Questions about Sega Saturn

Jollyroger said:
Indeed. Some machines, usually the more complex ones, tend to reveal only after quite some time, as developers find interesting ways to use their hardware. This is the primary reason I personally prefer flexible, complex machines to powerful but narrowly focused ones. Of course this is very naive in the real world of games development as a business, but from a perspective of purely technical challenge and creativity in software development, I believe that nothing beats the pleasure of working on those machines. Clearly games have to be written towards the strengths of those systems, but then they can be truly amazing. The more successful a platform is and generally the more the developers find ways (over time) to exploit distinctive effects, features, that sometimes are beyond what those systems designers had in mind...
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There is also a similar case on PS2. Despite being the most successful console of its generation, even that had untapped potential and was not used fully as intended if what was stated in the post below is true
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1958912/
And the question is, can we still hope that we will see the Saturn or any other similar case shine through the homebrew efforts of a programming enthusiast/hobbyist?
I really wish, but probably that's just wishful thinking
 
All consoles were limited by the tools and development environment of their time. Just look what enthusiasts did with homebrew games for the atari 2600. It's downright unbelivable.
 
Is it fair to say what Sega Saturn potential wasn't used even by 50%? Is it possible if that potential was used at some 90-95% Sega Saturn could show bette graphics than PS1? Maybe also with expansion like 4 MB RAM cartridge.
 
Liandry said:
Is it fair to say what Sega Saturn potential wasn't used even by 50%? Is it possible if that potential was used at some 90-95% Sega Saturn could show bette graphics than PS1? Maybe also with expansion like 4 MB RAM cartridge.
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I don't think you can measure it like that. But I'd guess that shenmue was close to the best the system could do.
 
dogen said:
I mean the saturn version of shenmue. There was a video of it included with the xbox version of shenmue 2.

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I think that even with that video is hard to tell how good the demo really was in real gameplay, sure there are complex scenes and really good prebaked lights but the framerate is horrible really horrible when there are gameplay scenes, if we are going to compare to psx the mor ecloser thing to the facial expression is vagrant story and look and run way better(except for the blob shadows it uses)

sorry cant link videos
 
dogen said:
I mean the saturn version of shenmue. There was a video of it included with the xbox version of shenmue 2.

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It does seem to exhibit the same graphic issues from other games. I.e flat shaded or lack thereof, and a faint white highlight instead of light sources affecting polygons.
Also do I see lots of clipping?
Framerate is super bad too. Panzer Dragoon Saga is a much better example.
 
Nesh said:
It does seem to exhibit the same graphic issues from other games. I.e flat shaded or lack thereof, and a faint white highlight instead of light sources affecting polygons.
Also do I see lots of clipping?
Framerate is super bad too. Panzer Dragoon Saga is a much better example.
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Well, it was still a long way from releasing. The frame rate most likely would have been better.
 
It's hard to quantify how much has been left untapped. Certainly the system could not push twice as many polygons as Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Saga do... My point is that with enough time (and market positioning) there may have been games that used more of what the machine was good at, all at once.
There are some specific hardware design characteristics/choices/limitations that prevent it from besting the PS1 in games that only use 100% polygonal environments, I am sure we could list a few here if folks are interested, but I think they are all already well known...
 
bunge said:
Let's just face it. If devs weren't so damn lazy we'd see max potential from all games.
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I politely disagree; the timescales set by a business to produce a game hardly ever allow enough time for experimentation and exploitation of a platform, unless a title has a significant development budget, and even then it depends on how well a game "fits" a machine, or how creative developers can get to exploit it...
 
Well, if those lazy devs didn't so selfishly insist on having a family, social life, a house, food, sleep, or a salary, those time constraints would not be so tight now would they?
 
Jollyroger said:
I politely disagree; the timescales set by a business to produce a game hardly ever allow enough time for experimentation and exploitation of a platform, unless a title has a significant development budget, and even then it depends on how well a game "fits" a machine, or how creative developers can get to exploit it...
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He was kidding.
 
Argh, I meant bunge's post. Can't messages be edited like in other BB systems?

I have to say though, I have heard many times that argument being used seriously...
 
Jollyroger said:
Argh, I meant bunge's post. Can't messages be edited like in other BB systems?

I have to say though, I have heard many times that argument being used seriously...
Click to expand...

Sorry. About once a year I sarcastically pull out the "lazy dev" argument to help keep things light. Didn't mean for you to take it seriously.
 
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