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OneEightHundred posted:Oh it's much worse than that. The PSX did not support "3D" in any modern sense. It has no Z-buffer, and no perspective correction, and triangle coordinates are specified in 2D. Everyone should read this port-mortem on Crash Bandicoot. It is absolutely insane how they got the game to run as well as it did. Pre-calculated geometry occlusion buffers are just the start of it. Maxwell Adams fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 17:54
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OneEightHundred posted:Oh it's much worse than that. The PSX did not support "3D" in any modern sense. It has no Z-buffer, and no perspective correction, and triangle coordinates are specified in 2D. And the funny part is, the Saturn did have 3D hardware support in a minimal amount, but PSX is remembered for 3d games and Saturn for 2d games. And of course, N64 did have straight up 3d support but tied to a hilariously small amount of ram for textures.
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Oct 24, 2011 17:55
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trandorian posted:And the funny part is, the Saturn did have 3D hardware support in a minimal amount, but PSX is remembered for 3d games and Saturn for 2d games.
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Oct 24, 2011 18:18
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OneEightHundred posted:Psygnosis' games looked great. Actually yeah that's true, the Tomb Raider games after the first one really weren't all that great looking even when they were new.
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Oct 24, 2011 18:23
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Sombrerotron posted:The Saturn's hardware actually required the use of square instead of triangular polygons or somesuch, and apparently this made programming games for the system pretty hellish. nVidia's first card, the NV1, did the same thing, and that it was one of the reasons for its lack of success. Is that the reason that Quake games on the Saturn looked weird, especially Quake II? Some places say they wrote a different engine for them entirely.
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Oct 24, 2011 18:25
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trandorian posted:Is that the reason that Quake games on the Saturn looked weird, especially Quake II? Some places say they wrote a different engine for them entirely.
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Oct 24, 2011 18:28
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Paul Pot posted:
As long as Doom 4 has the ability to have dozens of monsters on the screen at the same time, then it should be possible to mod the game into something more like Doom 2.
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Oct 25, 2011 03:36
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Sombrerotron posted:My understanding of the whole quadratic texture mapping thing that Sega (and later nVidia) did is more or less non-existent, although I gather that it's actually something different altogether from polygons, so I imagine that they did have to write separate engines or at the very least heavily modify the existing ones. I don't have the technical specs, but a lot of evidence suggests that this also included really harsh limits on texturing. It looks like at best, the texture span of a quad either had to be a power of two in both dimensions, and at worst, had to be the entire texture. It certainly couldn't do non-axial projection. Because it couldn't do a real lighting overlay, they had to use a bunch of static-lit quads to handle the static world lighting. This is fine for big surfaces generally, but it means that for lighting samples near edges, you get non-square quads and the texturing limits force the textures to be enlarged or squashed. Since Quake 1 also chopped all geometry intersections, putting a pillar on the floor would result in a bunch of floor quads with odd rectangular sizes and really hosed up texturing. i.e. see the checker floor at 5:38 on this video. The intro archway briefly visible at around 0:05 has a similar problem. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Oct 25, 2011 |
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Oct 25, 2011 04:20
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THE HORSES rear end posted:As long as Doom 4 has the ability to have dozens of monsters on the screen at the same time, then it should be possible to mod the game into something more like Doom 2. What I was getting at is that I highly doubt the map design will accommodate a classic Doom 2 keyhunt. Personally I don't mind a super linear game as long as the shooting parts are as good as in Doom 2.
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Oct 25, 2011 08:19
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Reading that blog about Crash Bandicoot's development blew my mind. It's amazing how much they squeezed out of that hardware; I know that most console games nowadays still have pretty tight limits but when you look at what tiny power the older consoles had it just seems so much more amazing what they could do with it.
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Oct 25, 2011 10:27
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Early 3d is pretty messy to look at. The Saturn version of Quake is actually really pretty compared to most attempts at 3D on that monster. Powerslave and Duke 3D for Saturn both use the same engine, and they're also good ports.
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Oct 25, 2011 13:27
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Is the Atomic Edition of Duke 3d on GoG as complete as they come? I'd rather buy a pack that has all official expansions, regardless of their respective quality for completions sake.
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Oct 25, 2011 18:13
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Rather Dashing posted:Is the Atomic Edition of Duke 3d on GoG as complete as they come? I'd rather buy a pack that has all official expansions, regardless of their respective quality for completions sake. Well, if you bought the original game on CD, you'd also have Duke 1 and 2, plus some Apogee shareware and Duke3d editing tools. Dunno if that counts as "complete" or not. Sombrerotron posted:The Saturn's hardware actually required the use of square instead of triangular polygons or somesuch, and apparently this made programming games for the system pretty hellish. Saturn programming was hellish, but it had nothing (well, very little) to do with quadrangles. The reason Saturn programming was hellish was because the developer tools were absolutely horrid and the console itself was this weird mishmash of multiple oddball processors. The internal schematics really are like someone took a 2D console and glued a 3D console on top of it. Square polygons meant that the process of porting graphics wasn't as simple as it could otherwise be, but developing anything for the Saturn was such a ridiculous level of bullshit to begin with that polygon format didn't really matter much in the end - a lot of developers would make "quadrangles" with two vertices either right on top of or right next to each other, which is basically the exact same as a triangle (just, obviously, less efficient than sitting down and creating proper quadrangles). Basically, developing on the Saturn is like one of those user .WADs where you have to kill two Barons with the starting pistol and there's a DeHackEd patch to make the pistol jam occasionally. The fact that you have to do a bit of backtracking and maze-running to get to the exit really isn't that big a concern.
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Oct 25, 2011 18:34
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Rather Dashing posted:Is the Atomic Edition of Duke 3d on GoG as complete as they come? I'd rather buy a pack that has all official expansions, regardless of their respective quality for completions sake. Atomic Edition includes the original game (three episodes) + the only official expansion (adding a fourth episode). That said, there's a shitload of unofficial (but authorized by 3D Realms) expansions developed by Sunstorm and WizardWorks which are not included in the Atomic Edition (and, AFAIK, cannot be bought anywhere these days): Duke Carribean, Duke it Out in D.C., Nuclear Winter, Duke XTreme, Duke Assault, Duke!ZONE, and Duke!ZONE 2. A bunch of those are packs of hundreds of fanmade levels you're probably better off without, though. So, it's the most complete version you can buy, but not "complete" in the sense that it includes all commercial Duke3d stuff. WiredStnkyPusyLuvr posted:The reason Saturn programming was hellish was because the developer tools were absolutely horrid and the console itself was this weird mishmash of multiple oddball processors. The internal schematics really are like someone took a 2D console and glued a 3D console on top of it. Rumour has it that 3d hardware was added quite late in development (in response to rumours that the PlayStation and N64 would be 3d powerhouses and that the Saturn would be outdated on release if it only did 2d, no matter how good it looked); if true, this would make sense.
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Oct 25, 2011 18:42
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ToxicFrog posted:Atomic Edition includes the original game (three episodes) + the only official expansion (adding a fourth episode). Rev. Melchisedech Howler fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Oct 25, 2011 |
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Oct 25, 2011 19:00
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Duke Caribbean is great and anyone who enjoys duke should play it.
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Oct 25, 2011 19:03
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ToxicFrog posted:Rumour has it that 3d hardware was added quite late in development (in response to rumours that the PlayStation and N64 would be 3d powerhouses and that the Saturn would be outdated on release if it only did 2d, no matter how good it looked); if true, this would make sense.
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Oct 25, 2011 19:24
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Sombrerotron posted:Sounds quite plausible, considering how ill-advised seemingly every hardware-related decision was that Sega made after they put the Sega CD on the market. The hardware did have a "kitchen sink" problem thanks to originally being envisioned as a 32X/Genesis/Sega-CD all in one, but if anything that would weigh against the rumor as they were already leaning toward 3D bullshit in the 32X.
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Oct 25, 2011 20:25
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Yodzilla posted:Goddamn are PS1 era 3D games terrible looking. It doesn't have the full effect unless the textures are warping and twisting all over the place.
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Oct 25, 2011 20:49
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OneEightHundred posted:I strongly doubt it. 3D on the Saturn is just sprite transforms, the system would have been unusable without the sprite unit. While the VDP1 did do both sprites and polygons, it wasn't "just sprite transforms". Textures for sprites and polygons also shared the same RAM space. Technically, in the Saturn rendering chipset, sprites are rendered as objects consisting of a single polygon.
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Oct 25, 2011 21:00
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I still like the idea of a harassed Japanese factory worker opening Saturn boxes late at night, unscrewing the cases, and hammering a '3D chip' onto the motherboards before carefully re-sealing the Sellotape, though. 'What? They changed the specs AGAIN? Bah' *throws toolbag to ground in despair*
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Oct 25, 2011 21:16
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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That Japanese factory worker's boss was named George Broussard. e: speaking of which, according to Georgie B's Twitter feed all he does is eat and play video games. oh to live the life...
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Oct 25, 2011 21:19
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Yodzilla posted:That Japanese factory worker's boss was named George Broussard. What, did he quit playing poker?
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Oct 25, 2011 21:21
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ToxicFrog posted:That said, there's a shitload of unofficial (but authorized by 3D Realms) expansions developed by Sunstorm and WizardWorks which are not included in the Atomic Edition (and, AFAIK, cannot be bought anywhere these days): Duke Carribean, Duke it Out in D.C., Nuclear Winter, Duke XTreme, Duke Assault, Duke!ZONE, and Duke!ZONE 2. I remember way back in the day buying the Duke Nukem Kill-A-Ton Collection, which had Duke It Out in D.C., Duke!ZONE 2 and Duke Xtreme. Duke Xtreme was basically made for multiplayer (it had all kinds of modifiers like adding toxic fumes to poop and gaining health when you tip a stripper, and most of the included maps were crap for single-player but good for deathmatches), but it was unstable on the OS it was made for (Windows 95) so I'd assume the only way to run it would be through a virtual machine. The DC expansion was good, it was worth playing when I had it sitting on a CD but I wouldn't dig around online for it. And Duke!Zone 2 was just badly made, I could never get it running on Windows 3.1 or 95.
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Oct 25, 2011 22:02
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trandorian posted:While the VDP1 did do both sprites and polygons, it wasn't "just sprite transforms". Textures for sprites and polygons also shared the same RAM space. Technically, in the Saturn rendering chipset, sprites are rendered as objects consisting of a single polygon.
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Oct 25, 2011 22:11
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Yodzilla posted:Goddamn are PS1 era 3D games terrible looking. One of my favorite FPS, despite it being pretty awful in general, was "PO'ed" which first showed up on the 3DO and was later ported to the PSX. I used to have the game on the PSX and the way the walls warped and stretched gave me horrible motion sickness. In fact, it is the only game to date that has given me motion sickness. Conversely, when I got my 3DO almost two years ago, I ended up getting PO'ed for it and it did not give me motion sickness at all. It also ran better than the PSX version strangely enough.
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Oct 25, 2011 22:16
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OneEightHundred posted:Right, but polygons were just distorted sprites, so adding 3D late means either they added sprite distortion late (unlikely given the state of the art), or they added a separate processor just to handle 3D (which they didn't). It would be equally accurate to say of the Saturn "Sprites are just distorted polygons". It's a polygon based system. The same processor is used for polygonal objects and sprite objects, sprite objects being single polygons. There's also kind of no proof that they "added 3D late". The system's design started in February 1993, the console had retail launch November 1994. If I remember right, the only thing added late in design was a second SH2 main cpu, the VDP1 always had 3d capability as well as always handling the one-polygon "sprites", and always used quadrilaterals for the graphic primitives instead of triangles.
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Oct 25, 2011 22:40
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SEGA's early 3D arcade hardware was based mostly on quadrangles, and so it made sense for the Saturn to be quadrangle based as well so that arcade ports (which still mattered at the time) would be easy for the Saturn. The dual SH2 setup was also common in SEGA 3D hardware, even making it into the 32X. I think the idea was to make porting between 32X and Saturn very easy, since they were originally supposed to coexist. If you look at the architecture, the Saturn is really close to a suped-up 32X CD system with native 3D support and a better sound chip. Good examples of those consoles actually being pushed show that they were decently powerful where 3D was concerned, even the 32X, which had to do everything in software. Shenmue Cinema Demo (Saturn) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUe9ASlu9Us Zyrinx 32X Demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F96yVYxNWPI
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Oct 25, 2011 23:49
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Rather Dashing posted:That's what was stopping me - I remember a friend way back having the Carribean and Nuclear Winter packs. I guess I'll get the GoG version and then look through other channels for the other sets. Check the OP, you can get them there (or click here 
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Oct 25, 2011 23:58
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Gargonovitch posted:SEGA's early 3D arcade hardware was based mostly on quadrangles, and so it made sense for the Saturn to be quadrangle based as well so that arcade ports (which still mattered at the time) would be easy for the Saturn. The dual SH2 setup was also common in SEGA 3D hardware, even making it into the 32X. I think the idea was to make porting between 32X and Saturn very easy, since they were originally supposed to coexist. If you look at the architecture, the Saturn is really close to a suped-up 32X CD system with native 3D support and a better sound chip. Good examples of those consoles actually being pushed show that they were decently powerful where 3D was concerned, even the 32X, which had to do everything in software. Man this just makes me even madder at how poo poo Doom 32x looked and ran!
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Oct 26, 2011 00:38
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ToxicFrog posted:Rumour has it that 3d hardware was added quite late in development (in response to rumours that the PlayStation and N64 would be 3d powerhouses and that the Saturn would be outdated on release if it only did 2d, no matter how good it looked); if true, this would make sense. The system had what was effectively primitive dual-CPUs that couldn't communicate with each other without some horrible hackery. The official development SDK was literally broken and would spit out corrupt binaries unless you used some arcane build configuration. Someone once posted a lot more detail on how hosed up the Saturn was internally in YOSPOS, but it's vanished to the wind 
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Oct 26, 2011 06:26
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trandorian posted:Is that the reason that Quake games on the Saturn looked weird, especially Quake II? Some places say they wrote a different engine for them entirely. Quake II only made it onto the PS1 & N64. The N64 version even got a boost if you added the expansion pak. All things considered I can't believe they jammed the game into either system given its PC requirements. Kazvall posted:drat you all for making me download Doom 64. There goes my night. Swear to Christ, map 17 "Watch Your Step" still terrifies me to this day. Also of note, my age has doubled since Doom64 first came out and it still makes me a little bitch. ToxicFrog posted:Rumour has it that 3d hardware was added quite late in development (in response to rumours that the PlayStation and N64 would be 3d powerhouses and that the Saturn would be outdated on release if it only did 2d, no matter how good it looked); if true, this would make sense. I was always under the impression that the Saturn was merely a home version of the Model2 arcade board. Apparently based on your post and others it was a retarded version of the Model2 with missing chromosomes.
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Oct 26, 2011 07:11
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One of the worst things about Saturn graphics is the lack of transparency, I find. Apparently it supports alpha blending, but there's a massive bug that makes it not work as intended, so you get Genesis-style dithering all over the place unless somebody wrote a software implementation for transparency, like in Burning Rangers. I guess the reason I like the Saturn so much is that it's like a trainwreck that you can't help but watch. They got next to nothing right with that system, it's really amazing. Back to early FPS games, I've been playing the Community Chest 3 WAD, and goddamn, that first level. The rest of the WAD is awesome, I highly recommend it, but that first level is the least fun Doom map I've played in a long while. I honestly just about didn't play the rest of the WAD because of how awful that level is.
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Oct 26, 2011 20:37
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Gargonovitch posted:Back to early FPS games, I've been playing the Community Chest 3 WAD, and goddamn, that first level. The rest of the WAD is awesome, I highly recommend it, but that first level is the least fun Doom map I've played in a long while. I honestly just about didn't play the rest of the WAD because of how awful that level is. It actually gets better after that first map? Because I stopped playing it on UV / Brutal Doom after that experience. It's just such a strange, disjointed map, with enemies placed around seemingly haphazardly. Clusterfuck would be the right word, I think.
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Oct 26, 2011 20:42
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Yeah, it's actually a pretty good collection of levels after that one. Why they chose to lead off with that level is beyond me, but if you can manage to slog through that shitshow, it's pretty good. I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's almost as good as Community Chest 2. Still not on the level of Scythe 2 or Requiem, but still lots of fun. Scythe X was also pretty badass. The last level is CRAZY.
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Oct 26, 2011 23:27
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Why did I not play Doom 64 before? It feels so much better than regular Doom. Also, why is there a jump button control when I can't even jump?
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Oct 27, 2011 03:39
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Zeether posted:Also, why is there a jump button control when I can't even jump? Because you can enable jumping in the options menu.
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Oct 27, 2011 03:56
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 Also, gently caress that crusher trap in M2. I lost a chunk of health that I got via the megasphere because I wasn't standing in exactly the right place (if you aren't under the flickering lights you're basically hosed)
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Oct 27, 2011 09:37
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:It actually gets better after that first map? Because I stopped playing it on UV / Brutal Doom after that experience. It's just such a strange, disjointed map, with enemies placed around seemingly haphazardly. Clusterfuck would be the right word, I think. Huh, yeah. I did the same thing. I should dig that out again then!
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Oct 27, 2011 14:25
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Are there any events happening tomorrow? I was hoping for some Unreal/UT99 multiplayer.
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Oct 29, 2011 20:32
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