Questions about Sega Saturn

[function]

Saturn doesn't actually have a 512 width output mode, IMO a major design flaw seeing as how the VDP1 framebuffers must be powers of 2. For high resolution you could use 640 or 704 width.

VF2 and other high resolution fighting games used 1024x256 VDP1 framebuffers.

There were PS1 fighting games that had widths of 512 and 640. No 704 though, 640 was PS1's maximum horizontal resolution.

Yeah, I was talking about the VDP1 frame buffer resolutions. Now you mention it, is is indeed a major design flaw that you can't match framebuffer resolution and output resolution. I often thought Saturn games had a kind of point sampled look to them, and I guess that's why ...

So I was off on VF2s resolution then! 1024 x 256 is indeed a really high resolution, but unless VDP2 or the output processor could "supersample", I suppose, during output some of that work would have been wasted. I could have sworn at the time that while Last Bronx was indeed higher res than the 256 x 224/256 FV and Megamix, that it looked lower res than VF2.

Do you think it could have been using a 512 x 256 framebuffer on VDP1?

 

[Exophase]

Yeah, I was talking about the VDP1 frame buffer resolutions. Now you mention it, is is indeed a major design flaw that you can't match framebuffer resolution and output resolution. I often thought Saturn games had a kind of point sampled look to them, and I guess that's why ...

I have to double check with people who understand VDP2 better than I do, but I don't think the sprite layer (the VDP1 framebuffer) can be scaled by the VDP2.

That aside, it looks like the VDP1 framebuffer resolution is tightly coupled to the screen mode anyway, where 512 wide framebuffers are used for 320/352 wide TV modes and 1024 wide framebuffers for 640/704 modes. So you can't use the 512 wide framebuffer in 640/704 mode, even if you're willing to not show polygons on part of the screen (and I don't think you can move the framebuffer layer around either)

You can vary where in the framebuffer RAM that the sprite layer is read from, which allows for some minor effects, but for the most part the framebuffer RAM will be at least 35.5% wasted.

So I was off on VF2s resolution then! 1024 x 256 is indeed a really high resolution, but unless VDP2 or the output processor could "supersample", I suppose, during output some of that work would have been wasted. I could have sworn at the time that while Last Bronx was indeed higher res than the 256 x 224/256 FV and Megamix, that it looked lower res than VF2.

The framebuffer is 1024x256 but it's not rendering 1024x256 worth of pixels.

 

[function]

I have to double check with people who understand VDP2 better than I do, but I don't think the sprite layer (the VDP1 framebuffer) can be scaled by the VDP2.

That aside, it looks like the VDP1 framebuffer resolution is tightly coupled to the screen mode anyway, where 512 wide framebuffers are used for 320/352 wide TV modes and 1024 wide framebuffers for 640/704 modes. So you can't use the 512 wide framebuffer in 640/704 mode, even if you're willing to not show polygons on part of the screen (and I don't think you can move the framebuffer layer around either)

You can vary where in the framebuffer RAM that the sprite layer is read from, which allows for some minor effects, but for the most part the framebuffer RAM will be at least 35.5% wasted.

Ouch! Actually, I think one of the reasons Sega went in for full screen optimisation on Saturn was supposedly because they normally have video memory to spare to increase the resolution. First PAL optimised game was Streets of Rage 2 on Megadrive, iirc, where they increase the number of background tiles drawn vertically. On Saturn they started doing aspect ratio corrected and sometimes speed corrected games (though sometimes through frameskipping). It was an amazing step up in experience for console gamers. Well ... for the seven of us that owned Saturns.

With the "point sampled" look I was thinking about games like Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, etc. There was something about the pixel edges that just seemed like it wasn't stable enough. But then again, not a lot on the Saturn seemed stable, so I may be tryingt to apply modern understanding to an imperfectly remembered past.

I need to dig my Saturns out and see if the drives in them still work ...

The framebuffer is 1024x256 but it's not rendering 1024x256 worth of pixels.

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Pedrohf]

Hi there.

Its my first post on this forum, but I follow the discussions for 4 years now. Im not a programmer, my only experience developing games, was back in the high school, tech demos for the mighty TI-83

Im from Portugal, and SEGA was big there. Until 1998, Saturn outsold the PS1 by a big margin here. Actually, Sega was so big here, that non-gamers didn't used the "console" name to refer to a console, but "a Sega".

The main reason given by Sega of Japan to reject the MIPS (N64) proposal, was that the die size at the time was too big to manufacture with good rates.
I think that the Sega Saturn was doomed from the start.. even with a completely different chipset, Sega was hurt bad by the 32x fiasco, poor politics and arrogance from SoJ.

Sega of America had a deal with Sony to develop a joint 32-bit system, but that was scraped by SoJ..

Anyway, back to topic..

I don't see with Sega used a SH-1 as a CD controller.. Can anyone clarify, if such a powerful/ costly chip was used?

Did any game used the SCU at full potential? I've read somewhere, that Sega advised that using the SCU, a big performance gain was expected.. But they also mentioned that a script that takes about 1,5h to write on SH-2, would take about a day and half using the SCU!

Most of the VDP2 are awas a waste of silicon.. A very nice chip, but not useful for the 3D era.. They should had used all that power, to improve the VDP1.

Greetings, Pedro

 

[Pedrohf]

There are a couple of games that would be impossible to render with such quality (textures) and effects.

Sonic Jam, with beautiful textures, no pop-up at all (except sprites), and huge 3d view.. Very good use of the VDP2 to render the flat floor, coupled with very wise use of polygons to render 3d levels/ river. It would be possible on the other consoles, but with much lower texture res, and some pop-up.
Last Bronx, with is amazing VDP2 solution.
Daytona USA CEE
Tomb Raider Japanese version was actually better than the PS1 version.

 

[Exophase]

I don't see with Sega used a SH-1 as a CD controller.. Can anyone clarify, if such a powerful/ costly chip was used?

It did have an SH1. In fact, the SH1 was utilized in a recently discovered exploit:

http://hackaday.com/2016/07/11/cracking-the-sega-saturn-after-20-years/

The SH1 is also used by the MPEG add-on card, that could be why they used such a relatively powerful CPU.

Did any game used the SCU at full potential? I've read somewhere, that Sega advised that using the SCU, a big performance gain was expected.. But they also mentioned that a script that takes about 1,5h to write on SH-2, would take about a day and half using the SCU!

I know there are some games that use it, but I don't really know what for...

I doubt you could really get that much use out of it because it has such limited RAM and isn't really good at anything outside of MAC operations. You could stream vertexes to it for camera transformation but you'd probably still need the CPU to perform perspective division, clipping tests, sorting, VDP1 command creation, etc. You wouldn't really save that much.

Most of the VDP2 are awas a waste of silicon.. A very nice chip, but not useful for the 3D era.. They should had used all that power, to improve the VDP1.

I'd say I agree, but I also think VDP1 was kind of fundamentally flawed for 3D graphics.

A PS1 design that was scaled up to spent as much die area and RAM as Saturn did on VDP1 + VDP2 would have probably been competitive in 2D and would have totally blown it away in 3D.

 

[Grall]

Interesting to see the mentioning of an ancient arcade game, and MAME, pop up in this thread. Must be close to ten years since I bothered much with MAME; not to hijack this thread or anything, but does anyone know of where to go to get ahold of a decent-sized ROM repository? (PM:ing me maybe is good, to not clutter up the thread...) Thanks.

Now back to our originally scheduled programming!

 

[swaaye]

One of the craziest things I learned about that generation, and it made me thing "Oh my god what if....". If you think about the shortcomings of Saturn because of it's exotic hardware configuration, and the restrictions placed on N64 hardware by Nintendo, not just the insistence of using carts, but requiring developers to use specific features that crippled performance, it makes you wonder what a Sega console with N64 hardware would have been like. Much faster than what we got with 64 because developers would have been free to tune the games to their preference, and without the space limits of carts. It isn't just that Sega could have had a system that matched N64, I think gamers might have even got more out of it in the long run.

I just ran across an interview with Tom Kalinske (former Sega USA CEO) about things from those days, including the SGI hardware demo they viewed before Saturn.
http://www.sega-16.com/2006/07/interview-tom-kalinske/

I remember Joe Miller and I were talking about this, and we had been contacted by Jim Clark, the founder of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), who called us up one day and said that he had just bought a company called MIPS Inc. which had been working on some things with some great R&D people, and it just so happened that they came up with a chip that they thought would be great for a video game console. We told them that in the U.S., we don’t really design consoles; we do the software, but it sounded interesting and we would come over and take a look at it. We were quite impressed, and we called up Japan and told them to send over the hardware team because these guys really had something cool. So the team arrived, and the senior VP of hardware design arrived, and when they reviewed what SGI had developed, they gave no reaction whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, they basically said that it was kind of interesting, but the chip was too big (in manufacturing terms), the throw-off rate would be too high, and they had lots of little technical things that they didn’t like: the audio wasn’t good enough; the frame rate wasn’t quite good enough, as well as some other issues.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I’m not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn’t good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren’t the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

 

[see colon]

Continuing with what my mate told me, the 3rd party games that were inherently better on Saturn:

Duke Nukem
The amazing brilliance of the Quake port which is even superior compared to the N64 version
Alien Trilogy
Dead or Alive..

Then he told me about the STV arcade machine, which is a Saturn. It had games like Die Hard Arcade.

He also told me that you could count with the fingers of one hand the games on Saturn where it shone at 3D, because compared to the PSX version they were normally more crude and had worse framerate and a resolution which was puke-worthy pain nausea and revulsion inducing.

But then you saw running on it a game like Panzer Dragoon, with distortion effects, or a Last Bronx that in some stages even had texture softening -how is it called the effect of softening textures?- and you wondered how it was effin' possible.

(that's more or less literally what he told me)

Regarding Duke and Quake.... Those ran on a different engine than their PC counterparts, and that engine ran better on Playstation. Compare the Powerslave versions for those consoles and you'll see better framerates, better textures and less blocky lighting.

Alien Trilogy? Better in every way on Playstation. If you watch some side by side Youtube videos the Saturn version holds up well, and it is a fairly decent port, but it is worse by pretty much every metric there is. Sometimes on Youtube it looks like it looks better, but really the textures are lower color depth with more contrast, and with youtube compression it apears that the game has better detail. That's not the case in real life. Plus, it runs better on Playstation and the FMV is better as well.

Dead or Alive is pretty much 2 different games. The Saturn version is very much like the Saturn VF2 - a mostly intact arcade port with a high resolution and framerate but simplified backgrounds. Playstation DOA has enhanced lighting and effects, and is a technical showcase in many ways. On a "how powerful is a system" meter, the Playstation wins here, even if I prefer the Saturn version because of it's more authentic arcade visuals and the controller layout.

Die Hard Arcade is a fun game that doesn't look very good. There aren't any impressive lighting effects or complex geometry in that game. Look at 3D beat 'em ups like Fighting Force (not as fun) on PSx. Last Bronx? Dead or Alive is just as impressive on Saturn, and compare it to Soul Edge or Tekken 3 and you'll see that Saturn wasn't the place for the prettiest 3D fighters. Also, before someone brings up Final Fight Revenge (which uses the 4MB RAM cart, BTW) or D-XHird - Those games aren't very good looking.

Panzer Dragoon (as a series) is probably the best example, because in it's prettiest scenes makes good use of VDP2. Most of the game is really just great art direction, though. Again, there isn't anything really impressive from a tech perspective that makes PD look good.

If you are going to compare exclusives, look at what are the best looking games per genre and you are going to have a hard time finding Saturn games that take the top spots. Find a racing game that looks better than Gran Turismo 2, for example. The only place where Saturn has a definitive lead would be a 2D fighter that uses the RAM cart.

 

[tuna]

Panzer Dragoon (as a series) is probably the best example, because in it's prettiest scenes makes good use of VDP2. Most of the game is really just great art direction, though. Again, there isn't anything really impressive from a tech perspective that makes PD look good.

Using VPD2 in parallel with the other processors is impressive "from a tech perspective".

 

[see colon]

Using VPD2 in parallel with the other processors is impressive "from a tech perspective".

I wouldn't say it is, but if you think it is who am I to to tell you your opinion is wrong. Realistically, what VDP2 is doing in Panzer Dragoon is exactly the same thing the racing surface in Super Mario Kart is. The difference is that Saturn has a dedicated video processor to do only that, and using is is a good use of resources but it never allowed Saturn to make a game that was possible on PSx or N64.

 

[tuna]

I am actually unsure whether Panzer Dragoon (1) actually uses VDP2. It looks pretty funky and not like Zwei and Azel.

Also, in Azel (Saga) it seems like VDP2 is used for a lot of cool effects very unlike SNES Mario Kart. These show up pretty late in the game though, so you might have missed them.

 

[Nesh]

There are a couple of games that would be impossible to render with such quality (textures) and effects.

Sonic Jam, with beautiful textures, no pop-up at all (except sprites), and huge 3d view.. Very good use of the VDP2 to render the flat floor, coupled with very wise use of polygons to render 3d levels/ river. It would be possible on the other consoles, but with much lower texture res, and some pop-up.

Is there a way you can prove this? Sonic Jam had a very limited 3D environment. Compare it to Soul Reaver which was a seamless huge 3D fully detailed world and Sonic Jam doesnt look all that impressive all of the sudden.

Last Bronx, with is amazing VDP2 solution.

But still bland looking

Daytona USA CEE

Looked mediocre next to Wipeout and Ridge Racer

Tomb Raider Japanese version was actually better than the PS1 version.

In what ways was it better?

 

[function]

I wouldn't say it is, but if you think it is who am I to to tell you your opinion is wrong. Realistically, what VDP2 is doing in Panzer Dragoon is exactly the same thing the racing surface in Super Mario Kart is. The difference is that Saturn has a dedicated video processor to do only that, and using is is a good use of resources but it never allowed Saturn to make a game that was possible on PSx or N64.

VDP2 could do three axis rotation of two high resolution infinite planes (or finite if you wanted), and could respond to a transparency flag allowing it to overdraw VDP1 generated content transparently or be occluded by VDP1 generated content. IIRC it could also do some maths on the tile data, like altering values based on plane angle (for example with water effects).

It's far in advance of what Mario Kart did, though it comes from the same school of thought.

VDP2 suited Panzer Zwei well due to the floor/ground/water and roof/cloud/sky nature of such a game. Back in April 1996 I thought Panzer Zwei was the most impressive console game I'd ever played outside of Sega's arcade machines.

I am actually unsure whether Panzer Dragoon (1) actually uses VDP2. It looks pretty funky and not like Zwei and Azel.

Also, in Azel (Saga) it seems like VDP2 is used for a lot of cool effects very unlike SNES Mario Kart. These show up pretty late in the game though, so you might have missed them.

Yeah, Panzer Ein (lol) does use VDP2, thought not with the abandon and creativity that Zwei and Saga did. The 'Omake' section of Zwei in Pandras (!) box shows an early version of Zwei running on something that looks much closer to the first games engine, at a lower frame rate, with shorter draw distance and the original game's 3D sight. Team Andromeda improved what their engine could do massively, very quickly.

High quality surface that stretched out to the horizon without clipping, popping, or needing to be fogged in close up really added to the aesthetic of the games. Which is not to say that it offered gameplay the PS1 couldn't provide, or that the PS1 could have done an equally (or more) impressive game differently.

 

[see colon]

I am actually unsure whether Panzer Dragoon (1) actually uses VDP2. It looks pretty funky and not like Zwei and Azel.

Also, in Azel (Saga) it seems like VDP2 is used for a lot of cool effects very unlike SNES Mario Kart. These show up pretty late in the game though, so you might have missed them.

Umm... yeah. Totally saw the end of PDS. Panzer Dragoon uses VDP2 for the water in stage 1, and for most of the floors of most of the levels. Just like PD2 does. But that's what VDP2 does. Backgrounds and scroll planes. Again, if anyone finds it impressive from a tech perspective, that's great. But VDP2 never allowed Saturn to pull off any miracle visual effects that put it in any way above PSx or N64.

Actually, if you are going to pick a game that really benefited from VDP2, it's probably Mechwarrior 2. If you compare the PSx and Saturn versions, Saturn used VDP2 for the base ground and sky, and VDP1 primatives for everything else. That means that the base ground was perspective correct, and the sky had a scrolling layer of clouds that looked nice. Lighting was the typical low quality gouraud shading seen in other Saturn games, and most of the objects in the world, plus the mech frame visible from the cockpit were less detailed than the PS1 port, but overall, since most of the game is a flat world, the Saturn port holds up nicely. But still, we aren't talking about the best looking PSx game here, so having a game achieve relative parity because of effective use of VDP2 is, again, proper use of a systems resources. It didn't allow Saturn to beat PSx by any stretch.

 

[function]

I don't think the "tech" is on paper nearly as impressive as the actual overall visual impact of filling the whole screen with high quality, perspective correct, detailed, smoothly animated, sometimes transparent planes and backgrounds. For some games this was a big advantage - the Panzer Dragoon games are amazing for the time - but for games where you need lots of geometry it doesn't do a right lot of good.

VDP2 allowed the Saturn to present certain types of moving images that the PS1 and N64 couldn't exactly match. Likewise, the PS1 and the N64 could present moving images that the Saturn couldn't exactly match. Overall, history was clearly leaning towards geometry, but that doesn't mean that VDP2 wasn't good at what it did or that certain approaches couldn't create results that were not objectively worse.

I had Mechwarrior Two. It was a great game. The delivery of the game's art and overall experience wasn't built around VDP2 though. It doesn't rank as showcase title, in my opinion.

 

[Grall]

VDP2 could do three axis rotation of two high resolution infinite planes

SNES could do X and Y rotation... Saturn could also do proper Z rotation? SNES had to fake Z rotation by using vertical scrolling of individual columns of the character map, and it didn't look correct. (Example of this effect includes airship travel in FFVI, there may be others as well.)

I don't think the "tech" is on paper nearly as impressive as the actual overall visual impact of filling the whole screen with high quality, perspective correct, detailed, smoothly animated, sometimes transparent planes and backgrounds.

It was a hardwired feature though; not really particularly impressive when twiddling a few knobs enabled the effect. Like SNES mode 7, the graphics chip just did it as part of its base feature set. Of course, it could be used effectively in some situations, but it always had the downside of being absolutely flat, for starters. Real ground rarely, if ever, actually looks that way.

 

[Exophase]

SNES could do X and Y rotation... Saturn could also do proper Z rotation? SNES had to fake Z rotation by using vertical scrolling of individual columns of the character map, and it didn't look correct. (Example of this effect includes airship travel in FFVI, there may be others as well.)

It couldn't do Z axis rotation with correct perspective projection. Per-scanline the coordinate calculation is affine unless you use the option to replace some of the parameters with per-pixel LUTs.

 

[function]

SNES could do X and Y rotation... Saturn could also do proper Z rotation? SNES had to fake Z rotation by using vertical scrolling of individual columns of the character map, and it didn't look correct. (Example of this effect includes airship travel in FFVI, there may be others as well.)

Yes, it had both two axis and three axis rotation modes. The Panzer games made extensive use of the three axis rotation mode.

It was a hardwired feature though; not really particularly impressive when twiddling a few knobs enabled the effect. Like SNES mode 7, the graphics chip just did it as part of its base feature set. Of course, it could be used effectively in some situations, but it always had the downside of being absolutely flat, for starters. Real ground rarely, if ever, actually looks that way.

VDP2 was actually a lot more complicated than people think and far far more than just a "mode 7 chip". It could perform various operations on the VDP1 buffer - including storing, manipulating and projecting VDP1 rendering passes - in addition to having several modes of operation for it's own rendering. According to the Yabause wiki:

"Unlike the VDP1 where its mainly used for drawing sprites and polygons, the VDP2 is used for pretty much everything else, whether it be drawing background screens, setting priority settings, or even palettes. And because of that, it is also much more difficult to use compared to the VDP1."

http://wiki.yabause.org/index.php5?title=VDP2

And while its features may be hard wired, so were triangle rasterization and blend modes. So nothing they were used for was impressive either, right.

Surfaces being completely flat was one of the reasons that VDP2 worked so well with the Panzer games: most of the time you were a long way off the surface! Athlete Kings was a great, hi-res (on VDP2) game, but there as you say an uncannily flat track took away somewhat from the amount of surface detail offered ...

Actually, I'm pretty sure you could hack in some kind of rudimentary bump mapping effect for directional light using VDP2. I wonder if anyone ever tried it ...

 

[Exophase]

VDP2 was actually a lot more complicated than people think and far far more than just a "mode 7 chip". It could perform various operations on the VDP1 buffer - including storing, manipulating and projecting VDP1 rendering passes - in addition to having several modes of operation for it's own rendering.

I'm pretty sure VDP2 doesn't do anything with the VDP1 framebuffer outside of display it straight as a layer with its own priority and color blending settings (like the other VDP2 layers). I'd say you're kind of overstating VDP2 in general. It really is an evolution of previous console 2D hardware, minus the sprite part. It has a lot of complex settings for priority and inter-layer blending and the like but not stuff like what you're saying.

I would consider the VDP2's greatest strength/asset to the system to not be any of the rendering or effects but the way the tiling worked. The 8x8 (or 16x16) tiling with individual palettes and flip/mirror could be considered a sort of texture compression. This in conjunction with the rotation plane is what really enabled the large high resolution maps seen in games like Athlete Kings.

But the big weakness of the VDP2 rotation planes, like with so much else on Saturn, is that you can't apply lighting/shading to it. At least not in a very reasonable way.