/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7782121
Sega of Japan wanted it to be the ultimate 2D console against Sega of America’s wishes. Then when they saw what the PSX was capable of they sort of Frankensteined together a weird hybrid architecture at the last minute.

>>7782131
That explains why SOTN runs like a snail on the Saturn.

>>7782146
Yeah basically few developers really attempted to get the most out of the Saturn because it was a pain in the ass to develop for compared to the PlayStation. Sort of similar to the Xbox 360 vs PS3 architecture.

>>7782163
Sad that Sega was their own worst enemy when it comes to hardware decisions.

>>7782221
Sega was very weirdly run in that the USA division had a lot of decision making power, unlike Nintendo where Japan pretty much always has the final say.

>>7782121
The Saturn wasn't necessarily weak, but it was a case of Sega as a first-party knowing how to handle the hardware and everyone else just more readily used to the competition. Plus with the Saturn having to improvise its 3D thanks to not specializing in it, it just made it harder to develop for whereas Playstation was the industry gold standard. 2D game wise it should utterly dominate the Playstation on almost every front once you add the RAM carts into the equation, but games like SOTN got downright unoptimized and sloppy ports because of the unfamiliarity issue and hardware differences.

>>7782131
Sega of Japan wanted 3D, don't be ridiculous. They were the fucking pioneers of 3D games in the arcade, and Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing were huge successes.

It's just their Arcade and Home divisions were wildly apart on a technical level. The arcade division was using state of the art shit and new how to push 3D using quads, and the home division really only new 2D, but home was tasked with making this thing, so they crib a little off of what the arcade division is doing where they can, but scale it way back because it would otherwise be too expensive, and they try to rely on some 2D systems to fill in the gaps, not really knowing where games were going to go, and certainly not anticipating the home console games were going to be 100% full 3D, because it just seemed so cost prohibitive. So that's how they end up with the VDP managing a large infinite flat plane, because they figure more games are going to be slight evolutions of last generation stuff, like Dark Savior, Grandia, or fighting games.

That's when they see Sony and the PlayStation, which went full 3D, and did it without breaking the bank, making it easy, all because they went with a different architectural model, which at the time wasn't the norm, but now is today.

It's too late for SoJ to switch over to the better model, and they just don't have the expertise to do it anyway, so they do the best thing they can, and just throw a second SH2 in there to try to get more performance. Of course it goes under or completely unutilized in much of its early life, because Sega scrambled so hard at the last minute they just didn't get the proper dev tools or documentation out there.

Sony at the time came in and just killed it, that's really all there is to it. They were infinitely superior to all the competition in absolutely every way. If they hadn't come in, Sega and Nintendo would still be going at it, and it's tough to say if things would be better or worse for it

>>7782258
Also, IIRC SoA was pushing hard for them to use a different 3D chip but got overruled by the Japanese designers.

>>7782271
Yes, SoA was talking to the people that made the GPU for the N64. I believe they wanted to use the same part, even, but at the time it was too expensive, and well, it ran and looked like shit, was really only good at doing 3D, and SoJ wanted something better.

It's just that what SoJ came up with wasn't all that better, and in many ways was worse.

>>7782121
>technically weak
OP hasnt seen a saturn upclose ever.

What the fuck is this?

>>7782306
What it looks like. A mesh shadow in a fugly racing game perhaps?

I own a Saturn and love my Saturn but I cringe when I see my fellow Saturn retards pretending it did 3D better than PS1 or even N64. Just own that its the best 2D console ever made, doesn't need to do 3D.

>>7782314
I cringe when i see the texture warping, polygon wobbling, muddy textures and fucked up 3D character joints in PSX games. But somehow people still pretend it was impressive graphics. PSX was never impressive. Impressive 3D had a name. SEGA model 2 & 3. But then again snoyflakes never left the house anyway.

>>7782337
No one expected console graphics to be 1:1 with expensive arcade cabinets at that time though. The PS1 pulled off good enough 3D for a $300 price tag.

>>7782306
Probably an inability of either hardware or dev to pull off a proper transparency, I believe that was a major problem with the Saturn so you didn't see transparencies often on the system at all without some workarounds. Of course, it was a functioning compromise, the average CRT would alias/blur that together.

>>7782337
Okay, but it still pulled it off better than Saturn which was my point. There's a reason so many 3D games for the system are on rails, isometric, or 2.5D. The most impressive 3D games are generally racing games which I imagine are easier to program for than say, an open world platformer. Only thing that rivals the N64 platformers on the Saturn is Croc, which is an okay game. Saturn's strengths are its sharp 2D graphics with occasional 3D backgrounds and special effects. Instead of pitting the consoles against each other, it's ultimately best to have all of them and to value each one for the strengths it has and not try and compensate for its weaknesses with console war shit.

>>7782385
>sharp 2D graphics
It had some decent 2D, but even then, the PS1 could out out similar looking 2D, unless you are specifically comparing certain arcade ports. Otherwise, the PSX was just as good at 2D, even if it drew it totally differently.

Hell, the Saturn wasn't even the best 2D system. That would be the Neo Geo and even the Neo Geo CD. Saturn had so much slowdown in comparison to the Neo Geo versions, even with an additional add-on for RAM.

That's the thing with the Saturn. It was a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

>>7782283
We can also probably safely assume that what SoJ was shown was not the final chip that ended up being in the N64. Remember the N64 came out 2 years after the Saturn, so Nintendo probably worked with SGI to improve things. Sega of Japan was already in crunch time trying to get it out the door by November of 1994, they didn't have the luxury of working with SGI to refine the chip.
>>7782402
Neo Geo ports had slowdown because SNK wasn't very good at optimizing things using the External RAM cart. The RAM carts require you to know what you're doing because if you don't you can cause bus stalls which will cause slowdown. Capcom Figured it out after Marvel Super Heroes and it's why their ports don't slowdown like SNKs.

That said, SNKs games don't even slowdown that badly if you use the right RAM cart. You need to use the official 1MB RAM cart with them. That RAM cart has faster RAM than the 4MB cart and all the cheap Chinesium aftermarket carts. If you use the official 1MB cart you wont get nearly as much slowdown.

>>7782337
Exactly, I couldn't take 5th gen console 3d seriously when the arcade obliterated anything at home

The VDP2 infinite plane was a good idea for underpowered 5th gen, most games on Saturn that used it wiped the floor with anything on PS1

>>7782121
In general there's a lot of memes and misconceptions thrown around about the Saturn's hardware. It's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be, developers just needed to take the time to learn it. Which a few did, others though clearly didn't.
>The hardware was complicated!
It was no more complicated than consoles that came before it like the SNES and it's a breeze compared to things like the Atari Jaguar. Hell you could even argue the N64 was equally complicated in it's own ways. And that's not getting into things like the PS2 and PS3 that came later.
>No one used the second CPU!
That only holds true for very early games like Virtua Fighter, Panzer Dragoon, etc. because they were done before the 2nd CPU was finalized in the design. Most games that came after that are using the 2nd CPU unless they're a shitty port from another platform.
>VDP1 is slow and sucks!
VDP1 has quirks, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Fillrate is lower than the PS1 sure, but in practice you're not going to hit that very often. You'll more likely be capped by the CPUs.
>It was only designed for 2D! 3D Was added on at the last second!
3D was always in the design. The last second change was adding the 2nd SH-2 to improve performance after Sony released their specs. It was a suggestion from Hitachi.

Really these are the main issues of the Saturn's design:
- No real way to define texture coordinates within a larger texture. You have to draw the entire texture at all times.
- Drawing polygons as Distorted Sprites causes pixel over draw which can hurt erformance.
- Pixel Overdraw can corrupt textures and transparencies.
- Transparencies take 6x longer to draw than non transparent sprites.
- Additive Blending can't be used for transparencies by VDP1, only shading
- No 256/512 pixel wide mode.
- Fragmented RAM makes it harder to use effectively.
- No ADPCM Support from the SCSP.

>>7782461
The problem is that, to be able to use it, you usually need to restrict the camera or the play field somehow.
I don't see how you could incorporate effective use of VDP2 into a game like tomb raider or sega rally.

>>7782402
>Otherwise, the PSX was just as good at 2D
The PSX just has enough power to draw 8x8, 16x16 for the background tiles. No effects, no scaling. THATS it. It cant even draw sprites. I dont know where this myth is coming from that the PSX is a competent 2D machine. When it has to fake 2D via a 3D engine. And when most "2D" on the PSX feel empty, laggy and lifeless compared to the real thing. The PSX is not a 2D machine. Period.

>>7782461
I too love flat mode7-style terrains that have no unique features to them to make them actually interesting.

>>7782501
There is no difference between a sprite and a background tile when all you're doing is drawing to a framebuffer. What are you on about?

>>7782432
It’s so strange that Sega was absolutely dead set on rushing the Saturn out to market asap when they were still doing just fine in the arcade and 16-bit markets.

>>7782515
Sega was always fixated on being on the cutting edge. That was as much about products themselves as it was about branding. When Sega began to fail it resulted in underwhelming and mistimed hardware.

Hitachi and Sega were in close partnership over the Saturn's development. The dual CPU dual GPU design came from Hitachi after Sega expressed concerns the console wasn't fast enough to compete with Sony's speculated Playstation. Hitachi's solution was to double the number of chips instead of figuring out a way to squeeze greater clock speeds and feature capability of the console. It was a mess.

>>7782348
The mesh transparency was also faster than PS1's transparency. Mesh transparency had the same cost as a single polygon.

>>7782494
That's not really true. VDP2 planes can be used very effectively in a 3D engine for floors, skies, and other things. You don't really need to restrict camera movement or anything. In fact there's actually a feature to sync the plane movement with your camera movements in Sega's libraries. It might actually be handled by hardware registers between VDP1 and VDP2.

Sonic Jam uses VDP2 Planes for the main ground level with no camera restrictions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vko1ZW-GOsg

Grandia goes all out with it by defining line windows to have different parts of the plane have different rotational parameters to make multiple levels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSHJ8x7L2rM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOsUdG8P9pg
And again there's no real camera restrictions on it as you can see in game, as well as in Debug mode and the prelude disc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYflySGyQOo&t=192s

So you could possibly set up those windows to pull off certain scenes in Tomb Raider to improve performance. There's also the fact that Tomb Raider was released early and unoptimized on Saturn.

>>7782523
The PS1 had better fillrate so transparency was unlikely to be a bottleneck for it. The Saturn had too little fill so true transparency would be more likely to limit performance even if it weren't crippled by overdraw.

>>7782526
Grandia going that far feels like it was doing things beyond what even Sega thought might be possible. The VDP2 plane system could have done a lot to improve how some games perform had they taken more thorough advantage. There's some soccer games from 97 and 98 I think which run full balls to the wall 3D models on a detailed plane, 480i60 and they look tremendous.

>>7782526
I thought VDP2 only did infinite planes. How can the ground in Sonic Jam be handled by VDP2 if there are gaps in it like the river?

>>7782508
>sprite
There are no sprites on the playstation. The console has to fake sprites. The result is that 2D on the playstation feels empty, sterile and lifeless. Compare SFA2 on the PSX to the saturn. And 3rd strike with its polyonal, physical hitboxes on PS2 vs the CPS3 version. They just feel fake.

>>7782523
>The dual CPU dual GPU design came from Hitachi after Sega expressed concerns the console wasn't fast enough to compete with Sony's speculated Playstation. Hitachi's solution was to double the number of chips instead of figuring out a way to squeeze greater clock speeds and feature capability of the console. It was a mess.

This is partially true and partially false. Only the 2nd CPU was suggested by Hitachi when Sega felt it wasn't fast enough. VDP1 and VDP2 were already in the console and finished by that point. VDP1 was made by Hitachi, VDP2 was made by Yamaha. The original Saturn design was most likely the same as what we got, minus the 2nd SH-2 and with half the main RAM.

>>7782515
They always seemed to jump the gun; Genesis came out to outdo the NES. But you get brap music and its age shows with the muddy colors. Dreamcast released with CD's and everyone moved to DVD's not even a year later.

>>7782547
v. misinformed post anon-kun

>>7782539
okay now try responding to the post instead of incoherently rambling about something else

>>7782537
Have a section of the plane be transparent, draw your polygons for the lower portion of the river there. You can also draw windows to change the rotational parameters of the plane at certain spots. The line window feature is actually very powerful.

For example this part of Radiant Silvergun is actually only using 1 of the 2 rotating plane layers available. We know this because we can still see additional VDP2 layers being drawn, and if both planes are used all other VDP2 layers get disabled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJsr2j9ghOA

What's going on is that they're using the line window feature to split the plane in half and draw one half with different tiles and parameters from the other.

>3D capability was added in literally months before it dropped because they saw what sony was up to
>complicated hardware to work with from dev standpoint, combined with very poor communication between SoJ and SoA, and by extension, their 3rd parties check out that one travelers tales dude who made sonic 3d blast jewtube channel, he has good vids on that
>all the good looking gaems got STOLARed.com so a lot of the western library was shitty 3rd-party crap
im sure theres some more technical shit that goes over my head, but as i understand it, thats the gist of it
it was built to be a 2d powerhouse, but by its release, the whole market had shifted to an attitude of "3d or bust"

also, if audio quality is something you give a shit about, the n64 comes up WELL short of both the others simply due to cartridge restrictions

>>7782561
>>3D capability was added in literally months before it dropped because they saw what sony was up to
read the thread before posting

>>7782563
tl;dr

>>7782561
>3D capability was added in literally months before it dropped because they saw what sony was up to
This isn't true and has been debunked multiple times. 3D was always in the design. All that got added in response to Sony was the 2nd CPU.

>>7782163
Exactly, PS1 was super easy to develop for. With the Saturn you basically had to do everything from scratch. Whoever did Quake pretty much had to make their own dev tools.

>>7782547
>>7782550
Still though, Sega did seem to want to get their stuff out ASAP without fully considering that their hardware would quickly become outdated compared to their competitors’ hardware being released one or even two years later.

>>7782553
It all comes down to, that fake 2D, realized via polygons lacks the sharpness, headroom and responsiveness of a genuine 2D engine.

>>7782483
>It was no more complicated than consoles that came before it like the SNES and it's a breeze compared to things like the Atari Jaguar.
I'd disagree with that. The Jaguar was an outlier - most previous and contemporary consoles weren't juggling so many different processors with the result of having so many bottlenecks that could lead to poor performance.
You have to juggle both CPUs, you have to make sure neither starves the other of memory, you have to avoid bumping against VDP1's fairly low headroom, and you have to find something that VDP2 is good at.

The devkits and documentation were also shit so it may have seemed more obtuse than it actually was.

>>7782569
yea i mean i was master race by 97/98, so im just perpetuating hearsay. dont mind me

regardless the much bigger issue was imo, that SoJ seemed to basically be some sort of secret society, and any western dev ive ever heard talk about devving for the saturn had nothing but nightmares to tell about the experience

>>7782573
There is no "fake 2D". You just draw your tiles. It's the same for a background or a sprite. Polygons aren't involved when you do this. You have no idea what you're talking about and just keep waving around nontechnical speculations like "fake" this or "fake" that.

>>7782570
>Whoever did Quake pretty much had to make their own dev tools.
They used their existing dev tools that they already had from making Powerslave. Those same tools were also used in the PS1 port of Powerslave. So making your own engines and tools wasn't anything Saturn specific.

The "easier to develop for" is in reference entirely to Sony's really good C Libraries and debugging and performance analysis tools. This was Sony's real game changing contribution to the industry. Sega did what had always been done before, give thick manuals of all the things the hardware could do, some compilers devkits to run code on, etc. and let developers have at it. Sony's libraries were a massive game changer and forced Sega to play catch up quickly. C libraries did quickly come out for Saturn, but they weren't really as good as Sony's early on.

>>7782584
different goy but i tend to agree
saturn fighters like SFA2 look much better than any ps fighter ive ever seen

>>7782594
They do, but that's not because the PS1 has "fake 2D", but because the Saturn has more VRAM for more animation frames and is capable of more background effects.

>>7782576
>But multiple CPUs!
The Genesis had both a Z80 and the M68000 in it that you had to juggle if you wanted decent performance and sound. The Sega CD added another M68000 to the mix.

The Neo Geo was in a similar boat with a Z80 and an M68000.

The SNES only has 1 CPU sure, but it's still mess to develop for with tons of bus and memory limitations and other odd bottlenecks. There's a reason why Genesis homebrew is thriving while SNES homebrew is pretty much dead. Hell I'd even say Saturn homebrew is more active than SNES homebrew at this point.

And that's not even getting into arcade hardware. Most arcade hardware at the time was juggling some times 2, 3, or even more CPUs with tons of convoluted hardware cobbled together. Saturn's 2 SH-2s is no where near as bad as that.

>>7782121
Because consumer-side Sega was trash at designing 3D hardware (see the Shiturn's VDP1) and wanted pleb 2Dshit to live longer, which it didn't. Sega would later rectify this by outsourcing their GPU development to 3dfx / PowerVR for the superior Dreamcast, sadly Sega fucked up again there by choosing PowerVR instead of a 3dfx GPU which would have made porting games from PC very easy, also PowerVR was in short supply at the time which resulted in not enough Dreamcasts being manufactured to fill the demand quota for them. Basically, SoJ was managed by fucking retards.

>>7782594
I’m sure someone with technical knowledge can answer but I’m assuming Saturn’s 2D fighting games being better comes down to more available RAM that makes it closer to arcade hardware from the time?

>>7782603
A 3DFX based Dreamcast would have most likely been underpowered even more compared to the other 6th gen consoles.

So could it be surmised that the Sega was trying to catch up to the PS1, while Nintendo was just going balls in the wind whatever it wanted?

>>7782605
Pretty much more base VRAM and VDP2. Throwing in the RAM carts just pushes it over the edge to where the PS1 just can't compete.

>>7782597
>>7782610
>the RAM carts just pushes it over the edge to where the PS1 just can't compete
>Saturn has more VRAM for more animation frames and is capable of more background effects.
now THAT makes sense
those SF ports were fucking phenomenal. basically arcade perfect.
used to play SFA2 the arcade one a lot and when my buddy said he had it home i scoffed at him
turned out he was right

>>7782602
The Z80 in the Genesis was just there for audio. It wasn't driving gameplay, that was all on the 68k. Saturn also has its own dedicated audio processor which I didn't mention if you want to count such a thing (but I think it would be silly to).
The second 68k in the Sega CD was commonly wasted. The Sega CD doesn't have a reputation for being a simple system either.

Arcade hardware is another story, so I suppose that's where Sega is showing its roots.

>>7782606
Yeah, it would’ve been the same scenario. The roughly Voodoo 1 level GPU would’ve easily been outclassed by the time the PS2 launched.

saturn vdp1 was just dogshit at rendering 3d compared to the playstation GTE

>>7782621
>The Z80 in the Genesis was just there for audio.
You can use it for anything you want really, that's just the most common use for it because it makes the most sense.

The point is, multiple CPUs wasn't anything new or crazy by this point. Previous Sega consoles had it, and plenty of arcade boards had it. It's probably why you see developers who had experience with these kind of situations doing just fine on the Saturn (Sega, Capcom, Treasure, Konami (KCET, not the others), SNK, etc.

And again, consoles like the SNES, N64, PS2, etc. were all very complicated to develop for. I believe either Rare or Factor 5 said that the N64 was just as complicated to develop for as the Saturn, if not more so. Developers don't care about complex hardware if it sells, the PS2 is proof of that. Honestly I'd say what hurt the Saturn more was the completely botched launch in the US. SoA fell on it's face and never really recovered, while SoJ handled their launch situation better.

>>7782629
The GTE doesn't render anything. It's used to help do the math for polygons. VDP1 has nothing to do with that, it just draws the commands it gets sent by the CPU, and it does those fairly well to be honest. Yes it's fillrate is lower than the PS1 GPU, but it's not nearly as bad as people claim.

>>7782637
Great post. Sony 100% crushed Sega when it came to marketing, price point, developer support, just about everything. Hell, I’d largely credit the PlayStation with making making console gaming its own thing that made arcade ports less important to consumers. Unfortunately for Sega, they banked heavily on their consoles offering the arcade experience at home.

>>7782637
>The point is, multiple CPUs wasn't anything new or crazy by this point.
For consoles, it was. The consoles which had multiple CPUs saw those used for limited purposes or just squandered in general. Arcades were a different story so developers with arcade expertise fared better.
>Developers don't care about complex hardware if it sells, the PS2 is proof of that
This is true to some extent. But the PS2 is an interesting point of comparison. Developers who didn't want to master the hardware used it as little more than a PS1.5. There were developer conferences where Sony cried that loads of games weren't even using VU0 at all. The gulf in performance between the lazier PS2 games and the most technologically impressive is pretty large.
>Honestly I'd say what hurt the Saturn more was the completely botched launch in the US. SoA fell on it's face and never really recovered, while SoJ handled their launch situation better.
This is a big part of it, but it's also the competition. The Playstation was just a better machine for the window it launched. Even if the Saturn were better on paper all the early titles surely pointed to the Playstation as the winner, with comparisons like Ridge Racer and Daytona USA humiliating the Saturn. For $100 more the Saturn failed to impress.

>>7782648
>Unfortunately for Sega, they banked heavily on their consoles offering the arcade experience at home
this was BIG
you look at a lot of the early saturn titles and its just arcade ports, with very little, if anything at all, extra put in
virtua racer is a perfect ex of this
you even get the game over screen when you win, just like the arcade
thanks to what sony and nintendo were doing, the consumer started to get accustomed to the wealth of content that games designed for home-play exclusively could offer

imo i think they saw capcom bringing back the arcade with the SF2 craze, and figured that it was a longterm trend, only for it to fizzle out again in just a couple years

>>7782243
Sega of America had essentially no say in the saturn development

>>7782648
>>7782637
Plus you also have to remember that it's not just Bernie Stolar and Sega of America totally botching shit, the Genesis was one giant life support clusterfuck where the CD and 32X had both been abandoned in short order so people weren't too trusting of the Saturn in the west. This problem and the botch would linger on to harm the Dreamcast and then Sony slapped their shit again with Playstation 2's turbo marketing.

>>7782679
because they were working on their own hardware projects, they divided labor that way

>>7782675
>you look at a lot of the early saturn titles and its just arcade ports, with very little, if anything at all, extra put in
even worse, the ports were extremely sloppy, which hurt sega's reputation in the long run.

arcade ports on the playstation were much better with what namco were doing.

>>7782712
yea i noped the fuck outta that one
loved me genny
saw the saturn release and said fuck it and started saving up for a 3d accelerator for muh pc instead
glad i did too
fuckin rogue squadron 3d and ep 1 podracer with a sidewinder forcefeedback stick
good as it got in 99 imo

>>7782121
Saturn was more powerful than ps1

>>7782131
This is wrong. Saturn was always a 3d system first, they added a 2d graphics processor later in development.
>>7782252
You also have no idea what you're talking about
>>7782258
This anon is dead on
>>7782314
Saturn is great at 3d
>>7782461
This anon knows what's up
>>7782483
You were doing well with your explanation untill you described polygons as distorted sprites. Distorted sprites is a terminology that they used, but the Saturn wasn't actually warping sprites to simulate 3d. Ps1, N64, Saturn, dreamcast etc all use 2d textures.
>>7782539
You sound schizo
>>7782561
Saturn was always meant to be 3d, always
>>7782573
Another schizo

>>7782860
>Another schizo
>replies to nearly every post ITT
sup kettle
you ever met pot?

>>7782860
"Distorted sprites" is just a brainlet-friendly description for forward texture mapping. But it does have a lot of limitations compared to uv-mapped inverse texture mapping.

>>7782146
>That explains why SOTN runs like a snail on the Saturn.
No, it was just a lazy port.

>>7782539
Yeah, I noticed that too! The sprites on the Saturn just feel /warmer/, you know?

>>7782860
if saturn was good at 3d then how come the playstation kicks the shit out of it when compared to games

>>7782563
>3D capability was added in literally months before it dropped
I think you underestimate just how long it takes to make changes like that.

>>7783056
sony had much better relations, and shared resources more, with their third-party devs

>>7782872
Thanks for laying down your crack pipe long enough to type that out
>>7782875
I guess it's limited by not having UV coordinates when it comes to porting games over from ps1, but I'd argue that mapping textures to quads was better for that period of time, just less jittery textures
>>7783056
Because ps1 is what devs targeted the most. Devs, you know, the guys who make games...if you do t have them...you do t have the good games that they make

>>7783048
Doubtful you will notice anything in life. But thats ok, just fake it

>>7782146
SOTN on plebstatiob is a 3D game. Which is already a workaround hack.

>>7782860

>>7783056
Metal Gear Solid is great anon but you can beat it in 3 hours.

>>7782603
>consumer-side Sega was trash at designing 3D hardware
Australian fan fiction? Hideki Sato who produced the Saturn also created various sega arcade pcbs. And he later also produced the dreamcast/naomi.

>>7783428
imagine making this

>>7783496
Try a whole coherent sentence perhaps?

>>7783428
The schizo comment must have hit you a little close to home

>>7783542
You certainly got my curiosity. But so far there is only incoherent noise coming from you. So whats with your schizophrenia obsession? And what has it to do with 90s hardware design? Please enlighten me. I m waiting. Lol.

Not trolling: can someone post me a link to an old interview in which Saturn reps told they were pretty satisfied with the Saturn's 2D capabilities, but attended a PlayStation demo that showed Ridge Racer and everyone there was awed. Then the Saturn guys were like "shit! It's 3D they want?", and rushed to improve the console's 3D specs.

>>7783575
Search for Hideki Sato interviews. The whole story is hilarious. From sony shitting their pants when they saw Virtua Fighter in 1993. To Ken Kutaragi trying to bully and intimidate Hideki Sato into joining sony as a 3rd party.

>>7783594
Thanks a lot, anon!

>>7783605
https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?33506-Hideki-Sato-on-the-Sega-Saturn-(incredible-new-interview)

There are more out there. The guy is quite talkative.

>>7783384
That’s mean, anon. You need to apologize.

>>7783620
No. But if it helps, Jesus still loves you.

>>7782501
>The PSX is not a 2D machine. Period.
It's general purpose. It excels at "painting" a blank screen with pixels. It does this painting very fast, whether for a 2D game or 3D, though it is faster when using your 8x8 or 16x16 billboarded rectangles, but developers don't have to use that and regularly didn't.

What type of 2D technology could Sony have implemented to make it "real" or "better" for you? A line buffer (or two) which read through a display list computed by the CPU or GPU which displays bitmap tiles from RAM directly to the video display controller without buffering an entire 320x240 pixel frame beforehand? Sony could have easily done so with minimal effort, but it would have served no real purpose. What they produced was sufficient for '94/'95 and was truly next generation.

>>7783630
Belittling people anonymously online isn’t very Christian of you. Jesus wouldn’t love what you said to that anon.

>>7782667
>For consoles, it was.
No, it really wasn't. Genesis had multiple CPUs, Neo Geo had multiple CPUs, SNES had multiple CPUs if we count add-on chips, the Sega CD and 32X combo was a mess of CPUs as well, and developers were able to develop for those platforms just fine.
>The consoles which had multiple CPUs saw those used for limited purposes or just squandered in general.
Again, this isn't really true either. You need to go learn how a lot of games used the hardware in these systems.
>This is a big part of it, but it's also the competition. The Playstation was just a better machine for the window it launched. Even if the Saturn were better on paper all the early titles surely pointed to the Playstation as the winner, with comparisons like Ridge Racer and Daytona USA humiliating the Saturn. For $100 more the Saturn failed to impress.
You're basically agreeing with me here but don't realize it. These factors can all be lumped under the botched western launch. If Saturn launched with the same hardware, but in say September with a stronger line up of games such as Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter Remix, Panzer Dragoon, etc. it would have looked a lot better than it did. If you cancel the 32X and move it's games to Saturn for launch the Saturn Launch line up really starts to look good.

People love to point the finger at Saturn's hardware, but it probably could have performed better had it just been given a better launch with stronger launch titles in the west.
>>7782683
> where the CD and 32X had both been abandoned in short order
This is true for the 32X, but not the Sega CD. Sega CD actually was well supported for a while and had a decent lifespan and library for an add-on. People need to stop lumping it in with the 32X.

>>7782860
>You were doing well with your explanation untill you described polygons as distorted sprites. Distorted sprites is a terminology that they used, but the Saturn wasn't actually warping sprites to simulate 3d. Ps1, N64, Saturn, dreamcast etc all use 2d textures.

You were doing well until you said this. Saturn literally does distort a sprite for it's 3D. It's exactly how it works and how it's described in the manuals. It's why you can't do things like map a specific portion of a texture to a polygon, because the texture effectively is the polygon because it's just a sprite. It's why a polygon can't be smaller than 8 pixels in width. It's why the system has bad pixel overdraw issues with how it renders causing transparency corruption. It's because it's literally distorting a sprite and drawing pixels over top of each other as it draws every line of the sprite. Distorted Sprites is literally what Saturn is doing.

>>7782121
i don't think it's so weak, it's a very fixed design, but it can do some really interesting things, it can output at higher resolutions for starters. doa on saturn is higher res and has much more complex 2D backgrounds thanks to its unique architecture

>>7783820
For fuck sakes, you saw distorted sprite listed in the dumped documentation and took it literally, didn't you? The Saturn uses quads, which is the shape of the 2d tilemap data. It just makes sense to limit each texture to the confines of a particular polygon, it results in less wobbly textures.

>>7783893
No, it's literally how it works and how it draws. It's not just one instance in the documentation, there's explicit detail about how it draws and works in that documentation. Hideki Sato also refers to them as sprites when he discussed the design in recent interviews. Even actual devs from back in the day have referred to them as sprites and confirmed this is how it renders.

Most people refer to them as Quads as it's the easiest way to describe it to people who don't know the hardware, but it's not really accurate as they're not really properly rasterized quads like what you see on Model 1, Model 2, Model 3 and NVidia's NV1 card. It sounds to me like you're just regurgitating old information and have never actually done anything on the hardware.

> It just makes sense to limit each texture to the confines of a particular polygon, it results in less wobbly textures.
Being able to define a sprites texture as a smaller region of a larger texture has nothing to do with texture warping, and being able to do it wouldn't change anything on Saturn as it would still be a 4 sided image. You would still be drawing 4 sided objects and still have the same style of texture warping as you already have on the Saturn. You would simply be able to say "Hey use this 16x16 region of this larger 256x256 texture as my texture". That kind of texture mapping is flat out not possible on the Saturn.

>the dumped documentation
The documentation wasn't dumped by the way. Sega's developer portal was on the open internet and all their documents, tools, libraries, etc. were on an unprotected FTP server in the 90s and people found it and downloaded everything.

>>7782121
Because Satan sucks.
And developers found quadrilateral polygons tough to code.

>>7783791
>developers were able to develop for the 32x juts fine
*doubt*

>>7783791
>You need to go learn how a lot of games used the hardware in these systems.
Not him, but I've never heard of the Mega Drive using its Z80 for anything other than audio.

>>7784732
Almost all 32x and Saturn games run better on 32x. It clearly wasn't as difficult to program for.

shiturn is faking 3d with sprites haha

>>7783791
>This is true for the 32X, but not the Sega CD. Sega CD actually was well supported for a while and had a decent lifespan and library for an add-on. People need to stop lumping it in with the 32X.
100%. in fact, promoting the sega cd more and pushing more advanced sega CD development in the west instead of developing the 32X would have put sega in a much better position for the saturn launch.

Why THE FUCK was Saturn not backwards compatible with at least the Sega CD if not also the Genesis and 32x?

>>7784893
You really want to chuck even more processors in there?

>>7782432
>You need to use the official 1MB RAM cart with them. That RAM cart has faster RAM than the 4MB cart and all the cheap Chinesium aftermarket carts.
Is there any evidence of this? Every review I've ever read even back in the day says with an official cart there's still slowdown or skipped frames.

I've also seen video captures where people compare, and the performance is the same. I think this is all hearsay, and even the later Capcom ports had some amount of slowdown or skipped frames, though nothing as bad as MSH, which had slowdown even without the cart.

The slowdown probably has more to do with the reliance on the 68k, which was not as fast as the one in the Neo Geo or CPS2, and it also would explain why the audio was all dogshit in most of the ports, since that was the primary task of the 68k in the Saturn.

>>7785025
I think it would have only needed a Z80. It already had a 68k (faster than the Sega CD one), and not one but two SH2s.

The real cost to Sega would have been a delay to market, which they thought they couldn't afford.

>>7785294
Well, if you want to have it backwards compatible with the Sega CD, also, you'll still need:
-Another M68k on top of the one already in the Saturn.
-A 32kx16 PSRAM chip
-The Z80 has you mentioned with an additional 8k SRAM
-The Genesis' VDP chip which would include the YM2612 and PSG
-a Single 64kx8 dual port RAM chip
-The CD's ricoh audio chip with another 64k of PSRAM
-The CD's VDP and associated RAM

And if you want compatibility with the 32x you also need a genlock chip to combine the 32X's video output with the Genesis' unless you used hardware engineering time on combining its functions instead of focusing on beefing up the VDP1 and 2 like they should have done.

>>7785290
>Is there any evidence of this?
Yes, you can open up both and look at the chips. The chips in the 1MB cart are faster than the ones in the 4MB cart.
>Every review I've ever read even back in the day says with an official cart there's still slowdown or skipped frames.
Yes, there's still some slowdown, but it's not as bad as what you'll see with a 4MB cart or an AR cart.
>I've also seen video captures where people compare, and the performance is the same.
Then you're not looking at good ones or paying attention. I know that one splitscreen channel that does comparisons on youtube always uses emulators, and the worst ones at that. I have the games and have tried with both RAM carts, it definitely feels less sluggish with the 1MB cart.
>The slowdown probably has more to do with the reliance on the 68k, which was not as fast as the one in the Neo Geo or CPS2, and it also would explain why the audio was all dogshit in most of the ports, since that was the primary task of the 68k in the Saturn.
This is absolute nonsense and shows you have no idea what you're talking about. These games are ports, they're ported to run on the Saturn and compiled to run on the SH-2 CPUs. The M68k is not being used to run the game code. The Slowdown for those early RAM cart games comes down to the fact that if you don't transfer data to and from them at the right times, you will cause stalls to happen on the bus and slow things down. This is why using the wrong RAM cart can cause more slowdown because the slower RAM in the 4MB cart can make these stalls even worse.

The Audio issue is simply that the Saturn's sound chip doesn't support ADPCM compression, so all the voice clips have to be uncompressed and fit in the 512K of sound RAM. That said, some later games like X-Men vs Street Fighter actually have a cheat you can use to get better voices, why they made this a hidden cheat I don't know.

>>7785542
>cheat you can use to get better voices
Whats the cheat then?

>>7782163
This, Sony could have the shittiest architecture imaginable with the PS2 that developers had no choice but to deal with it. The Saturn didn't sell well so if the hardware was hard to develop for devs simply wouldn't bother.

>>7783562
Of course I have you, you're butthurt. And no, I cannot enlighten you, that's beyond me

>>7785364
Had they gone the extra mile and did all this they wouldn't have died

>>7783701
People seem to think that the ps1s 2d is fake...mapping tilemap data to a flat polygon is just a different way of achieving the same thing that you can with sprites. I would never be able to tell you which games use sprites vs polygons in a 2d game by just playing the game so I don't know why that anon and others like him claim such things. Zoomers I guess?

>>7785737
Nobody was going to drop $399 to play sewer shark.

>>7784036
There reason why Sega devs use 2d terminology with the Saturn and relate everything back to 2d is because they couldn't into 3D. Sega arcade department knew what was up with 3d but Sega home division were alienated by it. The 3D quad is what is fundamental and the 2d texture is mapped to it. Setting confines to its texture mapping doesn't make it 2d. These flat "distorted sprites live in a 3d world

>>7785738
You don't even have to map to flat polygons. The Playstation GPU simply supports 2D rectangles.

>>7785542
The voices in the versus games actually came from the CDDA. The music was all played off DSP, so they stuffed voices onto the Redbook audio to get around the compression issue. The "cheat" you're talking about is just for sound effects, like hits and things like that.

There's just so much misinformation out there, even if someone "knows" what they're talking about, no real proof is ever actually provided, and misinformation keeps getting passed around.

Even videos like this purport there to be some difference essentially show the exact same performance:
https://youtu.be/RIDOYplGwmE
And that's on real hardware with the actual carts. I have a Neo Geo CD and I can tell you with certainty that that version of Metal Slug performs much better in the same scenarios (such as climbing the waterfall). It still has a good amount of slowdown, of course, it's Metal Slug, but it is absolutely obvious that it is better on a NGCD and not something that is barely perceptible, and the same with SamSho 3 and 4. No one has ever provided any real video evidence of a game running slower on Saturn due to a mismatched cart, and I would posit that it's likely a placebo effect until someone actually documents a difference.

To your pont on emulators, I find emulators actually run games better than they should most of the time, including a few we're talking about here. You can always tell someone is emulating the Saturn version of SotN when it has no horrible slowdown.

>>7785563
Highlight the sound effect / audio option and hit L or R or something like that. You'll see beside the normal setting in parenthesis is will say Sharp.

I would assume this has some impact in performance in some way, but I can't say.

>>7785795
Was doing it that way better?

>>7785978
Purely for speed. You give up the ability to scale or rotate the texture file, can't gourad shade, no interesting alpha blending options. It's basically a straight from texture location in RAM to video display without having to buffer a frame.

>>7782563
Stop saying this, it’s simply not true. When people say 3d, they mean fully 3d like the PlayStation was, not the peripheral 3d the Saturn originally had to complement 2d games. FULLY 3D capability was an afterthought in the Saturn and it shows. Something like Metal Gear could have never run on the Saturn, and I doubt even something like FF7 could have because the battles are still fully 3d.

>>7786013
The Saturn always had a processor that could transform polygons and always had a GPU that could paint textures onto them. What's not "FULLY 3D" about that? The fact that it simply wasn't as fast as the Playstation?

>>7786013
I'll bet it will blow your mind to find out that Sega added the 2D VDP2 as a response to the PlayStation.

>>7786035
They didn't, that was always part of the design. It was the second SH-2 that was added as a reaction to the Playstation.

>>7785743
Ehh, people who waited out the 32x and CD for the Saturn probably would have, 4 consoles and a CD player in one unit is a pretty cool deal on paper. It also could have potentially extended the market of those games for another year or so in the same way that SNES games were still being released just as the N64 was entering the market.

I know its an absurd order desu, but it could have been fucking sweet, no?

>>7786006
When you say "no interesting alpha blending options", what do you mean? Nocash docs seem to say it does semitransparency fine.

>>7782432
"Chinesium"

Thank you for the kek friend.

Sega couldn't into home hardware to save their lives, when you look at the big picture you basically just have to assume that the success of the genesis was down to luck, which they did everything in their power to try to fuck up. In the even bigger picture though you have to also consider that they did more to move video games forward than any other company in the 90s via their arcade hardware/titles and for that they have my respect forever

>>7782483
>It was no more complicated than consoles that came before it like the SNES and it's a breeze compared to things like the Atari Jaguar. Hell you could even argue the N64 was equally complicated in it's own ways. And that's not getting into things like the PS2 and PS3 that came later.
The only reason the PS2 got away with being so complicated is because Sega died and Nintendo shit the bed with the Gamecube. As well as being lucky and having the DVD playback killer app.
Sony knocked that shit off with the PS3 because they knew what was up.
Nintendo got away with the SNES being complicated because they were still using monopolistic practices to dominate the market.
Don’t know why you even brought up the Jaguar since it’s considered among the most spectacular console launch failures ever, rivaled only by the Atari 5200 and maybe the 3DO.

>>7786031
That was tacked on and not integrated into the overall architecture of the Saturn. It was clearly not intended to do fully 3d, it can’t even do transparency without some master assembly programmer behind the wheel.
No one with a straight face can say the Saturn 3d library of games is competitive with the Playstation's, it’s not even close.

>>7785759
just how the developer intended

>>7786169
>saturn couldn't do 3D because it was bad at transparency
It's okay to not like the Saturn, just please try to have a coherent point.

Hey I'm looking to play fighting games w/ my brother on the Saturn. Been thinking about getting a Retrotink 2x because of the price. Would I be disappointed? Is there any really noticeable lag, especially on fighting games and shmups?

>>7786317
A CRT is cheaper

>>7786039
Lies

>>7786401
https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?33506-Hideki-Sato-on-the-Sega-Saturn-(incredible-new-interview)
Let's put the unsubstantiated myths to rest.

>>7786169
Wtf? You made that up or were mislead by some someone else who made it up. Saturn was always fully 3d

>>7786402
>>In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons built on a sprite base.

I thought that was supposed to get rid of myths. This guy just said the Saturn did polygons from sprites JUST LIKE THE PLAYSTATION. So either one of two things is true, the ps1 wasn't 3d either, or Hideki sucked at 3d and always spoke of it in relation to 2d, which he did know

>>7783507
Attacking grammar is a Reddit tier strawman-tactic

>>7786426
I mean, the Playstation did have a more modern way of drawing its polygons, but it wasn't such a big dfference that I'd call the Playstation "real 3D" and the Saturn not.

But the main point you should take away from that interview is that the SH-2 was added as a response to the Playstation. Not the DSP, not VDP2, not anything else.

>>7786089
That's a pretty common term for machinists and other shop workers. Usually refers to the cheap general tools you get from harbor freight or wherever the fuck.

>>7786408
It wasn’t built with that capability in mind, Jesus Christ can you not read. The PS1’s 3d games are orders of magnitude larger and more complex than Saturn’s.

>>7786187
Lack o f transparency is just the most glaring example of how half baked Saturn’s 3d capabilities is.

>>7786495
The Saturn struggles with transparency as much in 2D. It's worse in 3D because of overdraw, but it's not like it's a 3D-specific issue.

>>7785876
>The voices in the versus games actually came from the CDDA. The music was all played off DSP
No, the music is CDDA, the voices are samples played by the sound chip. Later they started using IMA ADPCM streams off the disc for the music with one of the SH-2s decompressing it.
>There's just so much misinformation out there, even if someone "knows" what they're talking about, no real proof is ever actually provided, and misinformation keeps getting passed around.
The 1MB cart literally has faster RAM chips in it. You can open it up and examine it for yourself.
>And that's on real hardware with the actual carts.
And in the side by side you can see the slowdown isn't as bad. Sure it may still happen in some of the same spots, but the game picks back up and gets back to full speed quicker in the 1MB footage than it does with the others. The 1MB cart is also loading a lot faster than the other 2.
>To your pont on emulators
The point I was making with the emulator comparisons is that you're not going to see any difference in performance because they don't properly emulate the different RAM speeds in the different carts, or the bus stall issues.
>No one has ever provided any real video evidence of a game running slower on Saturn due to a mismatched cart, and I would posit that it's likely a placebo effect until someone actually documents a difference.
The evidence has been presented, you choose to ignore it. It doesn't completely eliminate it, but it does reduce how bad it is. It's not a massive impact in some cases but the game does seem to recover faster from it and overall a lot of the small hiccups that happen overall with the other two carts don't happen with the 1MB cart.

You feel it more when you're actually playing it as the person in the video states.
>I would assume this has some impact in performance in some way, but I can't say.
It has no impact on performance. I'm guessing Capcom didn't really like how they sounded.

>>7786013
> When people say 3d, they mean fully 3d like the PlayStation was, not the peripheral 3d the Saturn originally had to complement 2d games. FULLY 3D capability was an afterthought in the Saturn and it shows.
No, you're wrong here. 3D was in the design from the start. It's what VDP1 does with sprites and it does work. What came in at the last second was the 2nd CPU to help speed up 3D math calculations to try and match what the GTE was doing in the PS1.

> Something like Metal Gear could have never run on the Saturn, and I doubt even something like FF7 could have because the battles are still fully 3d.
Metal Gear Solid and FF7 could easily have been done on the Saturn. They're not that demanding really. In MGS you could easily have VDP2 just draw the floor for you for most of the game.
>>7786035
> Sega added the 2D VDP2 as a response to the PlayStation.
No it was the 2nd SH-2.

>>7786487
It was built with the capability in mind. PS1's GTE is just a tad bit faster at calculating polygons than Saturn's dual SH-2 set up. PS1's GPU also has some nicer features for transparencies and blending over VDP1.
>The PS1’s 3d games are orders of magnitude larger and more complex than Saturn’s.
What exactly are we comparing here? If you're talking about late generation stuff then that's not really fair on Saturn as Dreamcast was out by then, we don't really have anything on Saturn to compare to. Best we have is Homebrew, which is honestly quite impressive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htRJDg5caFs
>>7786495
This has nothing to do with 3D capabilities. VDP1 is fully capable of transparencies, the problem is that pixel overdraw from drawing distorted sprites causes the transparency to be come corrupted. It's also slow and can't blend with what VDP2 is drawing very easily.

>>7786440
He said ps1 distorted sprites to produce polygons. But I should ignore that and blindly trust the other thing he said because it backs up your point. No dice

>>7786487
Now you're wrong AND triggered. So, worst off then before

>>7786594
>ignoring what the designer of a console said about the design of a console because he gave an oversimplified offhand comment about something that was not the topic
ok

>>7786618
I don't care if he was Jesus or a pig farmer, what he said as wrong.

>>7786631
He made it you retard.

>>7786635
>>Hardware designer
>>Just trust him

I should trust the hardware designer who made a peice of shit that not he nor anyone else understood, which consequently got few games. I'm glad you're an incel that will never reproduce. Kill yourself before you waste any more of Earth's resources

>>7786656
>I should trust the hardware designer who made a peice of shit that not he nor anyone else understood
Thank god anon is here, he understands better than anyone.

>>7786656
>I should trust the hardware designer who made a peice of shit that not he nor anyone else understood
He understood it fine as did people at good developers at Sega, Capcom, Konami (Not KCEN), Treasure, Game Arts, Hudson, Lobotomy, EA, Technosoft, Tecmo, Koei, Tauntalus, NexTech, etc.
> which consequently got few games.
It got more games than the N64...

>>7786669
>>7786670

He said PS1 creates people polygons with distorted sprites. Dude sounds infallible, has to be right

>>7786709
I mean, the Playstation GPU was a dumb 2D rasteriser. So he's right in a sense. It wasn't like later GPUs with e.g. depth awareness.
There are additional technical distinctions between the two consoles which sometimes matter, but aren't relevant to the point being made at this time, so they weren't mentioned.

>>7786737
Let's see another source besides this Hideki interview then

>>7786709
Or you're an idiot who can't read properly. He's saying they had 3D capabilities just like PS1, but their approach was based on sprites. Not that PS1 did it the exact same way.

>>7786751
>>In the end, just like the PlayStation

That green text is a direct quote, thanks for throwing a stick in your own spokes

>>7786763
You need to read the entire part of that interview in context to understand it properly. Think about it how would Sato know exactly how PS1 was drawing polygons? He wasn't involved with it's design at all. He's simply saying that they were able to draw polygons now just like PS1, and they did it with sprites. He's not saying they did it the exact same way. The full sentence is this:
>In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons built on a sprite base.
And in the full context of the entire interview you should read it like this:
>In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons. However we built them on a sprite base.

Remember this is also being translated from Japanese.

>>7786784
I'm not reading that blog. Your chance to prove your point has passed, this is your last (you)

>>7786812
Then don't try and act like you know what you're talking about then.

>>7786747
https://archive.org/stream/NEXT_Generation_02/NEXT_Generation_02_djvu.txt
>The question of the Saturn’s technical ability is the most controversial aspect of the entire saga. Ever since the machine’s Sony-induced revamp, the Saturn has had more than its fair share of teething problems. Only recently were development systems updated to the point where they could be called ‘final.’ Originally, the Saturn was supposed to have one main CPU, but it was specced up to include another when tests revealed that a single chip was too slow. And the system control unit, or SCU — one of the main components of the Saturn architecture — has been subject to continual change.

>>7786327
Not what I asked you fucking retard I know that

>>7782572
as pointed out in this thread sega was/is an arcade company. I imagine they always had the latest and greatest shit to play with and weren't in tune with the ebb and flow of consumer electronics and home consoles along with prices and trends.

>>7786013
>doubt even something like FF7 could have
Thats ironic. The Saturn was Squares FIRST choice for Final Fantasy 7. After they decided they wouldnt do it for the ultra 64. Saturn bashing was cringe back in the nineties. Its cringe now.

>>7788313
There's nothing it's really doing that the Saturn couldn't do. Most of the time it's simple 3D models over a prerendered background, or a basic 3D model over a basic 3D world map. The battles are the most complicated part and those only run at 15fps. You could easily use VDP2 planes to help with that. The only challenge would be the transparencies.