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/vr/ - Retro Games

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5350760 No.5350760 [Reply] [Original]

It is fall of 1993. You are a freshly picked hardware technician chosen by Sega to join in the Saturn dev team. Sega has already rejected using any of NEC's CPUs for their upcoming console in favor of two from Hitachi. You notice that VDP-1 has more than a few issues in most of the ways it does 3d visuals. You also hear that as powerful as the Sega Custom sound processor is, it is incapable of compressing samples of external audio on its own. After a short while of thinking, you get three ideas as to how to improve the Saturn:
>put the 2 Hitachi CPUS in separate buses
>Modify the Sound processor so that it can compress samples of audio
>Take VDP-1 and re-design it.
However, you can only convince the lead devs of doing two of your three proposals for the Saturn. Which two out of three will you pick?

>> No.5350768

FUCK IT MORE RAM BITCHES YEAAAAAHH

>> No.5350774

>>5350768
Go on...

>> No.5350776

Buses and VPD-1 redesign
it's a game console not an audio player

>> No.5350783

>>5350760
Can you please fuck off you mega autist. Nobody cares for your daydreams

>> No.5350787

>>5350760
Your modifications exeed our projected budget for the project. You are fired. You have four hours to clear your desk. Thank you and good luck.

>> No.5351467

>>5350787
Which one in particular?

>> No.5351480

I cancel the whole thing and convince Sega to support the 32x until the Dreamcast comes out.

>> No.5351490

>>5350760
I make the VDP1 capable of drawing a pixel in a single cycle, and have a 12-bit RGB mode with 4 bit background priority/blending, and give the system a 512 pixel wide mode that allows for all color calculation effects as well as 16bit framebuffer.

This would make it significantly easier to get good graphics out of, significantly easier to use the VDP2 in a polygon environment, it would have a medium-res mode that can be used without disabling shading effects, and it would have a resolution for any number of NES/SNES/Master System ports.
If it can process triangles, that's a bonus.

The thing with the SH2s can be gotten around with over time using more mature developer libraries, and SCSP is fine enough and got software ADPCM encoders later in its life anyway (yes, for sound effects).

>> No.5351779

>>5351490
Okay, the 2x SH2's I don't see as an inherent problem. It would have made more sense to put the dual CPUs on separate buses.

>> No.5352047

>>5351779
If the two CPU's were on separate buses it would of been more powerful then the ps1 even if both CPU's were slightly slower then the ps1's CPU.

>> No.5352051

>>5351779
I think the capcom sega naomi arcade boards have the CPU's on separate buses.

>> No.5352508

>>5350760

I'd stuff it full of ram, and eliminate any 3D capabilities from it. 3D fucking sucks
End of story.

>> No.5352510

>>5350760
software sells hardware not the other way around

>> No.5352662

>>5352047
It is a tad more powerful than the PS1 already, but putting the 2 CPUs on separate buses would make it both more apparent and slightly easier to work with.

>> No.5352694

>>5352508
>t.PCFX fantard

>> No.5352797

>>5350760
vdp1 redesign and soundchip. nobody wants to work with 2 cpus.

>> No.5352964

>>5351779
CPU power doesn't fucking matter if you have a gpu that can push less pixels than a Neogeo.

>> No.5352970

>>5351490
Are you still here? You are no longer working here. Don't make me call security.

>> No.5352976

The mega autists in this thread apparently never heard about project budgets. Whatever nonsense fantasy you dream up here, you are unnecessarily blowing up costs of your project, jeopardising not only your job but the ones of your team members.

t. electric engineer since 1999

>> No.5352992

>>5350760
Don't you mean decompress not compress.

>>5352976
Yeah the saturn had a low budget with those seven or so cpus.

>> No.5352996

>>5352992
Why do you want to inflate it even more, mega autist

>> No.5352998

>>5352964

If you can draw only one screen worth of pixels using the cpu to prevent most overdraw then its fine. That's what doom and quake do.

>> No.5353001

>>5352996
I didn't say anything about inflating it. I'd go for a major simplification of the design if anything.

>> No.5353393

>>5350760

wasnt the selection of the hitachi chip also predicated on there being more people familiar with low level programming of the SH chips anyways (in japan that is)?

>> No.5354335

>>5353393
Maybe, but I'm pretty sure it was a business deal. Sega influenced the design of the SH-4 used in the dreamcast as well.

>> No.5354405

moar sound chips and ram
FUCK 3D

>> No.5354632

>>5354405
>T.Rabid sonic fantard

>> No.5354650

You would actually want to make the Saturn even cheaper, if not drop it all together, so it's failure doesn't financially impact Sega as much if they purpose of this is to save Sega from exiting the console market. In hindsight, it was bad timing.

>> No.5355069

>>5354650
Yeah, I see where you are going, maybe it a tad less bulky along with the VDP-1 redesign. Also, cheaper retail price does NOT equal success. The Jaguar quickly became cheaper than both the 3DO and the later released Playstation. Dreamcast was also cheaper than the launch model PS2.

>> No.5356649

>>5355069
BUMP OF LIFE!
Anywho, I really wonder which of the VDPs in the Saturn was most responsible for its major difficulty in doing transparencies, particularly in 3D games?

>> No.5356909

the n64 chipset on the saturn motherboard would have been a monster since the n64 was crippled because the buses weren't seperated

>> No.5356926

>>5355069
Its about making profit from console sales. SS and DC were sold at loss and Sega lost lot of money doing that.

>> No.5357050

Simplify VDP1 and put any leftover time into developing strong libraries for developers to use.