I'd say Wacky Races is about 100x better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6OP1r4ZEzM
Printable View
I'd say Wacky Races is about 100x better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6OP1r4ZEzM
Mario Kart...
When was the last time we saw Wacky Races again??
There is no Mega Drive equivilant to Mario Kart - it was just too God damn awesome.
A comparison between Wacky Races, Street Racer and BC Racers would be way mor appropriate, especially since neither of each can hold a candle to Mario Kart. Saying otherwise would be fanboyism bordering on being delusional...
Street Racer is on the SNES too, so you could compare directly. (the racing is most competitive as soccer and battle are crap on the MD -racing uses linescroll rather well on the genesis but not much if any added effects like scanline scaling or such to enhance perspective or create hills -like the road in Road Rash, Skitchin, or the batman CD driving games -EA's racers also seem to have software scaled sprites to some extent rather than choppy animation)
A shame Sega didn't push that on the Genesis (let alone CD), could have been pretty good if optimized right (linescroll/linescaling stuff and maybe EA style software sprite scaling would be best -the latter could give smoother sprite "scaling" than Mario Kart). Street Racer shows potential, but they could have pushed further. (albeit even that alone could have been pretty good, especially with the 4 player mode -and with some tweaks for better items/powerups and obviously sega characters/themes)
Rather odd Sega pushed 2 Sonic kart games on the GG but nothing on the MD. (nothing to really counter F Zero either)
Wacky Racers is an unfinished mess that's nothing more than a technical curiosity. (it did do software plane 3D warping -looks like it might be a simple vector line overlay onto a dithered texture BG on a separate layer, probably less aesthetically pleasing to many than the linescroll type methods)
The more extreme examples of 1D line scaling and linescroll for 3D perspective effects are cases like Panorama Cotton which does it so well that it looks like texture mapping. (I thought it WAS software 3D textures at first) However, that only works if you limit perspective to an on-rails set-up. (for free roam/360 decgree 3D plane stuff it won't work -I think software affine texture mapping is beyond what the MD CPU can do at a decent framerate -the vector lines/polygonish stuff in Wacky racers is a fair bit simpler than that)
Ther's also the option for tilemap rotation and a broad selection of tiles to use (and that's what Red Zone does), but that's also limited to mainly just direct overhead/flat rotation, not warping.
Hmm, OTOH, Zero Tolerance, Toy Story, Duke 3D, and Battle Frenzy seem to push actual texture mapping via column rendering, so maybe something closer to mode 7 really could be pushed. (they also might use lines to fill the floor/cieling -and only toy story does a textured floor/ceiling -mirrored though so only the top 1/2 is rendered and the bottom is mirrored by the VDP, Battle Frenzy does that too)
OTOH, even if you could manage it for single player, 2 player split screen would really put a hurt on things (unless maybe if you dropped resolution further for 2p mode -ie used 4x4 pixels and/or a smaller screen).
That really goes back to the linescroll/line scaling methods being more attractive looking/playing in general (on stock MD hardware -ie no add-ons of any sort).
The MCD or SVP would change that dramatically (let alone 32x), though much simpler/cheaper DSP/coprocessor options may also have been possible (and earlier). (for specific scaling/rotation/blitting stuff, it probably would have been simpler/cheaper to use a direct derivative of the ASIC in the MCD, but cut back to only logic that would be needed to interface via the cart slot and read from ROM as well as a buffer -maybe stay simple and clock it down to 7.67 MHz directly on the 68k bus with a single buffer RAM chip to render to -and halted when the VDP asserts DMA to read the buffer or ROM, but possibly interleaved for 68k accesses)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Smith
seeeeeen
On the PC there was also Wacky Wheels
Anyway, I've never liked any of these racers with a mode7-ish perspective. Even the more primitive fake 3D effect of Outrun and the likes had a much better feel.
I'm with you. I've always felt like the only person who never understood what the big deal was about Mario Kart. I'm not one for racing games though. I only ever really got into Road Rash.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeckoYamori
SMK obliterates Wacky Races and other similiar style racers on MD
I swear you're making polls left and right just to be posting. Who would ever choose Wacky Races?
All these polls are pretty dumb if you ask me. Only worthy part each time is to see kool kitty's posts =p
Didn't Fonzie figure out a way to do mode 7 on a stock genesis? It's used in a Pier Solar mini game supposedly, I'd really like to see it in action (Sadly I don't have a working genesis anymore, and no intention of getting one soon, much less the game).
It's truly a shame that there are no proper racing games on the sega cd, they'd be way better than mode 7 racers (just look at batman and robin), heck even mode 7 racers would be easy to do...
We evidently have 5 very delusional forum members.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
i assume you have had a bad day, mr badnusty....i sense frustration and possible anger within your words....let it out bro, let it out. ;)
I've never been a fan of Mario Kart, but Wacky Races is crap.
Mode 7 belongs to SNES and is something a Mega Drive can never do, since the VDP cannot be changed. Background scaling and rotation can be done in software though, and it is used in Pier Solar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Mario Kart is defiantly a better game but the Wacky Races cartoon was awesome.
The review was ASS!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Smith
:ok: I Agree w/ Mr Smith & TmEE :ok:Quote:
Originally Posted by TmEE
Well background scaling is perfectly possible, I've seen techdemos (the background tiles are repeated a lot though so the amount of processing and VRAM bandwidth spent is very small). Rotation is more complicated, did you do it Red Zone style? Or is it in software? I know there are some rather efficient algorithms nowadays, but doing rotation AND scaling at the same time is a bit intensive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
And there's still the problem of the perspective effect, That's what people usually consider as "Mode 7"? Is this what you guys did? Or is it just the regular stuff?
Yes, but 2D rotation is one thing (and also has more practical hacked approximations using tilemap rotation and a large selection of tiles to chose from to approximate true rotation -like Red Zone does), but doing so at a reasonable reslolution and framerate with time left over for game logic (or possilbly using the Z80 for part of the game engine) is another... and then it's yet another step to do true affine texture rendering with 3D warping (setting perspecitve on a scanline basis).Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
Though again, the ray-casting examples on the MD may not be too far from relevant examples on the issue though, so those might show that it's reasonably possible in a cut-down fashion. (framerate and resolution/screen size)
And then there's the issue of pushing split screen.
OTOH there should have been options for cheap coprocessors that could help out a good bit and the CPU could still take a fair bit of the grunt. (short of hacking in a derivative of the MCD blitter and some DRAM to render into, maybe just a simple/cheap DSP to help with some of the calculations but not the expense of adding RAM to render into -just a simple/cheap DSP with embedded ROM and scratchpad RAM, or maybe a large enough chunk of on-chip RAM to buffer a scanline and ports to allow the 68k to read from the on-chip buffer RAM as well, so the DSP could help render an entire texture line at a time as well as the 3D math for perspective and the 68k would build the lines into a framebuffer in work RAM and then convert those to tilemap format -to save space in RAM, maybe only buffer 8 lines at a time and convert to tiles to be DMA'd t the VDP)
Actually, that sound like it may have been the cheapest/simplest option for any decently competitive texture mapped planes. (except it's software rendered/blitted, so you COULD also render scaled sprites to the same plane or use the DSP to help scale animation for hardware sprites on the fly -which would probably make things a fair bit less choppy)
Hell, maybe they could have still used a direct derivative of the Sega CD ASIC, but cut out the CD specific features and DRAM management and cram in some buffer SRAM to buffer a few lines, an dpossibly help for bitmap to tile conversion as well -but you'd probably only be able to deal with one row of 8x8 cells at a time as you'd be talking about 2 kB on-chip RAM tops under the circumstances, might be better to remove the logic for bitmap to tile conversion and just use the blitter to scaline/rotate/line render in chunks the CPU could then convert to tilemap/sprite format)
And you could have a true Sega CD version of such games as well. ;)
Otherwise, again, plain software rendered stuff would probably be considerably less attractive to most people than faster/smoother/crisper linescroll based stuff. (maybe with some scanline based 1-D scaling like 3D Blast's special stages or Panorama Cotton)
never played wacky races.
Itś like for example the airship scenes in FF VI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
There isn't a "Wacky Races" for the Genesis, is there?
Yes there is, but itś only a beta and was never released in retail. It's not like on Amiga but a Mario Kart-clone.
Looky here: http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/37583/
Something like this then? (this is from IV but same thing):Quote:
Originally Posted by 108 Stars
http://www.destructoid.com/elephant/...ed%20Wings.jpg
How the F*CK did you guys do that :S?
Pretty much, but the perspective is more flat, that's why I specifically mention FF VI where you had a similar angle.
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...ool-3d-map.gif
You cannot fly freely over the worldmap in PS though, since our small style of overworld map is not fit for that. But the graphic effect is similar.
I must bow to Fonzie's greatness, that level of programming is just way beyond what I can do...
Here, I scanned a screenshot from the Posterity booklet:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6328/bildxb.jpg[/URL]
Nice touch with all the "ZOMG" arrows, the fact that the dithering isn't transformed makes it even more amazing...
You guys should really put up a youtube video or something, filled with derogatory comments towards the SNES while showing that in action :p
If you don't do rotation, just scaling/pwerspective, you can just use a combination of scanline scaling and linescroll to manage the effect. (like Panorama Cotton, Sonic 3D' sspecial stage, etc)
With 360 degree rotation (with or without warping) in realtime (not animated), that's a different issue entirely.
It looks like the FFIV esample is not using mode 7 but scanline based tricks as with Axelay or 3D Blast. (or several flat examples on the MD like G-Lock)
But FFVI is using mode 7.
At least that:
Doesn't look like mode 7 at all. (and mode 7 rarely if ever used the curved warping as sometimes used for scanline effects)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
The simple flat scaled/linescroll stuff was also used in G-Loc, Lawnmower Man (later VR stages), and another game I forget the name of. (a space harrier like railshooter with the first stage over water and maybe a female lead character on a hover bike iirc, I think it may have been Japan only)
It's something the PCE and SNES should both be capable of (without mode 7), like Axelay, but without the curved warped look.
I believe Castlevania IV also used a similar effect to do the 3D-ish rotating cylindrical hallway. (not the mode 7 rotating room) THat sort of thing shouldn't have been a problem to do on the PCE or Genesis, it's jsut scanline based stuff.
OTOH, Toy Story seems to do true software texture mapping for the ground (mirrored for the ceiling) as well as ray-casting and column texture mapping for the walls. (both SNES and genesis)
And looking at the booklet shot from Pier Solar, that looks like it might be using 2x2 pixel blocks to render with (and realtime dithering for pseudo 8bit color using simple paired pixels a la Zero Tolerance, Duke 3D, Road Rash, etc), so that would certainly help make it much faster. (1/4 the resolution and using paired pixels as bytes rather than having to break them into nybbles for the native 4-bit pixels)
And I mentioned that possibility above (blocky low res pixel rendering) before Pier Solar was brought up iirc. Again, that might end up lookign worse for a racing game than well-optimzied line scroll effects. (let alone 2 player split screen -Street Racer does 4p)
This is already achieved in on the pc engine through " METAMOR JUPITER".Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Here is the vid, looks mightily impressive for the little engine-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D39mPgUa43g
We really need a dedicated coding section here at Sega-16.
^
For me what counts is: the MD is capable of doing something like Mode-7 quite well, even if maybe not as easily or sophisticated as the SNES when it really pushes it.
For your standard mode-7-graphics like an overworld map or Mario Kart with 2p-splitscreen, the MD can do it pretty well. :)
But 108 Stars... we DO have that forum :)
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=28
Enjoy, you need to thank Guntz for it.
Damn, Iīm blind! :P
Thanks a lot, I canīt code myself but enjoy reading of the possibilities... and to see some examples from you guys! :)
http://www.thelegacy.de/pics/screen/...8Beta29002.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by 108 Stars
"Das Options" ??? :confused:
I'm not actually sure if it uses Mode 7 or not, but I will point out that they replicated that effect very well in the Wonderswan version, and obviously Wonderswan has no Mode 7.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
OK, I take back some of my comments about Panorama Cotton doing the same thing as Axelay and 3D Blast (or G-Loc, Lawnmower Man, or Burning Force -remembered the name).
PC seems to use actual scaling for parts of the BG, but it seems to all be 1/4 resolution (pixels are 2 lines high and 2 dots wide -might use dithered pairs horizontally), it also seems to use separate warping patterns for the floor and ceiling with different perspective (so not mirrored), but it does seem to use linescroll to provide curved warping. (no rotation, just 2D scaling -not 1D like axalay)
G-Loc, Burning Force, and Lawnmower Man (later VR stages with 3D-ish ground textures, not the earlier ones with just software scaling) seem to be different from axalay too, more like Space Harrier's ground but with more texture to it and possibly prescaled by the CPU and loaded into VRAM.
Lawnmower Man also has the scaled 2D object sections on the SNES (very similar), but uses mode 7 for the textured ground by the look of it.
And I noticed some really interesting stuff with Toy Story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQhu8vAS0-s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksRULxaJhE0
The SNES version definitely seesm to be using mode 7 given the color and detail alone (256 color rendering) and it does look like coarser pixels (maybe double wide or 2x2 like wold 3D) but I need to check in an emulator to be sure.
The Genesis seems to use blockier pixels as well and the paired pixel dithering method seen in several others (Zero Tolerance, Duke 3D, seems like Pier Solar too).
Both use doom/ZT like realtime lighting/shading effects as well.
However, one odd thing is that while the Genesis seems to be a normal ray-casting type renderer (by the look of it), the SNES game shows obvious affine texture map warping (ie PSX style "fish-eye" texture warping), so that would imply a true texture mapped renderer using polygons. (or a ray casting engine to define polygon/quad primitives and render using line by line texture mapping)
Edit: checked, it definitely seems to be rendering to mode 7 and is using 2x1 pixels (half horizontal res, like doom, but not Wolf3D's half vertical res) and it looks like affine texture mapping too.
It's rendering 112x64 with 8-bit packed pixels (a la mode 7) using mode 7 to stretch it as well as mirroring the tiles for the bottom half for a final window of 224x128.
By comparison, Zero Tolerance is effectively 128x80 pixels using dithered pairs for a window size of 256x80 pixels. (no mirroring)
It also uses shading/color gradients on the window layer for the color/shading effects on the floor/ceiling wires.
OK, the Genesis version runs in low-res mode with paired dithered (pseudo 8-bit) pixels for an effective 128x72 in a 256x144 true wndow and adds checkerboard dithering as well as genernal color indexing effects to provide 3 shaded light levels that actually manage it much better looking than Zero Tolerance. (again, seems like ray-casting due to lack of texture warping) If they ever pushed Doom on the Genesis VDP, I think that's the sort of color/graphics optimization that should have been pushed.
But here's the weird part: I took a screenshot from fusion in doubleraw, cut out everything but the 3D render window, and got a color count of 25!
I'm going to take a look in GENS to see if there's some dual-layer rendering going on. ;)
Edit:
Checked with GENS... disabled all layers and found all the 3D stuff is on just layer A, layer B is totally unused and disabling it shows no signs of being used for shadow colors even; yet even with all that disabled and only plane A enabled, I ended up getting a 26 color screenshot... weird. (no scaling/interpolation/filtering enabled either)
The only other thing I can think of is use of per-tile palette selection, but I have no idea how they'd have managed that without artifacts. (and a good amount of overhead managing the variable palettes and tilemap)
That is, unless it is shadow and for some reason, disabling layer B an sprites doesn't solve it. (the window layer can't use shadow, can it?)
The German, French and Spanish translations of the prototype are jokingly made up. You can notice that easily if you switch around the three translated languages (English is the only one that is fine). I guess they were done as placeholders by the programmers themselves and in their own funny way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9902/wackyraces.png
Notice the "Kill Bulls" line in Spanish (which is "Difficulty" in English) and the fact that all translated lines are more "Italian-ish" rather than anything resembling Spanish.
"Controllero Setupo" http://www.sega-16.com/forum/images/icons/talking.gif
Interesting thread, this.
I'm the original programmer / designer of this game. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask (though it was a long time ago!)
It was, of course, heavily based on Mario Kart (my favourite game at the time) with the addition of a weapon upgrade system from something like Salamander, which I thought at the time improved the game.
The 3d road was a full 3d poly fill system, with lines drawn on top for certain things. We did try other things, but hey, as always, time is very short in the industry, so we didn't get a lot of time to experiement.