Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sik
...I said those games were out before the MCD was released. Some were even launch MD titles. And I don't know if there would have been much point in rereleasing those games anyways. The whole point of them was to prove that the MD by itself could do arcade-quality games.
What's wrong with haveing enhanced (or substantially enhanced) versions of those games, especially as direct comparisons of the superiority of the Sega CD's capabilities? (and especially for games that were done poorly on the MD -several of those games on the MD showed more a lack of ability to handle arcade quality games . . . )
Quote:
Sega was moving away from the superscaler at that point, really. Moreover, they were starting to move into 3D games (Virtua Racing was released in 1992 IIRC). Also, by the time the MCD was released, the whole arcade-quality thing was fading away and Sega decided to move onto trying to focus on original games instead. Besides fighting games, there wasn't much arcade game porting going on at that point.
The Sega CD launched in late 1991, and launch games obviously would have been development a few months prior to that.
Sega had a big library of scaler games (many of which had no ports on the MD), and more from other 2D boards with scaling featured less substantially than the scaler/super-scaler pseudo 3D oriented boards. (ie System 16, 18, 32 rather than space harrier, after burner, X, Y, etc -some games making more sense to have in compilation form)
Even stranger was porting Space Harrier and After Burner to the 32x almost immediately after it was released.
Quote:
At the expense of lower framerate and more VRAM usage (the latter meaning you'll probably need to reduce your visible area, unless you want some severe artifacts appearing). Honestly I'd rather get less colors than having to cope with those issues.
No, I don't mean tying 2 tile layers together, but rendering to separate portions of 2 separate tile layers . . . not to mention cases where changing palettes on a tile basis would be usable. (granted, many cases would tend to favor one tile layer being used as a 2D back drop) And also not doing 2 full-screen layers overlapped (rendering separately to each as independent planes) . . . which is what BC Racers does. (albeit only 1/2 of the far BG layer is used as a framebuffer, the other half is just a plain scrolling section)
Using sprites adds still more color flexibility.
Quote:
Some games do render to sprites actually =/
Yes, but few, and sparingly, which seems odd. (Soul Star uses some sprites, but still uses a ton of ASIC rendered objects on the tile/frame buffer too -rather than limiting the framebuffer to the BG and ground effects -or some very large objects that would risk exceeding sprite bandwidth)
I just checked again in Gens/gs, and way BC Racers and Battlecorps does it is extremely wasteful bandwidth and VRAM wise . . . a full pseudo-bitmap foreground on 1 tile layer and the scrolling BG and rotated/warped BG on the other tile layer. (doing the overlay portion with sprites should have reduced bandwdith and added more flexible color use -albeit the bandwidth advantage would be slim when sprites cover much of the screen, but that might just mean slowdown/dropped frames once in a while vs constant slow framerate)
Albeit, with the way they are doing it, they can use separate palettes for foreground and BG (and more palettes for the tiled scroll section in the far BG).
Quote:
They did it because it was easier. Also, Battlecorps is a 3D game, some objects weren't even sprites but deformed quads (e.g. walls). It was probably easier to render everything to a single bitmap, especially if you consider how likely it could hit the sprite overflow otherwise.
Again, I was wrong about those games using a single 16 color layer, but the point on 3D is significant. You'd need that bitmap foreground to avoid rendering polygons to sprites. (though they could have cut DMA bandwdith -and VRAM use- by rendering the polygons, scaled "sprites," and 3D ground all on a single layer -albeit limited to 15 or 16 colors -or they could have rendered the polygons+ground on 1 layer and used hardware sprites for the scaled 2D objects)
Granted, if the framerate is limited by other bottlenecks in the system (rather than DMA bandwidth), using fewer planes or sprites wouldn't help framerate. (plus a single plane means more overwrites for the ASIC)
Quote:
And for the record, Battlecorps does use two planes. Floor and sky are one tilemap, objects and walls are the other tilemap. They use different palettes.
Yes, I realized that after testing it in Gens/gs a little while ago. ;) (same for BC Racers -the 2 use the same engine, Soulstar uses a different one -or an updated derivative of that one)
On the issue of Galaxy Force II on the Genesis, another problem is sprite drop-out without flicker (so objects totally disappear) . . . it seems flicker management (to compensate for drop-out) was uncommon to support on 16-bit consoles. (not sure why since there's significant drop-out in a number of games)
Granted, they also could have limited use of sprites more to avoid flicker at the expense of cut-down graphics. (though smaller sprites could also be better animated)
