Yes, he ran it on real hardware and it had no performance problems.
Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn
- Thread starter xaeroxcore
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I got a better one for you . Side by side both Dreamcast, just at different camera angles and distance. It's there. Not sure why your stubborn over this stage.
The only thing you're right about is about the church not having reflection. Wasn't a hardware limit though , someone even hacked those back in AND made transparent light glow .even more noticable
Reflection hacked back into the dc version compared to vanilla on the left:
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davis.anthony
Veteran
Glad you asked!
I made my own comparison of the best DOA 2 versions on PS2 vs DC 2 yrs ago on my YouTube channel!
Gameplay comparison starts on 6:51
View attachment 11592
So...no reflections on DC? And my point was, let´s assume yes, reflections are weaker or non existent on DC, there is plenty of other things which make DC version looks overall better over PS2 port. Even there is @Cloofoofoo telling you he has extracted the assests that proofs reflections on DC exists....But you insist, becuase you can´t see it on a YT video, even when you accept haven´t played the actual game on the last 20 years, when most people here have the actual games and consoles to compare literally right now.
You keep mentioning plying the game.
That is irrelevant as I have eye balls and more than enough videos on YouTube.
davis.anthony
Veteran
I got a better one for you . Side by side both Dreamcast, just at different camera angles and distance. It's there. Not sure why your stubborn over this stage.
The only thing you're right about is about the church not having reflection. Wasn't a hardware limit though , someone even hacked those back in AND made transparent light glow .even more noticable
Reflection hacked back into the dc version compared to vanilla on the left:
That's better.
Why is it so hard to post actual shots.
I posted it right after you said it. You may have missed it
xaeroxcore
Newcomer
So please use them.
Both the DC and PS2 have the reflection, but it's bugged on the DC. The reflection works by having a duplicated version of the real stage beneath the floor. The opera stage is unusual because you can see an area below the floor. You can't correctly add the reflected ceiling geometry over there, you have to leave the drop off as it is.
So when you look away from the drop off, you have correctly reflected geometry, but when you look towards the drop off, you would instead see the lower level through the floor. Tecmo wanted to prevent the player from seeing this, so they decided to adjust the transparency of the floor so that when the camera is pointed towards the drop off, it's opaque, but when you can't see the lower level, the floor transparent and shows the reflection.
On the DC, this check is backwards. When the camera is pointing to the back wall (where the reflection would work correctly), the floor is opaque, and when the camera is looking towards the lower level, the floor is transparent (incorrectly showing the lower level through the floor.) They probably did a dot product between the camera heading and the normal of the backwall to get the angle, and used that for the floor alpha, but forgot that the dot returns the negative angle so the alpha is reversed. Somehow, no one bothered to fix this on any of the DC versions, but it was finally fixed on the PS2 release.
tl;dr: The opera stage has a reflective floor on both DC and PS2, but it's bugged on the DC. The DC and PS2 use inverted alpha values for the angle dependent transparency.
So when you look away from the drop off, you have correctly reflected geometry, but when you look towards the drop off, you would instead see the lower level through the floor. Tecmo wanted to prevent the player from seeing this, so they decided to adjust the transparency of the floor so that when the camera is pointed towards the drop off, it's opaque, but when you can't see the lower level, the floor transparent and shows the reflection.
On the DC, this check is backwards. When the camera is pointing to the back wall (where the reflection would work correctly), the floor is opaque, and when the camera is looking towards the lower level, the floor is transparent (incorrectly showing the lower level through the floor.) They probably did a dot product between the camera heading and the normal of the backwall to get the angle, and used that for the floor alpha, but forgot that the dot returns the negative angle so the alpha is reversed. Somehow, no one bothered to fix this on any of the DC versions, but it was finally fixed on the PS2 release.
tl;dr: The opera stage has a reflective floor on both DC and PS2, but it's bugged on the DC. The DC and PS2 use inverted alpha values for the angle dependent transparency.
xaeroxcore
Newcomer
Mistery solved!!
Ha ha ha! Who could be dumb enough to get that wrong?! Muddling your normal direction. Psht.
When you are referring to Ninja 1 and Ninja 2 what are you referring to?
Are you referring to Team Ninja teams?
No, it's parts of Dreamcast development kit. IMO it's a mess and it's part of the reason it failed. So the lower level libraries is called kamui(there's kamui1 and 2), at the higher level is ninja( ninja1 and 2) and Naomilib(developed by am2 and used a lot in Naomi and it's ports). There's a library lower than kamui but it's not worth mentioning.
Naomilib is used by the likes of 18 wheeler, f355 challenge, virtual fighter 3, fighting vipers 2 AND yes dead or alive 2 is built on it. ( This why it's always a topic how the heck is doa2 is miles better than the rest) seems to perform better than ninja.
Ninja is library meant to make dc dev easy for JAPANESE devs( western devs weren't allowed to use it and could only use kamui). Handles graphics, sound, movies, controls , does lighting for you, has model formats( exporter can activate things like transparency and env map without code) and animation and some very basic help in collision. Ninja 1 performance was pretty bad with specular highlights, not so good render to texture performance, polygon performance isn't great. Used A LOT of Japanese in both third party and first party(Sega).
Ninja2 is an evolution of the above but performance greatly improved ( according to SC2 guy it's to 2x to 3x faster). It added specular control, bump mapping , updated the model format and removed outdated features while adding new things to graphic support( improved rtt) . NO game uses this except for a 2d dating sim on the Dreamcast. Posted screen shot below of performance difference for nj1 and nj2 via sc2 models, nj1 struggles to keep 30 fps and constantly falls to 20 fps with 1 light source, nj2 version same exact scene but with 3 light sources and runs 30 fps no dips even when zoomed out. Same guy also tested render to texture feature and it's a lot faster basically felt radial blur is now freeish.( Since you don't have the render stuff off screen , it could just copy the finished frame and used as a texture doesn't increase scene complexity!)
Sc2 models , nj1 ( 1 light)
Sc2 scene , ninja 2( 3 lights)
If Sega was keeping tools away from non japanese developers it shows that they didn't fully free themselves from the culture that destroyed the Sega Saturn. What a shame. They always had this thing towards their western peers.No, it's parts of Dreamcast development kit. IMO it's a mess and it's part of the reason it failed. So the lower level libraries is called kamui(there's kamui1 and 2), at the higher level is ninja( ninja1 and 2) and Naomilib(developed by am2 and used a lot in Naomi and it's ports). There's a library lower than kamui but it's not worth mentioning.
Naomilib is used by the likes of 18 wheeler, f355 challenge, virtual fighter 3, fighting vipers 2 AND yes dead or alive 2 is built on it. ( This why it's always a topic how the heck is doa2 is miles better than the rest) seems to perform better than ninja.
Ninja is library meant to make dc dev easy for JAPANESE devs( western devs weren't allowed to use it and could only use kamui). Handles graphics, sound, movies, controls , does lighting for you, has model formats( exporter can activate things like transparency and env map without code) and animation and some very basic help in collision. Ninja 1 performance was pretty bad with specular highlights, not so good render to texture performance, polygon performance isn't great. Used A LOT of Japanese in both third party and first party(Sega).
Ninja2 is an evolution of the above but performance greatly improved ( according to SC2 guy it's to 2x to 3x faster). It added specular control, bump mapping , updated the model format and removed outdated features while adding new things to graphic support( improved rtt) . NO game uses this except for a 2d dating sim on the Dreamcast. Posted screen shot below of performance difference for nj1 and nj2 via sc2 models, nj1 struggles to keep 30 fps and constantly falls to 20 fps with 1 light source, nj2 version same exact scene but with 3 light sources and runs 30 fps no dips even when zoomed out. Same guy also tested render to texture feature and it's a lot faster basically felt radial blur is now freeish.( Since you don't have the render stuff off screen , it could just copy the finished frame and used as a texture doesn't increase scene complexity!)
Sc2 models , nj1 ( 1 light)
Sc2 scene , ninja 2( 3 lights)
I am also curious why Ninja2 wasn't taken advantage at all. 2D dating sim?
No kidding. Ninja1 docs on sdk9 ( last usa sdk for DC that even had ninja stuff before they completely removed it ) were horribly outdated and didn't even reflect the ninja API calls( sc2 guy said by looking at the headers he realized it's more of ninja 1.5 since it had some improvement but it still wasn't anywhere near nj2). Also told usa devs to ignore ninja stuff and just focus on on using kamui2. ( Ironic since Sega themselves used nj heavily ) . And I am guessing naomilib is something us devs wouldn't be made aware it was even an option since it's not included in the sdk by default.
Ninja2 simply wasn't used by anyone simply because it came out too late, around September 2000 which means in a few months dc would be discontinued and most devs working on anything would likely scrap their plans. It's a shame , the feature and performance increase would have made even the common game capable of using most effects easily this time around and even increased polygon output. Not to mention the flexibility of the file format, you could pretty much animate everything in the modeling program and export light info/animation , bake vertex colors , set blending levels and materials ( bump mapping and env map included) . Have more limited framebuffer effect access but far less costly / more usable.
Absolutely agreed. They never learned. I was wondering why japanese games looked so much better, and i thought they learned from the saturn mistakes, but i guess i was wrong. As far as the 2D dating sim, it came out after sega dropped out. Such missed potential...
Maybe that's what soul reaver 2 was using. They said they were confident they could match ps2 just fine!
EsppiraK
Newcomer
In terms of visuals sure, in terms of performance I am pretty sure it would run most of the time at 30 FPS.
Was the PS2 version 60fps?
Oh, yeah, definitely. 30fps would be the cap, I'm sure.
I think it may have been, but i don't recall. Probably fluctuates, though
Well it depends, so far when they released the very first gameplay trailer ( was running on the PS2 ) they claimed even though it's PS2 footage dreamcast at parity with it so far. Nixxes always claimed on their website it was running identical up to that point but who knows really.
The guy( Mikael kalms) they had working optimizing Dreamcast graphics released a little home brew donut demo and had this to say of the dreamcast :
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