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

[Cloofoofoo]

Yes that was what I assumed


I think we might be talking about differenth things or well not exactly the same.

Maybe this is a better way to express it:

- We have the VRAM. Either we balance it equal or more textures or polygons (assuming the CPU could feed more than possible) All adds up together so you might come to a point where you need to downscale the space for textures to fit more polygons. Or if you want to have a lot of unqie big textures, you could not fit enough polygons (even if you could theoretyically T&L enought)

I mean if we look at DOA2 versus saw Soul Caliber its pretty obvious that its less textured. Part of it is the visual style, but that style is also done I think due to the Tech Restrictions. They favored more clean and hires texture vs Soul Caliber had more varied and "detailed" textures. For Shen Mue they have a lot of texture needed for the look. Also of course they cant hit so high poly count due to other things taking CPU time, so for that type of game it works pretty well for a balance of lots of textures, decent amount of polygons + stuff to do with the world etc. So in the end they use both the CPU power, the VRAM pretty PVR wise though those bigger non MIPMAP textures do not use the GPU the best. But if they would have opted for mipmap and more lower res textures for sure the world would not have as varied textures.



Yeah PSP I am like a lost kid regarding so I take your word for that. Speaking about ripping. I need to talk and get some help from you there. I am totally new to that so if you could get me started it would be a great favour. I tried to PM you but I seem not to get how to do it. If I click on your profile I cant find any button to PM/DM you. Maybe as a newcomer I dont have rights to do that yet. So if you are up for a direct chat please do message me directly



Yeah maybe my memory is just bad. I bet you know better than me about it. Or if it was like that it proves that our engine was not so good. I am sure that the render stuff was ok but a also know a lot of the AI game logic code was really slow which of course sadly affected how much stuff we could render.

Btw when you are talking the amount of tris. We are talking about culled right? so not the whole amount of tris inside the camera frustrum?

From my memory eah enemy was around 800 tris. and usually it was max 3 on screen so say worst caste 2.5k K for those
Jack I think was with effect etc... like 2k? maybe 2.5k (including the modifier volume shadow)

Then I think usually the game world that was left after culling max 5k tris. Plus UI and particles etc.. so yeah I think 10k is not to far off. But again I can be very wrong.
From my memory it was like 10k and often in the frustrum it would have been 15-20k tris if we would not had culled them. And then maybe the whole loaded level would have been of course more.

thats weird , it should have automatically worked to pm me. not sure how i can be of help but ill check your message.

This wasnt meant as a slight against head hunter at all, merely curiosity. Its funny you mention ai, the wince sdk actually speaks about that ai unless strucured correctly its super slow on dc compared to x86 cpu. no one else has really mentioned /eleborated on this.

yeah culled(view frustum at least) , some numbers from in game debug stats. stuff like sonic adventure 2 ranged from 4k to 12k tris @ 60 fps, grandia 2 8k to 25k tris @ 30 fps, mdk2 7k - 27k tris 15fps- 30fps, maken x up to like 24k verts @ 60 fps. ive seen more but should give an idea.

For assets to compare to jack Ive seen seen the truck + trailer for player in 18 wheeler be almost 5k triangles, replay model of the highest chariot in zusar vasar 7.5k triangles , player characters in canon spike 2k to 2.5k triangles. its very interesting to compile these informations. no modifiers in these numbers.

on the whole doa2 texture thing , i kind of dont understand, imean wether simple or not they are 4444/565 16bit texture vq compressed, they are the same size to other texture same color depth and size. it ISNT anyless textured than any other game and judging from what nulldc says about the textures amount that live in the cache (meant for rendering) its not any less than other games. If anything have you checked dctalk for the new texture tool released doa2? they actually converted the emulator pcmod hd textures to work on the real console and surprisingly it has plenty of room to work with texture twice as big if not more. Doesnt seem they made so much sacrifice of vram to get their vertexbuffer + textures to fit in vram , if anything they were conservative.

 

[StefanHQ]

thats weird , it should have automatically worked to pm me. not sure how i can be of help but ill check your message.

Yes very odd. Now it works, so i have sent you a PM

This wasnt meant as a slight against head hunter at all, merely curiosity. Its funny you mention ai, the wince sdk actually speaks about that ai unless strucured correctly its super slow on dc compared to x86 cpu. no one else has really mentioned /eleborated on this.

Ah no worries, I did not take it such. It was great info in all from you. And yeah physics and well most was not so quick. Almost all non render code was just C, with little to no AMS also. So for sure there was room for optimisations in Headhunter

yeah culled(view frustum at least) , some numbers from in game debug stats. stuff like sonic adventure 2 ranged from 4k to 12k tris @ 60 fps, grandia 2 8k to 25k tris @ 30 fps, mdk2 7k - 27k tris 15fps- 30fps, maken x up to like 24k verts @ 60 fps. ive seen more but should give an idea.

So for headhunter it was quite straightforward system. Word was decided in sectors, with portal (so not PVS) checking of what sectors was visible.Then objects outside camera frustrum in those sectors was culled off. and then depending on object complecity (prestored) objects that was tested against portal if visisble or not. Then there was LOD levels and what we ended up with I think was backfaces culled in the T&L (not sure) and what was left is what was sent to be drawn.

And then all alpha polygons was also sorted.

For assets to compare to jack Ive seen seen the truck + trailer for player in 18 wheeler be almost 5k triangles, replay model of the highest chariot in zusar vasar 7.5k triangles , player characters in canon spike 2k to 2.5k triangles. its very interesting to compile these informations. no modifiers in these numbers.

Exactly! I mean most main character and enemies are pretty safe bets. I mean even if an enemy is outside the screen, in most game scenarios often there was the possibitlites that main player plus all enemies possible in an "action" scenario was good measures. Also I must add I dont recall we had so much framedrops. At start we had some so we played it safe model wise. Later on as the game progressed the engine became more optimised so its possible we could have had more. What I know is that we tested running it uncapped And here and there in places it ran at 60fps. But of course we needed to cap it to 30fps all over.

Also if we look to the bike sections its a lot more polygons if we look the the main player. Its the same jack mesh plus we now have the bike, plus shadows, plus also some reflection mapping on the bike (that haha is hardly noticeable)

on the whole doa2 texture thing , i kind of dont understand, imean wether simple or not they are 4444/565 16bit texture vq compressed, they are the same size to other texture same color depth and size. it ISNT anyless textured than any other game and judging from what nulldc says about the textures amount that live in the cache (meant for rendering) its not any less than other games. If anything have you checked dctalk for the new texture tool released doa2? they actually converted the emulator pcmod hd textures to work on the real console and surprisingly it has plenty of room to work with texture twice as big if not more. Doesnt seem they made so much sacrifice of vram to get their vertexbuffer + textures to fit in vram , if anything they were conservative.

Ah no i did not mean anything regarding the cash. Just the VRAM storage space of (compressed or not) texturesd and vertexbuffers.
No I have not seen that. I am still not so deep into the DC indie / game scene yet. Ah then I was wrong on my assuptions. I though that VRAM in DOA2 was filled to the most. I admit defeat haha. I just remember some post that mentioned that the vertexbuffer was full to the limit but again I might have miread it as I have basicall been skimming a lot of info.

Getting back after many years and seeing all studies. So regarding game specs and performance you are way ahead of me (And that is why it would be helpful to chat about that with you a bit more direction and not in the form of forum here so not spamming it with unrelevant open questions.

 

[xaeroxcore]

My dudes, i really hope something big comes from all this for our DCs! Hahahahaa

Also, Sonic 2 puts surprisingly low geometry on scene, for being one of the DC best looking games. Do you guys think with enough optimization Sonic and main char models could have had the slight Gamecube version geometry upgrades working on DC?

Also, i know they are completely different genres, but Maken X and Sonic, both put less geometry on stage at 60 fps than MDK2, and it runs on 30 fps and looks good, but less "next gen" than those 2 games.

Finally, talking about DOA 2, may be they made a similar approach as the one taken by Square in Tobal 2? Less detailed textures, in exchange for higher geometry? I mean, DOA 2 characters are higher poly than lotta PS2 fighting games, incluiding all PS2 Tekken...

 

[Sonicfan]

My dudes, i really hope something big comes from all this for our DCs! Hahahahaa

Also, Sonic 2 puts surprisingly low geometry on scene, for being one of the DC best looking games. Do you guys think with enough optimization Sonic and main char models could have had the slight Gamecube version geometry upgrades working on DC?

Also, i know they are completely different genres, but Maken X and Sonic, both put less geometry on stage at 60 fps than MDK2, and it runs on 30 fps and looks good, but less "next gen" than those 2 games.

Finally, talking about DOA 2, may be they made a similar approach as the one taken by Square in Tobal 2? Less detailed textures, in exchange for higher geometry? I mean, DOA 2 characters are higher poly than lotta PS2 fighting games, incluiding all PS2 Tekken...

Doa 2 was a. Artistic choice, not a limitation of the hardware. The characters looked almost exactly like their CG models for one thing. There's new footage of it being modded with what looks like the textures from the xbox version on real hardware. Plus, it looks like they were also being conservative on the fx. Which is weird considering all they threw at the ps2 version. Maybevit was to make up for the awful textures and picture quality of that version

 

[StefanHQ]

Doa 2 was a. Artistic choice, not a limitation of the hardware. The characters looked almost exactly like their CG models for one thing. There's new footage of it being modded with what looks like the textures from the xbox version on real hardware. Plus, it looks like they were also being conservative on the fx. Which is weird considering all they threw at the ps2 version. Maybevit was to make up for the awful textures and picture quality of that version

Yeah I never really saw textures themselv as an issue. I mean with Tobal 2 we are talking PS1 where using textured or non texture polygons made a bigger difference.

With FX do you mean sparks and such? If so well then its down to the fillrate. Many says its not a problem but I always found that the DC could shug down a lot if a few big Alpha textures was thrown to the screen. PS2 on the otherhand its a beast that just keeps drawing whatever you tell it to draw haha.

 

[Karamazov]

i dreamed of a scud race dreamcast port back in the day, sad it never happened.

 

[Loggo]

With FX do you mean sparks and such? If so well then its down to the fillrate. Many says its not a problem but I always found that the DC could shug down a lot if a few big Alpha textures was thrown to the screen. PS2 on the otherhand its a beast that just keeps drawing whatever you tell it to draw haha.

Isn’t this specific to semi-transparencies, though?

As I understand it, fillrate is generally not a problem on DC when dealing with opaque and punch-through polygons.

PS2 was abnormally efficient at transparencies. Its unorthodox architecture did things in, well, unorthodox ways compared to how "normal" GPUs are designed to work. I'm pretty sure than even on PS360 performance would plummet if a game tried to replicate PS2’s trademark behavior of endlessly redrawing translucent polygons on top of each other.​

 

[StefanHQ]

Isn’t this specific to semi-transparencies, though?

As I understand it, fillrate is generally not a problem on DC when dealing with opaque and punch-through polygons.

PS2 was abnormally efficient at transparencies. Its unorthodox architecture did things in, well, unorthodox ways compared to how "normal" GPUs are designed to work.​

Yes that is what Aplha textures / Alpha blending means

well PT takes a little more time not so much themselves but because they do not block as much as opaque = more stuff behind can be visible = more potential to draw more.

So how to phrase it. When using opaque polygons in most case due to the defferred rendering of PVR render of scene is not a problem. But that is because = do not render hidden stuff = do not use a lot of fillrate.
So fillrate IS a problem if we state it in the context of how much the DC can fill.

Yeah it was drawing beast. I felt the GPU very straight forward. Just a powerbeast of drawing polygons / Blending. It as more down to feed it right. so for me the GPU is not the orthodox thing but more the architecture in general.
And the DC in contrary had a very "modern/standard" overal setup but the PVR with its tile based defferred rendering was orthodox at the time.

I'm pretty sure than even on XBOX360 performance would plummet if a game tried to replicate PS2’s trademark behavior of endlessly redrawing translucent polygons on top of each other.​

I dont really have a key how much it could draw when it came to normal polygons but I have not seen scenes with as mush particles and glows and transparent stuff like on PS2 at that time

 

[Loggo]

Yes that is what Aplha textures / Alpha blending means

Yes, I was referring to fillrate which "many say it’s not a problem".

Although, I suspect I know what you were originally referring to. Sometimes people describe DC’s transparency as "free" which can lead to misconceptions. The "free" part doesn’t refer to fillrate, it refers to DC being able to do order-dependent transparency in hardware. So DC’ transparency is "free" in the sense that "you don’t need to do the sorting manually". The cost in terms of fillrate is absolutely not "free". If anything, it’s a well-known performance hog.​

 

[Loggo]

*order-independent

Sorry, for the DP but I can’t edit.

 

[Loggo]

OK, reading your second post again I think I misunderstood you.

You were apparently talking about "raw" fillrate.

This is what happens when try to post from work, apologies.​

 

[Sonicfan]

Yeah I never really saw textures themselv as an issue. I mean with Tobal 2 we are talking PS1 where using textured or non texture polygons made a bigger difference.

With FX do you mean sparks and such? If so well then its down to the fillrate. Many says its not a problem but I always found that the DC could shug down a lot if a few big Alpha textures was thrown to the screen. PS2 on the otherhand its a beast that just keeps drawing whatever you tell it to draw haha.

Nah, not sparks, it was motion blur, render to texture, and specular highlights that kind of made it look more like the ps2 in regards to lighting.

 

[Nesh]

Doa 2 was a. Artistic choice, not a limitation of the hardware. The characters looked almost exactly like their CG models for one thing. There's new footage of it being modded with what looks like the textures from the xbox version on real hardware. Plus, it looks like they were also being conservative on the fx. Which is weird considering all they threw at the ps2 version. Maybevit was to make up for the awful textures and picture quality of that version

Do you have a link to the footage?

 

[Cloofoofoo]

It probably would have been good for tge boss battle. Every other version of tge game used a progressively accumulative blur when you get hit by him, so maybe that radial blur would have been a nice alternative on DC?

its exactly the same effect. its not accumalative , they just change how opaque it is. just an guessing example: the effect is on by default in the tengu boss fight, defaults to 30% opacity , looks light/clear. Tengu hits you and maybe its programmed to change the alpha of the full screen quads to 70% opacity making it really pronounced/trippy and goes back to 30% once you hit tengu back. its the same effect just that they added conditions to it.

the interesting about the espirral motion blur video it seems like for example when fighting zack when he is using env map suit , it might be doing render to texture of the stage at a slow interval to use that as the env map texture. which is why you see a really wide fov version of the stage covering the full screen instead. Didnt think the game did that at all, this is just my guess anyway.

 

[Sonicfan]

@xaeroxcore I've been following the progress of his DoA2le mods for a while, and it's absolutely amazing what he's doing with it! Hopefully one day someone will be able to swap out the models and stages and make a virtua fighter 4 mod, just as proof that it could work, haha!

 

[xaeroxcore]

I was about to tell you about that videos! Hahaha Man, that looks totally on DC geometry, lighting and texture realm! Did we find the missing link on DC VF 4?

 

[xaeroxcore]

I mean, look ath this one, it seems closer to Force Five geometry and lighting than regular Naomi 2 VF4. I´d bet DOA 2 characters have more polys...

 

[xaeroxcore]

Top NAOMI 2, bottom Pachinko. You can clearly see Naomi 2 is way more detailed, even with cloth texture, higher res, way better lighting...One thing is for sure, Pachinko VF4 does not run on Naomi 2.... And for the flatter lighting, way less detailed stages....Gotta Naomi 1 or directly a Dreamcast. Since i played Force Five always had a VF4 appeal to me, could it be Sammy used this Pachinko VF4 as tech base for creating Force Five/Jinji Storm?

 

[Sonicfan]

I was about to tell you about that videos! Hahaha Man, that looks totally on DC geometry, lighting and texture realm! Did we find the missing link on DC VF 4?

That's what I'm thinking. If this isn't DC related, it would blow my mind!

 

[Sonicfan]

I mean, look ath this one, it seems closer to Force Five geometry and lighting than regular Naomi 2 VF4. I´d bet DOA 2 characters have more polys...

According to him, they're ps2 models with better textures. It looks like that's absolutely true. No point in making new lower poly models when you already have them, so I'm inclined to believe that's exactly what they are!