going on in terms of physics in Dreamcast games.
I think DC was very weak in that area. I would expect huge compromises and changes in those place if not some full omissions.
Olga's boss fight has a lot of physics going on with the wind and that would have been a curious effort
Overall the game was super impressive not just due to its static detail but also from its physics and dynamic effects which also had gameplay impact.
The interactions with the environment were very high. It is why this game was a spectacle and an unmatched next gen experience for a long time.
This effort lacks reflections, post processing effects, shadows, physics (Snake's bandana is missing) and in a simple environment without the need of particles. Also running at 30fps.
It is barebones polygons
davis.anthony
Veteran
MGS2 would have worked fine on DC but would have seen significant cut backs compared to the PS2 version.
Not sure if you're complaining without actually comparing the facts just to obscure things or what. Basically that's the homebrew engine simulant . Which currently runs about performance of 5k to 11k triangles at 30 fps. I've talked to the guy who did the soul calibur 2 models on the official sdk using highest abstraction ninja2. Performance for that was around 39k to 50k tris at 30 fps with like two directional light sources , textured . Pretty much the same even when u using two animated models on the scene. Keep in mind this is highest abstraction and not a layer down like kamui 2. Post processing wise he said surprisingly you can do a full screen render to texture and layer 4 times on screen( I guess useful for radial blurs) basically at no cost for gpu when it's already running 30 fps.
Comparing this to performance of the commercial tools is a grave error.
I am not complaining. I am stating facts regarding what we know of PS2's and Dreamcast capabilities and I m pointing that the demo of MGS2 on DC is not an indication that the MGS2 would have been ported without significant cutbacks.
MGS2 took advantage of PS2's crazy amounts of fill rate/bandwidth and processing capabilities where the DC lacked. Especially regarding the fill rate even the XBOX struggled in scenes where huge amounts of particles were present.
Yes, it's a given there would be compromises, but the fact that this indie engine is so nicely done shows that a version from a AAA dev would definitely be comparable. There's a pretty decent amount of games with physics on DC
Crazy taxi has a decent amount of physics for one. Also the Olga boss stage is just the two tarps, the rest is the particle fx. It almost assuredly wouldn't be the same approach on DC, but it would still look excellent!
I don't think anyone here thinks there wouldn't be compromises, like you said, even xbox had reductions in performance and texture fidelity (mainly due to it not being optimized at all). Just like any hardware, things would be different, but still relatively great! (Snes, genesis, tg16) all great graphics relative to one another, same for 6th Gen graphics. Ps2 obviously wasn't gonna be able to handle re4 or splinter cell the same as it's contemporaries, but they Still looked good comparable more or less (definitely nowhere near as good as their mai. Platforms, ofcourse
)
xaeroxcore
Newcomer
I really hope they release soon something grounbreaking! I mean, there are chances simulant could become in the future what Renderware was for PS2, but meant for indie devs?
StefanHQ
Newcomer
Tbh I prefer the original lighting. The new one looks odd and off, like shiny plastic.
Textures is wll more detailed but I think they collide with the not so realistic art style in general, so hmmm I think I prefer the original there as well. the new one looks nice if you just look at the texture but the overall impression is less.
The blur effect... well it do not look like a m blur at all really. Cool effect though but apart from giving it a bit trippy feeling I do not see what it adds. Would be cool to know how they did it though?
Who are the group / people behind this mod?
this esppiral, its one guy that sifts through values to see what turns on and off stuff . that seems more like radial blur. I remember some one( the person who did soul calibur 2 model demo on ninja) said that its pretty much copying/saving prior frame to use for a rtt , cost up to 16ms without increasing scene complexity. its probably the same here because i doubt very much they would like to render things twice for a seperate render texture or even have resources to do so.
It probably would have been good for tge boss battle. Every other version of tge game used a progressively accumulative blur when you get hit by him, so maybe that radial blur would have been a nice alternative on DC?
We discussed it on discord, and I recorded some footage of it. It looks like, in every round, it takes a snapshot of the area you're in, and applies it to the reflection. If you walk around the stage without switching rounds, the texture never changes. Also on bootleg versions, it sometimes doesn't load till the next round or at all, so he basically looks white, lol.
Btw, I wonder why they didn't implement the blur on DC. Maybe it couldn't keep adding as much?
xaeroxcore
Newcomer
I´d say you answered that yourself, they probably added motion blur effect on PS2 and that "new lighting", which is nothing special, to try to actually add some graphical value on PS2 port, in order to "justify" the Hard*Core subtitle and also hide the horrible lower native res and aliasing...And didnt work. DOA 2 looks better on DC, and it´s natural, because is game built around its strenghts. So, they didnt used the blur on DC, cuz its not needed. I have both versions (DC and PS2) and even made a YouTube comparison video, and find that blur effect on Tengu´s PS2 final boss fight very annoying.
Yeah, it's a bit overdone, but they liked it enough to keep doing it on later games. If anything it's pretty balanced; if you're good enough not to be hit too much, it's significantly reduced. It's supposed to be a play on tengu manipulating reality. Doau did it to a better effect, for sure.
xaeroxcore
Newcomer
Now i recall they also used motion blur on DOA 3 final boss fight....and was annoying as fuck! hahahahaah