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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 59 KB, 364x198, sega-saturn.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6859290 No.6859290 [Reply] [Original]

do you think the Sega Saturn was a powerful console?

>> No.6859295

Objectively yes, but it was also a huge bitch to code for. 3D consoles benefit more from ease of programming a la the PS1 than sheer graphical performance, especially if the hardware is difficult to work with.
This was comparatively less of a problem for the Nintendo 64 considering nearly all the developers were in-house.

>> No.6859323

>>6859290
Not as powerful as the Jaguar, that's for sure.

>> No.6859339

>>6859290
I could do weird and interesting things and it has become an interesting hobby project for a lot of really skilled programmers. I listened to an interview once from a developer who praised the Saturn - saying it will keep giving if you're willing to put in the work. Seeing what people are cooking up now there seems to be a lot of truth to it. It's definitely the lowest res of the 3 consoles at the time but what it did often has a very unique look that I find really appealing. The intense and vibrant dynamic lights in Quake, the smathering of particles in burning rangers, the awesome vistas in panzer dragoon zwei and games like mass destruction running at a perfect 60fps with a shit ton of effects and transparencies going on show there was absolutely some capability in that thing. Since all consoles eventually end up outdated at the end of the day what matters most ends up being the library which the Saturn has a stellar one.

>> No.6859359

>>6859290
>Burning Rangers
>Quake
>Fighters Megamix / Last Bronx/ Dead or Alive

When they wanted Saturn was savage,

>> No.6859362

>>6859290
Yes. It was the PS3 of the 5th Gen consoles. The games were closer to arcade quality and you could watch VCD's. But just like the PS3, it was hard to program for. So developers were not able to use the Sega Saturn to it's fullest potential, which is disappointing to me because I would have loved seeing a game on the Sega Saturn that would be as mind-blowing as Metal Gear Solid and Super Mario 64.

>> No.6859365

>>6859290
VDP1 was shit at doing 3D compared to PS1.
VDP2 was good at tilemapped backgrounds, but that's it.
The twin SH2 setup was dumb because game programming doesn't benefit from multiple CPUs especially back in the '90s when this was a new and experimental thing.
The sound chip wasn't as good as the PS1's.

>> No.6859381

Basically Sega banked on 2D living a bit longer, it didn't, Saturn got btfo by Sony and Nintendo, and so they had to rush the Dreamcast out the door, but it was too little too late by then because everyone was anticipating PS2 and Dolphin to give a shit about Sega anymore.

>> No.6859405
File: 3.00 MB, 480x360, 480.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6859405

>>6859290
>do you think the Sega Saturn was a powerful console?
Depends what you wanted it for. VDP2's infinite background generator made games like Panzer Dragoon possible and simply could not have been done on PSX or N64.

>> No.6859414

>>6859405
Sin and punishment look better than pd zwei

>> No.6859420
File: 2.96 MB, 640x480, devour.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6859420

>>6859414
Nope.

>> No.6859424

>>6859420
FF9 looks better than that

>> No.6859432

>>6859424
Its really easy to get accustomed the texture jitters on PS1 and have a tinted memory of how PS1 games looked, but be honest here.

>> No.6859454
File: 3.00 MB, 640x480, virtua cop2.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6859454

>>6859424
Why do you keep arbitrarily comparing shit with nothing in common?

>> No.6859461

>>6859290
It's fairly powerful. VDP1 is pretty slow overall, but that's mostly it being compared to the PS1. It's not like some kind of miserable piece of silicon for 1994, but the PS1's GPU is just better designed.
Having two decently clocked SH2 CPUs means the machine has a good bit of raw power, too. Even a lone SH2 isn't quite the fastest thing, but it's not particularly slow either. A dual CPU design was a bit weird and certainly made it hard to program for, and IIRC, they really were banking on people writing fucking multithreaded asm for the machine (so, someone on the staff had his head up his own ass), but it also ends up being a saving grace overall -- the PS1 has the GTE to assist with 3D calculations and lighting, while Saturn games tend to offload that to the other CPU.

There are some really shitty design decisions that just seem like pointless added costs (why is there a whole SH1 doing nothing but running the CD drive controller? why even bother with the fucking 68k for audio? it's not even hooked up in a useful way to do Genesis backwards compatibility (which must have been a goal at some point)! why the FUCK did they even bother with that absurd fucker DSP chip that was absolutely fucking retarded to program for and you manually fucking pipelined instructions and had to deal with the wait states so you had to space when you sent instructions out, etc, etc).
The machine really wasn't going to lose much with a lot of that shit removed.

>>6859381
Sega, had they not fucked up during the Saturn days so badly, could have weathered the storm. Strong initial sales dipped majorly while people waited to see what the competition could do, but Sega was in so much fucking debt and wasn't the well regarded hyper-juggernaut that they were in 1994 anymore.

seriously, Sega fucked up the Saturn's release so bad
and the whole 32X debacle didn't help
and neither machine was particularly available when demand was actually there
it's just so bad

>> No.6859465

>>6859365
>VDP1 was shit at doing 3D compared to PS1.
It's more just that it's slower and isn't as good at transparencies.
>VDP2 was good at tilemapped backgrounds, but that's it
It was pretty good at doing additive blending, bitmaps, and infinite rotating planes too.
>The twin SH2 setup was dumb
This is a meme. The dual SH2s is probably the least controversial aspect of the Saturn's design. The CPUs were powerful for the time and pretty easy to use. Most games actually do use both CPUs, and most of your 3D ones do a setup where one CPU is doing all the 3D Calculations and Sorting, and the other is doing everything else. Only the most incompetently coded shovelware doesn't use both.
>The sound chip wasn't as good as the PS1's.
The only area the PS1's chip wins at is support for compressed samples, but that's why the Saturn has a dedicated 68k to control the sound chip, it can be used to do decompression. Every other aspect the Saturn's sound chip beats the PS1 sound chip. It's a very powerful chip that was also used in some of Yamaha's high end keyboards at the time. It can do 32 PCM channels or combine those in ways to make different kinds of FM Synth Channels. So you could use 4 PCM channels to make 1 4OP FM Synth Channel if you wanted. And some games do this. Sakura Wars is one of them. If you compare the music between Saturn and Dreamcast you can actually hear this. While Dreamcast has higher quality PCM samples, it sounds flat by comparison because it's missing all the backup FM Synth channels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBZpqti7Z2w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8zsHF_2nr8

>> No.6859467

>>6859432
>be honest here
Nothing but candor, my friend.
https://youtu.be/6n4M0OFqRVg
https://youtu.be/X7VNWt0y1C8?t=198

>> No.6859478

>>6859454
>PDS
>FF9
>nothing in common
What did he mean by this?

>> No.6859480

>>6859467
Skip to 3:18 on the second link

>> No.6859629
File: 3.00 MB, 640x480, rally1.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6859629

>> No.6861181

I will ask here instead of making a new thread. Does anyone know if you can use an SD card AND a usb thumb drive at the same time with the MODE from terraonion?

>> No.6861587

>>6861181
Yes you can

>> No.6863685
File: 1.75 MB, 2016x1512, safe_words_for_vr.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6863685

>>6859290
It played a lot of fun games I enjoyed at the time and ended out to be one of my most favorite consoles. It had mode7 on steroids, displayed a lot more colours than the Mega Drive, I still find a few of the "quads" polygons impressive if developers put effort in utilizing it to their art design for the respective games.

>> No.6864669

>>6861587
Bad ass thanks anon.

>> No.6865216

>>6859323
This is just bullshit. The Jaguar could not pull this off. >>6859405 Not a single game for the Jaguar comes close. Cybermorph/Battlemorph or that racing game? Give me a break. You're just making shit up.

>> No.6866593
File: 40 KB, 704x480, 00000037.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6866593

>>6859290
I like how the Saturn could run 3D fighting games at 704x480 and 60FPS with pseudo-3D 2D background layers.

PS1 3D fighting games usually ran in resolutions like 512x480 (Tobal 1 & 2, Dead or Alive, Bloody Roar 2) or 384x480 (Tekken 3 and IIRC Kensei). DoA1 on PS1 uses 512x480 and has simplified backgrounds / bitmaps in comparison with the Saturn port.

>> No.6867501

was this running on a Saturn?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZUcPQAMvg

>> No.6868009

>>6863685
do you have all the tea cups anon?

>> No.6868018

In terms of raw power and potential
N64>Saturn>>PS1
In terms of how easy it was for developers to do shit on it
PS1>>N64>Saturn

>> No.6868028

>>6868018
Saturn was objectively inferior to PSX in every possible way. I say this as a Saturn fan, but seriously you guys need to be realistic.

>> No.6868046

>>6859290
It is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYEiDwZbRc

>> No.6868051

>>6868046
>make advanced engine the likes has never been seen for a fifth gen homebrew project
>just make a lame quake/d3d ripoff

>> No.6868056

>>6868009
how many were made anyway, like 300 each?

>> No.6868057

>>6868046
this guy was a maniac, truly. I mean the good things is that now he can do whatever the fuck he wants with this nice fuckin engine

>> No.6868067

>>6868046
Ngl that looks freaking amazing

>> No.6868420

>>6868051
>It looks like Quake.
It's called place holder assets.

>> No.6869086

>>6868046
>splitscreen multiplayer
fucking epic.

>> No.6869517

>>6859290
The Saturn's VDP1 was the basis for NVIDIA's first graphics processor, the NV1, which was one of the first 3D graphics accelerators on PC, released in 1995. Like the Saturn, it uses quad polygons and supports forward texture mapping with limited perspective correction, and several Saturn ports are available for it. However, the NV1 has a lower fillrate and rendering performance

The most powerful PC graphics card of 1995 was Yamaha's Tasmania 3D, which was based on triangle polygons. It had a higher fillrate and rendering throughput than the NV1, but less than the Saturn.

>> No.6870920

>>6859290
as powerful as PSX.

>> No.6870972

better 2D capability than ps1
worse 3D capability than ps1/n64

>> No.6871362

>>6866593
Okay and? Who fucking asked for your input dude? Sod off.

>> No.6871462

maybe this will help
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E