"Yes, but how many polygons?" An artist blog entry with interesting numbers

[function]

The Digital Foundry Retro video clearly shows it's no where close to being classed as a 30fps game.

It's a 20fps game with periods of high 20's.

No, you're making things up again.

The vast majority of the game is 30 fps, with some dips as low as 20, one of which DF used to highlight some aspects of performance.

"It's not something you encounter throughout the game by any means". DF do not support your claim, they refute it.

And the game slows down when frame rate drops, so even a moron could tell it's not a "20fps game" just by watching a playthrough.

 

[PSman1700]

The DC was a 1998 launch console, its quite impressive for the time it was released, almost two years before the PS2 while still coming close enough performance wise.

 

[davis.anthony]

More than 90% of the game is 30 FPS. There are a few areas that have problems,

Videos on Youtube showing frame rate disagree with you on that.

 

[davis.anthony]

No, you're making things up again.

The vast majority of the game is 30 fps, with some dips as low as 20, one of which DF used to highlight some aspects of performance.

"It's not something you encounter throughout the game by any means". DF do not support your claim, they refute it.

And the game slows down when frame rate drops, so even a moron could tell it's not a "20fps game" just by watching a playthrough.

Sigh.......

Cutscenes are largely OK but you don't play them, the actual gameplay where you walk around is god awful.

So it looks like DF were wrong and you encounter it throughout the game.

The vast majority of the cut scenes are 30fps....but the actual gameplay? Nope....

 

[davis.anthony]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but DC definitely out performs psp visually. The framebuffer effects help psp out very well though. Psp could never pull off the likes of shenmue 2 without some pretty hefty cutbacks in texture quality, resolution, and quite possibly poly counts/framerate. The thing people seem to forget is shenmue has full realtime time of day calculations, every npc is running their own ai, and has unique voices for each. DC is pulling way more than visuals off with that game!

Not to mention the N64 quality lighting Shenmue 2 has.

There are more visually impressive games on PSP.

 

[davis.anthony]

Then maybe youre in the wrong topic, " yes but how many polygons"

Then what about the fact that despite it runs considerably higher resolution, much higher texture resolution and similar polygon counts and lighting conditions What else do you want? All this while having 8 mb less ram that is slower. Or what model rig complexity?
Both used hundred of bones per scenes or even characters, what metric other than ignoring anything you didnt like? Both dreamcast ports of powerstone and crazy taxi 1 and 2 run considerably worse while looking worse( either unstable or locked 30 fps framerate) . And before you say anything ps2 was able to brute force dc ports to run just as well in the beginning of its life.

Are you using ports to PSP to compare? Sigh.....

Show me an open world game on DC as complex as Liberty City Stories on PSP.

I'll wait.

 

[Sonicfan]

Very interesting discussions.

As much as I would love to see Dreamcast full potential revealed, I doubt it would be capable of anything near PS2 best. The computational power just isn't there, which is why the lighting is so flat on DC titles, although I was kind of impressed with it on Project Justice in at least one stage. We also have to remember that the PS2 was built for multiple pass rendering, its texture buffer alone was 60% faster than Dreamcast with its best compression scenario. The pixel fill rate for DC was about 500M pixels for normal opaque/translucent polys, where the PS2 was at least double that. Also, if I remember correctly, there was a tech discussion that the Dreamcast would run out of memory before it could reach its maximum polygon budget, so the additional memory of the PlayStation is going to pay dividends for not only that but other things.

Don't take my comments the wrong way, I firmly believe the Dreamcast did not see its full potential, DOA2 was probably pushing it as hard as could be at the time, but the game was an early 2000 release, no doubt developers would have found tricks/processes to achieve better results. I always thought that a well-designed Dreamcast version of VF4, would play well and not look drastically different from a polygon budget point of view, then say VF4 on PS2. I'm sure some nips and tucks would be needed in areas, and perhaps some geometry reduction, but I think we have the numbers in this forum to suggest that hypothesis. However, the lighting would take a drastic hit, as the Dreamcast just did not have the computational ability to do that amount of polygon budget with lighting, and this could affect the game presentation considerably. This is just one example of course.

I have no reason to think this particular way, and I'm no programmer, but I would guess the Dreamcast probably hit 80% of its potential with DOA2, it seems that well optimized. Had the DC been around longer, and developers put as much time/budget into games development on that console as say the PS2, we would have been duly impressed. As one commenter said before, "it was not the Dreamcast's technical ability, that was the issue".....

Fully agree! Dreamcast had so much more to give.

Videos on Youtube showing frame rate disagree with you on that.

Now I'm darn sure you're just trolling lol

 

[TapamN]

The vast majority of the cut scenes are 30fps....but the actual gameplay? Nope....

Frame rate analyses cherry pick problem areas so they have something interesting to show. I've played Shenmue and Shenmue II to completion on real hardware with real GD-ROMs multiple times. The majority of the game is 30 FPS.

I don't know enough about the PSP to really compare it to the Dreamcast, but a lot of the complaints you have aren't due to hardware limitations, but timing.

The developer mindset for Dreamcast games was stuck in the 90s, because that's when most of the games were made. The vast majority of Dreamcast games are "PSX/N64 game with higher resolution and rounder models" because they hadn't figured out how to go past that yet. It takes time for developers to come up with new ideas on how to use the hardware, and the Dreamcast didn't live long enough for it to use any of those new ideas. Find an alternate reality where the Dreamcast lived and outsold the PS2, and you'll find much more impressive Dreamcast games than what's in this dimension.

 

[Sonicfan]

Frame rate analyses cherry pick problem areas so they have something interesting to show. I've played Shenmue and Shenmue II to completion on real hardware with real GD-ROMs multiple times. The majority of the game is 30 FPS.

I don't know enough about the PSP to really compare it to the Dreamcast, but a lot of the complaints you have aren't due to hardware limitations, but timing.

The developer mindset for Dreamcast games was stuck in the 90s, because that's when most of the games were made. The vast majority of Dreamcast games are "PSX/N64 game with higher resolution and rounder models" because they hadn't figured out how to go past that yet. It takes time for developers to come up with new ideas on how to use the hardware, and the Dreamcast didn't live long enough for it to use any of those new ideas. Find an alternate reality where the Dreamcast lived and outsold the PS2, and you'll find much more impressive Dreamcast games than what's in this dimension.

Yeah, not to mention they used higher poly models in a simpler form like the blue stinger models being so high poly and barely showing it as apposed to the lower poly psp models of the likes of kingdom hearts, that look more modern despite that fact. I'm willing to bet ff12 has really low poly models, but smart modeling and textures help to pull them off better

 

[Sonicfan]

Also, idk why you say shenmue has simple lighting, @davis.anthony; it has great lighting, and sourcing that certainly look absolutely beautiful! Especially at night, and when in dark rooms, or around things like fire

 

[Sonicfan]

So circling back on this tried the debug version of Dead or Alive 2 Dreamcast , which lets you control the light sources. Turns out the game by default uses 3 light sources, 1 per fighter and 1 for the stage /props(each light has ambient). you can then further activate 4 more lights( it affects both fighters) and change their type from directional or point lights. Its hard to control the color so turned each light on and off and they indeed add to the models. So in total you can achieve 7 lights but it drops the framerate to around 30 fps which makes the game run in slow mo. ( tried on a real dreamcast)
Probably why the cutscenes are locked to 30 fps on the dc i guess it uses more lights.
The situation isnt as dire as you all made it seem to be honest if it can do doa2 detail with 7 lights and not be a slide show.

Wow! I bet if this was released this days they'd give you the option to play with the extra lights, or without them (think prioritize graphics/ prioritize framerate modes) is there a way to change the limited edition into like a definitive edition with the levels lighting changed, and maybe enable the extra lights in an extended menu?

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Are you using ports to PSP to compare? Sigh.....

Show me an open world game on DC as complex as Liberty City Stories on PSP.

I'll wait.

Sigh. As you know it didnt live long enough to get a gta style game. The only open world games are crazy taxi 1 + 2 and super runabout which are both a more simplistic approach to it buts its still open world. But ps1 did get gta 3 style games ( open streaming world , going into multiple buildings, getting in and out of cars) in the form of mizzurna falls and germs. Does this make the ps1 superior to the dc? As many people have told you its not a tech limitation as much as it was timing, financial choices and lack of knowledge. And shenmue 1 and 2 had lights for each lamp at night if you even bothered to look or even look while inside of a building.

If you feel the need to poke further tapamn already posted the maps in crazy taxi 1 are 200,000 polygons and crazy taxi 2 are 160,000 triangles. And i recently extracted cabs and drivers and pedestrians using naomilib. Pedestrians are about 600 triangles and 4 of them can ride the cab, the drivers are about 800 triangles. The cabs have lod, one for when the front of the car is visible ( when the camera pans on it or you turn too far making it visible) with high detail rims about 2,500 triangles. A low detail version with simple tires and the front head lights deleted for about up to 1,500 triangles. The low detail cab + driver + 4 pedestrians is about 3000 to 3500 triangles and the high detail with all that is around 5,000 triangles. All this running at solid 60 fps ,streaming a city at twice the speed as gta psp games. Its up to you to go find gta 3 or psp gta info and compare. Not here to collect info on your behalf and honestly waste more time on you. Super runabout have an even bigger map but theres no way for me to get those models.

And the last obvious bit, this is a polygon count topic and ill keep posting to that, no need to bog it down more and waste more of my time.

 

[jlippo]

More than 90% of the game is 30 FPS. There are a few areas that have problems, but those are seem to be caused by the lack of mipmapping, which can cause a huge penalty to GPU performance. I do homebrew dev for the Dreamcast, and I've seen rendering without mipmapping run slower than with mipmapping and 2x SSAA.

I've actually thought about trying to hack the Shenmue II to add support for compressed palettized textures, which are smaller than the compressed 16-bit textures the game uses, and convert some textures to 4bpp or 8bpp compressed to free up video RAM, then add mipmaps to all/most of map geometry. This would probably fix all slowdown.

It would most likely look quite bit better as well.
Even with some mipmap bias, if extra sharpness/aliasing is wanted.

 

[davis.anthony]

I've played Shenmue and Shenmue II to completion on real hardware with real GD-ROMs multiple times. The majority of the game is 30 FPS.

Unless you played the games with a frame rate counter on that is simply a baseless opinion.

 

[davis.anthony]

Also, idk why you say shenmue has simple lighting, @davis.anthony

Because it does.....

 

[davis.anthony]

Sigh. As you know it didnt live long enough to get a gta style game. The only open world games are crazy taxi 1 + 2 and super runabout which are both a more simplistic approach to it buts its still open world. But ps1 did get gta 3 style games ( open streaming world , going into multiple buildings, getting in and out of cars) in the form of mizzurna falls and germs. Does this make the ps1 superior to the dc? As many people have told you its not a tech limitation as much as it was timing, financial choices and lack of knowledge. And shenmue 1 and 2 had lights for each lamp at night if you even bothered to look or even look while inside of a building.

If you feel the need to poke further tapamn already posted the maps in crazy taxi 1 are 200,000 polygons and crazy taxi 2 are 160,000 triangles. And i recently extracted cabs and drivers and pedestrians using naomilib. Pedestrians are about 600 triangles and 4 of them can ride the cab, the drivers are about 800 triangles. The cabs have lod, one for when the front of the car is visible ( when the camera pans on it or you turn too far making it visible) with high detail rims about 2,500 triangles. A low detail version with simple tires and the front head lights deleted for about up to 1,500 triangles. The low detail cab + driver + 4 pedestrians is about 3000 to 3500 triangles and the high detail with all that is around 5,000 triangles. All this running at solid 60 fps ,streaming a city at twice the speed as gta psp games. Its up to you to go find gta 3 or psp gta info and compare. Not here to collect info on your behalf and honestly waste more time on you. Super runabout have an even bigger map but theres no way for me to get those models.

And the last obvious bit, this is a polygon count topic and ill keep posting to that, no need to bog it down more and waste more of my time.

There you go with the polygon counts again acting like they're everything and why didn't you talk about Crazy Taxi's ridiculous pop-in that at times is quite comical.

Graphically there are more impressive games on PSP than DC.

 

[Sonicfan]

Because it does.....

So you're gonna ignore the rest of what i said? I see you're simply choosing to deny that shenmue has very dynamic lighting, so depending on the time of day, and the source of light, it could look "flat" or very colorful, and full of depth. Even open world games these days have that same issue. Digital foundry even talks about that when they review games. Time of day makes a big difference.

 

[Sonicfan]

There you go with the polygon counts again acting like they're everything and why didn't you talk about Crazy Taxi's ridiculous pop-in that at times is quite comical.

Graphically there are more impressive games on PSP than DC.

Gta has crazy amounts of pup-up, at a way lower framerate, so does that mean ps2 is weaker than Dreamcast?

 

[davis.anthony]

Gta has crazy amounts of pup-up, at a way lower framerate, so does that mean ps2 is weaker than Dreamcast?

While also doing more 'simulation' than any open world game on DC while having better lighting and effects.

 

[davis.anthony]

So you're gonna ignore the rest of what i said? I see you're simply choosing to deny that shenmue has very dynamic lighting, so depending on the time of day, and the source of light, it could look "flat" or very colorful, and full of depth. Even open world games these days have that same issue. Digital foundry even talks about that when they review games. Time of day makes a big difference.

It's lighting is N64 level with the same flat lighting across everything which is made even worse due to pretty much everything missing a shadow.

Changing the colour of the flat lighting to a shade of orange to 'simulate' a particular time of day doesn't make it's lighting any less flat.

I don't see the obsession with this game graphically:

- It has a poor frame rate
- It shimmers every where
- Has notable pop-in
- Has small play areas due to DC's limited RAM
- Missing shadows on pretty much everything
- Flat lighting
- Suffers with dithering artefacts

It's nothing special.