Comparing the 32X and SNES- NO BIAS!!!

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09-03-2010, 05:02 AM
Blade_Runner02

Comparing the 32X and SNES- NO BIAS!!!

As a question I've been driving myself crazy with and want to know...can the 32X produce transparencies for 2-D games and produce sound (mostly) on par with the SNES? I'd just like to know as I'd very much like to defend the system and state it was just wrong place, time, and marketing, as a Neptune would be one hell of a dream console.:D

I have seen transparencies on a Genesis, such as the shadow effects in Virtua Fighter 2 Gen, as well as the victory screens (even tried them on an emulator it is NOT a screendoor dithering effect it's legit) and on the 32X the only TRUE (I hope) transparencies I've seen are the shadows below your racer in BC Racers...

May sound like a dumb question, but I just...want to believe in what might have been had 3rd party developers had actually helped out the 32X back in the day, as I think it had a lot of potential, but it just fumbled the ball. I'd just like to have the satisfaction of (thinking) how sweet it would have been to see SNES games like Demon's Crest or Castlevania IV on the 32X, or to know the satisfaction of knowing it could have run them just as well as Nintendo's juggernaut.

I am new on here, but want to get as much as I can. I grew up a Nintendo kid, but my cousins had the Sega systems, from the Gen to the DC. Now that I've been exposed to the freedom of emulators for several years, I finally found Sega heaven with the Kega Fusion and finally found a near-mint Gen2 recently, and now I want to start a Sega collection...off topic yes, but some background info.
09-03-2010, 08:06 AM
tomaitheous

Quote:

I have seen transparencies on a Genesis, such as the shadow effects in Virtua Fighter 2 Gen, as well as the victory screens (even tried them on an emulator it is NOT a screendoor dithering effect it's legit) and on the 32X the only TRUE (I hope) transparencies I've seen are the shadows below your racer in BC Racers...

It's called shadow/highlight (it can only darken or lighten a color - a total of two level to pick from). It only exists on the Genesis side. Not a lot of games used it because of the limitations it put on the design. It IS a hardware feature, but it shouldn't be confused with 'transparency' capabilities of the SNES - which has quite a few color mixing modes, special separate color window overlay window, sprite transparency and BG layer transparency.

The 32x has no hardware transparency support (but it also pretty much has no hardware support for background tilemaps or even sprites). It's possible to do transparency in hi color mode, in software on the 32x. But that would *only* be for the 32x layer, not for the Genesis layers. And it would slow things down (as it has to be done in software).
09-03-2010, 08:22 AM
sheath

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

May sound like a dumb question, but I just...want to believe in what might have been had 3rd party developers had actually helped out the 32X back in the day, as I think it had a lot of potential, but it just fumbled the ball. I'd just like to have the satisfaction of (thinking) how sweet it would have been to see SNES games like Demon's Crest or Castlevania IV on the 32X, or to know the satisfaction of knowing it could have run them just as well as Nintendo's juggernaut.

I am new on here, but want to get as much as I can. I grew up a Nintendo kid, but my cousins had the Sega systems, from the Gen to the DC. Now that I've been exposed to the freedom of emulators for several years, I finally found Sega heaven with the Kega Fusion and finally found a near-mint Gen2 recently, and now I want to start a Sega collection...off topic yes, but some background info.

Welcome aboard, I just bit the bullet back in July and haven't been able to stop frequenting these boards. To your question, some of the games you mentioned could have been made on the Genesis alone very well with only minor changes. The colors and audio in Demon's Crest and Castlevania IV are not out of the reach of the Genesis, but they would have to be adjusted to a certain extent. The Mode 7 effects wouldn't make it to the Genesis alone without using an entirely different effect. Backgrounds can "tilt" on the Genesis, but they rarely rotate smoothly outside of Red Zone.

Now for the transparency question, as you already noted, some of the Genesis' effects can be used to "fake" transparency. The 32X can actually display over 256 colors simultaneously, though to my knowledge only Blackthorne does this. So, whether or not it is capable of "true" transparency, the 32X's color capabilities outweigh the SNES' and can therefore handle any SNES level transparency in software if anything else.

Now, I would be surprised if it could display transparent objects over the Genesis backgrounds, that seems to be asking too much. So, the entire game would have to be running off the 32X for a transparency effect to be complete.

A little off topic, but still to the point. I think the reason you're looking to the 32X to make the Genesis better is because you've only experienced Genesis games in emulation. Hopefully you lucked out and got a Genesis 2 with a good sound chip, otherwise you're likely to go on thinking the Genesis had worse sound than the SNES.

The colors though, ah the colors, well, see what you think using Composite out of your Genesis 2 on an SDTV. If you must use an HDTV see if you can find one with a comb filter that doesn't posterize lower resolution stuff. The facts are though, that the Genesis and SNES were roughly equal systems in software. The Genesis didn't need the 32X to be "better" than the SNES, depending on what kinds of games you like to play.
09-03-2010, 09:49 AM
Da_Shocker

WE all seen what happened with FX Fighter on the SNES.
09-03-2010, 09:52 AM
retrospiel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

and produce sound (mostly) on par with the SNES?

I don't think you'd need a 32X for that. Just a decent sound driver (i.e. not the ones by Sega of America, Virgin, Acclaim, EA, Accolade) and a talented composer who likes FM.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

but I just...want to believe in what might have been had 3rd party developers had actually helped out the 32X back in the day, as I think it had a lot of potential

I am not sure about that. Sega dropped it because it didn't have any potential. They sold the first batch during the holiday season but then it just sat there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

I'd just like to have the satisfaction of (thinking) how sweet it would have been to see SNES games like Demon's Crest or Castlevania IV on the 32X, or to know the satisfaction of knowing it could have run them just as well as Nintendo's juggernaut.

I doubt these games would have caused the bare bones Mega Drive any issues. Let alone the Sega CD.

There's a Castlevania on Genesis. I am not sure but I think it looks better than CV4. (Not that it's surprising considering it's a bit younger)

Demon's Crest is a late(r) SNES game. I don't think there's anything comparable for Genesis. Maybe Story of Thor aka Beyond Oasis, especially the boss fights. Or Monster World IV.

There aren't many late Japanese Mega Drive games, because Sega shifted focus to 32X and then Saturn in 1995.
I think some of the more impressive Japanese SNES games were made during this period.

In general the best Mega Drive / Genesis games were the earlier ones (~1990-1993), when the ROMs were very expensive, so even when the games were great they often don't look too hot on first sight (see Jewel Master, Golden Axe 3). The average Mega Drive game had 1/4th of the space available that the average SNES game had.

Some awesome late Japanese MD games include Pulseman, Alien Soldier, Bare Knuckle III, Ristar, Dynamite Headdy, Samurai Shodown, Soleil / Crusader of Centy, Panorama Cotton, Great Circus Mystery, Langrisser 2, Time Dominator 1st / Socket, Virtua Racing, etc.

Some of them were released in the West, some weren't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

finally found a near-mint Gen2 recently, and now I want to start a Sega collection...

I'd recommend a model 1 Genesis. Those produce the much better sound. Look for one with a "HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHCS" logo to be sure it's an earlier model 1 variant.
09-03-2010, 05:34 PM
Blade_Runner02

^Thanks guys, again, I'm new to the Sega side of the spectrum, but had always watched from afar with nothing but the S/K Archie comics to read >_<

The most exposure as of late I've gotten to older Sega games BESIDES emulation is...emulation on a PS2 & 3, haha, with the Gen COl / Ultimate (sure it is) Collection. A strange thing I noticed when playing through Shinobi III and Streets of Rage 2 is that the lights and water....DO look transparent, though I bet it's either from blurring or my old SD TV itself...Does anyone know if the games were messed with on the Gen Collection? I believe there was a layer put over them to look good in 1080 or whatever, but I'm not for sure.
Again, if I sound like a total noob or this has all been discussed before then I'm sorry guys! Gotta try to start somewhere and I'm just so burned out on Nintendo that all I've been playing are Capcom / Konami / Sega games (any systems) as of late. I really wanted a 32X and jumped at getting the Gen2 since my naive memories conceived the 32x as super cheap on ebay...I get on there looking for one and....yeesh (0_o)

And it's also ironic that the game I'm after most for Gen happens to BE Crusader of Centy. Again, I get on to look and...yikes!
Currently all i own is Superman complete in the case, yet the European version is better cuz you can choose the difficulty (making it more playable and dare I say...fun?) I have had exposure to my friend's for a short while but all he had was Rocket Knight Adventures and dare I say I was very impressed with it! But a model 1 I have never been able to get ahold of (working, anyway) and Gen 3's LOOK cool but I will stay the hell away from.

I was thinking had when the Gen Model 2 came out that Sega would have totally beefed up the system to match or surpass the SNES' audio/graphics chips yet I'm like oh yeah...then what would Model 1 owners do?
The CDX is drool-worthy to me, yet I've not the fortune to invest in it but I was teased at a local game store in my hometown where Snatcher COMPLETE sat in the bargain $6 bin and I LET IT sit there for years never thinking anyone would want it but when I go to...snatch it, the owner had realized his amazing mistake and had sold it for $50 3=

It seems like every time I want a Gen game it just so happens to be super rare (i.e. Splatterhouse 2/3, CoC, etc) Shinobi III and Revenge of the Joker (for S's and G's) might be my next purchases...but you gotta start somewhere.

I just can't understand how Sega dropped the ball on transparencies, from the Gen to even the Saturn (til those later games faked/hacked it or whatever)...
I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't judge the games by them at all I just wish it could be on par (technically, not in gaming goodness or satisfaction) with th SNES as I have a lot of respect for Sega standing up to Nintendo in the 90s, seeing as how NEC just couldn't cut it over here...
09-03-2010, 05:52 PM
Blade_Runner02

^& true, just wishful thinking for the 32X >_<

Is that conducted by a dude with the Gen's FM?! or slightly arranged? 0_o that just blew my mind man (I recognized some Phantasy Star III & Ecco 2 in there)...even though I should recognize more =S
Shinobi III's sound impresses the hell out of me (most everything about it does).
09-03-2010, 05:57 PM
Chilly Willy

You keep saying "transparency", but I guess you mean translucent. The Genesis and 32X handle TRANSPARENCY just fine - it's translucent effects that have to be "faked". ;)

To be more accurate on how you refer to it, call it alpha effects, since that's what it is - applying an alpha channel that is more than just on or off to the graphics.
09-03-2010, 06:39 PM
Blade_Runner02

^Oh, sorry man my terminology sucks =(

But yeah, isn't it the alpha chip / channels that the SNES had that the Gen lacked?

Ristar boggles me with the water effects in level 2-1, or is it simply disguising everything below the water line? Like in Hook SNES when Pan jumps in the water, he turns slightly blue, can go between above and below water and his halves are different colors, etc. On Hook Gen, it's that bloody screen-door effect... I just wish the 32X could have done the same effects as the SNES did, not to beat out either side, but so I could defend the 32X in an argument if it was ever brought up idk why but I always want to stick up for the underdog, and I grew up seeing Sega that way (I unfortunately was too young to remember when they nearly had an equal chunk of the market w/ Nintendo).
If my comments have any eagerness or sound naive, call me out on it xD I'd wanna sound as professional or knowledgable as I can but to the technical specs I'm extremely noobish, so my apologies man
09-03-2010, 06:40 PM
Blade_Runner02

^NOT to say the Ristar thing is LIKE Hooks, I changed the sbject lol.
And I did notice how when I saw what was NEAR ....transluscent on the Gen it was always in black / white / grey shades...so I was naive and got my hopes up again =S
09-03-2010, 06:55 PM
64k

the best faked transparent effect ive seen on the MD was on Kawasaki super bike jobby! the effect on the visor on the motorbike when you're racing dumbfounded me for quite awhile.

but I think it's shadow/highlight.
09-03-2010, 09:50 PM
Blade_Runner02

Castlevania Bloodlines, to me, doesn't look as good as SC4, but it's still damn impressive, considering all the gore I think Sega let it have to get an edge of Nintendo's censorship of the SNES back then.
And I'm sure they would look fine if ported to GEN, but that SNES has that sound chip that cheats with that near-symphonic background, and I haven't heard anything on Gen that can equally match that, (like Donkey Kong Country 1&2, etc). I'd like to think the Gen could produce audio exactly like the SNES Mega Man X1&2, if they were ported (I ignore the bootleg poser MMX3 rom-thing).
I just wouldn't want to feel like it was watered down at all from the SNES, or if they were released simultaneously like for example, Saturday Night Slam Masters, I wouldn't feel like the Gen version had lesser audio than the SNES one (though the deathmatch feature was pretty badass).
And yeah, you're all right...I forget the 32X was a Gen add-on, and alpha channels would have been hard to do for software...
IF they had gone with the Neptune idea do you think then that the 32X part would have functioned seperately (video and audio-wise) from the Gen part since it was no longer an add-on? Or am I just sounding like an idiot here? =S I am so curious to see what V Hamster or the Darkstalkers port would have looked like...and AvP would be badass as well...

Basically, it's not like I have anything against the Genesis, hell the more Sega games I play the more they seem to be like the kind of games I would have preferred when I was younger, and even now (with the exception of third party non-Nintendo games on SNES, I will forever wish that Genesis had gotten Konami's Batman & Robin as well...more of my fave villains, and it's not tyranically impossible).
And I've heard two seperate rumors...
Were the AvP FPS (like the Jag/Sat one) or the AvP Capcom arcade game ever planned for 32x? I've heard rumors of the Capcom one which make me drool....ugh that would have been so cool.
09-03-2010, 09:55 PM
sheath

That is actually what I was saying, what few multi-platform games there are between the 32X and SNES are technically better on the 32X. Blackthorne, Doom and Mortal Kombat II are the best examples I can think of off the cuff.

Also, watered down ports between the Genesis and SNES are the fault of the developer not the Genesis hardware.

I would recommend comparing Revenge of Shinobi to Castlevania IV (on real hardware), the graphics and audio seem to be more of the same style.
09-04-2010, 07:46 PM
Blade_Runner02

Redundant question/wonderings >_<

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtrFS...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js8nn...eature=related
^
So, in a nutshell, would those two tracks be possible on a 32X using its soundchip? I realize the Gen can produce good sound as well but for some reason i don't trust it with tunes along those lines...I have flashes of trumpet blares or beeps/boops ala Beyond Oasis going through my head or the tones or pitches being different/off etc... Could the 32X even use it's soundchip by itself, or would it be way to much work for the software to run the game smoothly? I heard somewhere the 32X utilized Q-Sound but I believe that's just BS... Yet I can't understand why Sega made the audio so hard to program for...

Attachment 1654
These are taken from Hook. The first 2 are from SNES, the last from Genny. I just wondered if the 32X would be capable of ding what Hook does with the water (alpha effects, yes?) like how the SNES does, or that the 32X could do it like any SNES game does, etc without the screen-door effect... (But not to say it would do something like some arcade games where the character sprites change color to suit the water/environment only when they're FULLY submerged beneath, thats not what I'm asking)

Again, I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a total idiot guys, or am annoying everyone or sounding redundant but idk it's just stuff I've been thinking about lately...I so wish the Neptune to had existed =S
09-04-2010, 08:06 PM
evildragon

Organ music can be done for sure, Bloodlines does it on the Genesis with no problem..
09-04-2010, 08:13 PM
Blade_Runner02

^Bloodlines for sure man, it did a lot of stuff I was impressed with coming out of CV4...
I just wish the coulds wouldn't flicker during the fight with the "gargoyle" or the clouds at the opening stage above the castle were shadows and not the screen-door thing... =S
THAT's what my 32X wondering is about...if all that would have been fixed if it was on it in some far-off fantasy world...
09-04-2010, 09:08 PM
sheath

Yup. 32X could have done it with even higher sample quality. All Demon's Crest's music is sample based synth. While it's some of the better usage of the SNES sample capabilities, it doesn't surpass even Genesis sound possibilities.

Especially see:
Ghouls N Ghosts Soundtrack

Strider - Grand Master

Forgotten Worlds Level 5

I created this page a long while ago to compare the best music for the two systems. To me it's mostly apples to oranges, but the Genesis alone can do just fine. Let me know if any of the links are dead, I'll fix them.

16-bit sound comparison
09-05-2010, 02:00 AM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

As a question I've been driving myself crazy with and want to know...can the 32X produce transparencies for 2-D games and produce sound (mostly) on par with the SNES? I'd just like to know as I'd very much like to defend the system and state it was just wrong place, time, and marketing, as a Neptune would be one hell of a dream console.:D

Tomaitheous already addressed transparencies... and given the limitations of composite video (especially), there's not anything wrong with using a dithered mesh (or columns) for transparency. Due to a bug in VDP1, a lot of the transparency on the Saturn if done with meshes. (I think it works fine for 2D stuff, jut not anything using 3D on VDP1)

One problem with meshes in 320x224 mode on the Genesis is that (for most NTSC models) it tends to cause rainbow artifacts -worse with higher contrast colors- in composite video. (even s-video a little) Not in 256 wide mode, and not in RGB or PAL composite/s-video either. (PAL has a higher res color signal so the video encoder doesn't artifact)
On the 32x, the better composite video doesn't have that artifacting problem to a significant extent.

As for the 32x in general... it's not really that good against the SNES for what it is. It certainly adds to the 2D capabilities, and the 32x+Genesis is pretty much superior in 2D to the SNES, but that's not its biggest strength, and suing the 32x alone you still might have some disadvantages to the SNES in terms of speed. (GBA for that matter too -which also has hardware scaling and rotation -beyond the limited use on the SNES, more like the Sega CD)
The 32x is all CPU driven with a simple bitmap display, no 2D or 3D hardware, and as such it's only as good as software rendering. (think VGA games on a 486 PC) With efficient use of the Genesis hardware as well as the 32x software rendering, you've got some pretty good 2D. (Kolibri is probably the best example with the far 2 BG layers on the genesis and foreground+"sprites" rendered by the 32x) A lot of other 2D games barely use it... mainly more colorful "sprites" sometimes with scaling effects. (knuckles chaotix is all Genesis for the backgrounds)
It did allow better animation too as there wasn't the VRAM/VDP bandwidth limits of the Genesis. (so you wouldn't have to clip the screen in SFII or such either) That would still be limited by ROM, but you can do higher compression as well with the CPU resource.

The SNES could do about as much color as all 32x games did (256 color bitmap display), but all 2D games (outside of mode 7) stuck to the 16-color tile modes (also 4-colors on the 3rd layer when used -usually overlay or far BG). Doom, Dirt Trax, and Stunt Racer were the only ones to use 256 color mode 3 in-game.
I'd imagine that was due to ROM capacity. (256 color tiles would take 2x the space -though since it's planar they could have been more flexible than that too so I'm not sure)

The 3D stuff and other software rendering is where it shined for the time. Polygons, texture mapping, scaling, rotation, and warping (granted the Sega CD did those though was crippled by the Genesis VDP's DMA bandwidth), ray casting, voxel engines (comanche, Amok, etc), and some other things.

The same things that were really impressive to many in the arcade, on PCs, Jaguar, and 3DO at the time. And the 32x was pretty competitive there, mainly crippled by RAM limitations. (and total lack of 2D or 3D hardware acceleration -though for some things like ray casting or voxel engines, that wouldn't help so much, and 3DO and Jaguar had limitations/bottlenecks that didn't really make them especially better at texture mapped polygonal 3D -3DO you were stuck with quads)

The 32x could do a simple texture mapped plane to simulate mode 7 and go beyond that as well (higher resolution textures could be possible), and plenty of other software rendering. (again, pretty much anything on a 486 PC... except you had no FPU and you had RAM limitations -but also the genesis hardware as well)

In terms of sound you had the Genesis hardware plus PWM... PWM could have been really useful for some things with the DMA feature it has, but it wasn't documented for developers to use for some unknown reason. Though Chilly Willy got it working quite well: http://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/...c80b40dce24b69

With DMA you have WAY less CPU overhead to deal with and could easily have something on par or better than the NDS's sound system. (DS is 8 channels up to 32 kHz with stereo PWM output at 9-bit resolution, 32x resolution/max sample rate are variable, but at 9-bit resolution you could have 44.1 kHz) The PWM is stereo and variable resolution/sample rate as mentioned, see: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread....090#post145090
It's only 1 channel with stereo output (also a mono mode), the rest is up to software mixing, but with DMA and the resource in the 32x you can mange a lot. (chilly willy's sample synthesizer being worked on is 32 channels using DMA and mixing with the slave SH2)
PWM also has artifacting, especially at low sample rates (squealing sound), resistor DACs as used in the SNES, Sega CD, etc (most things -and onboard the Genesis), you didn't have that problem.

However, without DMA (as all developers were stuck), you could only do software/interrupt driven PWM playback, so tons of CPU resource, and you'd be lucky to manage 8 22 kHz channels with the slave SH2. (more likely 4, unless you dropped to lower sample rate too -and PWM sounds particularly bas as sample rate drops) For that reason, it was often worse off than the SNES... plus if you had to use the slave SH2 for other things, you were even worse off. Actually, due to the PWM as it was, it wasn't really better than what the Genesis already had with the bare 8-bit resistor DAC (no PWM artifacting ;)) except it had stereo and it didn't disable the 6th FM channel on the YM2612. (otherwise, without DMA, it was only better because of the added resource)

Given that problem, it's a bit of a shame they didn't just use the same Ricoh sound chip in the Sega CD. (8 channels up to 32 kHz, hardware stereo panning on all channels -unlike SNES which only does hard L/R panning without pairing channels) Or hell, some bare resistor DACs would have been better using than PWM as they did... (the Ricoh chip would be way better still though... or for that matter resistor DACs with DMA ;) better than PWM with DMA in most respects -even if you limited it to 8-bit 50 kHz stereo like the Atari STE for example -9 or 10 bit DACs would be better though and probably not much different in cost if it was a custom Sega chip regardless)

None of that is using compressed audio though, so either software decompression or using uncompressed samples. (and 8-bit PCM samples take up 2x the space as 4-bit ADPCM of the SNES)

OTOH the SNES's sound chip is very powerful, but it's horribly limited by the tools/format supported, that and the interpolation is a double edged sword. (the muffled sound of the SNES is due to interpolation -it's a shame it couldn't be turned on an doff, especially per channel) It ends up being a glorified MOD player with some added effects and hardware ADPCM decoding and not really better than the FAR simpler/cheaper Ricoh PCM chip used in the FM Towns, Sega CD, and Sega System 18 and 32 arcade boards -8 channel up to 32 kHz 8-bit PCM 4-bit stereo hardware panning on all 8 channels -snes doesn't- and no interpolation, just scaling to 32 kHz and oversampling+digital filtering making VERY crisp sound compared to the SNES. (especially ironic as Ricoh was Nintendo's primary chip vendor and probably would have given Nintendo a good deal on it) On the Sega CD: Silpheed, Sonic CD's Past stages, and NovaStorm use the PCM chip only, so you can get an idea of it.
Now, if the SPC700 module in the SNES was really supported with a wide ray of flexible tools, you could have had a LOT more than what it was, for one thing the hardware supported up to 32 channels (albeit that would disable the echo/reverb I think) and I don't think the interpolation had to be forced, but I'm not sure. The DSP should have been useful for a lot (not sure just how flexible it is though), and the SPC CPU is rather flexible as well. I'm not sure if ADPCM was hard coded as the only format accepted or if that was just a format/tool limit and plain PCM could be used or other -possibly custom- compression formats. (depending on the DSP's capabilities, it could be used for other forms of compression, otherwise the SPC CPU would be useful to some extent -what might be really nice is higher compression ratio samples to fit more into sample RAM)

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomaitheous

It's called shadow/highlight (it can only darken or lighten a color - a total of two level to pick from). It only exists on the Genesis side. Not a lot of games used it because of the limitations it put on the design. It IS a hardware feature, but it shouldn't be confused with 'transparency' capabilities of the SNES - which has quite a few color mixing modes, special separate color window overlay window, sprite transparency and BG layer transparency.

Does shadow/HL only work for sprites+sprites or Sprite+tiles, or can you combine 2 full tile layers for a single layer with shadow colors as well? I thought you mentioned that you could, but chilly willy mentioned it was only used in conjunction with sprites/sprites+tile.

It does seem a bit of a shame it wasn't used more. Not as useful as SNES translucency/averaging, but still rather useful. (if limited) Vectorman (and especially vectorman 2) use it noticeably iirc. You could probably fake translucent sprites with it too, ie a shadow "sprites" and another sprite overlaid that was mainly colorless pixels and some overlay. (though then you're wasting more sprites/VRAM space rather than just using dithering)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

WE all seen what happened with FX Fighter on the SNES.

Huh? What happened to FX fighter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sheath

Welcome aboard, I just bit the bullet back in July and haven't been able to stop frequenting these boards. To your question, some of the games you mentioned could have been made on the Genesis alone very well with only minor changes. The colors and audio in Demon's Crest and Castlevania IV are not out of the reach of the Genesis, but they would have to be adjusted to a certain extent. The Mode 7 effects wouldn't make it to the Genesis alone without using an entirely different effect. Backgrounds can "tilt" on the Genesis, but they rarely rotate smoothly outside of Red Zone.

I think some tilt effects are done by column scroll... not sure. (or at least scrolling columns of tiles -not individual lines -not sure if the MD can do that vertically, I know it can linescroll)

The rotatating tunnel/hall effect (not the flat rotating background in that one room) can be done on the Genesis quite well, it's a scanline effect that the SNES, PCE/TG-16, and Genesis can do fine. (as in 3D Blast's special stages -or Axelay on the SNES)
The tilting/rotating mode-7 room could be done on the Sega CD or 32x easily, on the Genesis you'd be stuck with approximations using tricks or animation. (animation would be rather impractical -not sure how they did Sonic 1's special stage)

Sound is subjective though, and there are a lot of crappy music engines and/or arrangements on the SNES and Genesis not limited by the hardware, but yeah, most of those could transition well, especially given how much FM is already used. (Capcom and Konami tended to use a ton of FM samples anyway)
Then there's PCM/sample playback too, which has other limits on the Genesis... (normally related to the quality of playback code used and/or the number of software mixed channels used -far too many had sub-par code though)

Quote:

Now for the transparency question, as you already noted, some of the Genesis' effects can be used to "fake" transparency. The 32X can actually display over 256 colors simultaneously, though to my knowledge only Blackthorne does this. So, whether or not it is capable of "true" transparency, the 32X's color capabilities outweigh the SNES' and can therefore handle any SNES level transparency in software if anything else.

Blackthorne is 256 colors... Virtua Racing might be in highcolor mode but I'm not sure, all others are 256 colors... (15-bit highcolor mode requires the screen to be clipped to 204 lines or less to fit into the framebuffers, Space harrier is the only other game to do that, and I think it's still 256 colors too -not positive, but I don't see any reason for it not to be)

As for transparency, matching the SNES's very nice hardware translucent effect would be resource intensive and only possible in highcolor mode, not 256 color mode (so no more than 204 pixels tall). Plus, rendering is slower 16bpp in general vs 8bpp 256 color rendering.
In most cases, dithered/column meshes are fine though. (if you do it in realtime -ie for any 3D/scaled/rotated stuff it would take some added resource, but a lot less than highcolor software transparency)

The genesis layer is all still limited to 15 color tiles and 61 colors (without mid-screen palette loading or HL/shadow).

The SNES can output pretty much as many colors as the 32x on-screen, but it's not that simple. Firstly, they have the same master palette using 15-bit RGB and both can index 256 colors for the display (all 32x games do except maybe VR), but the SNES usually uses mode 1 or 2 with 16 16-color palettes (8 sprite 8 BG -4x as many as the MD, 1/2 of the PCE) with 15 colors per tile like the Master System/Genesis/PCE and 15 colors per sprites. (it's 15 colors plus transparent/colorless)
In mode 1 you also get a 3rd BG layer, but that's only using 4-color tiles (3 colors+transparent) usually for a far BG or an overlay/status bar.
Modes 3 and 4 have 256 colors per tile layers, but mode 4 has some bugs (I think), but mode 3 is fine: 1 15/16 color tile layer and a 256 color tile layer and 15 color sprites. (technically only up to 240 colors as it shares the color RAM with the 16-color palettes, so 1 in 15 colors has to be transparent, plus you probably get less than 240 still if you want to practically optimize the 16 color palettes)
That's not used for any 2D game afik though. (just splash screens, Doom, Dirt Trax, and Stunt Racer FX -Star Fox and Vortex use 16-color tile modes and the polygon layer is only 15 colors like virtua racing and other Geneiss polygon stuff -Yoshi's Island is also using 16-color tiles)
Probably avoided due to memory use as I said above. (and 16 color tiles being fine)

Transparancy is very nice and in hardware, 50/50 color averaging for 15-bit RGB output in hardware. Genesis has the rather limited HL/shadow whcih is underused on top of that. (usually limited by how it tends to monopolize VRAM/sprites for rather limited benefit vs mesh effects)

Mode 7 also uses 256 colors, but a full, independent 256 color palette at that, and is the only 256 color mode used in any 2D games afik. (both for the warped BGs, simple flat rotating BGs, and scaled/rotated "sprites" like some bosses in SMW and such -not mode 7 is the only BG layer able to be used when on-screen, so only the solid color window is behind it -and sprites to fake BG- you can change the video mode on a line by line basis though, so mode 7 games tend do that on the horizon)

And that's not counting the common mid-screen/line by line palette swapping trick used on most systems since the 2600. ;) (except the genesis gets garbage pixels artifacts on-screen when doing it -usually hidden by flickering sprites- while the SNES and PCE don't get them on-screen but only in overscan and some others don't get them at all) Though with the larger number of subpalettes, doing that trick is far less necessary, especially on the PCE with its 32 palettes. (512 colors on screen to the SNES's 256 and MD's 64 -albeit really it's practically 15x32, 15x16, and 15x4 colors on-screen or less due to redundant colors in many palettes, plus only 15 colors per tile/sprite)

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Now, I would be surprised if it could display transparent objects over the Genesis backgrounds, that seems to be asking too much. So, the entire game would have to be running off the 32X for a transparency effect to be complete.

Another reason meshes would work better. :p

Quote:

A little off topic, but still to the point. I think the reason you're looking to the 32X to make the Genesis better is because you've only experienced Genesis games in emulation. Hopefully you lucked out and got a Genesis 2 with a good sound chip, otherwise you're likely to go on thinking the Genesis had worse sound than the SNES.

Not sound chip.... audio amp. The sound chip in the models with bad amps are BETTER than the ones in good model 1s. :p You only get to hear the superiority with modding though. (or the CD-X; even the late models with OK sound don't do it justice, though they're far more competitive with good model 1s)

Don't forget there's a huge range of video quality too. :p

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The colors though, ah the colors, well, see what you think using Composite out of your Genesis 2 on an SDTV. If you must use an HDTV see if you can find one with a comb filter that doesn't posterize lower resolution stuff. The facts are though, that the Genesis and SNES were roughly equal systems in software. The Genesis didn't need the 32X to be "better" than the SNES, depending on what kinds of games you like to play.

Huh? Why would the comb cause posterization at LOWER resolutions???
The factor would be the deinterlacing/filtering used: make sure the deinterlacing doesn't ruin 240p stuff and that the edge enhancement is disabled. (somethings lumed in with sharpness, so you have to find the right point in sharpness)

Getting it modded for S-video or using an RGB to component adapter are good options if you are willing to spend a bit (or are any good with soldering for s-video... except some model 2s have encoders that can't be modded for s-video).
The 32x also tends to help composite video quality.

The Genesis has way less color than the SNES of course, but the significance of that varies vastly... hell the PC Engine/TG-16 has 2x the colors on-screen of the SNES without tricks and has a good chunk of games that are higher resolution than the genesis's 320 wide mode. (though the same 512 color palette as the MD, and 16 colors per tile/sprite like MD/SNES -usually)

Some games really show the difference though, but it varies and also depends on the video quality. Dithering gets blended OK on the genesis to make op for some color limits, though less so in the 256 wide mode used in a lot of games (though not the majority), and the 320 wide mode has the rainbow artifacting problem in composite video on most models. (on anything using dithering with high-contrast colors -namely dark/light)
09-05-2010, 03:56 AM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

I don't think you'd need a 32X for that. Just a decent sound driver (i.e. not the ones by Sega of America, Virgin, Acclaim, EA, Accolade) and a talented composer who likes FM.

He said SOUND not just music and you have a lot of limitations with PCM on the Genesis and a lot of compromises even with good coding/mixing/PCM timing. (like VDMA on cart ROM, Z80's crappy bank switching, limits of software mixing with a 3.58 MHz Z80, etc)

Plus, the SNES's sound is fundamentally superior to the MD's in many respects... but artificially limited as I mentioned above. And mediocre sounding MD stuff is just as true as mediocre SNES arrangements.
Hell some SoA GEMS stuff (default) actually managed to sound pretty damn good, like the vectorman games, and most Gems stuff at least tended to have fairly decent PCM compared to some games. (Shiny customized GEMS with new instruments for EWJ/EWJ2 of course)
EA's engine is actually pretty good I think, or at least not as limited as GEMS... you get some bland/generic adlib-like stuff in many cases (I wonder if that's related to their experience in PC games), but you did get some decent PCM, and some exceptions to the music too.
Skitchin' has some really nice tracks as far as EA games go IMO, and it's actually only 1 PCM instrument (a guitar) plus drums, not multi-channels like I'd assumed (according to Tiido), the rest is FM and PSG including some good FM percussion even, good use of PSG, and some other good FM including a saxaphone-like sound. (maybe more like an electric guitar, but very different from the PCM one, more like the lead in some MMX games) I think the samples guitar might be in Z80 RAM, and seems to be pitch shifted in realtime. (like a single channel MOD player)

I already gave a detailed description of PWM though... Lots of potential, but capped by lack of support for whatever reason. (in that context, re-using the ricoh chip in the Sega CD/etc would have been way better -it's better in some ways than the 32x with PWM for that matter, but there's trade-offs: higher output resolution, 8 hardware channels, hardware volume/pitch/panning vs a single stereo channel with variable sample rate/resolution, often used for 10-bit 22 kHz, but 44.1 kHz 9-bit would be good too -and better than the DS output -32 kHz 9-bit, albeit with 8 hardware channels)

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I am not sure about that. Sega dropped it because it didn't have any potential. They sold the first batch during the holiday season but then it just sat there.

Source or idle speculation? :p

They sold at least 200k during the holiday season, and I wouldn't doubt it slowed down in early 1995, but that's seasonal sales for you, they wouldn't be able to know what was really up until late summer, if not the 1995 holiday sales season. (Summer and holiday sales tend to be strongest -go back really far and it was mainly holiday sales, but as the market evolved after the early 80s it became less and less seasonal)

The hardware was flawed, sure (so are most consoles in one way or another -some more than others and some making bad trade-offs in hindsight while others get lucky), but it still was useful and had tons of potential, the main limit was RAM.

Quote:

I doubt these games would have caused the bare bones Mega Drive any issues. Let alone the Sega CD.

Yeah, but there's always more potential. ;) Namely color and added software effects on the 32x for 2D stuff. Some games would benefit a lot more than others. (some cater very well with some optimization for the MD color limitations, others not so much -and some opted for dithering which often looks OK in composite video -especially 320 wide- but much more obvious in RGB, some others get posterized too -Toy Story and 3D blast managed it pretty well, but some of the Mortal Kombat games didn't and some others)

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There's a Castlevania on Genesis. I am not sure but I think it looks better than CV4. (Not that it's surprising considering it's a bit younger)

I think CV4 looks a fair bit better overall, larger/more detailed sprites and environments, some nice shading gradients etc, but the music isn't nearly as good. (the main theme is good, some other stuff is weak, especially the NES remixes -BL could have sounded even better with some decent percussion samples rather than weak FM drums)

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Demon's Crest is a late(r) SNES game. I don't think there's anything comparable for Genesis. Maybe Story of Thor aka Beyond Oasis, especially the boss fights. Or Monster World IV.

Demon's Crest is eye candy to a fair extent, decent/average game (arguable), that looks very nice, like Shadow of the Beast or Donkey Kong Country. (probably more like the former as DKC -especially DKC2- has som interesting gameplay elements/depth at least)

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In general the best Mega Drive / Genesis games were the earlier ones (~1990-1993), when the ROMs were very expensive, so even when the games were great they often don't look too hot on first sight (see Jewel Master, Golden Axe 3). The average Mega Drive game had 1/4th of the space available that the average SNES game had.

Where do you get that idea?
There were tons of 512 kB SNES games (the smallest common size on the MD early on), both had a lot of 1 and 2 MB games, a good chunk of 3 MB, and a fair amount of 4 MB games, but very few beyond that. (SSFII on the MD if 5 MB, and there's a couple 6 MB games on the SNES) Many late (ie 1994-1997) games were 3 or 4 MB. You also had some oddball games with other ROM sizes like 640 kB (Ghouls n' Ghosts) and some 2.5 MB, maybe 1.5 MB stuff. (usually that meant 2 ROMs, so more cost -and often not too much cheaper than the next full ROM size or no cheaper at all) A lot of late STI/SOA and various 3rd party titles were big for example.

Some SNES games also had hardware data decompression (a few chips did that including SA-1), though most tended to be 4 MB anyway, so trying to minimize cost of going past that, I think both of the 6 MB games used compression too. Some MD games use software compression for graphics, but that's limited depending if you have to stream it on the fly or not, or how often you have to stream and what compression schemes are used. (potential for doing that with audio too, but not very often done, especially streamed from cart -some might simply drop to 4-bit PCM if halving the sample rate with 8-bit PCM is worse)
Some PCE stuff uses compressed sound/graphics as well.

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Some of them were released in the West, some weren't.

Just as with most Japanes platforms. :p (especially NES and SNES -even more so if you were in Europe with the de-facto no RPG policy by NOE)

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I'd recommend a model 1 Genesis. Those produce the much better sound. Look for one with a "HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHCS" logo to be sure it's an earlier model 1 variant.

To be sure see this thread: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7796

There are good and bad model 1s and model 2s, use the guide. (a good model 1 is often easier to find, but it varies and it might be easier to find a good model 2 in your region, unless he already lucked out :p -there's always modding too, except for the VA2/2.3 especially with a KA2195D)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

^Thanks guys, again, I'm new to the Sega side of the spectrum, but had always watched from afar with nothing but the S/K Archie comics to read >_<

Heh, I owned no Sega hardware up until last spring. :p Grew up Nintendo and PC, had some sega PC games including Sonic CD, Sonic3/k/3&K, Garfield and some others. Then their post DC stuff, and some rare occasions playing Genesis with friends. (less with Saturn -Dreamcast mainly in store displays)

Emulation got me... now Model 1 HDG+CD and several *spares* I picked up cheap locally. (all "good" model 1s -including one HDG) And some ~20 games, mostly common/cheap. (though Sega collecting tends to be a lot cheaper then Nintendo with the fanboys driving prices up :p) Still some rate/expensive stuff though.

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Again, if I sound like a total noob or this has all been discussed before then I'm sorry guys! Gotta try to start somewhere and I'm just so burned out on Nintendo that all I've been playing are Capcom / Konami / Sega games (any systems) as of late. I really wanted a 32X and jumped at getting the Gen2 since my naive memories conceived the 32x as super cheap on ebay...I get on there looking for one and....yeesh (0_o)

Some similar discussions, but nothing exactly like this... not recently at least, and especially not from someone wanting to specifically learn more on the topic rather than mainly discussion the issue in general. (and a lot of other threads where it went off topic into this area too :p)

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And it's also ironic that the game I'm after most for Gen happens to BE Crusader of Centy. Again, I get on to look and...yikes!

Yeah, I'm still kicking myself for missing out on a complete copy of CoS last year... for only ~$15.
There's lots of much cheaper/easier to find games though, depending on what you're interested in. (maybe post a thread on that if you want, with the preferred genres listed)

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I was thinking had when the Gen Model 2 came out that Sega would have totally beefed up the system to match or surpass the SNES' audio/graphics chips yet I'm like oh yeah...then what would Model 1 owners do?
The CDX is drool-worthy to me, yet I've not the fortune to invest in it but I was teased at a local game store in my hometown where Snatcher COMPLETE sat in the bargain $6 bin and I LET IT sit there for years never thinking anyone would want it but when I go to...snatch it, the owner had realized his amazing mistake and had sold it for $50 3=

Heh, yeah the model 2 was a cost reduced verion, just smaller and cheaper, like the NES2 or SNES2/Jr (or PS/PS3 Slim, SPOne, etc)

What is a bit interesting is the lack of on-cart add-ons like Nintendo used, they had plenty of expansion capabilities added to the cart slot (what allowed the 32x to work as it did), but largely unused. General co-processing, graphics enhancement, RAM, sound, etc, with varying cost impact.

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It seems like every time I want a Gen game it just so happens to be super rare (i.e. Splatterhouse 2/3, CoC, etc) Shinobi III and Revenge of the Joker (for S's and G's) might be my next purchases...but you gotta start somewhere.

Some of those aren't rare, just not super common or are more desirable/high demand. (like happens way more often for some SNES or NES games ;))

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I just can't understand how Sega dropped the ball on transparencies, from the Gen to even the Saturn (til those later games faked/hacked it or whatever)...

With the 32x, it's all software, just a plain bitmap display, like a PC, plus the Genesis graphics. (or some other home computers -but most like a VGA/SVGA PC with a 486, or more like a 486SX due to no FPU) No hardware support for anything really: no scrolling, no sprites, no BGs, no polygons, no texture mapping, no shading, no blitter, nothing, just a bitmap display and a good amount of CPU grunt for software rendering, like PC games of the time. :p (except PCs could expect a LOT more RAM) And the Genesis graphics as well, either on top or under the 32x layer.
A shame the 32x didn't have something like the graphics ASIC/coprocessor/blitter in the Sega CD. (usually called the scaling and rotation ASIC, but it's really more of a flexible blitter useful for moving rectangular objects around a bitmap display as well as scaling and rotating them -like mode 7 but no hard limit on the number of simultaneous planes/objects- and like mode 7 it could be made to do warped perspective layers like BC Racers, or useful for texture mapping polugons as well -as a few games did to a limited extent like parts of F-1 Beyond the limit, Batman and Robbin, Batman Returns, and Joe Montana NFL -it would have been really cool if Stellar Fire had been texture mapped)

In the Saturn's case, 2D transparency works fine (I think), for sprites/objects and VDP2 layers, but not 3D stuff. (no warped quads)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

But yeah, isn't it the alpha chip / channels that the SNES had that the Gen lacked?

It's a feature of the SNES PPU, or one of them at least (it has 2 PPUs), 50/50 color averaging of layers/sprites for 15-bit RGP output (the SNES's master palette -same as "highcolor" graphics in many cases though sometimes 16-bit RGB is used there I think -see wikipedia's monochrome/RGB palettes article)

The Genesis was just older hardware and didn't have that effect as such... though it did have the more limited HL/shadow feature. (dithering/meshes worked fine in most cases though -especially for composite video/RF, more so in the 320 wide res mode than the larger pixels of 256 wide -same res as SNES and used in quite a few games like SFII though not the majority of Genesis games)
Kega Fusion's CVBS filter blends dithering rather well too... actually far better and more consistent than real composite video. :p (though there's really few cases where the dithering is ugly enough for me to not prefer the unfiltered look)
Oddly, some SNES games seem to use lots of dithering effects... Harvest Moon comes to mind. (especially the text box)

And in terms of terminology, most people say "transparency" though that's incorrect... "translucency" is fine though, or translucent, or alpha, etc.

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Ristar boggles me with the water effects in level 2-1, or is it simply disguising everything below the water line? Like in Hook SNES when Pan jumps in the water, he turns slightly blue, can go between above and below water and his halves are different colors, etc. On Hook Gen, it's that bloody screen-door effect... I just wish the 32X could have done the same effects as the SNES did, not to beat out either side, but so I could defend the 32X in an argument if it was ever brought up idk why but I always want to stick up for the underdog, and I grew up seeing Sega that way (I unfortunately was too young to remember when they nearly had an equal chunk of the market w/ Nintendo).

I'm almost positive that's simple palette swapping as I mentioned above. You can re-load the palettes between active scanlines to do that. It was rather common on many consoles/computers from the VCS (2600) onward, hence the nice raster/shading effects in some 2600 games and multicolor sprites (one color per line). Some did that in hardware too, like the Amiga, others in software, and sometimes with some artifacts, but not always on-screen. With the SNES and TG-16 the artifacts are off-screen, but the Genesis (and SMS I think) they end up mid-screen (random/garbage pixels) and are usually covered by flickering sprites. Most of the Sonic games used that effect for water. You could also do that without changing palettes with systems with multiple subpalettes, but remapping to other palettes already loaded, but with only 4 palettes on the MD, that's really limiting, the SNES has 16 palettes and the TG-16 has 32 palettes, so that's much more of an option. (plus SNES has translucency on top of that)

Quote:

Originally Posted by evildragon

Organ music can be done for sure, Bloodlines does it on the Genesis with no problem..

And pretty much any instruments done with Yamaha 4-op FM in the arcade could be done on the stock Genesis, or the X68000 -not general midi- or the IBM Music feature card, PC8801's FM, etc. (not sure if the YM2151 has the same algorithm set or not, I's expect the whole OPN family too -YM2203/2608/2610/2612, but the 2151 is in the older OPM family, I know the OPL3's 4-op mode is more limited -and some algorithms are useless as they can be done better with additive 2-op FM)

Of course we've got these threads already too:
http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=704
http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5097

And he should probably check out some remixed SNES music on the Geneis, including the stuff in the Sonic Boom hack:
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Boom_%28hack%29 A bunch of Mega Man X stuff along with some F-Zero tunes (one is mislabeled), and some others.

Here's some cool remixes off the top of my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOMW1KslAtk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFMsrHCFXj0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCHuoQAqrUU
It's also remixed in bloodlines, though I think I like the SNES better there. (one of the few that's really better on the SNES) weak FM percussion hurts though. The YT remix seems to try to mimic the SNES music a lot more, the lack of percussion samples hurt it though. (a lot of Genesis games used PCM percussion -definitely check out Vapor Trail ;))

Quote:

Originally Posted by sheath

Yup. 32X could have done it with even higher sample quality. All Demon's Crest's music is sample based synth. While it's some of the better usage of the SNES sample capabilities, it doesn't surpass even Genesis sound possibilities.

Several problems, without DMA (which IRL 32x games never used) it was VERY CPU intensive to use PWM, it ate up the slave SH2's power to do 4-8 22 kHz channels and added artifacting as I said. (it's arguably worse than what the Genesis already had -it's stereo and you can do higher resolution samples, but for a lot of stuff, the YM DAC could sound better, it's the SH2 resource that gets you the difference)

PWM is sort of nasty, especially as the 32x, GBA, and DS use it, though the higher the sample rate the less the artifacting. (the Jaguar had a rather nice PWM set-up though) 32x with PWM and 9-bit 44.1 kHz output would have been better than the DS though, save for need of software mixing vs 8 hardware channels. (DS is limited to 32 kHz 9-bit output)
Also remember there's no hardware compression, so you use larger, lower-quality, or software decompression for audio samples on the cart. (depending on the scheme used you could do a lot higher ratio compression than the SNES's 4-bit ADPCM, though not as high quality output -the schemes chilly willy and TmEE have been working with are higher ratio and less resource intensive than ADPCM and some sounds pretty good) See: http://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=586

Quote:

Especially see:
Ghouls N Ghosts Soundtrack

Strider - Grand Master

Forgotten Worlds Level 5

I don't think organ music is particularly impressive on FM, synth organ stuff is one of the more common FM sounds to use... actually I've heard some people complain that a lot of genesis music "sounds like an organ" (generally an analog/electric organ). :p

Plus, there are some better examples of that, especially some more pipe-organ like stuff (like in Bloodlines), and I personally prefer what Capcom did with 4-op FM in the arcade version of Ghouls n' Ghosts.

Looking up some YM2151 stuff is also a good comparison, not identical (2 more channels and no PSG), but useful to compare nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcHj46oaK4

And again, the SNES is artificially limited too (in a similar manner as the 32x, generally speaking), as used IRL it was not even totally better than the far simpler Ricoh chip in the Sega CD (etc) but had trade-offs.
And of course, you get mediocre music/arrangements/compositions on the SNES just like the Genesis.

And a lot of SNES games tended to use sampled FM instruments too. (sometimes more advanced FM too -like stuff off a DX-7, but sometimes 4-op stuff and probably some that could have been 2-op) It was up to the composers. ;) (a fair amount of Amiga games did that too, not just FM, but in that case especially a lot of chip sounds and analog synthy stuff -some rather SID-like)
09-05-2010, 02:03 PM
retrospiel

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

He said SOUND not just music and you have a lot of limitations with PCM on the Genesis

What kind of limitations are you talking about ?

You can stream CD quality music via PCM on Genesis if the cartridge space allows it: http://www.mediafire.com/?b8bcmo8jui2dyxo

You can even code a mod player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRXlrYyFxSg

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Plus, the SNES's sound is fundamentally superior to the MD's in many respects.

Aside of a consistent quality throughout the hardware generations, there's two (2) I can think of: ADPCM compression, and having more than 1 channel capable of playing samples.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

And mediocre sounding MD stuff is just as true as mediocre SNES arrangements.

Actually I think the mediocre MD stuff is MUCH worse than the mediocre SNES stuff which is usually at least tolerable. But then again, there seem to be few good SNES soundtracks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Hell some SoA GEMS stuff (default) actually managed to sound pretty damn good, like the vectorman games, and most Gems stuff at least tended to have fairly decent PCM compared to some games.

Yep. But as I hinted at in my previous post: These were among the rather few later Mega Drive / Genesis games and not limited by cartridge space.

Dune II is my favorite soundtrack using the GEMS sound driver btw.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

EA's engine is actually pretty good I think, or at least not as limited as GEMS...

I agree. EA's is among the better Western developed FM drivers for MD/G.

Not as flawless as the Krysalis driver used by Matt Furniss of course, but it had some potential.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Skitchin' has some really nice tracks as far as EA games go IMO

I can't stand Skitchin' at all. There are many better soundtracks that used EA's driver. James Pond III sounds rather nice, and some of EA's sports games.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

They sold at least 200k during the holiday season, and I wouldn't doubt it slowed down in early 1995, but that's seasonal sales for you, they wouldn't be able to know what was really up until late summer, if not the 1995 holiday sales season.

Shipping 200k units during the holiday season 1994 does not mean that all 200k units were sold. Provided this was the case, you could immediately tell the market saturation / disinterest in your product by the next incoming orders (or lack thereof).

And from what I remember they continued to support 32X for quite a while, at least during the 1995 holiday season when they released Virtua Fighter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Where do you get that idea?

Original research: Take a GoodTools set and compare the number of games with 16Mbit or higher that were released for SNES with the number of games of the same size for MD/G.

SNES was later released (1988 vs 1990 in Japan) and supported for many years later, when ROM prices got cheaper and cheaper. It's not surprising, really.

Perhaps 1/4th on average might not be realistic but it'd be safe to say that the average SNES game was at least twice as big as the average MD/G game: If a game like Revenge of Shinobi was released for the SNES it'd have been released on an 8 Mbit cartridge in 1991, and not on a 4 Mbit cartridge in 1989.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

There are good and bad model 1s and model 2s

...There's one bad model 1 and countless bad model 2 variants.
09-05-2010, 03:02 PM
Chilly Willy

The issue with not using something like the CD PCM chip on the 32X was probably more to do with space than anything else - there simply wasn't room for the PCM chip and two more ram chips. PWM was easy - add a three counters and two small FIFOs to the interface chip along with a tiny amount of logic to handle the flags and DMA/INT assertion. Feed the output to a simple low-pass filter.

As to why 32X games didn't use DMA, the developer units had a number of bugs that required work-arounds that probably affected the DMA. For example, there was an interrupt issue that required developers to use the free-running timer in the SH2 plus extra code in all interrupt handlers to keep the SH2s from freezing up (on the dev units... no such issue occurs in the consumer units). The only place you find DMA audio is in the 32X diagnostic cartridge SEGA made... and a look at the code shows the routine waits on a timeout and errors with the DMA, not the DMA transfer done. That seems to indicate they had issues with the developer units not terminating the DMA the way they were supposed to.

I think we have better 32X development tools NOW than developers had THEN. I can compile/assemble 68000 and SH2 code with modern GCC, and immediately test on a flash cart on an actual consumer 32X. No hardware debugging, but many programmers prefer logging as their form of debugging in any case (I do for sure).
09-06-2010, 12:26 AM
retrospiel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

Is that conducted by a dude with the Gen's FM?! or slightly arranged? 0_o that just blew my mind man (I recognized some Phantasy Star III & Ecco 2 in there)...even though I should recognize more =S

I think it is the original FM+PSG, recorded as individual channels, then professionally mixed and arranged as a medley.

Aside of the actual mix, the one thing that definitely is not original is the drums (in most cases).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

Does anyone know if the games were messed with on the Gen Collection?

They applied some of the usual video filters but that's it I think.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

I was thinking had when the Gen Model 2 came out that Sega would have totally beefed up the system to match or surpass the SNES' audio/graphics chips yet I'm like oh yeah...then what would Model 1 owners do?

Exactly what I thought. At least that they'd improve on video / audio output quality... but no... :|
09-06-2010, 09:16 AM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

What kind of limitations are you talking about ?

There's a ton including limitations of using the Z80 for playback (pixing/sample rate/bank switching), 8-bit bare DAC, no useful hardware timed interrupts for the Z80, Z80 RAM, lack of Z80 access to 68k RAM, contention over ROM, etc. Getting good playback code is part of it, but there's more to it than that, a lot more. (good timing, plus compensation for interrupted ROM access -especially VDMA- good mixing and more work to compensate for that, then the quality of samples used, etc -you could even have software compression, but that would be entirely up to developers and I don't think any classic MD games streamed compressed samples from ROM -some stored some small compressed samples in Z80 RAM)

Some of that also limits the 32x: namely ROM DMA contention (more so if using PWM DMA in some respects), though if your game uses only 32x graphics, or fairly fixed (rarely updated) Genesis graphics, you're OK, but VDMA to ROM can screw stuff up.

I'd gotten the impression that the main limit was quality of playback code and that it was just limited by sloppy programmers, but that's only part of the story as came up here:
http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?p=289590
http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?p=289781
(and a log winded discussion preceding that)

I think you even have cases where the sound text sounds rather clean (no VDP DMA updating going on), but in-game the samples are a bit distorted/jittery. (I noticed that in Pulseman, unless it's an emulation error -samples sound pretty nice in sound test, but a bit jittery in-game)
One thing the PCE had over the MD in that respect was video RAM that wasn't limited to Vblank for updating, convenient timed IRQ, and a CPU with very nice interrupt handling. (albeit only 5-bit DACs to work with)

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You can stream CD quality music via PCM on Genesis if the cartridge space allows it: http://www.mediafire.com/?b8bcmo8jui2dyxo

No, you can't, even without the above limitations and with sufficient cart space, you physically can't. The Amiga, STE, SNES, Sega CD PCM, 32x, Jaguar, or DS can't even do that, though they're closer. (Jaguar is closest and can technically exceed CD-DA in some areas, but not meet it in others, the Atari Falcon's DMA sound chip could though and 3DO, PSX, N64 and Saturn)
---CD Audio is 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo linear PCM: the Genesis only has an 8-bit DAC to work with, so you're down to 8-bit mono right there. Tiido also mentioned that you can't go past ~26 kHz on the YM2612 DAC without getting missed writes, so that's the practical limit as well.
-SNES can do stereo, but only accepts ADPCM up to 32 kHz (with 12-bit output per channel and 16-bit combined output iirc)
-Ricoh chip does stereo 8-bit PCM up to 32 kHz with 16-bit combined output (8-bit limit is what's important though)
-Amiga (using DMA and standard video resolution) is limited to 8-bit stereo PCM up to ~29 kHz, though there's tricks to get closer to 12-bit by pairing channels. (double that sample rate at VGA resolutions)
-STE is 8-bit stereo up to 50 kHz
-NDS is 8-bit 32 kHz stereo with 9-bit PWM output.
-32x can do 44.1 kHz stereo PWM at 9-bit resolution (22 at 10 bits, 88.2 8-bit)
-Jaguar can do 14-bit stereo at over 200 kHz using PWM. (but a much nicer set-up than the GBA/DS/32x)
-Atari Falcon can do 50 kHz 16-bit stereo. (8 hardware DMA sound channels too)

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You can even code a mod player:

Yes, but it's highly impractical to do so as you need to use the 68000 for that, and it's too resource intensive to have a decent game then. (Toy Story used a 4-channel MOD player for the title/credits sequences)
You can also do a MOD player on the vanilla ST (using the PSG), let alone various 8-bit computers and consoles -if not actual MOD, similar sample trackers. (I'd bet you could manage that on the SMS too)

Unfortunately the bank-switching of the Z80 on the MD heavily limits multi-channel PCM streams from ROM, though you can do a single channel MOD player, and some games do that. (Skitchin' and I think Sonic 3 among others -the GDRI sound engine list has several noted for using MOD) 2-channel might be possible too, but pushing it. (even without bank-switching limits, the Z80's speeds gets to be a bit of an issue too with 4-channel PCM -but you can see what Spectrum demos manage at similar speed; had they used a faster speed and better bank-switching it would be another story -let alone adding DMA logic for the DAC)

I was chatting with Tiido about this too, and asking if you could do a set-up where the Z80 just handles playback (in leu of real DMA sound/PCM support) and have the 68k shift sample pitches and mix the channels to a single PCM stream for the Z80 to read, but he explained that the 68k's RAM can't be read by the Z80 and Z80 RAM is too small to buffer into practically. (plus if Z80 RAM were larger, you could fit a fair amount of samples directly in it ;))

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Aside of a consistent quality throughout the hardware generations, there's two (2) I can think of: ADPCM compression, and having more than 1 channel capable of playing samples.

No, I mean the hardware technically speaking. It was never used near to its potential due to artificial limits put on it by the standard format. They might as well have just gone with a simple sample based synthesis chip, or simple DMA audio channels even (like the Amiga/STE/Archimedes/etc).

As it is you have 8 hardware channels up to 32 kHz, 16-bit resolution output, hardware ADPCM decompression (to 12-bit I think), interpolation (double edged sword -also used on the Saturn and maybe PSX), powerful DSP, 2 MHz SPC700, 64 kB dedicated sound RAM, hardware volume, pitch, looping, reverb/echo, and some other effects.
The hardware is capable of 32 independent channels though (without reverb/echo), depending hoe flexible the DSP is, it could be used for various other forms of synthesis and added effects. (true wavetable synthesis, subtractive synthesis, FM synthesis, digital filtering effects, etc) I'm not sure about the DSP though. The SPC700 is a nice bit of resource to work with as well (custom 650x derivative).
I wonder if the ADPCM could be bypassed and linear PCM used instead with other compression schemes used (with higher ratios) and decoded by the DSP or maybe the SPC700. (something like the 2-bit CVSD scheme Chilly Willy used could have been rather nice, or Tiido's T-ADPCM even more so -such would be up to developers of the time to implement though, but very useful: with the 2-bit CVSD samples would take 1/2 the space as 4-bit ADPCM and with T-ADPCM 2/3 the space at somewhat better quality -neither sound quite as good as ADPCM but you get a lot more space and it's better than cutting the sample rate for ADPCM, plus they're less resource intensive to decompress -there's also 1-bit CVSD at 1/4 the size of ADPCM but it's pretty noisy, especially at low sample rates, maybe useful for some 32 kHz stuff where lower sample rate would be less desirable than the added noise -ie vs 8 kHz ADPCM, 12 kHz TADPCM, or 16 kHz 2-bit CVSD)

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Actually I think the mediocre MD stuff is MUCH worse than the mediocre SNES stuff which is usually at least tolerable. But then again, there seem to be few good SNES soundtracks.

I'm not really sure about the SNES soundtracks thing (maybe few great, but many good... similar to MD though depending on taste by far -same for Amiga MOD, SID, various other chips, Adlib PC stuff, etc), but IMO there's rather little Genesis stuff that's not at least tolerable. Most of the "poor" stuff is just a bit bland, but still OK, like run of the mill FM stuff in DOS games.

F-22 comes to mind as being very bland/generic FM sounding, but the music is still decent IMO, reasonable and maybe even a little catchy. (far from EA's best stuff -though some of the more average stuff still beats their PC OPL2 versions -sometimes not though, but the sampled percussion in particular is a boost and some games use better FM instruments than others -skitchin' probably one of the best -also a neat 1-channel MOD player)

I've yet to find a MD game (other than Sonic Eraser perhaps) where the music is enough to ruin the experience. (though plenty of stuff that could have complemented it more)
You've got a lot worse Adlib/Soundblaster stuff to deal with. :p (also some generic/mediocre Arcade use of the YM2151 -mainly in western arcade stuff though)
There's biometal on the SNES that is totally killed by the music (probably the worst on any SNES game I've heard), that was only the re-done (why???) US/EU soundtrack though.

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Yep. But as I hinted at in my previous post: These were among the rather few later Mega Drive / Genesis games and not limited by cartridge space.

Hmm, it would be interesting to compare actual numbers... especially for games released in the US specifically. (I'm sure the SNES being pushed more in '95-97 than the MD had a significant effect, but I don't think it's as extreme as you implied)

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Dune II is my favorite soundtrack using the GEMS sound driver btw.

You mean using Default Gems or are you including Shiny's customized instrument set? (and did virgin use the default instruments or an expanded set for GEMS?) That was the major problem with GEMS, too limited a standard instrument set. (and since you're talking use with composers not experienced in coding -mainly midi stuff, hence the use of GEMS over SMPS- you're stuck)

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I agree. EA's is among the better Western developed FM drivers for MD/G.

How many others were there? Most 3rd parties just used GEMS (not sure if any western 3rd parties used SMPS -some JP ones did iirc, or maybe only 2nd parties/sega published 3rd parties), but there were a few with custom sound engines like EA, Novatrade, Ocean, Accolade, Probe, or few that were consistently used at least. (some custom engined seem to be one off as well)
Looking at the list, there definitely seems to be a lot more distinct custom sound engines from western developers than I'd assumed though.

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I can't stand Skitchin' at all. There are many better soundtracks that used EA's driver. James Pond III sounds rather nice, and some of EA's sports games.

I rather like Skitchin's music, and the sampled guitar (MOD/similar) is certainly interesting, it would have been really interesting if some games did a sampled channel like that for instruments tough to do in FM. (certain multi-string instruments, especially like piano, violin, cello, etc)

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And from what I remember they continued to support 32X for quite a while, at least during the 1995 holiday season when they released Virtua Fighter.

They should have phased it out gradually... if at all, and brought out the Neptune possibly, through 1997 at least, if not later. Still, I agree it would have simplified things if they hadn't gone with so many distinct platforms, but having something on the mass market before 1997 was very important. (and the Saturn was not goign to start to be that until late 1996 at the earliest)

But, again, in that context the Jupiter could have made a lot of sense if they really wanted to get an early competitive edge on the 5th gen market. Otherwise, stick to competing in the 4th gen mass market and have the Saturn in the high-end against the PSX until it moved into mass market territory of the console market prices. (I think they could have doen OK sticking to the Geneisis and CD alone, especially if they finally came out with a low-cost duo unit and/or started pushing enhanced carts more -the more SVP was used the cheaper it would get by far -really shouldn't be too much different from the Super FX -again VR used 2x as much ROM as any SFX game prior to 1995's SFX2 games, and 4x as much as some, so that's part of it too -all SFX 1 games were 1 MB or 512 kB)

Original research: Take a GoodTools set and compare the number of games with 16Mbit or higher that were released for SNES with the number of games of the same size for MD/G.

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SNES was later released (1988 vs 1990 in Japan) and supported for many years later, when ROM prices got cheaper and cheaper. It's not surprising, really.

Yeah, but I meant in the heat of the US 4th gen market (1991-1995) is what I was thinking of, maybe even 1996. The genesis obviously has some older smaller games though. (where as later small games were usually low-budget stuff)

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Perhaps 1/4th on average might not be realistic but it'd be safe to say that the average SNES game was at least twice as big as the average MD/G game: If a game like Revenge of Shinobi was released for the SNES it'd have been released on an 8 Mbit cartridge in 1991, and not on a 4 Mbit cartridge in 1989.

Well you've got a ton of early MD games inflating that of course. (one other thing on the SNES was 8-bit ROMs would be cheaper than 16-bit ROMs on the MD, and the cart PCBs were smaller with fewer pins as well, though the MD also used slower ROMs than the SNES, so there's some saving there too -less as time went on though and you even had SNES games bumping up to full speed 3.58 MHz ROMs rather than 2.68 MHz)

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...There's one bad model 1 and countless bad model 2 variants.

Number of revisions doesn't matter, number produced does, and the VA7 (while not the majority) makes up a significant chunk of the model 1s out there. And not countless bad morel 2s, exactly 3 depending on your definition: VA0/1/1.8 (and some of those are pretty OK sounding, others pretty distorted). VA2/2.3 which is fine with FM but has the volume issue for some PSG channels, and the VA3/4 with pretty nice stock sound. (and the best composite video of any model 1 or model 2 as well with the CXA-1645 -with some mitigating factors) Then there's the model 3 which all have sound that's fine, but only mono and also uses the CXA-1645 encoder. (granted mono is the only way to avoid headphone amp noise on model 1s)

Interesting that the quality actually improved in some areas on the later models given they were still getting smaller and cheaper, usually there's not much improvement at all, though the NES2 got rid of the ZIF connector problem (but was RF only and had noisy composite video on top of that) SNES Jr did add better composite video too. (but took away RGB and S-video)
The model 2 AV port was poorly thought out though, they really should have designed it with a lot more expansion in mind. (and thus keep it standard for the Saturn and DC rather than constantly changing -the SMS/MD1 port was indeed too limited though, a 12-15 pin connector would have been nice)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

The issue with not using something like the CD PCM chip on the 32X was probably more to do with space than anything else - there simply wasn't room for the PCM chip and two more ram chips. PWM was easy - add a three counters and two small FIFOs to the interface chip along with a tiny amount of logic to handle the flags and DMA/INT assertion. Feed the output to a simple low-pass filter.

Since they'd already licensed the chip, couldn't it be integrated into one of the ASICs on the 32x? And couldn't it be set up to read from ROM and/or SDRAM rather than needing dedicated RAM?

The other complain was use of PWM DACs, I know Tiido has a big issue with that, with 8-bit resistor DACs preferable to PWM artifacting. (something similarly simple like the Atari STE's DMA sound might have been nice)

In the context of the PWM ended up being all IRQ based anyway, it seems like a bare resistor DAC and timers would have been preferable (or a pair for stereo), but they were obviously planning on DMA.

Quote:

As to why 32X games didn't use DMA, the developer units had a number of bugs that required work-arounds that probably affected the DMA. For example, there was an interrupt issue that required developers to use the free-running timer in the SH2 plus extra code in all interrupt handlers to keep the SH2s from freezing up (on the dev units... no such issue occurs in the consumer units). The only place you find DMA audio is in the 32X diagnostic cartridge SEGA made... and a look at the code shows the routine waits on a timeout and errors with the DMA, not the DMA transfer done. That seems to indicate they had issues with the developer units not terminating the DMA the way they were supposed to.

I wonder if that was ever corrected for any games that didn't start development until after the consumer units were released. (or were only in the early stages) That would seem lik the sort of thing you'd want to address as soon as possible with the bugs fixed on the final product.

You also run into problems using DMA to ROM with the Genesis graphics being used don't you? Tiido mentioned that DMA audio could be impractical with a lot of VDMA stuff going on. (unless you had a game that updated MD graphics very infrequently, or didn't have all samples being used in ROM)
09-06-2010, 02:20 PM
Chilly Willy

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Since they'd already licensed the chip, couldn't it be integrated into one of the ASICs on the 32x? And couldn't it be set up to read from ROM and/or SDRAM rather than needing dedicated RAM?

They could have, but it might have put the price for the ASIC out of the range they wanted for the 32X. As it is, they went for PWM instead of PCM to cut the logic down... that should be a prime indicator of what they were working towards.

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The other complain was use of PWM DACs, I know Tiido has a big issue with that, with 8-bit resistor DACs preferable to PWM artifacting. (something similarly simple like the Atari STE's DMA sound might have been nice)

But PWM requires only ONE resistor and a cap. They REALLY went for cheap in the 32X. :D

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You also run into problems using DMA to ROM with the Genesis graphics being used don't you? Tiido mentioned that DMA audio could be impractical with a lot of VDMA stuff going on. (unless you had a game that updated MD graphics very infrequently, or didn't have all samples being used in ROM)

If you had a game that was doing large DMA transfers from the rom to the vram on the Genesis side, that would interfere with anything else trying to use the rom. If you were trying to play a sample directly from rom to the PWM, that would be affected.

Fortunately, the vast majority of 32X games are not going to be using the Genesis vram in that manner. Also, if you had a big transfer to vram, you could/should also break it into several smaller DMA transfers. Finally, you probably aren't going to play audio straight from the rom to the PWM, you'll be mixing the audio via software into ram buffers that are played (via ints or dma). The size of the buffers can be tailored to handle latency due to things like rom contention.
09-07-2010, 12:33 AM
Blade_Runner02

^Thanks for the info guys, this is a wealth of info I really appreciate the responses to my noobish question >_<.
I'll ask questions or inquire from the responses when I can, classes are being killer right now and other crap in life as well.
But those sound remixes blew me away! The Simon impressed me it was like Bloodlines' on STEROIDS! Just under the SNES version.

But I finally brought my Genesis 2 up today, and am proposing hooking it up tonight. I tried the filter on the emulator you suggested, and while some games looked blurry as hell from it, others looked a lot better, and aside from (in some games) the sprites looking messed up when beneath the dithering, it looked just as good as the alpha effects to me! My Gen has an RF cable(duh lol) but I was about to get an AV cable off amazon. IF I get the AV for GEN, or if I were to play the GEN on a newer HD TV (when I can ever afford one), will the dithering still occur or will I be looking at Joe Musashi and Peter Pan through screen doors? =(
09-07-2010, 12:58 AM
retrospiel

I never recommend any usage of filters. I hate filters.

And before investing into a model 2 Genesis composite cable I'd recommend to track down a model 1 Genesis instead.
09-07-2010, 01:23 AM
Blade_Runner02

^I'd rather not use the filters, but with some of the games it looks ok...I'd rather see the game for how it truly is rather than masked, but sometimes it adds to the retro charm, or makes me think I'm on an old wood-pannelled TV (MISS THOSE!).

And I just bought the AV chord >_< I can't afford a GEN1 right now, would love to, but financially I can't =S I doubt I'll ever even have a 32x or CD. CDX or X`eye would be a dream come true but NOPE...they're way too expensive =/
09-07-2010, 01:26 AM
sheath

Just so you know, there are at least two schools of thought on AV preferences. One is that you need to get as close to the actual chip output as possible, or at least "RGB" quality which requires a large investment in the US. Another, or the other, is to play it in the way you played it originally. In the case of the Genesis this means RF and small mono SDTVs for most people in the US.

I prefer a slightly modified version of the second school. Playing each game system on the best output made available by the hardware manufacturer in your region. For the Genesis 1 or 2 that is Composite using a 32X, for the SNES that is either Composite or S-Video (depending on how much aliasing you can stand). I actually prefer an early Genesis 1 Sega CD 1 combo for audio and the 32X for video.

With that I get the best clarity without introducing excessive aliasing, dithering or high pitches that might be seen or heard from "pure chip output." On my Rear Projection HDTV I can tell when something is dithered over Composite, and it is crystal clear over S-Video in Saturn or PS1 games. With Composite though you have to be looking for it.

From what I have seen, though, newer LCD HDTVs can filter the image to look just like it does on SDTVs. I've even seen Dreamcast or Wii games over Composite look like Component video on older sets.

My recommendation would be to bring a Nomad, or your Genesis 2, to the place you intend to buy a set from. Insist that they let you test it on the HDTV of your choice or don't buy it. Every set is *significantly* different on these things.

But then, I'd only listen to Genesis audio on a surround sound tuner, preferably Yamaha, with Left-Right on front and back, Center Speakers and a Sub, so what do I know?
09-07-2010, 01:59 AM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

They could have, but it might have put the price for the ASIC out of the range they wanted for the 32X. As it is, they went for PWM instead of PCM to cut the logic down... that should be a prime indicator of what they were working towards.

Yeah... though that was sort of a hardware vs CPU grunt/software solution too (well more practical with DMA used), with a bit of hardware added in other areas, they could have afforded to drop the slave SH2 and been better off in a lot of areas -but not certain things that wouldn't generally be supported by some hardware features -some ray casting engines and such. (given the lack of DMA support it was particularly limiting though -otherwise you could probably handle 8 22-44 kHz PWM channels rather easily with a lot of resource left over)

If they could have crammed the SVP's SSP-1601 core onto one of the 32x ASICs, that would have been nice too. ;) (in leu of the 2nd SH2... especially with some other hardware support on top of that -by itself it could have been cheaper than 2 SH2s though less flexible for some things -even using a separate package on the board it probably would have saved cost vs 2 SH2s, though I don't know enough to fully understand the performance trade-offs of using that DSP vs slave SH2)

Hmm... this is getting a bit off topic, but (if this isn't too broad), would that DSP be competitive with (or faster than) the ASIC in the Sega CD for scaling, rotation, and affine line rendering? (or acting as a blitter in general for that matter -the tilemap conversion wouldn't matter in the case of the 32x though)

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But PWM requires only ONE resistor and a cap. They REALLY went for cheap in the 32X. :D

They did that on the GBA too, and the DS even. (albeit the latter has 8 hardware DMA channels) With DMA working it really could be pretty good, as you can use it now obviously :p, though the low sample rate stuff is always going to be problematic. (again, I wonder if there are a lot of cases where 44.1 kHz 1-bit CVSD samples would sound better than 22 kHz 2-bit CVSD or 16 kHz T-ADPCM -or 11 kHz ADPCM- due to the PWM artifacts -ie CVSD artifacts at 44 kHz preferable to PWM ones at 22 kHz)

Still, in the case of using PWM, the Jaguar had a pretty nice set-up compared to the others above. ;)

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If you had a game that was doing large DMA transfers from the rom to the vram on the Genesis side, that would interfere with anything else trying to use the rom. If you were trying to play a sample directly from rom to the PWM, that would be affected.

Tiido seemed to imply that software/interrupt driven PCM/PWM was easier to compensate for such interruptions than with DMA audio, but maybe I misunderstood.

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Fortunately, the vast majority of 32X games are not going to be using the Genesis vram in that manner. Also, if you had a big transfer to vram, you could/should also break it into several smaller DMA transfers. Finally, you probably aren't going to play audio straight from the rom to the PWM, you'll be mixing the audio via software into ram buffers that are played (via ints or dma). The size of the buffers can be tailored to handle latency due to things like rom contention.

Ah, OK, so the ROM DMA interruptions would hold up the CPU from reading samples to software mix (and modify pitch/volume) and in such cases you wouldn't have the PWM logic using DMA to ROM, but to the RAM where the mixed stream is buffered.

Wouldn't that be the same soft of case as the Z80 pulling samples from ROM, mixing them or pitch shifting (probably single channel) working in RAM and then playing the mixed stream on the DAC? (so you'd only have to compensate for when ROM can and can't be accessed -especially Vblank, when V-DMA would occur)
Granted the RAM to work in is a lot tighter. (but unlike the 32x, you wouldn't be using it for much else)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade_Runner02

But I finally brought my Genesis 2 up today, and am proposing hooking it up tonight. I tried the filter on the emulator you suggested, and while some games looked blurry as hell from it, others looked a lot better, and aside from (in some games) the sprites looking messed up when beneath the dithering, it looked just as good as the alpha effects to me! My Gen has an RF cable(duh lol) but I was about to get an AV cable off amazon. IF I get the AV for GEN, or if I were to play the GEN on a newer HD TV (when I can ever afford one), will the dithering still occur or will I be looking at Joe Musashi and Peter Pan through screen doors? =(

Use Kega Fusion if you're not already (3.64 is the latest version), a nice selection of filter and general resolution options.
However, you should also get the render plugin pack for added video options. (especially useful is the double raw plugin which disabled horizontal stretching and leaves 256 wide games as square pixels)
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=kega

I usually leave it on normal or doubleraw, sometimes using the filters. (CVBS is good for some games with really heavy horizontal dithering but not much else IMO)
09-07-2010, 03:12 AM
Chilly Willy

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

If they could have crammed the SVP's SSP-1601 core onto one of the 32x ASICs, that would have been nice too. ;) (in leu of the 2nd SH2... especially with some other hardware support on top of that -by itself it could have been cheaper than 2 SH2s though less flexible for some things -even using a separate package on the board it probably would have saved cost vs 2 SH2s, though I don't know enough to fully understand the performance trade-offs of using that DSP vs slave SH2)

Hmm... this is getting a bit off topic, but (if this isn't too broad), would that DSP be competitive with (or faster than) the ASIC in the Sega CD for scaling, rotation, and affine line rendering? (or acting as a blitter in general for that matter -the tilemap conversion wouldn't matter in the case of the 32x though)

The SVP is much more limited in what it can do, but faster about doing it. It's got a very small program memory (mapped into a block at near the start of the rom), and a very small data memory block for variables and whatnot. The output to DRAM is actually through an indirect store register that increments the address for each store (+1 word until you hit a cell boundary, then +enough words to reach the next tile). Basically, the game puts the polygon coords into the SVP work ram along with the "color", then the SVP generates a flat shaded polygon to dram. At least, that's how I understand it.

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Tiido seemed to imply that software/interrupt driven PCM/PWM was easier to compensate for such interruptions than with DMA audio, but maybe I misunderstood.

Probably. It was probably a comparison of DMAing straight from the rom to the PWM versus interrupt driven ram buffer.

Quote:

Ah, OK, so the ROM DMA interruptions would hold up the CPU from reading samples to software mix (and modify pitch/volume) and in such cases you wouldn't have the PWM logic using DMA to ROM, but to the RAM where the mixed stream is buffered.

Wouldn't that be the same soft of case as the Z80 pulling samples from ROM, mixing them or pitch shifting (probably single channel) working in RAM and then playing the mixed stream on the DAC? (so you'd only have to compensate for when ROM can and can't be accessed -especially Vblank, when V-DMA would occur)
Granted the RAM to work in is a lot tighter. (but unlike the 32x, you wouldn't be using it for much else)

Yes, but the Z80 has much more of a load to handle being as slow and limited as it is. Where the Z80 is less affected is a case like my compression examples: the 1 bit CVSD holds 8 samples per byte, so you have 8 sample periods in which others can use the rom before the Z80 needs more data. As long as you aren't trying to DMA an entire screen to the vram, it should be relatively unaffected by rom bus usage by the 68000 side. Again, games should ALWAYS being doing DMA in segments to allow for decent rom access by the Z80 or SH2s. This is where a game developer shows their skill - if they are doing Z80 PCM from rom, they should be aware that large DMAs will cause the PCM to be noisy or warbly due to waits on the DMA.
09-07-2010, 03:41 AM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

The SVP is much more limited in what it can do, but faster about doing it. It's got a very small program memory (mapped into a block at near the start of the rom), and a very small data memory block for variables and whatnot. The output to DRAM is actually through an indirect store register that increments the address for each store (+1 word until you hit a cell boundary, then +enough words to reach the next tile). Basically, the game puts the polygon coords into the SVP work ram along with the "color", then the SVP generates a flat shaded polygon to dram. At least, that's how I understand it.

The SVP is just used for rasterization, not to calculate the coordinates as well? (the 68k plots the points for VR?) If that's the case, that's another cap on the SVP's polygon pushing capabilities in VR. (only as many vertices as the 68k can push out alongside game logic/AI stuff)
09-07-2010, 03:00 PM
Chilly Willy

I'm not certain about everything the SVP does. I'm mostly going by the notes notaz made when adding SVP support to picodrive. If I could get a disassembly of VR, especially the SVP part, I could be more exact about what the SVP does. I've also wondered if VR could be altered into a SCD game... replace the SVP parts with ASIC parts. That would be an interesting mod to work on. :)
09-07-2010, 11:20 PM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

I'm not certain about everything the SVP does. I'm mostly going by the notes notaz made when adding SVP support to picodrive. If I could get a disassembly of VR, especially the SVP part, I could be more exact about what the SVP does. I've also wondered if VR could be altered into a SCD game... replace the SVP parts with ASIC parts. That would be an interesting mod to work on. :)

Wouldn't it run a lot slower on the Sega CD?

I remember reading a topic where Fonzie mentioned that with proper optimization on the MD+CD, you could get polygon rendering at roughly 3x the speed of the Genesis alone.

One other thing I wonder about VR is why it was 2 MB when most of the game was untextured polygonal graphics, unless the BG and overlay graphics took up a ton of space, but they seem fairly simple. (VR Deluxe used 3 MB, but VERY detailed BG graphics on the MD side)
Hard Drivin' on the MD was only 256 kB and Race Drivin' and Steel Talons at 512 kB, though I imagine simpler models would require a lot less data as well. (though you have the Super FX games like Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, and Star Fox 2 at 1 MB with a fair amount of detailed BG and some textures even, and Vortex and Dirt Trax at only 512 kB)
Yoshi's Island and Doom were 2 MB SFX2 games, but in those cases it's pretty obvious why they used that much. (Doom's textures and Yoshi's Island being a 2D game in general with significant amounts of animation -the SFX might have even cut down ROM size if it was used to decompress some data on the fly)
09-07-2010, 11:49 PM
Chilly Willy

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Wouldn't it run a lot slower on the Sega CD?

A little slower. Probably not a LOT slower.

Quote:

I remember reading a topic where Fonzie mentioned that with proper optimization on the MD+CD, you could get polygon rendering at roughly 3x the speed of the Genesis alone.

I need to do some test myself on that.

Quote:

One other thing I wonder about VR is why it was 2 MB when most of the game was untextured polygonal graphics, unless the BG and overlay graphics took up a ton of space, but they seem fairly simple. (VR Deluxe used 3 MB, but VERY detailed BG graphics on the MD side)
Hard Drivin' on the MD was only 256 kB and Race Drivin' and Steel Talons at 512 kB, though I imagine simpler models would require a lot less data as well. (though you have the Super FX games like Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, and Star Fox 2 at 1 MB with a fair amount of detailed BG and some textures even, and Vortex and Dirt Trax at only 512 kB)
Yoshi's Island and Doom were 2 MB SFX2 games, but in those cases it's pretty obvious why they used that much. (Doom's textures and Yoshi's Island being a 2D game in general with significant amounts of animation -the SFX might have even cut down ROM size if it was used to decompress some data on the fly)

My guess is pcm samples. SEGA never uses more than 2:1 compression on audio clips, and VR has a number of them. Between that and the number of 3D tracks you have, that probably uses quite a bit of space.
09-15-2010, 01:43 AM
Blade_Runner02

Hey guys sorry I haven't been on in a few (like anyone cares) schoolwork just got real hectic as I was slammed in the face with a lot of stuff at once. And I just got my head rocked by Sonic 3....what's with the water effect in the opening stage? It's not transluscent, but when below water Sonic's a different color, and he is two different colors when I jump between the water and surface (& pause)....is this some sort of render or palatte trick or did Sega seriously totally mask their water ability?!
I was playing it on the PS3 collection, then noticed it. I raced to the PC to try out the rom and ran it unfiltered and without any other modes or layers of filtering....and it was still there! Unless it was that highlight ability like stated earlier that was in Virtua Fighter 2? Sorry if I sound dumb I'm just dumbfounded by this 0_o
09-15-2010, 10:38 AM
sheath

The water levels in Sonic games are a mid screen palette swap. Sonic 2 actually breaks the Genesis' color limit with 75 colors in Aquatic Ruins. Sonic 3 should be using the same method. I don't believe it has anything to do with shadow/highlight mode.

If I recall correctly the line where the palettes swap can get messed up, so that's why little sprites for the water surface are using interlacing to fake transparency at the water line.
09-15-2010, 03:45 PM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

A little slower. Probably not a LOT slower.

Hmm yeah, with the SVP's case it would be loaded with the duties of rasterization and convertign the bitmap frame into tilemap. (I'd assumed it had to calculate the vertices too, but you mentioned the 68k seems to do that for VR)

In the CD's case, you wouldn't just have the ASIC, but the 12.5 MHz 68k as well, so if the Genesis CPU supplied the vertex data like in VR (I'm assuming that's the case) it would be up to the sub-CPU and ASIC to replace the duties of the SVP. (and the ASIC already does bitmap to tilemap conversion in hardware, so it would just be rasterization to worry about)

In fact, with the capabilities of the ASIC, it might be better to modify the game a bit rather than having pure polygons used and use affine rendering in place of some of the "texture polygon" decals to cut the polygon count back significantly -and also the number of vertices needed to be calculated. (things like the streaks on the road, words on banners, some added details on various models, etc) And on top of that, you could replace some of the 3D objects with scaled 2D textures/"sprites" and save more there. (you'd be limited by the practical amount of textures you could fit in RAM as well as storing additional sound samples outside wave RAM which can't be streamed from the CD on the fly -especially if you opt for CD-DA music, except in the case of VR, most of the voice samples are in time to the music clips anyway, so that might work out well used as single voice+music recordings)

If the CD was so useful for doing 3D, it's rather odd (and unfortunate) that it wasn't pushed more for that purpose.

Quote:

My guess is pcm samples. SEGA never uses more than 2:1 compression on audio clips, and VR has a number of them. Between that and the number of 3D tracks you have, that probably uses quite a bit of space.

They probably weren't compressed at all in that case either, or I got the impression that most games didn't bother to deal with compressed samples in general. (would the 2:1 cases be ADPCM?)
In any case, 2:1 compressed 8-bit PCM would take as much space as 4-bit ADPCM (but uncompressed 8-bit would take 2x that), so if that were the case, it would be no more limited than SNES cart games other than the fact that a rather significant amount of voice samples were used. (then again, on the SNES games you also needed all the samples for music -albeit no more than 64 kB if they stuck to a single bank for the whole game- plus voices as well -in Star Fox's case there's a significant amount of voice samples though only sparingly used in-game there's a particularly long example at the end of the game -in total proabably over 30 seconds of speech albeit pretty low sample rate by the sound of it and then there's all the background and textured used as well)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sheath

The water levels in Sonic games are a mid screen palette swap. Sonic 2 actually breaks the Genesis' color limit with 75 colors in Aquatic Ruins. Sonic 3 should be using the same method. I don't believe it has anything to do with shadow/highlight mode.

Yep, there's a lot of games that break the 61 colors "on-screen" limit, but in all of those cases, the use of added color is rather limited. (in many cases, doing much more than 30-40 colors would imply tricks as well -other than a few games using tons of dithering and nearly completely distinct palettes, but that often tends to make things look worse than with less color -same goes for FMV in many cases, the stuff trying to max out color tends to look uglier at times than stuff optimized with more shared palettes, albeit you could also opt to use many different, but still similar colors/shades in the palettes: so few redundant colors with high color count but still avoiding clashing from overly contrasting palettes -the restrictions of the 9-bit RGB master palette limits that too though as the contrast is much higher in general)

Quote:

If I recall correctly the line where the palettes swap can get messed up, so that's why little sprites for the water surface are using interlacing to fake transparency at the water line.

The line where the palettes are reloaded always is artifacted on the Genesis, though not on most other computers/consoles (I think the SMS does it too). The SNES and PCE both have artifacts too, but not visible on-screen, only in overscan. (in the MD's case, the artifacts are delayed long enough that they appear in active display as garpage pixels -every 16 pixels I think)

I'm not sure how often the NES or SMS use it, but I'd think it would be rather useful for the NES at least. (SMS has the artifacting problem)
09-15-2010, 05:16 PM
Chilly Willy

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Hmm yeah, with the SVP's case it would be loaded with the duties of rasterization and convertign the bitmap frame into tilemap. (I'd assumed it had to calculate the vertices too, but you mentioned the 68k seems to do that for VR)

It wasn't mentioned in the SVP doc notaz did, but I imagine the SVP does all the 3D math and projection. I can't see them trying to use the 68000 for that.

Quote:

In the CD's case, you wouldn't just have the ASIC, but the 12.5 MHz 68k as well, so if the Genesis CPU supplied the vertex data like in VR (I'm assuming that's the case) it would be up to the sub-CPU and ASIC to replace the duties of the SVP. (and the ASIC already does bitmap to tilemap conversion in hardware, so it would just be rasterization to worry about)

Yes, you'd be splitting the duties between two 68000s and the ASIC instead of one 68000 and the SVP.

Quote:

In fact, with the capabilities of the ASIC, it might be better to modify the game a bit rather than having pure polygons used and use affine rendering in place of some of the "texture polygon" decals to cut the polygon count back significantly -and also the number of vertices needed to be calculated. (things like the streaks on the road, words on banners, some added details on various models, etc) And on top of that, you could replace some of the 3D objects with scaled 2D textures/"sprites" and save more there. (you'd be limited by the practical amount of textures you could fit in RAM as well as storing additional sound samples outside wave RAM which can't be streamed from the CD on the fly -especially if you opt for CD-DA music, except in the case of VR, most of the voice samples are in time to the music clips anyway, so that might work out well used as single voice+music recordings)

With a racing game, there are few sound effects beyond the engine noise, bumps, and tires squealing. I could easily see all the sounds fitting in the PCM memory on the CD. Then you are free to play music off the CD.

Using textures for the polygons would look better for some things, but also increases memory usage, so I'd probably be sparing with the textures.

Quote:

If the CD was so useful for doing 3D, it's rather odd (and unfortunate) that it wasn't pushed more for that purpose.

By the time 3D was being pushed in games, they were already past the SCD. And while you can do 3D with it, it's not really made for 3D. It's better than not having it, but not as good as what came with the Saturn.

Quote:

They probably weren't compressed at all in that case either, or I got the impression that most games didn't bother to deal with compressed samples in general. (would the 2:1 cases be ADPCM?)

Yes. Look at the ADPCM for the SMPS player (in games like Sonic) to see how that's done... it's like the "standard" 4 to 12/16 ADPCM, but adjusted to fit 8 bit better.
09-15-2010, 11:31 PM
kool kitty89

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

It wasn't mentioned in the SVP doc notaz did, but I imagine the SVP does all the 3D math and projection. I can't see them trying to use the 68000 for that.

OK, I think I misinterpreted this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

Basically, the game puts the polygon coords into the SVP work ram along with the "color", then the SVP generates a flat shaded polygon to dram. At least, that's how I understand it.

For some reason I thought you'd said the 68k was outputting the coordinates, but you only said "the game."

Quote:

By the time 3D was being pushed in games, they were already past the SCD. And while you can do 3D with it, it's not really made for 3D. It's better than not having it, but not as good as what came with the Saturn.

I meant SVP/Super FX level 3D, especially competing against what the SNES was doing, plus some earlier PC games (late 80s to some early 90s releases), etc.

It wouldn't be 32x (or 486 PC, or Jaguar) level 3D, let alone PSX/Saturn, but significantly beyond what the Genesis, ST, Amiga (68k), or 286 oriented PC games were doing, or at least faster/smoother than what they were doing. (maybe similar game/model complexity, but running much faster -Steel Talons on the Genesis has a rather high on-screen polygon count, but extremely low framerate -similar with the ST iirc)
So one thing could be porting over some games already going to the Genesis, but enhancing them. (higher framerate if nothing else, but probably more complex modes or use of textures and scaling/rotation in other cases)

Quote:

Yes. Look at the ADPCM for the SMPS player (in games like Sonic) to see how that's done... it's like the "standard" 4 to 12/16 ADPCM, but adjusted to fit 8 bit better.

SMPS did that with samples in Z80 RAM though didn't it? (not streaming from ROM)
09-16-2010, 01:55 AM
Chilly Willy

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool kitty89

OK, I think I misinterpreted this:

For some reason I thought you'd said the 68k was outputting the coordinates, but you only said "the game."

Different steps. The game logic all runs on the 68000, and after updating everything, they probably feed all the data to the SVP to get updated coords, then in the next step, feed those values to a different SVP routine to generate the polygons. Well, that's how I'd do it.

Quote:

I meant SVP/Super FX level 3D, especially competing against what the SNES was doing, plus some earlier PC games (late 80s to some early 90s releases), etc.

It wouldn't be 32x (or 486 PC, or Jaguar) level 3D, let alone PSX/Saturn, but significantly beyond what the Genesis, ST, Amiga (68k), or 286 oriented PC games were doing, or at least faster/smoother than what they were doing. (maybe similar game/model complexity, but running much faster -Steel Talons on the Genesis has a rather high on-screen polygon count, but extremely low framerate -similar with the ST iirc)
So one thing could be porting over some games already going to the Genesis, but enhancing them. (higher framerate if nothing else, but probably more complex modes or use of textures and scaling/rotation in other cases)

Yes, that's how I see the SCD - SVP or SuperFX level coprocessing. As long as you can squeeze it into the SCD memory (remember - no rom here for all the data), it should be able to perform most things at that level or above.

Quote:

SMPS did that with samples in Z80 RAM though didn't it? (not streaming from ROM)

I do believe they decompress into sram ahead of time. It could be done on the fly, but I don't think they do.

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