Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn

I was playing Sturmwind on the DC last year I believe it was launched in 2012, absolutely stunning horizontal shooter that wouldn't have looked too far out of place as an Xbox 360 arcade title release, their is no denying that the DC was outclassed by the PS2, but out of the two formats time seems to have been kinder to the DC, sure you can see the lack of geometry in a lot of titles, but with the VGA cable and a scan line generator it's visuals just pop with a clarity that you certainly do not get with a PS2, even on level ground using RGB scart the DC still has it by a comfortable margin.
 
TTT has more advanced visual tecnology in several aspects, even compared with late PS2 games, but all bent together doesn´t look that good as Soul Calibur or DOA 2, because TTT also remain two critical aspects of the 32 bit engine: Dated Animations and Stage integration. TTT is a 2.5 game scheme, while SC and it´s 8 way run resulted something more innovative (despite it was also created originally into a 32 bit hardware -System 12-), all bent with true 3D stages . I mean, in TTT stages are real time 3D too and with better poly count, textures and effects than SC, but not in the same layer as where all the action happens...So everything seems strange in motion. SC does more with less, because uses more efficiently it´s limited resources. I mean TTT characters are built with at least twice the poly count of the SC ones, but the TTT one looks more like a plastic CGish dolls. In SC they apparent to be more detailed (but in reality they´re not), thanks to smarter art decisions,reflected in the details in their outfit, hair movement, breathing simulation, etc and all of this
is synchronized with smoother animatons. In the lighting department i think that SC beats TTT for the same reason, beceause they use the lighting resources to strenght the beauty of the game, just instead to show a technology upgrade against the competition ...TTT is an amazing game (i bought my PS2 just for that game), but in the graphical area seems more like a tech demo than a true "next gen" (of the 6th gen) game, while SC is more innovative and some aspects, and uses it´s limited engine resources more efficiently and smarter. Obviously TTT is a graphically more advanced game that SC in lotta of aspects, as PS2 is more poweful than Dreamcast. But the gap between both systems is not generational, so SC showed that is possible to do something way impressive with less resources.
Most of the things you describe have mostly to do with art than with graphical detail.
Technically speaking, TTT had more detailed visuals in every aspect. If SC had better animations, or if you could roam the environment in SC (mind you, characters in SC were confined on a platform, whereas in TTT that platform was an infinite plane. In that regard they arent much different. You could roam the environment in none objectively speaking), or if SC was innovative in style or gameplay, all these have nothing to do with how much better it looked compared to TTT. You are describing something else here
That being said I don't think it is fair to post upresed screenshots from the ps3 version, it may the artwork shine, but it is not representative of how the game looks on the actual hardware.
You have a point, but my post was illustrating how much better TTT looked compared to T5, not how it looked compared to other DC games. Hence why I posted images from TTT and T5 on the PS3 and not a DC game
 
Most of the things you describe have mostly to do with art than with graphical detail.
Technically speaking, TTT had more detailed visuals in every aspect. If SC had better animations, or if you could roam the environment in SC (mind you, characters in SC were confined on a platform, whereas in TTT that platform was an infinite plane. In that regard they arent much different. You could roam the environment in none objectively speaking), or if SC was innovative in style or gameplay, all these have nothing to do with how much better it looked compared to TTT. You are describing something else here

I´m talking about technology in denial, not just graphics. SC has tech improvements for the time not just in the strictly visuals area, in the gameplay too. TTT is just a standard 32 bit fighter with incredible (for the time) graphics. SC has incredible, but less detailed than TTT, graphics for the time too...but in SC all the innovations (in art, graphics and gameplay) work together and offer a more solid "next gen" experience , compared with TTT. In SC at least characters can fall off of the plattform, which is a some basic enviroment interaction. In TTT stages are aweome and detailed...but you can never reach them, because you´re really fighting on a different plane.

My point is, TTT displays in denial more advance effects, and specially poly counts and more detail in char and stages...but is stuck in the last gen in other critical areas. SC displays less effects, detail and geometry, but not to the point to look dated compared with TTT, cuz´the game displays better it´s features than TTT, thanks to a great art direction and smart use of resources.
 
Are we talking about the graphics or the gameplay and art here? I am confused.
If we are talking about the gameplay and art then we are off topic
 
Yeah if we are to get into the discussion of gameplay there are is another fighting game on DC at the time that was more innovative with its level design and the impact it has on the fighting mechanics.

When it comesto how TTT and SC look in person at the time, I was always of the impression that TTT had better lighting and more polys on the characters. The character animations in Soul Calibur is what trumped everything for me. That felt like a true generational leap while TTT did not in that regard.
 
Are we talking about the graphics or the gameplay and art here? I am confused.
If we are talking about the gameplay and art then we are off topic

No @Reggy72, me and others are talking about the real life visual impacts of SC (and others games like ShenMue, Ferrari F355 and ToyCommander :love:) versus many PS2 games on a real TV / monitor where the (unmatched :yep2:) high quality video produced by the DC (whether via RGB scart or VGA cable) was making a big and very often underrated difference.

But back in the day the difference was utterly obvious to me: image quality (and motion quality if we add SC animations) of many DC games > polygons and effects of many (not all obviously) PS2 games.
 
I think composite or (in the case of the DC) RF (urgh!) hindered the DC more than the PS2.

The consistently fantastic 640 x 480 and 24-bit colour of the DC (sometimes dithered down to 16-bit on VGA) needed RGB or VGA on a CRT to really shine.

VGA on LCD doesn't always do the DC justice, IMO, as the dithering seems to have been designed for use with CRT phosphors. I really need to dig out my Dreamcast and throw it through my plasma. I bet that'd look nice ....
 
No @Reggy72, me and others are talking about the real life visual impacts of SC (and others games like ShenMue, Ferrari F355 and ToyCommander :love:) versus many PS2 games on a real TV / monitor where the (unmatched :yep2:) high quality video produced by the DC (whether via RGB scart or VGA cable) was making a big and very often underrated difference.

But back in the day the difference was utterly obvious to me: image quality (and motion quality if we add SC animations) of many DC games > polygons and effects of many (not all obviously) PS2 games.
Well, then the question is, would the DC be able to do TTT without any downgrades and look better than the PS2 version because of better output quality? I think not.
Yeah if we are to get into the discussion of gameplay there are is another fighting game on DC at the time that was more innovative with its level design and the impact it has on the fighting mechanics.
Agreed
When it comesto how TTT and SC look in person at the time, I was always of the impression that TTT had better lighting and more polys on the characters. The character animations in Soul Calibur is what trumped everything for me. That felt like a true generational leap while TTT did not in that regard.
Well, TTT didnt even try to re-invent the traditional Tekken gameplay. TTT was Tekken 3 with a Tag mode (just with massively upgraded visuals on the PS2). SC on the other hand re invented Soul Edge/Blade and introduced a gameplay system like no other. We can say with absolute certainty that the arcade version of SC was above and beyond TTT on the arcades. Its animations where amazing before it even hit the Dreamcast which shows the tremendously amazing work that Namco did.

But since the DC version was upgraded visually and it was the first time many had their first experience with it, there is a false impression that it was DC's technological leap that introduced us to its amazing system and animations whereas it was just Namco's desire to make a better Soul Edge game
 
Agree with Nesh in some points...if the question is if DC have power to handle PS2 TTT 1:1, answer is no. I think DC can have a decent 128 bit version of TTT but downgraded in several areas, and may be upgraded in a fewer others or without any upgrade at all. In other hand, i think Tekken 4 or the PSP version of Tekken 5 could be handled by the Dreamcast with less downgrades , because those games are smartly developed than TTT and both display an apparent higher graphic quality using less polys per characters, and less quality textures here and there.Anyway i´d think that would be easier for the DC to handle decent ports of VF4, Mortal Kombat V Deadly Alliance or Soul Calibur 2 with fewer upgrades than any hypothetical port of the PS2 Tekken´s.
 
Given the amount of memory you could pretty much only use for textures on the DC, and it's advanced VQ texture compression, it's pretty safe to say that any PS2 -> DC port could have had upgraded textures.

A lot of other stuff would probably have suffered though ...
 
Ok, would someone be so kind as to explain the way the DC and PS2 handle 3D graphics to me? I thought the SH4 handled all the T&L and geometry while the PowerVR basically textured it? The PowerVR actually handled T&L data from the SH4 to build geometry on it's own?

Am I still correct to assume that on the PS2 the EE handled T&L and geometry before sending it to the GS? I'm starting to doubt everything I believe in :???:
 
Ok, would someone be so kind as to explain the way the DC and PS2 handle 3D graphics to me? I thought the SH4 handled all the T&L and geometry while the PowerVR basically textured it? The PowerVR actually handled T&L data from the SH4 to build geometry on it's own?
No. On DC & Naomi 1, the SH4 did the geometry, i.e. transformations, per vertex lighting calcs, near plane Z-clipping, and projection. CLX2 (The PowerVR part) did tiling (AKA binning), polygon filling /Z testing and texturing.

On Naomi 2, the geometry was largely offloaded to the Elan processor, which then fed a pair of CLX2s.
 
OK, so I was effectively right. I keep seeing numbers posted on poly rates for the CLX2, and I'm thinking "the GPU didn't handle that stuff".
 
The Dreamcast's main CPU is a two-way 360 MIPSsuperscalar Hitachi SH-432-bitRISC[136] clocked at 200 MHz with an 8 Kbyteinstruction cache and 16 Kbyte data cache and a 128-bit graphics-oriented floating-point unit delivering 1.4 GFLOPS.[36] Its 100 MHz NEC PowerVR2 rendering engine, integrated with the system's ASIC, is capable of drawing more than 3 million polygons per second[40] and of deferred shading.[36] Graphics hardware effects includetrilinear filtering, gouraud shading, z-buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, per-pixel translucency sortingand bump mapping.[36][40] The system can output approximately 16.77 million colorssimultaneously and displays interlaced or progressive scan video at 640 × 480 video resolution.[40]Its 67 MHz Yamaha AICA[137] sound processor, with a 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU core, can generate 64 voices with PCM or ADPCM, providing ten times the performance of the Saturn's sound system.[36] The Dreamcast has 16 MB main RAM, along with an additional 8 MB of RAM for graphic textures and 2 MB of RAM for sound.[36][40] The system reads media using a 12x speed Yamaha GD-ROM Drive.[40] In addition to Windows CE, the Dreamcast supports several Sega andmiddlewareapplication programming interfaces

Sorry for the double post, but to clarifiy, this is what confused me.
 
Its 100 MHz NEC PowerVR2 rendering engine, integrated with the system's ASIC, is capable of drawing more than 3 million polygons per second[40]

Well, that is true. Although other limitations may come in to play, here it's probably a matter of dividing the CLX's 100Mhz clock by the number of clock cycles it takes to perform the "set up" for a triangle**. Having said that, the 'set up' is performed again for each tile a triangle crosses, but as the tiles are 32x32, this should not be a big issue.


**The figure for which I can't remember but I'd guestimate it's probably somewhere between 10 and 20 clock cycles.
 
Those shots are IMPRESSIVE!!! I always have been jaw dropped by the old Le Mans...

I don´t know nothing about develep games, but...there aren´t possibilities to someone to mod this and turn it to a newer game for Dreamcast? I mean...just wondering how a Sega GT would look with the Le Mans engine, instead of it´s mediocre original graphic engine meant to beat the PSX GT, but clearly not conceived to compete against real 6th gen racers, especially in the future rival consoles like PS2.

Although Le Mans DC version was impressive, there are some flaws about it's graphics engine so the idea that Sega could have made a Sega GT isn't well explored.

My personal ignorant opinion from havingm.bbought Japanese DC magazines in late 90s on Sega GT's visuals is and was that Sega must have had the goal to offer an online mode thereby limiting the graphical engine and pushing of the technology back then to gain an advantage over Sony who didn't eventually seriously purse online mode because of it's cost added and added complexity and need of more tech power and ram and bandwith.
 
A separate object.

Zm3hRoE.jpg





Enjoy.

IQXa0Jh.jpg


CMkEL5y.jpg






The first version of Dead or Alive 2 for the ps2 features the same low poly character, later Tecmo released Dead or alive Hardcore with even more content than the Dc limited edition.

The game on the ps2 runs at very low resolution and the texture quality took a huge downgrade, but it's worth playing it due to the extra content.

I'd like to take a look at Dead or alive 2 ultimate for Xbox if anyone know some tools to dig into the game please let me know :)

Yes, I am a big Dead or alive series fan. :cool:

Just wondering, mind if you could DM or send me the file to the Dreamcast Nightmare model in OBJ or 3ds Format? Thanks.
 
There is also a leaked Half Life DC version ;)

That would be an interesting analysis if we could compare with the PC version.

Me and a friend tried it. It played and looked great on the DC. For some reason though we couldnt change weapons either because of a bug or we didnt figure out the controls.

I am eager to see polygon models of VF4 PS2 and the Naomi 2 version

I have played the DC version it was interesting but there are lot of bugs and the framerate is terrible
 
Back
Top