CPU is not the bottleneck, all else is.
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CPU is not the bottleneck, all else is.
This's awesome, reminds me of journey to silius. There's a lot of sunsoft stuff I like they're a really overlooked retro company.
Like tiido says overclocking the cpu too much would make everything else not able to keep up making stuff glitch out like crazy. Even the built in genesis 68k cpu can overclock so fast that the rest of the console can't keep up. I managed to overclock starfox 1 so fast the snes console no longer keeps up:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
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Originally Posted by AlecRob
Then why not replace the master clock? :D
Oh wait, that'll REALLY screw with stuff. TV refresh rates would in crease, the game would run faster, I mean play faster. And the audio would go higher pitch.
I have a feeling that could toast some parts, or even a TV if the TV's refresh rates are pushed too much.
Haha. Yeah that would have a terrible effect such as the nes overclock. Overclocking a nes does get rid of slowdown, but the cpu generates audio so all the audio changes pitch. It is easy to find the clock pin on any part and bypass it then overclock that part individually which is how most overclocks are done (for the sake of not messing everything up). I'm really thankful that in game slowdown doesn't bother me one bit, as long as graphics are drawn at a smooth 60 fps the game can slow down all it wants.
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Originally Posted by evildragon
Sonic 2 tends to slow down to where it looses it's 60fps smoothness. I have an EASY way to test for this that does not entail loosing rings. Aquatic ruins, get the blue sphere power up, have tails with you. Go high up in the trees and start jumping around. When the leaves start falling, the CPU can't keep up and goes down to about a measly 17fps.
I'm pretty certain sonic 2 always draws at 60 fps. The game slows down but the graphics are alway drawn at full speed. I've been playing sonic 2 since 1992 and I've never seen any parts that feel too slow to me or anywhere near it.
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Originally Posted by evildragon
Go to the spot I mentioned. You'll see.. It does crawl when the leaves start falling, and it WILL loose frame rate.
Fine I'll video tape it, since no one will probably try this.
This spot.
That's not a framerate loss it's just slowdown.
O_o ? what's the difference ??
A slowdown is always a framerate loss as you don't update sprites nor plan position...
Yea, not sure where Drakon is going with this. The game looses frame rate, it can't update the screen at 60 times a second anymore, thus frame rate loss.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stef
By this logic, Quake III runs at 120fps on my old 486 because the monitor is in 120Hz. :)
It's still smooth, it's just slower but still smooth. Like peanut butter, I'm happy when it's smooth.
Then again probably anything over 30 fps is good enough for me so maybe I'm just not noticing it.
It's definitely not smooth. If I was to film at 60fps on my camera, and frame by frame it, the TV would refresh every frame, but in this instance, it's updating almost every 3 frames. That's frame rate LOST.
Sonic 2 doesn't "skip" frames, it will still render them sequentially, but it will be delayed.
I've never liked it when people began calling slowdown things like "framerate drops". It doesn't need new terminology, we all know what slowdown is. It's not the same as a 3D game dropping frames. 3D games can also have slowdown and just like in 2D games, the game continues running at the same integers, without dropping any frames. It's just slower. Hence the name, slow-down.
Different terminology = same issue.
It still isn't moving objects on the screen at 60 frames per second. That IS a frame rate drop, OR a slow down.. It's the same damned thing.
The rate is the same, the speed is not. The speed is slower, because the hardware has to slow down to continue running the game at the same rate.Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
So you mean to tell me the sprites and graphics are moving at 60 frames per second.
Because they are not.. When the game slows down enough, graphics are in actuality, updating their positions like once every 3 frames. That is not 60fps.
Games are often moving objects on the screen at far less than 60 fps, all while running at full speed aka not suffering from slow down.Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
That's evading the question at hand. What was being stated was that Sonic 2 does NOT drop below 60fps when jumping in the trees.
When in fact, if it's updating every 3 frames, that means about 20fps is what is actually making it to the TV screen.
Rate has a radically different defintion than speed. How fast do you think the crime rate in the U.S. is?Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
Many Genesis games update at 1fps without suffering slowdown. Thus is why hand drawn animation is measured at rates like 1's or 2's. Because the fastest you can animate is one frame per frame of video/film. Depending on the speed of movement, the distance between frames will be different, but the rate of animation is the same.
Framerate drop terms became popular to describe when 3D graphics would update at a different rate at the same speed. If a new frame was drawn for every one yard of movement and it dropped to every two yards, then it's called a lower frame rate, even though the speed is the same. When a 3D game like PSU 360 slows down, no frames of movement are lost. The gane only slows down.
Whether it's true or not, I've heard programners mention several times that slowdown is actually something programmed into games, to keep the frame rate the same. In 2D games you can still make platform jumps if the game runs slower, but you can't if frames are skipped. 60fps is only the top speed TVs could display at and as such, the smoothest games were programned to animate around.
It doesn't drop to 20fps, it's still updating the screen 60 times a second, it's just taking longer to update positions. If it was dropping frames it wouldn't slowdown, Sonic would just move across the screen in a very choppy way.
The difference in a modern example would be like a FPS vs the 360 version of Phantasy Star Universe. The 360 version of PSU always runs at 60fps, but the game slows down during more intense action. The game doesn't get any more choppy, it retains it's smoothness, things just move slower. Meanwhile in a game like Left 4 Dead when the horde of zombies comes at you the game will drop from 60fps to possibly 30-45fps and it looks very choppy. Things don't get slower, they just get very choppy. Sonic 2 is more like Phantasy Star Universe in that things don't get more choppy, they just slow down.
EDIT: That's kind of odd that we both came up with the same example...
We are on different pages here. Of course the TV is 60hz. But for a frame update every 3 frames, that's 20fps. Yes the game slows down too, but we no longer have 60fps.
You're not actually losing frames though. You're not getting 20fps, you are still getting 60fps. The objects positions are just being updated slower. If the game truly dropped to 20fps you'd be losing frames and things would get choppy. Think Sega Touring Car Championship on the Saturn.
If its not missing any frames, and the game is running 1/3rd the speed, then that is 60 frames every 3 seconds, 20fpsQuote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
EDIT: Misread Thenewguys post.
Games don't update everything at 60fps before the effect we are all talking about, so fps are irelevant. Each d-pad press equals the same, unlike a franerate drop. The game just slows down.Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
The other term I don't being used for different things is "lag". To me lag is when multiple people are playing the same game, but not exactly in realtime. Some people use lag to describe framerate drops and slowdown. It doesn't matter if you can break down a phenomenon and show how lag describes a mechanism of it. If you end up using the same term for three different phenomenons then it defeats the purpose of using terms to sum anything up in the first place.
This's exactly my point. Sonic 2, megaman 3, and other 2d games suffer from slowdown. But games like starfox on the snes suffer from framerate drop. Slowdown never bothered me, in fact I enjoy it. However framerate drop always annoyed me.
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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thenewguy
This is like saying a 24fps movie being played on a 60hz TV is a movie being played at 60fps just because the TV updates 60 times a seconds.
For a framerate to drop from 60fps to 20fps means that 2/3 of your frames are now getting dropped. That is not whats happening in Sonic. All the frames are still there and being drawn you are just now receiving the same one 3 times in a row. The frame rate doesn't drop, the game slows down it's animation and movement speeds. There's a difference. Dropping to 20fps would result in everything still moving the same speed, but you only saw 1/3 of the frames that got it from Point A to Point B. Sonic doesn't do this, it just slows down and gives you a duplicate frame for the other 2 frames instead of just dropping them and skipping ahead.
No it's not. It's a 60fps video being slowed down. While yes the number of unique frames per second is now lower, you are not actually losing frames. A frame rate drop would be taking that 60fps video and removing 40 frames each second and playing it back. The result would be a video that runs in the same amount of time but is choppier due to there being less frames. There is a difference. Calling them the same thing is not accurate because they are two different things. Sonic has slowdown, not frame rate drops.Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
"Screen refresh rate is 60 Hz." -> Right.
"The frame is updated every 3 screen refreshes in NTSC, it's 20 fps." -> Right.
"The game is now cycling the character's animation using just 4 frames instead of 8 like in the beginning of the stage, it's dropping frames." -> Right.
"It has slowdowns, resulting in screen refreshes that maintain the same frame but it's still 60 fps." -> Wrong.
"The lower framerate means that it's dropping frames." -> Wrong, you can't say that just looking at the framerate.
It's the difference between a Framerate Drop and Slowdown Barone. For the frame rate to drop from 60 fps to 20 fps would mean we lose 2/3 of the frames. For the frame rate to slowdown to 20 fps is different and is what Sonic 2 does.
When Sonic slows down, it takes 3 seconds to get all 60 unique frames you would have gotten before in 1 second, and it takes 3 seconds for Sonic to move a certain distance. But you still get all 60 unique frames eventually. If Sonic were to drop to a frame rate of 20 fps, you would only get 20 frames in total. Sonic would still move that same distance in 1 second as he would in the above scenario in 3 seconds, but you would have lost 40 of the frames that would have shown you more detail.
Does that make sense? I admit this got a bit messy along the way but what's trying to be described here is that Slowdown and frame rate drops are different things, and you shouldn't swap the terms.
Trekkies I'm pretty sure I put my stuff in a clearer way.
Frame rate, frame drop and screen refresh are all different things. You guys are mixing those concepts IMO.
Frame rate is about number of unique frames in a closed period of time (1 second when you use fps), so there's no "eventually" shit. If it has only 1 unique frame every 3 screen refreshes in 60 Hz, it's just 20 fps. The rest is bs.
Trekkies>I'm afraid there is a problem in your logic...
If sonic takes 3 seconds to get what it does in 1 second normally (60 frames) then that does means that 60 frames are now extended to 3 seconds so 20 fps (20 frames per second).
I think you are mistaking 2 different games engine logic..
There is a *big* difference with games that actually handle sort of "automatic frame rate" and games that does not do it. Usually only games that use heavy and irregular rendering performance use the first method and only in these games you can have some frame drops (some display frame miss) but with a constant gameplay still run at normal speed. Honestly you have only a very game using that type of engine on 16 bits system, we usually saw that for PC games where hardware can differ a lot depending the user... To start with it is more difficult to handle game engine that way as you have to separate game logic from the game rendering, also almost 16 bits games runs at a constant frame rate so there is no need for that...
Starfox could be a good example of a game which could use it as it has irregular display refresh but i believe that if you overclock the super FX, not only the frame rate is better but algo the gameplay is faster (this game probably uses a cheated engine) :-/
Anyway even if game logic speed is constant or not, the screen refresh rate, in both case, drop from 60fps to 30fps or even less..
I'm aware I was wrong on the bit about still maintaining 60 fps, I mispoke. And I admit it. But I still stand by the fact that a frame rate drop to 20fps is not the same as a frame rate slowdown to 20fps.
In the above post I didn't say you eventually get 60 fps. I said you eventually get those 60 unique frames. There's a difference.
Dropping from 60 fps to 20 fps means this:
You delete 40 of those 60 frames and show the remaining 20 in one second.
Slowing down to 20 fps from 60 fps means this:
Instead of showing those 60 frames in 1 second you show them in 3. You still show all 60 frames, but it takes longer to show them. You don't however lose or drop frames.
I think you got poisoned by Drakon's concept previously but I got what you meant (it was a mess to understand, ahaha) so I was already editing my post.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
I got it.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Same here... edited my previous post, anyway we understand your point. Still words you choose to describe one or the other is a matter of taste.
For me slowdown or frame drop is a problem, a game should always runs at 60 FPS, or at least maintain a regular frame rate.
If there's one thing I hate more than frame drop, it's frame drop + slowdown at the same time! Starfox comes with frame drop by default, however once you overclock the game you actually get slowdown briefly in a couple of places (at default clock speed everything is slow so you normally don't notice this). I overclocked starfox (and other superfx games) to increase the framerate. Yes the games run faster as well but the response time is just as sped up so all is good. I can't fix the game speed increase but since it's still perfectly playable I think it's absolutely worth the framerate increase. I always hated the delayed response time as well as the frame drop in superfx games running at default speed.
When sonic 2 gets overwhelmed movement slows but it still looks smooth. When starfox runs at default speed everything looks just plain choppy. I suppose to translate what's happening in starfox into sonic you'd need to make sonic jump a few positions ahead at once instead of drawing each position individually. It looks like starfox (and other superfx games) are skipping frames to keep the pace reasonable, this is why it's called being choppy. I'm not sure if my overclock makes starfox look smoother because it's drawing more frames than before, if it's because the drawing speed is sped up, or both. Personally I don't really care as long as the game is playable and everything looks smooth and not choppy, also the improved control response feels great!
For once I couldn't agree more with trekkiesunites. I do think he's arguing a bit hard over this (that's trekkies though) but he couldn't be more correct on the subject.
I know a lot of people really dislike slowdown. I get a lot of people asking me to overclock megaman 3....which is funny because megaman 3 doesn't have its own clock. I actually enjoy slowdown as part of the experience. However frame drop drives me nuts.
Sorry to back up a bit, just got a chance to watch this. Awesome! Even the mono speaker input is cool. My only question is why is the camera having a hard time with the interlaced effects when batman gets hit? I hate that and wouldn't expect it to be a problem with a camera recording an interlaced screen, I guess I would be wrong too.Quote:
Originally Posted by evildragon
Did I miss us already drawing any conclusions over what the RAM and CPU replacement did for the gameplay, framerate or anything else?