Sega_Model_4
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Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn
- Thread starter xaeroxcore
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xaeroxcore
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Suddenly the DC looks like the most underutilized and underrated console.
Just makes you wonder how DC and PS2 would look like if both could be utilized to their fullest with the knowledge and tools available today. The DC and the Saturn get crazy homebrew projects. PS1, PS2, GameCube, XBOX have barely anything.
Just makes you wonder how DC and PS2 would look like if both could be utilized to their fullest with the knowledge and tools available today. The DC and the Saturn get crazy homebrew projects. PS1, PS2, GameCube, XBOX have barely anything.
Sega_Model_4
Newcomer
These other consoles were properly used in their lifetimes. DC and Saturn had short lives and much less attention from developers.
Surely we can say the other consoles were better utilized. Considering when the DC was released and how much more straightforward it's HW was compared to PS2, you would have thought it that we knew it's limitations better.
The recent homebrew show a completely different picture. Unexpected one. We don't know how much of that is due to a)better modern tools and technical knowledge and b) how much of that is due to the untapped power considering the available knowledge of that time
Would developers have managed to create such impressive feats if the DC lived fully with the knowledge of the time?
We see handful of people porting and creating impressive tech demos on their spare time that surpass whatever whole software houses and Sega themselves could pull out back then.
So there is also the question how much could the PS2 be pushed with the knowledge and technology of today?
Absolutely. There is knowledge and paradigms that could be brought to bear on PS2 for different results. It'd be wrong to think the best PS2 achieved in its lifetime is the best it could achieve for all time. And TBH the only people wanting to use current trends as 'this proves DC was better' are fanboys warring. The actual interest here is 1) DC was far more capable than it appeared at the time, and the hardware design had some great features. 2) All hardware had room to grow and still does; the limits of these retro consoles haven't been reached yet.
I think the short lifespan of the DC combined with it's very advanced feature set make the differences between "then" and "now" particularly stark. Another factor is that game development changed particularly rapidly over the 3~5 years following the DC's early death.
Streaming for storage, which the DC was actually pretty well equipped for, became more and more of a factor and the tools and techniques for developing assets improved radically. 3DS Max exploded in popularity and capability over this period, and Z-Brush made creating amazing looking normal mapped low poly assets very attainable.
What's so great about DC GTA3 that @EsppiraK is posting is that it's using assets and streaming requirements from a contemporary game (actually even a little more detailed than the PS2 version) and it's running them using an SDK that is still, afaik, missing a couple of features that official Sega SDKs had around 2001. It's a handful of passionate and really talented indie developers applying what was known about the hardware by talented developers back in the day to a software problem (GTA 3) that only came around after the DC was dead.
This is not to say that the PS2 didn't also have more gas in the tank to accommodate further evolution and growth. For example, with it's insane fillrate and massive vector processing power it could probably have begun to move into some "pixel shader" like areas. There's always the chance that some new way of using old hardware can dreamt up!
This Megadrive demo was by a team that found a couple of new tricks in old machines toolbox. All without a framebuffer! And this was 29 years after the Megadrive came out!
Streaming for storage, which the DC was actually pretty well equipped for, became more and more of a factor and the tools and techniques for developing assets improved radically. 3DS Max exploded in popularity and capability over this period, and Z-Brush made creating amazing looking normal mapped low poly assets very attainable.
What's so great about DC GTA3 that @EsppiraK is posting is that it's using assets and streaming requirements from a contemporary game (actually even a little more detailed than the PS2 version) and it's running them using an SDK that is still, afaik, missing a couple of features that official Sega SDKs had around 2001. It's a handful of passionate and really talented indie developers applying what was known about the hardware by talented developers back in the day to a software problem (GTA 3) that only came around after the DC was dead.
This is not to say that the PS2 didn't also have more gas in the tank to accommodate further evolution and growth. For example, with it's insane fillrate and massive vector processing power it could probably have begun to move into some "pixel shader" like areas. There's always the chance that some new way of using old hardware can dreamt up!
This Megadrive demo was by a team that found a couple of new tricks in old machines toolbox. All without a framebuffer! And this was 29 years after the Megadrive came out!
The games that were being developed at the time mattered as well. Most of the Dreamcast library, outside of the first party stuff of course, are PS1 ports. So they were somewhat limited by the lead platform as well. And I think that's why better looking titles for the system were exclusives. And maybe why some of the earlier titles are some of the nicer looking ones, because there were less exclusives and more ports.
I believe the DC wasnt exactly getting PS1 ports but rather the PC ports that were also designed for PS1. It was getting in other words the best versions of multiplatform games. But yes it is true that a lot of those werent pushing the console. A lot of these games were designed around mainstream hardware, whereas the DC could punch above mid specs
DC had some exclusive games that trully shined also from third parties. Sega exclusives were a mix of jaw dropping visuals and mediocre. Blue Stinger sucked. But Sonic Adventure in my eyes back then was like Toy Story in real time. Blazing 60fps in fully realized environments with high quality textures was something else. But curiously it lacked killer racing and fighting games developed by Sega that could impress as much as Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 did on the Saturn. Virtua Fighter 3 was outdated next to DOA2. Sega Rally 2 was no where as good looking as its arcade counterpart as it was handled by a third party that did a mediocre job at it. Other ganes like Headhunter wasnt particularly impressive either.
The PS2 despite being a pain to make games on, it was getting a lot more jaw dropping games much sooner in its lifespan. Tekken Tag and Ridge Racer V alone obliterated visually anything that came on the DC in the whole duration it lasted. A lot of games exhibited state of the art visual effects (like dynamic water and dynamic shadows) that were barely seen on the DC.
Putting aside the real capabilities of the hardware, the perceptual difference in quality was huge between the two consoles very very early into the PS2's lifespan with games like SSX, The Bouncer, Tekken Tag etc.
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