/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4916946
>mid-summer
>can't write truth

>my consumer trinitron CRT looks too clean on composite
I want to enjoy dithering greatness.

Which Street Fighter series would the Saturn have had more trouble running...
>Street Fighter 3 (NG/2I/3S)
>Street Fighter EX (Plus Alpha/EX2 Plus)

>>4916946
It can, you just can't see them because they are transparent.

>>4917073
yea the rainbow banding on genesis looks garbo on my trinitron

>>4916946
Why haven't I made a webm showing off loads of transparencies in games to end these threads before they start yet? Would that even end the threads?

>>4917167
That's dithering, not alpha channel transparency.

>>4917086
Saturn would be equally fucked.

>>4917438
>show alpha channel transparency
>that's not alpha channel transparency

Where's the 2D equivalent of Radiant Silvergun on the PSX?

>>4917438
In what fucking dictionary is this considered "dithering"?

>>4916946
the hardware was never built with transparency / alpha in mind. however, using some programming tricks, you can have transparent graphics, it's just merely calculating the sums of the colours of an object with whatever is behind it.

>>4917438
that is not dithering. that is a calculation of colour palette to give the illusion of transparency, which the saturn (and many other 16bit/32bit systems) can easily do.

>>4917543
in the dictionary for clueless fucking retards.

>>4917513
Where's the equivalent of Radiant Silvergun anywhere?

>>4917513
*blocks your path*

>>4917593
Looks like a SNES game, lmao.

Meanwhile, Saturn has THIS.

>>4917593
>action RPG is similar to shmup
what

>>4917557
>that is a calculation of colour palette to give the illusion of transparency
so what is transparency if not exactly this?

>>4917657
we're only discussing aesthetics and hardware power ITT

>>4917648
This game was such a slog.
Looks nice and neet concepts, though.

>>4916946
It can handle 2d transparencies, SNES style.

>>4917086
Ex would have worse textures and mesh transparencies, SF3 would have shitload of missing animation (larger RAM carts wouldn't help, it's a lack of fillrate, not a lack of memory that matters - the RAM cart add generic memory, that has to be uploaded to VDP1, and while it is uploading, it can't draw anything, so the more frames you have the more you have to upload and the less you can actually draw).

But it wouldn't have "trouble" doing either, they'd just both look worse.

transparencies are overrated anyways

give me god tier tilemapper and sprite morphing any day

>>4917438
>>4917557
Dithering is the checkerboard pattern mesh.

Saturn has no alpha transparency, it has
- 50% background sprite + 50% new sprite (addition, sprites only, backgrounds ignored)
- background sprite minus 50% (shadow mode, sprites only, backgrounds ignored)
- 1/32 step background blending (addition based, background only, sprites ignored, and you have 32 steps total for 4 screens max - so with 4 screens you only have 8 steps)
- max 8 step sprite to background blending (addition based, CRAM sprite only, anything inbetween the sprite and BG is overwritten)

Alpha transparency implies that you have an entire colour channel only for transparent data. You don't have that on the Saturn, you can only set certain bits, from 1 to 3 usually (for values 0-8), that tell the certain sprite to blend at a certain ratio. And even that is stupidly limited to certain sprite modes only.

It's similar in the Playstation, but there you have 4 completely different blend modes (one is actually subtraction), and since everything is a framebuffer triangle, you don't have to worry about blending with backgrounds (everything previously written is "the background").

They could've easily added a 12-bit RGB mode to the Saturn that would've allowed for sprite+sprite+BG blending, fixing a shitton of issues with the console and making it five times easier to develop for. But Sega's internal team had no fucking clue about what they were doing.

>>4917789
Autism. Also wrong.

>>4917073
That is why Sony/Aperture Grille CRTs are shit for retro gaming and Shadow Mask's are superior.

>>4919257
Mesh transparencies on a CRT through composite are the best.

>>4919257
Late slot masks really are better than aperture grilles. It's mostly "retro video game kids" saying otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_geometry

>>4919270
The indirect mapping of phosphors to pixels can look nice in other ways, but dithered transparency relies entirely on composite video. The tube has nothing to do with it. The effect works the same on an LCD with composite input.

>>4917765
>Cycloid β as dithered garbage

>>4919310
> The indirect mapping of phosphors to pixels can look nice in other ways
this is where computers like the c64 really shine, since graphics artists really took advantage of pixel bleeding and dithering to add more depth to their limited colour pictures.

>>4919394
> dithering
yeah, no. it's not.

The Saturn can handle transparency BUT

1) VDP1 and VDP2 are poorly integrated with each other (wipe each others shit out)

2) VDP1's transparency mode is stupidly slow due to poor quad drawing design (lots of overdraw and glitchy anyway)

>>4919412
No I'm saying I'd like to see what Cycloid β would look like dithered.

>mid-90s plebstation
>can't handle 2D engines

>>4919503
PS1 has no problem running 2D engines. It's arguably faster than the Saturn at rendering "sprites" (not backgrounds though). Where the PS1 falls short in 2D games is down to not being able to hold too many animations in RAM because unlike Saturn it doesn't have a RAM expansion slot.

>>4919485
There’s a fighter in VF Kids who compares nicely. Also I’ve got a webm in the works showing off how “good” dithered meshes look via composite, hang tight.

>>4919557
Dithering will NEVER be comparable to true transparency. Even meshes through composite will ALWAYS be a crude approximation of the genuine article, and no amount of Saturn shilling will ever change that.

>>4919689
S-video for comparison.

>>4919538
>Where the PS1 falls short in 2D games is down to not being able to hold too many animations in RAM because unlike Saturn it doesn't have a RAM expansion slot.
However, games on Saturn that don't use any RAM expansion (such as SF Alpha 2) still have more animation frames than the PS port.

>>4919906
I would say that’s down to the Saturn having marginally more VRAM than the PS1. Once again, not an issue of power, just more space to load 2D data into.

>>4919906
Saturn has more RAM overall and VDP2 to offload drawing backgrounds.

>>4919916
>>4920831
Well, then it's not just because of the RAM expansion slot, it's because the Saturn has more RAM period.