/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7186816
Also ported to Saturn and PS1.
From a chat I had with developer Paul Griffiths 14 years ago:

"I wrote the Saturn version, and it ran at a constant 60 fps. The PSX version could only manage 30 fps though.

The Saturn version got the extra performance from having some custom hardware that really helped that particular game. The terrain was displayed much like Mode7 on the SNES, ie a scroll screen that could have a perspective transformation to display it at the correct viewpoint to match the polygonal display drawn over it. It wasn't tiled by the hardware though, I used the bitmap mode, and dumped the tile data in 2 strips, to update the horizontal and vertical edges. Since the scroll screen wrapped round in both directions, it gave a seamless scrolling landscape.

The PSX had to draw the terrain as a grid of polygons, and so was forced to run at 30 fps due to the limited rendering power of that console generation. Without the scroll screen hardware, the Saturn version would also have been stuck at that frame rate.

The game was written almost completely in C, with a few SH2 assembler functions to handle the update of the scroll screen data in the vertical blank. This was the first game I'd written in C at that point, everything prior I'd done in assembler. I used the SGL libraries, as these were far more capable than the SBL libs that were initially available.

The Saturn hardware also allowed me to have parts of the scene reflected in the water, by drawing the reflected geometry inverted and using various priority/blending settings in VDP2 to combine the frame buffer and scroll screens.

As for programming the Saturn now, I'm sure you'd find the stuff available on the web will cover any of it admirably.

This was my only Saturn game, after that I moved on to various crappy projects on the PSX, and then PC."

The Saturn version is the one to go for. Had a bit of a chat with the main coder (Paul Griffiths) roughly 13 years ago:

"Hi, someone sent me a link to this, and I just thought I'd point out your comment about the game running at a solid 30 fps is slightly off. I wrote the Saturn version, and it ran at a constant 60 fps. PSX version could only manage 30 fps though. Saturn version got the extra performance from having some custom hardware that really helped that particular game. The terrain was displayed much like Mode7 on the SNES, ie a scroll screen that could have a perspective transformation to display it at the correct viewpoint to match the polygonal display drawn over it. It wasn't tiled by the hardware though, I used the bitmap mode, and dumped the tile data in 2 strips, to update the horizontal and vertical edges. Since the scroll screen wrapped round in both directions, it gave a seamless scrolling landscape. The PSX had to draw the terrain as a grid of polygons, and so was forced to run at 30 fps due to the limited rendering power of that console generation. Without the scroll screen hardware, the Saturn version would also have been stuck at that frame rate. The game was written almost completely in C, with a few SH2 assembler functions to handle the update of the scroll screen data in the vertical blank. This was the first game I'd written in C at that point, everything prior I'd done in assembler. I used the SGL libraries, as these were far more capable than the SBL libs that were initially available. The Saturn hardware also allowed me to have parts of the scene reflected in the water, by drawing the reflected geometry inverted and using various priority/blending settings in VDP2 to combine the frame buffer and scroll screens.
As for programming the Saturn now, I'm sure you'd find the stuff available on the web will cover any of it admirably. This was my only Saturn game, after that I moved on to various crappy projects on the PSX, and then PC."