/vr/ - Retro Games

sprites, and tile-based graphics in general, are essentially a memory compression strategy. it's a completely different approach to graphics than drawing polygons, but can also be easily implemented using polygons

>>7762121
Yes it can draw traditional 2D sprites and tiles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PxGM1np2hU

>>7762121

>>7762232

>>7762237

>>7762242

>>7762232
SF Alpha 3 is a known polygon game on the PS1. Its not a real 2D game. Same probably goes for Captain Commando.

>>7762121
The ps1 creates it's pseudo-3d by warping 2d tile information into 3D space. It doesn't have a z-buffer, so it used affine texture mapping to quickly take a guess at where the texture should be located in 3d and warped the 2d tile.map data to fit the guess. Technically, all games are 2d

>>7762121
Stick to Saturn if you want 2d games.

Saturn >>>> PSX >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Nintendo 64

>>7763039
agreed

>>7762393
>SF Alpha 3 is a known polygon game on the PS1.
This is a misunderstanding. It's only for certain effects like hit sparks certain flashes, etc. that it uses polygons to save memory.
>>7763035
>The ps1 creates it's pseudo-3d by warping 2d tile information into 3D space.
This isn't quite correct either. Some games do this yes, but the system does have fast 2D modes which games like SotN use to draw 8x8 and 16x16 tiles for the background layers and sprites.

The Saturn's superiority over the PS1 for 2D isn't that it uses Quads or has Sprites, as PS1 has this too to some extent. Saturn's 2D Strength comes from VDP2, more VRAM, and RAM expansion carts.

>>7763078
Thats not true. All the playable characters are actually polygons in SF ALPHA and the Marvel games. And and quite possibly a large number of other "2D" playstation games. Thats why i made this thread. To dig deeper into the actual PSX capabilities. I suspect the system isnt even capable of multiple windows and paralax scrolling.

>>7763378
What do you mean by multiple windows?

>>7762121
The capabilities were superior to that of saturn. But don't say it out loud in front of a SEGA fanboy

I thought the PS1 couldn't do real 3D and could only do 2D and weird fake 3D

>>7763378
It's doing the same thing the previous Alpha games on the console did. The big "It's using polygons so it's better now" statement that gets regurgitated is in regards to what I mentioned.

That said, PS1 can do 2D stuff just fine as stated in the SotN video.
> I suspect the system isnt even capable of multiple windows and paralax scrolling.
Sure it is, see the SotN video above.

>>7763417
It depends entirely on what you're focusing on. In raw fill rate of VDP1 vs the PS1's GPU yes PS1 wins. In terms of overall transparency effects and blending, PS1 is better. Where Saturn comes a head though is overall VRAM, VDP2, and RAM cart expansions. Which is why almost always when a game is made with Saturn in mind or from a system that's set up similarly to how Saturn and other traditional 2D hardware works, Saturn will come out on top.

PS1 only really comes out a head for stuff that's made for PS1 and is made to take advantage of it's strengths like raw sprite fill rate and transparencies.

>>7763425
Replace 2's with 3's and vica versa

>>7763417
If thats the case, why are 90% of the 2D ports vastly superior on the Saturn. For example? Every single CPS2 port. And even the MVS ports. You are not helping with your rampant faggotry.

>>7762121
I think its pretty good look at all the Shmups on the console and the other japanese 2d games. Wish a little bit of the 16 bit era lasted on the ps1 desu

Also SOTN, 2d classic man

>>7763459
>Also SOTN
Yeah, with its overkill of gigantic sprites and its award winning animation.

>>7762121
If you dig through PS1 libraries you can see lots of 2d stuff. Libgpu and libgs include drawing stuff and libgte does all sorts of transformations.
https://www.retroreversing.com/ps1-libs

>>7763624
>https://www.retroreversing.com/ps1-libs
thx anon

he Engine:

The Playstation (henceforth PSX) cannot do 2D. "But," you say, "I've played 2D games on the Playstation. Of course it can do 2D. I've even seen specifications for the 2D capabilities of the Playstation in FAQs and other sources." This is misleading. The games you have played appear to be 2D because they are flat, not because they are 2D. While the Saturn has distinct hardware for displaying and processing 2D sprites and other 2D elements, the Playstation does not. In order to represent a 2D game, the PSX must have a 3D engine that creates a polygon, textures one side of it, and then keeps that side facing the same direction and manipulates that polygon as if it was a sprite. This means that doing 2D on the PSX is really just doing flat 3D. The specs you've seen in FAQs and on the net, then, are an estimation of the ability of the PSX to pretend to be doing 2D. This is unlike the Saturn, which has separate 2D and 3D capabilities that can be mixed when needed or utilized separately. In order to create Dracula X on the Playstation, the incredible 2D-looking game that it is, the programmers had to create a custom 3D engine. The theory, then, is that the Saturn Dracula X is a port of the PSX's 3D engine with modifications rather than a game reprogrammed to properly utilize the Saturn's 2D and 3D capabilities. While the Saturn version of the game has extra content and some reprogrammed or changed special effects, the engine itself was a direct port and the graphics were not effectively modified or touched up as a result.

The Slowdown:

The PSX version had limited slowdown. This could be a performance side-effect of the odd 3D engine used to render the game and fill rate issues as the PSX creates oodles of flat polygons to fill the screen. As the Saturn has lesser 3D capabilities, it makes sense the Saturn would struggle even more with the ported 3D engine, no matter how much the code of the engine was optimized for the Saturn. As such, the Saturn has even more slowdown as it attempts to power a non-optimal engine design. The Saturn also uses a higher resolution display setting than the PSX (see Graphics below for more details) which means that it has more screen real estate to fill and has to work harder there as well.

The Slower Loading and More Loading Breaks:

The Saturn has more RAM than the PSX. Theoretically it might take the Saturn a little longer to fill that memory. Additionally, the PSX can compress sound data and the Saturn cannot. It's possible the difference in loading time and load points is due to having to utilize more memory for sound data. Furthermore, the increased screen resolution of the Saturn version may play a role in this as it takes more memory to display more pixels. I cannot determine if the Saturn or PSX use any texture compression routines that may affect this. It should be noted that as the PSX is more 3D savvy, it's possible there are some memory-saving functions the PSX can utilize that the Saturn cannot.

The Transparencies:

The Saturn cannot do hardware alpha channel transparencies in 3D. That has to be done in software as some programmers have shown they have the ability to do. Transparencies can be done, I believe on a hardware level, in 2D operating modes. Several games have demonstrated this. The PSX-derived engine is 3D-based and thus interpolation/dithering had to be used in most cases to replace true transparency. When true transparency is used it is programmed in software and slows the game down greatly, as evidenced in the special weapon rooms.

The Graphics:

The graphics seem a little more blocky in areas and a little less distinct on the Saturn as opposed to the PSX. The best example of this is Alucard's cape. Watch as it flows. One minute the vertical outline is thin, the next it's thicker, something that doesn't occur in the PSX version. Also watch the metal lattices in the background of some of the early areas and you'll notice some of the vertical lines appear fatter than others. Have you ever noticed on a computer when you scale a picture up by 5% or 10% in a non-uniform manner? Some of the picture stays the same and some bits get a little chunky. Well, the PSX's resolution for Dracula X is most likely the lowest resolution available to the Playstation, 256 x 224, in order to keep the fill rate high as possible and the game as fluid as possible. The Saturn's closest matching resolution is 352 x 240. This means that the graphics are scaled up a little, and not uniformly, with a much greater increase on the horizontal. The 3D engine was ported without proper modification to maintain proper object and image sizes and as such, all the graphics are scaled to match the increased resolution.

>so chad it doesn't even need 2D capabilities, it just throws textured polygons around on a flat plane to imitate 2D perfectly
Sony ChadStation

Playstation has to fake 2D. Case closed. Sorry snoyflakes. But reality hurts.

>>7762121
>is the console capable of sprites
yes
>does it have a hardware sprite engine
this isn't a thing
>Tiles, rotation, scaling, windows, parallax scrolling
it can do anything the snes could do.

The system had more 2d games than 3d games. Suikoden and Castlevania: sympony of the night come to mind.

looks like 2d plays like 2d
>but it isnt real 2d look at these hardware diagrams that say ps1 cannot do 2d
lol

>>7763749
>>7763757
Dear butthurt Snoyflakes... There are NO 2D games on the playstation. Its all done utilizing 3D POLYGON ENGINES. No traditional 2D, nada. If you think there are 2D games NOT using 3D POLY engines. Prove it. Share your videos, links, that are not cringy DF Retro, whatever. Or shut the fuck up. And one more time SOTN uses a 3D POLY ENGINE. Comprende?

>>7763779
More Saturnfag coping.

The backgrounds are tiled. And the "sprites" are transparent polygons.

And regarding the myth that the PSX can do 2D as well as the Saturn. If the PSX had to run 202 polygons all with animated (sprite) textures slapped onto them, as in Dragon Force, it would shit itself.

Heart of Darkness may be TRUE 2D.

To this day I don't understand how it works. The graphics seem to be streamed like a movié, but it's not a FMV game.

>>7763791
You should try playing 2D PSX games.

Speaking of movies. The intro of street fighter alpha, which is made up of large sprites on the saturn, is a jpeg movie on the psx instead. Capcom quite possibly couldnt do it on the playstation. Or they had not yet figured out how to fake it with polys.

>>7764606
>Capcom quite possibly couldnt do it on the playstation.
It's sprite-based in the Alpha 2 Gold port.

>>7764675
Polygon based. And that port lags pretty badly. Especially when you pick the large guys like Sagat and Zangief. Probably a fill rate issue?

Bad console.

>>7762121
>IS the console capable of traditional sprites?
Yes. If you can draw textured polygons, you can also draw sprites.

>Does it have a hardware sprite engine?
Depends how you define it. It has a framebuffer, where it can draw as many sprites as you have the bandwidth to. But it doesn't have fixed hardware sprite registers or so.

>How about tiles?
No, but since it has a framebuffer, you can achieve tile-like behavior.

>Rotation, scaling, windows, paralax scrolling?
Rotation and scaling, yes. Parallax scrolling, depending on what kind of result you want - you can make 16 background layers of trees and scroll them separately like in SOTN, or draw the ground as a trapezoid and move the bottom two points for Street-fighter-2 like ground, or even draw the background is 1 pixel strips and scroll them individually if you must.

More advanced tilemap functions like line and column scrolling would be trickier but you could probably simulate them some way if you think about it hard enough.

>Which games on the PSX are true 2D without the help of polygons?
None of them since the console doesn't have hardware sprite registers and tilemaps, and all of them since sprite is a polygon by definition. And just giving a background a priority value already gives it depth in the Z direction, ie. making it 3d.

>>7763378
>I suspect the system isnt even capable of multiple windows and paralax scrolling.
You can do those with many different framebuffer techniques.

>>7763458
>why are 90% of the 2D ports vastly superior on the Saturn
They are all ports of old shit that relied on either hardware tilemapping and/or buttloads of RAM.
All CVS2 and MVS ports were extremely fucking basic games that only relied on extremely large ROM space, and the Playstation didn't have enough memory to keep all the animation in.
And for tilemappers you have to re-code the game to get the same effects, which most companies gave no shits about because ports generally don't get a deadline for anything other than getting the game runnign and then shipping it.

I don't see what the controversy is, obviously the Playstation can draw 2d rectangles without any polygon bullshit. There's no "sprite" or "tile" engines, you just draw your rectangles to a framebuffer and build up the 2d picture you want that way. Playstation VRAM is fast so it's not a problem.

>>7763683
>>7763687
>>7763689
This is all nonsense and speculation with no actual technical knowledge of how either system or the actual game works. It's old and very outdated.

A thread for inaccurate """"technical"""" assertions was once bait of premium quality, but I've been baited by it too many times for it to work again.
Get better material faggot

>>7765543

Oh, that is interesting.

You know what pisses me off about retro gaming more than ANYTHING? There's still secrets behind how these systems worked. It's BULLSHIT by the companies that "own" the technology because THEY REFUSE TO MAKE THE SHIT ANYMORE.
Sony, Sega, Nintendo, etc should provide us with the full code and specs for their legacy systems. There's no reason not to.

They're like a bunch of old geezers hoarding silver while mining rhodium and bitcoin.

>>7767651
The ps1 is fully documented, what the fuck are you talking about.

>>7763078
Is it just me, or does it feels like Sega's strategy when it came to designing console was "taking something already been done and giving it more power". I mean, hardware wise, the Master System, Genesis and Dreamcast have the juice compared to their contemporaries, but nothing of them is new.

>>7763039
Ps1 didn't need a crutch memory expansion card. There are few and I mean very few examples where the vanilla saturn does 2d better than the ps1.

>>7768648
VMU was new

>>7768692
It kinda did, lots of playstation games had cut features or additional loading screens because of the low amount of RAM.

>>7762121
>Let us talk about the actual 2D capabilities of the playstation. IS the console capable of traditional sprites?
No, 3D render only. 2D games on the PS1 use flat polygons for sprites.
Thanks I could help, bro!

>>7768648
That's largely because Sega was doing their best to bring their arcade machines home. Each console was based on a contemporary arcade board and arcade boards were designed to make pretty coin-ops, not so much rock the boat with unique features catered to the home market. It's a big part of why the Saturn came unstuck for them. 'The arcade at home' wasn't what consumers wanted anymore and taste for in-the-home experiences was diverging further than it ever had before, for the console market. Same reason the Dreamcast would've been doomed as a fourth pillar if they had tried to stick around with it. They brought the right console to the wrong console war. Funnily enough they probably would've done better in the modern gaming climate, where arcade-style experiences have an audience again. They really died off around the 00's.

>>7768753
sauce: my ass

>>7768774
Arcade boards were good for running a few dozen games with pretty specific requirements each.

The Sega Saturn is perfectly built for running ports of Virtua Fighter and that's about it.

>>7765543
I suspected as much. While it seems obvious that you could fake a 2D sprite with two triangles, in practice the PS1's GS doesn't guarantee polygon edges perfectly mesh. Lots of 3D PS1 games have polygon edge artefacts because of this. OpenGL requires that if two polygons share common vertices they MUST have edges that perfectly mesh when drawn to the 2D pixel grid. Ask anyone who has done software 3D rasterisation and they'll tell you that this isn't very easy. The PS1 GS uses the naive approach and it's no good for this kind of stuff. So, confirmation that the PS1 has a rectangle drawing function answers a nagging question I've had for a while about how people solved the edge issue.

>>7768801
>The Sega Saturn is perfectly built for running ports of Virtua Fighter and that's about it.
Well, the original release of VF Saturn suggests that it wasn't quite all there even for that.

>>7768843
The original port didn't even use VDP2.

>>7768852
That makes sense since the concept of VDP2 didn't exist in the model1 board and therefore the assertion that the Saturn was ideal for VF doesn't ring true. VF was 100% polygons and they tried to put that code on the Saturn and came up short. VF Remix and VF2 used the VDP2 capabilities to "fake" the floors and backgrounds to keep some precious polygon budget for the characters and floor details that can't be faked with VDP2. That's why the floors on VFR look janky, because they are trying to mesh a perspective warped 2D tilemap onto a space that really wants texture mapped polygons. It works well enough.

>>7768783
http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/cv-sotn/documents/nocturne-port.htm

>>7768904
>t. some rando
I give you credit for trying. It's easy to falsify though.
You can look at any technical doc describing the Playstation GPU, or any emulator implementing it, and find what primitives the GPU supports. Here's an excerpt from Duckstation for example.

>>7765453
(You)

>>7768938
It's still a flat polygon without shading. I get that it's arguing semantics at that point, but I don't understand this compulsion of yours to obfuscate that fact.

>>7769034
it literally isn't. Polygons are a different draw command to rectangles. It's not like you're just taking a polygon and ignoring some parameters, it's a mode only for tiles and sprites (which lack a distinction at this point).

>>7768878
VFR looked worse than VF1 on Saturn since they had to remove all the lightning.