Why are handhelds so.......weak?
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The Saturn's 704x576 VF2 hi-res mode is also used in Decathlete, one of the system's best looking games. Incomprehensibly, Decathlete actually looks superior to that Sydney 2000 Olympics game (by Infogrames maybe?) that came out on PS2 and DC. I didn't quite believe such a thing was possible until I re-hooked up my Saturn to compare them.
The Saturn has a broad range of impressive titles, owing to its uniqueness and the variety of approaches devs took when SEGA was stingy with uniform tools/libraries. Pure 2D games like many of Capcom's, a game like Princess Maker, and the pastel-beauty Astal are still gorgeous. A game like Grandia (and Dark Savior for brute geometry), which mixes a little 2D with robust 3D environments, shows off scenes with high detail and bares an unexpected degree of resemblance to its next-gen sequel. For 3D, Lobotomy's FPS engine impresses for smoothness and lighting in Power Slave, Duke Nukem 3D (fully 3D engine unlike the PC original), and Quake. The aforementioned Decathlete and Virtua Fighter 2 are eye-popping with their extreme res, Last Bronx can look good sometimes, and Dead or Alive is proficient. NiGHTS dispenses its eye candy with a sugar-coated layer of the magical, incomparable special effects. And perhaps most impressive of all - Virtua Cop 2's stunning 3D world, which stands up to today's games more than any last-gen game has a right to.
But even with all of the developers and all of those years they spent trying to reach the ceiling of performance for the 32/64-bit machines (and seemingly leveling-off in the last couple of software gens on PSone), Saturn Shenmue forces us to redefine those perceived limits.
The Saturn has a broad range of impressive titles, owing to its uniqueness and the variety of approaches devs took when SEGA was stingy with uniform tools/libraries. Pure 2D games like many of Capcom's, a game like Princess Maker, and the pastel-beauty Astal are still gorgeous. A game like Grandia (and Dark Savior for brute geometry), which mixes a little 2D with robust 3D environments, shows off scenes with high detail and bares an unexpected degree of resemblance to its next-gen sequel. For 3D, Lobotomy's FPS engine impresses for smoothness and lighting in Power Slave, Duke Nukem 3D (fully 3D engine unlike the PC original), and Quake. The aforementioned Decathlete and Virtua Fighter 2 are eye-popping with their extreme res, Last Bronx can look good sometimes, and Dead or Alive is proficient. NiGHTS dispenses its eye candy with a sugar-coated layer of the magical, incomparable special effects. And perhaps most impressive of all - Virtua Cop 2's stunning 3D world, which stands up to today's games more than any last-gen game has a right to.
But even with all of the developers and all of those years they spent trying to reach the ceiling of performance for the 32/64-bit machines (and seemingly leveling-off in the last couple of software gens on PSone), Saturn Shenmue forces us to redefine those perceived limits.
Re: Definitely rose tinted hindsight
I never said that anything at all could look better than modern consoles.
It all depends what you're drawing.
I've never run a Saturn emulator in my life. I've seen a few screen shots though...
But anyway, it looks perspective correct to me. The clipping problem you mention (quads warping so all four vertices leave the viewport at the same time) actually distorts the entire texture perfectly within the quad.
Again, the visual comparison I'm talking about depends on the scene you're trying to draw. I'm not saying Saturn could run DOOM3 or anything like that =)
Saturn PAL conversions fuck up badly on NTSC consoles. =) In Duke Nukem 3D, for example, the HUD at the bottom of the screen... isn't. It's pushed off the bottom.
How is PS1's performance in 640x480? The only time I can think of seeing it, ever, is in FF8... and that's only for the startup credits.
I doubt Saturn would choke on GGX. How many sprites does it display at a time? How many background planes?
Crazyace said:
I never said that anything at all could look better than modern consoles.
It all depends what you're drawing.
I've never run a Saturn emulator in my life. I've seen a few screen shots though...
But anyway, it looks perspective correct to me. The clipping problem you mention (quads warping so all four vertices leave the viewport at the same time) actually distorts the entire texture perfectly within the quad.
Again, the visual comparison I'm talking about depends on the scene you're trying to draw. I'm not saying Saturn could run DOOM3 or anything like that =)
Saturn PAL conversions fuck up badly on NTSC consoles. =) In Duke Nukem 3D, for example, the HUD at the bottom of the screen... isn't. It's pushed off the bottom.
How is PS1's performance in 640x480? The only time I can think of seeing it, ever, is in FF8... and that's only for the startup credits.
I doubt Saturn would choke on GGX. How many sprites does it display at a time? How many background planes?
Shenmue saturn...
Very slow frame rate - doesn't really look any better than the Disney Atlantis game on PS1.
PS1, for 3D had a lot of advantages over Saturn that no amount of rose tinted spectacles could hide..
Dithering on gourard shading - effective 24 bit from 16 bit screen...
Extremely fast coprocessor for 3D transforms ( At 7-8 cycles per vertex peak throughput was pretty high, nearly 4-5 million verts/second )
Saturn had very slow division on the main CPUs ( and no divider on the DSP ) so an equivalent would be >30 cycles ( If pipelined then maybe 20 )
for the best cases. If both CPUs ran the transform the effective peak would increase - but the cost of supporting the transform would be more than the transform itself.
Astel is still pretty cool, in the same vein as Rayman.. and I tend to think of DOA on PS1 as being much better than the Saturn version - with superior lighting and shading even when compared with the model 2 arcade version. Virtua Cop 2 is probally my favorite Saturn game - it's a shame just how bad the version of HOTD was....
Very slow frame rate - doesn't really look any better than the Disney Atlantis game on PS1.
PS1, for 3D had a lot of advantages over Saturn that no amount of rose tinted spectacles could hide..
Dithering on gourard shading - effective 24 bit from 16 bit screen...
Extremely fast coprocessor for 3D transforms ( At 7-8 cycles per vertex peak throughput was pretty high, nearly 4-5 million verts/second )
Saturn had very slow division on the main CPUs ( and no divider on the DSP ) so an equivalent would be >30 cycles ( If pipelined then maybe 20 )
for the best cases. If both CPUs ran the transform the effective peak would increase - but the cost of supporting the transform would be more than the transform itself.
Astel is still pretty cool, in the same vein as Rayman.. and I tend to think of DOA on PS1 as being much better than the Saturn version - with superior lighting and shading even when compared with the model 2 arcade version. Virtua Cop 2 is probally my favorite Saturn game - it's a shame just how bad the version of HOTD was....
Reply for Tagrineth...
The Saturn shows incredibly bad distortion of front plane polys ( one's hitting the camera ). As the VDP draws polys as distorted sprites there is no easy way to move the texture coordinates in.. For 2D this isn't a problem as the 2d scissoring will kill the pixels, but for 3D clipping becomes more important.. ( Driving games suffer very badly from this.. )
The drop to 8bits for high res really hits the 3D fighters, where the engine choice became unlit ( straight textured models ) in highres, or lit gourard shaded models in lowres ( VF2 / FV )
PS1 was quite nice because the increase in horizontal resolution didn't often affect the rendering speed - There were many games that actually used an 'inbetween' resolution of 512 by 240/256 ( such as the F1 games ) and as long as the game could run at 50/60Hz the step from 640x240/256 to 640x480/512 was free..
The reason Saturn would choke on GGX is that the sprites are >256 colour 640x480 VGA res... and the hardware wouldn't handle it.. The PS1 would have difficulty ( and the lack of memory would make a real version really impractical... )
The Saturn shows incredibly bad distortion of front plane polys ( one's hitting the camera ). As the VDP draws polys as distorted sprites there is no easy way to move the texture coordinates in.. For 2D this isn't a problem as the 2d scissoring will kill the pixels, but for 3D clipping becomes more important.. ( Driving games suffer very badly from this.. )
The drop to 8bits for high res really hits the 3D fighters, where the engine choice became unlit ( straight textured models ) in highres, or lit gourard shaded models in lowres ( VF2 / FV )
PS1 was quite nice because the increase in horizontal resolution didn't often affect the rendering speed - There were many games that actually used an 'inbetween' resolution of 512 by 240/256 ( such as the F1 games ) and as long as the game could run at 50/60Hz the step from 640x240/256 to 640x480/512 was free..
The reason Saturn would choke on GGX is that the sprites are >256 colour 640x480 VGA res... and the hardware wouldn't handle it.. The PS1 would have difficulty ( and the lack of memory would make a real version really impractical... )
Re: Reply for Tagrineth...
Of course. Like I said - the quad distorts to hold all four vertices within the viewport (creating a really weird skew effect; the quad also detaches from its neighbours) until the whole thing can leave the screen.
It's extremely apparent in Duke Nukem 3D.
Yeah, true, but I still think VF2 looks great, even with the static lighting.
So PS1 has infinite fill rate? Cool.
The hardware would handle it great if you either A. palletised the sprites (not too hard, just extremely time consuming), or B. dropped the resolution.
Yes, the Saturn's lack of colour range in high-res is rather annoying. Not saying it isn't 8) But saying it would "choke" is a bit of an exaggeration - in its original form, it wouldn't run period, but with minor modifications, I'm sure it would run perfectly.
Crazyace said:
Of course. Like I said - the quad distorts to hold all four vertices within the viewport (creating a really weird skew effect; the quad also detaches from its neighbours) until the whole thing can leave the screen.
It's extremely apparent in Duke Nukem 3D.
Yeah, true, but I still think VF2 looks great, even with the static lighting.
So PS1 has infinite fill rate? Cool.
The hardware would handle it great if you either A. palletised the sprites (not too hard, just extremely time consuming), or B. dropped the resolution.
Yes, the Saturn's lack of colour range in high-res is rather annoying. Not saying it isn't 8) But saying it would "choke" is a bit of an exaggeration - in its original form, it wouldn't run period, but with minor modifications, I'm sure it would run perfectly.
could have been fixed..
If there had been more transform power then the front plane problem could have been fixed by subdividing the polys extensively... There's also a very strange consequence of the way that polys are drawn on Saturn (and 3D0 ) that means that smaller polys are actually way slower to draw than big polys.
VF2 was good models, but the background sucked big time - ( even at the time ) It helped that the arcade version didn't have any lighting either...
At the launch I was far more impressed to Toshinden graphically - especially the final stage inside a giant transparent torus..
It's not that PS1 has infinite fill rate - but the poly setup is pipelined with the rasterisation, so there is a lower bound where the time taken to rasterise is constant, rather than dependant on the pixel area. Also in interlaced mode the hardware would automatically draw only the odd or even lines...
Well, with minor changes ( dropping characters to 4 bit, and res to 320x240 ) it should be possible - but that would lose some of the graphical charm - ( almost back to the SNES streetfighter conversions.. )
If there had been more transform power then the front plane problem could have been fixed by subdividing the polys extensively... There's also a very strange consequence of the way that polys are drawn on Saturn (and 3D0 ) that means that smaller polys are actually way slower to draw than big polys.
VF2 was good models, but the background sucked big time - ( even at the time ) It helped that the arcade version didn't have any lighting either...
At the launch I was far more impressed to Toshinden graphically - especially the final stage inside a giant transparent torus..
It's not that PS1 has infinite fill rate - but the poly setup is pipelined with the rasterisation, so there is a lower bound where the time taken to rasterise is constant, rather than dependant on the pixel area. Also in interlaced mode the hardware would automatically draw only the odd or even lines...
Well, with minor changes ( dropping characters to 4 bit, and res to 320x240 ) it should be possible - but that would lose some of the graphical charm - ( almost back to the SNES streetfighter conversions.. )
Re: could have been fixed..
Creeeeeeeeeepy. Note to self, grab Toshinden. 8) Borrowed one of the original GB BAT games, very fun. 8)
I know, I was being silly 8) But that's really creepy. So what is PS1's max fill rate?
Of course. I never said it wouldn't lose some of its wow-factor... but saying Saturn would 'choke' on it is an exaggeration. If Saturn had a 16- or 24-bit 640x480 mode, I'm sure it would run beautifully.
Crazyace said:
Creeeeeeeeeepy. Note to self, grab Toshinden. 8) Borrowed one of the original GB BAT games, very fun. 8)
I know, I was being silly 8) But that's really creepy. So what is PS1's max fill rate?
Of course. I never said it wouldn't lose some of its wow-factor... but saying Saturn would 'choke' on it is an exaggeration. If Saturn had a 16- or 24-bit 640x480 mode, I'm sure it would run beautifully.
Crazyace:
The trade-off was well worth it, to say the least - Virtua Fighter 2, Dead or Alive, and Decathlete are three of the most striking games of the last generation with their incredible definition, smooth 60 fps, and sharp textures. The backgrounds in Virtua Fighter 2 look especially nice (the mountains in Wolf's stage are as clear as a photograph), and the textures on the characters (like the subtle pattern on Shun's pants) stand out. Decathlete is remarkable for the amount of geometry it pushes during the 1600m race... simultaneously, it shows the whole stadium when the camera pulls back together with eight (I think) fully-modeled runners filling all of the lanes. And it never slows down.
It's a shame Winter Heat, the follow-up, uses a different, lower-res engine (I think the programming may have been outsourced... Data East is listed in the credits, though I thought they had already went-under/been-acquired long before.)
The way you're interpretting specs here, Crazyace, gives me the feeling you believe PS games touch Model 2 game graphics in a visual comparison. If that's the case, we have polar viewpoints on the impact of IQ in rendering.
The textures are putrid in the conversion. I believe Psygnosis was the developer SEGA outsourced it to. They got the gameplay spot on, though, so it was still fun to play.
I never got the impression of a limited color palette from any of the super-res games; I guess I have the artists to thank for that. In fact, the games pulled it off so gracefully I would never have known was I not informed during a discussion with the Saturn programmer of the Ten Pin Alley conversion.
The trade-off was well worth it, to say the least - Virtua Fighter 2, Dead or Alive, and Decathlete are three of the most striking games of the last generation with their incredible definition, smooth 60 fps, and sharp textures. The backgrounds in Virtua Fighter 2 look especially nice (the mountains in Wolf's stage are as clear as a photograph), and the textures on the characters (like the subtle pattern on Shun's pants) stand out. Decathlete is remarkable for the amount of geometry it pushes during the 1600m race... simultaneously, it shows the whole stadium when the camera pulls back together with eight (I think) fully-modeled runners filling all of the lanes. And it never slows down.
It's a shame Winter Heat, the follow-up, uses a different, lower-res engine (I think the programming may have been outsourced... Data East is listed in the credits, though I thought they had already went-under/been-acquired long before.)
And by lowres, that's the equivalent of PlayStation's high-res here! It would be more apt to term Saturn's 704x576 as something like super-res and its 640x480 as high-res to make it directly comparable to PS terms.
The way you're interpretting specs here, Crazyace, gives me the feeling you believe PS games touch Model 2 game graphics in a visual comparison. If that's the case, we have polar viewpoints on the impact of IQ in rendering.
not really equal to model 2..
HOTD did dissappoint - it seemed at the time that PS1 gun games were getting better Horned Owl -> Time Crisis, yet Saturn gun games peaked at VC2 and then dropped heavily in quality..
As you said, good art direction helps, but it was probally more your expectations - as the Saturn versions matched the flat shaded unlit arcade originals, DOA in particular was improved a lot for PS1... and many people didn't like it as the look was 'different' from the model 2 arcade ( The flat/gourard argument was already in full swing between fans of Model 2 and System 20/22 arcade titles ... )
Most Saturn titles often had bright arcadey colour pallette because of the limitations. VF2 impressed when released, but most people ignored the terrible flaws in the graphics because the gameplay of the arcade had been captured well. Decathlete is still very cool though - one game that plays up to the strengths well, with a very detailed mode7 stadium floor and not really many polygons at all... Winter heat probally needed to model everything as polys which would make a major difference to the choice of engine..
I class 704x576 as very similar to the 640x480 - the horizontal change isn't much, and the vertical increase is just overscan - you'll find that many saturn games stuck to 320x240 NTSC ( and there are even some PS1 games that overscanned up - but they were the exception )
Letterboxed PAL conversions were the PS1's bane - and the Saturn shone for those...
I quoted specs to show the comparision between PS1 and Saturn - the Model 2 visuals shone because of the higher res visuals ( on the special progressive monitor ) and the perspective invariant texturing - still point sampled, but no distorting triangles....
The PS1 weaknesses are well known ( For flat floors the use of Mode 7 style rotated playfields had a great visual quality on Saturn games that was rarely matched by the PS1 equivalents ) but it had a lot of processing strengths that showed more subtly in realtime lighting and better 3D animation.
For me these are distinct resolutions:
Low res: 320x240 PS1, 320x240 Saturn, 352x240 Saturn, 360x240 PS1
Mid res: 512x240 PS1, 640x240 Saturn, 640x240 PS1, 704x240 Saturn
Mid res: 320x480i etc etc
High res: 512x480i PS1 640x480i PS1 640x576i Saturn 704x576i Saturn
On NTSC TV's there often was no point increasing the vertical resolution beyond that ( one reason why DC and Xbox output 640x480 as well.. )
The 352/704 resolution were side products of the VCD mpeg playback options more than any specific requirement for smaller pixels.. ( On the PS2 an equivalent res is used for DVD playback, but not for games )
HOTD did dissappoint - it seemed at the time that PS1 gun games were getting better Horned Owl -> Time Crisis, yet Saturn gun games peaked at VC2 and then dropped heavily in quality..
As you said, good art direction helps, but it was probally more your expectations - as the Saturn versions matched the flat shaded unlit arcade originals, DOA in particular was improved a lot for PS1... and many people didn't like it as the look was 'different' from the model 2 arcade ( The flat/gourard argument was already in full swing between fans of Model 2 and System 20/22 arcade titles ... )
Most Saturn titles often had bright arcadey colour pallette because of the limitations. VF2 impressed when released, but most people ignored the terrible flaws in the graphics because the gameplay of the arcade had been captured well. Decathlete is still very cool though - one game that plays up to the strengths well, with a very detailed mode7 stadium floor and not really many polygons at all... Winter heat probally needed to model everything as polys which would make a major difference to the choice of engine..
I class 704x576 as very similar to the 640x480 - the horizontal change isn't much, and the vertical increase is just overscan - you'll find that many saturn games stuck to 320x240 NTSC ( and there are even some PS1 games that overscanned up - but they were the exception )
Letterboxed PAL conversions were the PS1's bane - and the Saturn shone for those...
I quoted specs to show the comparision between PS1 and Saturn - the Model 2 visuals shone because of the higher res visuals ( on the special progressive monitor ) and the perspective invariant texturing - still point sampled, but no distorting triangles....
The PS1 weaknesses are well known ( For flat floors the use of Mode 7 style rotated playfields had a great visual quality on Saturn games that was rarely matched by the PS1 equivalents ) but it had a lot of processing strengths that showed more subtly in realtime lighting and better 3D animation.For me these are distinct resolutions:
Low res: 320x240 PS1, 320x240 Saturn, 352x240 Saturn, 360x240 PS1
Mid res: 512x240 PS1, 640x240 Saturn, 640x240 PS1, 704x240 Saturn
Mid res: 320x480i etc etc
High res: 512x480i PS1 640x480i PS1 640x576i Saturn 704x576i Saturn
On NTSC TV's there often was no point increasing the vertical resolution beyond that ( one reason why DC and Xbox output 640x480 as well.. )
The 352/704 resolution were side products of the VCD mpeg playback options more than any specific requirement for smaller pixels.. ( On the PS2 an equivalent res is used for DVD playback, but not for games )
Didn't mean to ignore you chap...
The Tobal games, Erghiaz and also Tekken 3 are exceptionally good PS1 titles.. I liked DOA as a comparision as it came out on both systems, and wasn't such a quick port as the DC/PS2 version - where the main difference was really the extra costumes ( The PS2 did have a better engine, but the assets weren't changed at all and the only difference was really the cut scenes... )
The Tobal games, Erghiaz and also Tekken 3 are exceptionally good PS1 titles.. I liked DOA as a comparision as it came out on both systems, and wasn't such a quick port as the DC/PS2 version - where the main difference was really the extra costumes ( The PS2 did have a better engine, but the assets weren't changed at all and the only difference was really the cut scenes... )
Crazyace:
I remember when everyone was waiting for Fighters MEGAMiX, and SEGA had assured us the game was coming in "high-res" (hey, it was a big deal to some of us fanatics!) And then I remember the MEGA backlash when we played it and found out "high-res" didn't quite mean VF2 res... everyone was very disappointed despite the added lighting, color, and geometry complexity.
For many Saturn converts, super-res mode is nirvana, and MEGAMiX didn't stack up in an ugly way. We all began clamoring for a new fighter which used the VF2 res (one reason DOA was embraced so readily despite its imitative similarities to SEGA's opus.)
I don't like that look as much because it comes across as softer and blurrier by comparison. That's not to say I don't find gourard shaded beauties like PS DOA and Tobal 2 appealing - they have nice smoothness and gentle contrasts which I like.
I'd never mistake those two resolutions modes - it's like night and day to me. So, the difference definitely shows up on my TV. The few Saturn games that do use the super-res mode are just striking in their crystal clarity.
I remember when everyone was waiting for Fighters MEGAMiX, and SEGA had assured us the game was coming in "high-res" (hey, it was a big deal to some of us fanatics!) And then I remember the MEGA backlash when we played it and found out "high-res" didn't quite mean VF2 res... everyone was very disappointed despite the added lighting, color, and geometry complexity.
For many Saturn converts, super-res mode is nirvana, and MEGAMiX didn't stack up in an ugly way. We all began clamoring for a new fighter which used the VF2 res (one reason DOA was embraced so readily despite its imitative similarities to SEGA's opus.)
marconelly!
Veteran
What resolution is DOA1 PSX running at?
Those are awful. Try Bloody Roar 1&2, if you want graphics.
Also PS1 DOA is pretty bad too, compare to the Saturn. The Saturn one is closer to the Model 2 counterpart than PS1 version, that's for sure.
FMM uses something similar to FV isn't ? Regardless, you can't fall face down, in that game. I think it was, Janet from VCOP2 where she had VF3 Aoi moveset, in one of the throw, where Aoi step on the opponent's bottom, Janet would do it from the front
since characters can't fall face down.marconelly!:
V3:
I'd guess 640x480. Team Ninja knew the PS couldn't replicate the Saturn version, so they went for a look that played to the PS's strengths. It still made for a good looking game but was disappointing to many - the super-res look was so favored by the gaming press that they frequently listed it as a positively distinguishing hallmark of Virtua Fighter 2's graphics. Which certainly wouldn't make the visual difference out as something which could be downplayed as being "very similar".
V3:
I believe so, but FMM is massively upgraded by comparison (the next-gen FV engine, probably). The colored lighting is there, but stronger - like when you fight in that disco stage and the characters are continuously lit with varying colors. The picture is less glitchy, too, where the breakable walls won't flash in and out like before. Geometry levels are increased by a lot, the game is a lot more colorful (not as brownish/redish looking as FV), and there are actually great texture maps all over the place this time. Actually, I'd have to say the game looks much sharper overall, too, so maybe it isn't running at a similar resolution to FV (still not VF2 res, though). It might just be the other upgrades playing tricks on me, though.
I never noticed or suspected that was going on. Very interesting... do you know what limitation might have been the cause for them to have to change it?
I am no expert, but I think they just go limited amount of memory. Afterall, they did put in VF3 moveset. So if you removed face down position, you cut down some memory usage. They also remove the ring, to remove more fall animation.
Another theory, FMM uses tweak FV engine, that's why you can't fall face down.
But it looks odd. You can hit character from behind, expecting them to fall flat face down in VF game, in FMM they just sort of twist in mid air and fall face up. I remember getting annoyed with this stupid dynamic.
