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

[xaeroxcore]

Skies of arcadia for the dreamcast is next. The game is strange. The main characters are around 900 tris without weapons. side characters and low level monsters are around 500 tris. The later end (regular)monsters and bosses range from 3k to close 8k tris. The stages seem to range from 5k to 50k tris.

Vyse - 938 tris without weapons

Final boss - 6,111 tris

Regular enemy inside shrine- 3,500 tris

Electric giga boss - 7,670 tris

Ruins - 24,017 tris

ice ruins - 24,443 tris

ice ruins pt2 - 52,414 tris

ice ruins entrance - 12,498 tris

Inside valuan ship - 19,761 tris

Impressive! I used to remember how good look some stages but always were dissapointed with character detail, now i understand why. Also, cutscene characters LOD sports more geometry?

Thanks for the impressive work Cloofoofoo. Can you give us numbers from Project Justice and Headhunter?

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Did record of lodoss war next for the dreamcast. Very interesting game in that in the higher levels this game has 10-20 monsters mobbing you, I figured everything would be super low poly. I was wrong while some of the low level enemies are 500 to 700 tris the higher level normal enemies are like 1k to 2k tris, thats very high considering there seems there could be almost 20 of them on the screen. The main character is close to 2k and bosses range from 2k to 6k.Its just that everything is poorly textured and badly modeled for the given count. Stages are pretty dense too.

main chracter -1,724 tris

Dragon boss - 6,005 tris

boss - 2,214 tris

lamia creature - 1,502 tris

reptile creature - 1,527 tris

lizard man - 969 tris

Four armed regular enemy - 2,036 tris

stage ?? - 17,659 tris

another stage - 33,713 tris

 

[xaeroxcore]

Did record of lodoss war next for the dreamcast. Very interesting game in that in the higher levels this game has 10-20 monsters mobbing you, I figured everything would be super low poly. I was wrong while some of the low level enemies are 500 to 700 tris the higher level normal enemies are like 1k to 2k tris, thats very high considering there seems there could be almost 20 of them on the screen. The main character is close to 2k and bosses range from 2k to 6k.Its just that everything is poorly textured and badly modeled for the given count. Stages are pretty dense too.

main chracter -1,724 tris

Dragon boss - 6,005 tris

boss - 2,214 tris

lamia creature - 1,502 tris

reptile creature - 1,527 tris

lizard man - 969 tris

Four armed regular enemy - 2,036 tris

stage ?? - 17,659 tris

another stage - 33,713 tris

33k triangles ....on stages that looked average as its best for 99/2000 standards. Probably lotta PS2/PSP games uses less triangles and look better....Too bad DC games were made with 32/64 bit development logic.

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Next game is Musapeys choco maker on the dreamcast from 2002. Made by the same people who made death crimson 2 and ox also on the dreamcast. Judging from the files it uses the same engine as well. I didnt think it would be alot of polygons but I was wrong. This is a puzzle game using blocks, each block model is 88 triangles and the game easily can display more than 100 of them @ 60 fps. Lets say theres 50 blocks on screen x 88 triangles that easily 4,400 triangles. Thats just something to keep in mind despite the game looking not too great. These are from the disc files.


1st player character + its ears = 2,205 tris + 344 tris = 2,549 tris

2nd players character + ears - 2,237 tris + 344 tris = 2,581 tris

Block -88 tris.

Stage/background for 1 player mode- 1,600 tris

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Next up Boku Doraemon for the dreamcast. I know nothing of this series. That said the dreamcast game uses 3d environments and hand drawn 2d characters. Environment are very detailed with detailed props.

The characters are all handrawn sprites . Here is doraemon:

Shop/neighborhood - 10,498 tris

House/lower floor/kitchen - 12,364 tris

Glasses prob - 3,456 tris

Some sort of traveling device? -1,438 tris

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Next up is seventh cross evolution for the dreamcast ,released 1998. One of the earlier games. Despite that the models push alot of polygons though texture detail isnt good. Since the game is about assembling your body using dna i had to pick one to represent the player. There were plenty that were super high in polygon count but I chose the one they used on most press shots/magazine ads. Again for 1998 its a pretty huge leap. Considering kratos from god of war ghost of sparta on psp is 5,000 tris(says the dev anyway) the main character polygon count is surprising for this game.

Seventh Cross Evoluion -dreamcast

Main character level 26 body - 4,504 tris

Land were you first start - 7,693 tris

The open ocean - 15,089 tris

Hermit crab boss - 4,208 tris

Final boss - 3,904 tris

Regular enemy lizard - 1,231 tris

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Next is konami's air force delta for dreamcast. The game uses very low poly models and very highres textures for the land. The land textures are a massive 512x512 resolution. The land models are broken up into pieces/ square sectors. It ranges from 50 tris to 500 tris per piece. There seems to be lods for the land patches or the planes. Planes range from 900 tris to 1700 tris.

AirForce Deta - dreamcast

F14 tomcat - 1,384 tris

yf-23 - 1,369 tris

land patch - 512 tris

Land texture

land texture 2

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Last one for now. Revisiting Seven Mansions for the dreamcast by Koei. Strange co-op resident evil style game. Stranger in that the character models have far more polygons than the surroundings.Regular enemies range from 1,700 tris to close to 3000 tris. Textures are messed up for some reason.

Seven Mansions : Ghastly Smile - Dreamcast

rock monster - 3,495 tris

final boss - 3,233 tris

Boss - 3,511 tris

Regular enemy - 1,797 tris

elevator - 1,204 tris

hallway - 2,848 tris

Kei - players character 1 - 3,039 tris

Reina - player character 2 - 3,085 tris

 

[Cloofoofoo]

BorderDown for the dreamcast from 2004. Grev creator interestingly admitted he had a grander vision for the game and about a third of background detail/effects was cut due to technical limitations.While cutscenes were scaled back due to budget. Which is crazy because some of the stages 80K polygons, who knows how much more detail he wanted. He also did not want to port to ps2 due to technical problems too as the game would have to be redesigned from scratch he claimed.He might as well just make a new game at that point so porting from naomi to dc was a no brainer.

Border Down - Dreamcast

Stage 1 - 83,864 tris for the whole stage

stage 4( i think) - 23,846 tris

Player ship - 567 tris

stage 6 enemy - 761 tris

stage 6 enemy2 - 492 tris

stage 1 boss - 1,406 tris

Final boss - 8,102 tris

 

[xaeroxcore]

BorderDown for the dreamcast from 2004. Grev creator interestingly admitted he had a grander vision for the game and about a third of background detail/effects was cut due to technical limitations.While cutscenes were scaled back due to budget. Which is crazy because some of the stages 80K polygons, who knows how much more detail he wanted. He also did not want to port to ps2 due to technical problems too as the game would have to be redesigned from scratch he claimed.He might as well just make a new game at that point so porting from naomi to dc was a no brainer.

Border Down - Dreamcast

Stage 1 - 83,864 tris for the whole stage

stage 4( i think) - 23,846 tris

Player ship - 567 tris

stage 6 enemy - 761 tris

stage 6 enemy2 - 492 tris

stage 1 boss - 1,406 tris

Final boss - 8,102 tris

80 k on DC is crazyyyy! This level of detail was just possible due the nature of the game (2D perspective and constant movement of the camera?) ...or can this level of detail be replicated on other types of 3D games on DC (like fighters or racers) with enough budget and time?

 

[Karamazov]

80k for the whole stage. But it was not rendered in totality during gameplay obviously.

If i remember correctly the powerVR chip in the DC had a feature that would render only visible polygons on screen, saving some processing power.

 

[Cloofoofoo]

80 k on DC is crazyyyy! This level of detail was just possible due the nature of the game (2D perspective and constant movement of the camera?) ...or can this level of detail be replicated on other types of 3D games on DC (like fighters or racers) with enough budget and time?

Its not all displayed at once but its one of the largest levels i have found on the dreamcast, they usually dont even come close. The largest model that displays it all at once is a locket model for the credits of blue submarine no.6 on the dreamcast that was 19,000 triangles.

 

[Mobius1aic]

80k for the whole stage. But it was not rendered in totality during gameplay obviously.

If i remember correctly the powerVR chip in the DC had a feature that would render only visible polygons on screen, saving some processing power.

Yeah DC had very good geometry culling IIRC.

 

[TapamN]

80k for the whole stage. But it was not rendered in totality during gameplay obviously.

If i remember correctly the powerVR chip in the DC had a feature that would render only visible polygons on screen, saving some processing power.

Polygon strips whose 2D screen space bounding boxes are completely off screen are discarded completely by the component that writes out the display list. So they don't take up space in the video RAM display list, and the rasterization part of the GPU never sees them. They are purely a waste of CPU and DMA time.

I have code that can submit (with transformation, lighting, and perspective) over 6 million poly/sec if the polygons were off screen. The GPU, under unrealistic ideal conditions, could only get a bit over 4 million poly/sec on screen. You could fake push more polygons by just repeatedly submitting the same off screen vertex over and over. I wouldn't be surprised if you could "push" 10-20 million poly/sec doing this.

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Polygon strips whose 2D screen space bounding boxes are completely off screen are discarded completely by the component that writes out the display list. So they don't take up space in the video RAM display list, and the rasterization part of the GPU never sees them. They are purely a waste of CPU and DMA time.

I have code that can submit (with transformation, lighting, and perspective) over 6 million poly/sec if the polygons were off screen. The GPU, under unrealistic ideal conditions, could only get a bit over 4 million poly/sec on screen. You could fake push more polygons by just repeatedly submitting the same off screen vertex over and over. I wouldn't be surprised if you could "push" 10-20 million poly/sec doing this.

This is what i wanted to understand though. The cpu still has to calculate the position and lighting of this offscreen vertex/ triangles? So wouldnt culling offscreen triangles before they even get submitted to the powervr gpu be even more beneficial or its just a waste of cpu time and should let the gpu do all the unseen culling?

The model still takes up main ram space thougj because it has to be fully loaded right?

 

[TapamN]

This is what i wanted to understand though. The cpu still has to calculate the position and lighting of this offscreen vertex/ triangles? So wouldnt culling offscreen triangles before they even get submitted to the powervr gpu be even more beneficial or its just a waste of cpu time and should let the gpu do all the unseen culling?

The model still takes up main ram space thougj because it has to be fully loaded right?

Whether or not the rendering code does T&L for off-screen stuff depends on the model format. A model format I made for the Dreamcast stored AABB's for groups of close-together strips, so if part of the model was off screen, chunks could be easily culled and T&L would be skipped. The model format used in Border Down might do this too.

It's definitely worth doing frustum culling on the CPU if you can eliminate 100s or 1,000s of polygons with one AABB/sphere versus frustum check. It's generally not worth it if you're culling 1-4 polygons per check. When exactly it's worth it depends on how expensive the culling check is versus how expensive rendering an unseen model is.

The entire model would definitely take up main RAM when it's loaded.

 

[Cloofoofoo]

Whether or not the rendering code does T&L for off-screen stuff depends on the model format. A model format I made for the Dreamcast stored AABB's for groups of close-together strips, so if part of the model was off screen, chunks could be easily culled and T&L would be skipped. The model format used in Border Down might do this too.

It's definitely worth doing frustum culling on the CPU if you can eliminate 100s or 1,000s of polygons with one AABB/sphere versus frustum check. It's generally not worth it if you're culling 1-4 polygons per check. When exactly it's worth it depends on how expensive the culling check is versus how expensive rendering an unseen model is.

The entire model would definitely take up main RAM when it's loaded.

Good to hear from some one who has worked on these things on the dreamcast. So you do the bounding box/volumes to check visibility and removed 1000s of unseen triangles. Behavior of this in commercial games seem baffling so while I have you attention I will go ahead and ask this. Ill bring up one example , trigger heart on the dreamcast and ps2. While I assume the polygon count given by nulldc might be bloated, an old emu author of a dreamcast emulator called makaron mentioned this game was 44K triangles per frame at 60 fps. Thats alot but once I looked at it both on DC and ps2 it seems the geometry extends way past the screen and only a small fraction of is actually on screen .

On the ps2 they culled all offscreen triangles and IF i remembering right its doing backface culling leading to only a couples thousand on frame. On the dc no such thing. I mean I do realize you said it depends how expensive the technique but having 40K triangles out of the frame unclipped seems crazy to think it would be faster? Ill put images below to show you what i mean.( they were earlier here but not sure if you saw them). Considering the ps2 is the faster machine its crazy they handled it so differently. (i dont use emulators to show per model polygon count, usually extract models from disc assets, just a note)

Dreamcast, no culling used -

Ps2 , culled everything offscreen -

 

[xaeroxcore]

Its not all displayed at once but its one of the largest levels i have found on the dreamcast, they usually dont even come close. The largest model that displays it all at once is a locket model for the credits of blue submarine no.6 on the dreamcast that was 19,000 triangles.

I know i could be annoying, but pleaseeeeee....give us Headhunter numbers....and Shenmue 2 if you can aswell! Pleaaaaseeeee!

 

[Cloofoofoo]

I know i could be annoying, but pleaseeeeee....give us Headhunter numbers....and Shenmue 2 if you can aswell! Pleaaaaseeeee!

Headhunter is a no. Shenmue is do able just tedious. But most llikely the next 3 games are tony hawk, matt hoffman, spiderman since they use the same engine. Shenmue faaaar off.

 

[Karamazov]

whe had some shenmue 1 numbers in this thread a few years ago.