/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8882514]

Cannot even do transparencies

[Anonymous No.8882517]

It's the same on a CRT

[Anonymous No.8882519]

It can, but most developers didn't really make use of it. I prefer X4 and a few other games like Street Fighter Collection on Saturn but prefer PS1 as a console overall

Pic related is probably one of its best features honestly

[Anonymous No.8882532]

On a composite cable through crt you wouldn't see it. This flaw Is a recency bias issue.

There's no cable that will fix SF alpha 3 on the ps

[Anonymous No.8882542]

>>8882514
this thread again? oh well...
(saturn can do transparencies)

[Anonymous No.8882546]

>>8882514
left looks better
it's more natural than putting a bunch of black dots on the light
and i think for the bottom pic that's just a changed background element

[Anonymous No.8882549]

Toshinden S isn't a fair comparison.

[Anonymous No.8882591]

>>8882542
>saturn can do transparencies
>post pic showing it can't
LMAO

[Anonymous No.8882605]

>>8882591
Shush moron. If the argument is that Saturn "cannot" do transparency, that's just wrong.

[Anonymous No.8882619]

>>8882605
Why does the sprite behind disappear? It's an invisibility cloak?

[Anonymous No.8882626]

>>8882591
>>8882605
and kys

[Anonymous No.8882632]

>>8882619
ohnonononon...

[Anonymous No.8882635]

[Anonymous No.8882643]

>>8882605
okay, so here is the real deal shit.
saturn can do transparencies extremely inefficiently if the programmer is clever enough. even in your example, if another sprite moves behind her cape, you can not see them behind it as it can only create a transparency in front of the background layer. PSX did not have this limitation.

[Anonymous No.8882645]

>>8882605
>>8882619
VDP2 can do transparency but it can't make anything dawn by VDP1 transparent. So mixing the two makes this retarded effect possible.

[Anonymous No.8882649]

>>8882635
also the gauge in sega touring car, and some shadows in vf games

[Anonymous No.8882654]

>>8882619
>>8882643
To be honest I quite like the effect even if it prob wasn't intended, I think 360 ver fixed it but it wasn't as uniquely charming for it.

[Anonymous No.8882663]

>>8882643
That's because it uses Sprites/Quads to draw polygons. If you tried to make a triangle on the Saturn, it would have to re-draw lines which overlap. It was incredibly inefficient through traditional means, but developers found a way to bring in fading & transparency.

[Anonymous No.8882672]

>>8882514

the most dumbed down technical answer i can think of.

saturn has 2 gpus, one draws ONLY sprites (or "rectangular polygons" if 3d), the other draws ONLY the background layers. (old 2d game concept)

a sprite cannot be ALPHA transparent to another sprite, but the gpu can "skip each other pixel" to fake a transparency. (each output pixel must belong to a single sprite like the neo geo)

when the image is being composited to be shown on screen, for each output pixel it fetches the corresponding pixel from the GPU1 (sprites) and GPU2 (background), if the GPU1 pixel is transparent, it is mixed with the pixel from GPU2, causing it to be true transparent, but only against the background. (explains the guardian heroes reposted to death example)

[Anonymous No.8882701]

>>8882635

this is mask transparency, not alpha.

mask is when a texture has a "background color" that is assigned to "not be drawn".

if we didn't had those, every 2d character sprite would have huge boxes around their bodies from within the area they were drawn

[Anonymous No.8882719]

>>8882672
>a sprite cannot be ALPHA transparent to another sprite,
Well, it can actually. You can do proper 50/50 blending with other sprites, but then it wont blend with the background layers. You can have it be blended with the background layers, but then it wont blend with the sprites and will end up erasing them.

There are ways to work around this, but most devs just went for the mesh effect since it looks the same on a CRT over composite anyways. Some devs got clever and did things like having the transparency flicker between blending with the background and blending with sprites every other frame, so at 60Hz it looks correct(Cotton). Some passed it off to VDP2 to handle since it can do 50/50 and additive blending just fine (Burning Rangers). Others copy some of the sprites to a VDP2 layer and then draws the transparent polygons overtop with blending done with background layers so it looks correct (Grandia).

[Anonymous No.8882729]

>>8882635
That's not a transparency.

[Anonymous No.8882731]

>>8882517
Not quite

[Anonymous No.8882757]

No transparencies, yet still far better visuals than the N64.

[Anonymous No.8882771]

>>8882514
And they call this console a 2D powerhouse. Just lmao.

[Anonymous No.8882798]

>>8882514
Modern deferred rendering can't into transparencies (not without a significant performance penalty) either. It seems as though realtime 3D rendering regressed technologically when deferred shading became a thing.

[Anonymous No.8882806]

>>8882757
No way, that looks ugly as fuck

[Anonymous No.8882819]

>>8882514
>sound effects are off-pitch from downsampling
Saturn's X4 is unplayable.

[Anonymous No.8882821]

>>8882798
Modern deferred rendering CAN into transparency.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/Materials/HowTo/Transparency/

[Anonymous No.8882827]

>>8882605
Is her sprite intentionally fuckawful?

[Anonymous No.8882835]

>>8882819
>A handful of the sound effects are 16KHz instead of 22Khz
>unplayable
I think you're overreacting here. I highly doubt you can even notice that difference unless you're sitting there with headphones listening to them back to back.

[Anonymous No.8882836]

>>8882821
>(not without a significant performance penalty)
There's a reason why modern games are regressing back to dithering. It's because it's more performant to have TXAA blur and ghost the shit out of it instead of properly blending their transparencies.

[Anonymous No.8882838]

Also, does Megaman 8 have transparency on Saturn or no?

[Anonymous No.8882851]

>>8882838
Sprite transparencies like X4? No, but neither does the PS1 version.

[Anonymous No.8882863]

>>8882838
>Excited to try Mega Man 8 on Saturn because it has extra features and superior Tengu Man theme
>Start playing the game
>Immediately remember 8 isn't that good and switch to X4 instead

[Anonymous No.8882874]

>>8882835
Anyone can tell it's wrong without having played the original.

https://youtu.be/Z-amVoAwjBI?t=548
https://youtu.be/Z-amVoAwjBI?t=667

[Anonymous No.8882876]

>>8882836
Takes a gazillion layers to have performance penalty, and lighting is a lot more complex than possible in engines with forward rendering. Lots of light sources, dynamic lighting, etc.

[Anonymous No.8882931]

>>8882806
Yeah needs a little extra smudging everywhere. Instant Nintendo classic.

[Anonymous No.8882958]

>>8882514
It can, but people will deny that it's situational and unwieldy to implement because it's has a weirdo 16-bit 2D system tier layer system.

[Anonymous No.8882975]

>>8882874
Yeah, Playstation sounds way better, but I'm guessing most people didn't care at the time due to game sound still being a developing thing.

[Anonymous No.8883050]

>>8882532
>>8882542
this. same issue with RGB/nearest neighbour filter when emulating SANIC on a Genesis emu.

[Anonymous No.8883082]

>>8882874
If you haven't played the PS1 version you wouldn't even know it's different or something is off, especially when going through shitty TV speakers. Comparing them directly most would probably just assume Saturn used a different sample rather than it being lower quality. As that wasn't really uncommon for the time as different versions were developed by different teams.

Honestly the Saturn version doesn't even sound bad. The warning siren I actually like more on Saturn as the PS1 is a bit more obnoxious sounding.

[Anonymous No.8883094]

>>8882863
>8 isn't that good
Holy Mother of filtered Batman.