PS2 vs Dreamcast Graphics

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Isn't that the real technical term for cel-shading?

BTW what the polygons count for Zombie Revenge ? . The game wasn't the best, but it looked amazing. I also thought Sakura Wars 3 and IV were a technical showcase for the DC too

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Well I was gonna build up to it and finally post it in a month, but personally as a guy whos looked through about 100 Dreamcast games through emulation, Sakura Wars 4 has the best graphics of any Dreamcast game overall. The game runs at an unlocked 60 FPS which is about 1.8-2.2 million PPS.

But its really no surprise I think the game has the best graphics on the Dreamcast, its one of the few 1st party games that came out in 2002.

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Originally Posted by Yharnamresident

Well I was gonna build up to it and finally post it in a month, but personally as a guy whos looked through about 100 Dreamcast games through emulation, Sakura Wars 4 has the best graphics of any Dreamcast game overall. The game runs at an unlocked 60 FPS which is about 1.8-2.2 million PPS.

But its really no surprise I think the game has the best graphics on the Dreamcast, its one of the few 1st party games that came out in 2002.

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Ehh Sakura wars 4 doesn't run @ 60 fps . It runs 30 fps on real hardware. Not even the PC version run 60 fps. And it isn't really pushing that many polygons. I've gone in to the asset files and pulled out the models. While a kobu is inactive it had a low lod of 1200 polygons. While active or in cutscenes mode the kobu had 2300 to 2500 tris. The only except is the soubu(the final mech you use) it's 2900 Tris. The stages are also very basic. The second stage if I remember right was only 5000 Tris with no car props( like I said I'm looking at the assets directly). The enemies are like 1000 Tris at low lod and like 1500 at hi lod.

What's actually impressive about Sakura wars 4 are actually the effects. They are very ps2 like post process/framebuffer effects. I used the emulator to extract textures and I found that under certain cutscenes like the first one they used radial blur and the white kobu swinging his blade made a refraction effect during the intro. They also did localized blurs that only affected certain parts of the screen as well as refracted cloacking effects both during cutscenes of stage 2. It's very cool and I don't think many other games if any use those. Finally on the first form of the final boss they used like a semi blurred texture that pulsated on the bosses last frame of animation (hard to describe but it's also subtle).

Not surprised because overworks were the only to use bloom on DC. They used it in very short sequences in skies of Arcadia. I guess they expanded the effects for Sakura taisen 4.

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Originally Posted by Yharnamresident

But its really no surprise I think the game has the best graphics on the Dreamcast, its one of the few 1st party games that came out in 2002.

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I think both games were a technical showcase (but both were 30 fps form what I remember) and it so sad they were never translated. I did like the use of the mini-maps on the VMU too. I think Overworks with Skies and the Sakura games on the DC were really something special

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

Ehh Sakura wars 4 doesn't run @ 60 fps . It runs 30 fps on real hardware. Not even the PC version run 60 fps. And it isn't really pushing that many polygons. I've gone in to the asset files and pulled out the models. While a kobu is inactive it had a low lod of 1200 polygons. While active or in cutscenes mode the kobu had 2300 to 2500 tris. The only except is the soubu(the final mech you use) it's 2900 Tris. The stages are also very basic. The second stage if I remember right was only 5000 Tris with no car props( like I said I'm looking at the assets directly). The enemies are like 1000 Tris at low lod and like 1500 at hi lod.

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I spent hours examining it, its an unlocked 60 FPS. NullDC can easily recognize locked and unlocked framerates. The whole game isn't 60 FPS for sure.

This is another game that runs at an unlocked 60 FPS. The video was captured from real hardware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXKtvkmR6o

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

Not surprised because overworks were the only to use bloom on DC. They used it in very short sequences in skies of Arcadia. I guess they expanded the effects for Sakura taisen 4.

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Kamahl is a pretty active and knowledgeable member on here(you might not of heard of him), but he said the main thing that separates Dreamcast games with PS2/GameCube games is the weaker shadows and no post-processing effects. I've started to realize hes absolutely right. Theres not much developers could do about the weaker shadows, but the post-processing effects would've started to be used more in games in 2001 and after. I remember reading on a gaming site that Skies of Arcadia was the first game to ever use bloom when it was released in late 2000. That does seem pretty accurate but it might not be. It also explains why Dreamcast games rarely use them, the bulk of Dreamcast games were released in 1999 and 2000.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

Not sure what your asking. For ps2 you need pcsx2 9.8 which was the last version to allow extracting the scene using shift+f8 into an .obj file.

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This is very useful. I take it you couldn't get 3D Ripper or Ninja Ripper to work with relatively modern PCSX2 versions?

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Nintendo had and still has more cash reserves in the bank than SONY. Nintendo if it really wanted too, had/has got way more than enough money to go to the likes of AMD, hand over a Billion and have them develope a cutting edge GPU/CPU. But Nintendo has always been a well run corp and also a Toy corp and I would guess, didn't want to enter the market of high price consoles or where one Nintendo was taking a massive hit per console sold.

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Nowadays that seems believable, but even early 2000's Walkman/Tritition/PS1 Sony?

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Not really, compared to what Visual Concepts were doing for the NFL and NBA sports games, football games looked pretty basic. Uefa Dream Soccer is a better playing game and does feature nice animation in places, but the players look weird (with a strange hunched stance) and lacking the quailty textures of Virtual Striker 2, that while it was the 3 game in the series on the DC for Silicon Dreams, I would what Genki could have done with 3 entries in the series with its Virtual Striker engine

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Yes you hear me a lot saying "this developer didn't put in much effort", or "this game could've been better if they did xyzxx", but most of the Visual Concepts games get my full approval.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

For maximum speed it's definitely not the same engine. It's whole different game made by Sims. It's fun though but genki had nothing to do with it. Even superficially it just doesn't measure up to Daytona. No internal modeling of the cars, the lods are more vicious.

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Look at the games next to each other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNuCJljDdLw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxgv820P_yA

The scale of everything, the lighting, even the way the cars drift is exactly the same.

What also makes it essentially undeniable, is that Sammy was also using the Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 engine for Faster than Speed. So they must've got a deal with Genki to use their game engines.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

WOW, If you could just stand back a little and try and have a sensible debate, but I guess when it comes to anything Nintendo thats out of the question

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Thats the wrong response, you could see he was agreeing with you

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Originally Posted by SegataS

Nintendo could but then it would be another Gamecube or Wii U in sales. Literally no point to 3 consoles that are pretty much the same with PS4 and Xbox already out there. Being different has worked out for them. SEGA chasing Sony didn't work. Nintendo chasing Sony didn't work twice. Wii and DS made them a shit load of money. The switch is just the perfect balance for them and selling like crazy. They were always better at handhelds than consoles and they found a nice balance. Can't fault them for being successful even if they are odd a lot of the time. I feel personally Switch is their best system since SNES. SNES is still better but everything after the SNES until now was meh IMO. Now they are getting a lot of support and putting out some of their best stuff. This is the best choice they could have made. A few voices on forums may want a more traditional console, I don't use it as a handheld very much at all. Sales, however, say otherwise. I mean it will overtake Xbox One before the year is out. So we are just a very small minority.

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Yes as someone who barely plays Nintendo consoles, SNES is the best. Although if they make a TV version of the Switch, it could overtake SNES but I wouldn't guarantee it.

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Originally Posted by Yharnamresident

I spent hours examining it, its an unlocked 60 FPS. NullDC can easily recognize locked and unlocked framerates. The whole game isn't 60 FPS for sure.

This is another game that runs at an unlocked 60 FPS. The video was captured from real hardware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXKtvkmR6o



Kamahl is a pretty active and knowledgeable member on here(you might not of heard of him), but he said the main thing that separates Dreamcast games with PS2/GameCube games is the weaker shadows and no post-processing effects. I've started to realize hes absolutely right. Theres not much developers could do about the weaker shadows, but the post-processing effects would've started to be used more in games in 2001 and after. I remember reading on a gaming site that Skies of Arcadia was the first game to ever use bloom when it was released in late 2000. That does seem pretty accurate but it might not be. It also explains why Dreamcast games rarely use them, the bulk of Dreamcast games were released in 1999 and 2000.

This is very useful. I take it you couldn't get 3D Ripper or Ninja Ripper to work with relatively modern PCSX2 versions?

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I thought we were specifically talking about battle mode. Adventure mode(when u go and talk to girls in chibi mode) is indeed 60 fps. But the game is locked like that , it isn't variable ( 60 fps for adventure and 30 fps for battle.)

I am guessing those effects are too much without a controlled environment. All those effects only took place in cutscenes and we're only breifly used. The shadows could have been done a different way, urban chaos and Hoffman bmx used real time shadow mapping (kinda like modern games, using the lights viewpoint/distance to render the object to a texture as a shadow). There's a tech demo of that on the DC that was released a while back.

I've had no need to use ninja ripper on pcsx2 9.8. Everything I threw at it works. I've thrown alot of popular and obscure games. Never gave me a problem.

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The scale of everything, the lighting, even the way the cars drift is exactly the same.

What also makes it essentially undeniable, is that Sammy was also using the Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 engine for Faster than Speed. So they must've got a deal with Genki to use their game engines.

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We will have to agree to disagree. There's nothing on copyrights or the credits indicating that. Also there's nothing in maximum speed that even resembles Daytona. Further more Tokyo Xtreme racer engine behaves extremely different from Daytona. It does alot of culling on the cars while dyatona culls almost nothing. It even renders alot of what's offscreen. IAM more willing to bet genki was lent something from Sega or amusement vision to work with.

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Originally Posted by SegataS

How did doing both a powerful console and a "gimmick" work for Xbox One? Pretty much killed all momentum and handed it to Sony and now the Switch is about to outsell XBO. Pretty clear picture which was the right choice.

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Its easy to notice, its because they bundled the gimmick with the console and not sell it separately.

Also the Xbone is not a super powerful console, they used very outdated RAM compared to the PS4, so they could afford bundling the gimmick.

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Originally Posted by SegataS

Argue all you want but the sales prove people demanding a traditional console from them are in the minority.

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Yes as someone who wants a traditional console from them, I recognize that.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I think it was nothing to do with the price, but the interface. I'm a Staff Nurse in the NHS and even the Trust bought a Wii to help entertain the elderly patients
I know of many people who don't game at all but bought a Wii to play Wii Sports and use the Balance Board. I think Nintendo did a remarkable job of making a system, that non-gamers could use do to the small simple remote, they screwed all that up with the monster controller for the Wii U mind

The issue was though that while Wii sales were massive, those non-gamers didn't buy many games and I think that's why 3rd party support was lacking

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In 2010, my friend was house-sitting a nearby house, and he brought me over so we could do some activities. The house had a Wii with only Wii Sports. Theres exhibit #72,454,598. Also we played Wii Sports baseball while drunk.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

They certainly sold a ton of Wii Fit and Balance boards. I believe Nintendo managed to sell an insane number of Balance Boards for the Wii.

Edit*

Yep, Wii Fit and Wii Fit plus are 2 of the top 10 best sellers for the Wii. There's not a single 3rd party title in the top 10 and after Just Dance 2 (near number 15), the sales numbers drop dramatically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ii_video_games

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This seems more accurate

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I think that was the issue with the system. Nintendo sold a ton of system to non-gamers who only used it for Wii Play or Wi Fit

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Yes Nintendo definitely wasn't interested in the men 18-35 demographic with the Wii.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Does anyone know how many Polygons Buggy Heat is pushing? I was impressed by that when it launched in Japan, it looked like a Model 3 game

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Buggy Heat is locked 30 FPS at 20,000 polygons. The game really seems like it has no charisma, its just ghetto allover.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

I thought we were specifically talking about battle mode. Adventure mode(when u go and talk to girls in chibi mode) is indeed 60 fps. But the game is locked like that , it isn't variable ( 60 fps for adventure and 30 fps for battle.)

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I noticed the dorm section was definitely a locked 60 FPS, but I never saw any section that was a locked 30 FPS. I've seen locked 30 FPS before like MSR and Striker Pro 2000.

Let me look at the game again in the latest version of Demul.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

I am guessing those effects are too much without a controlled environment. All those effects only took place in cutscenes and we're only breifly used. The shadows could have been done a different way, urban chaos and Hoffman bmx used real time shadow mapping (kinda like modern games, using the lights viewpoint/distance to render the object to a texture as a shadow). There's a tech demo of that on the DC that was released a while back.

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I would hope developers would've found a way to use light bloom during an entire game, I know theres a certain member here that hates bloom but I absolutely love it.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

I've had no need to use ninja ripper on pcsx2 9.8. Everything I threw at it works. I've thrown alot of popular and obscure games. Never gave me a problem.

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That seems surprising. Theres nothing wrong with using a 8-year-old Dreamcast emulator, but an 8-year-old PS2 emulator should have incompatibility and glitches with tons of games.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

We will have to agree to disagree. There's nothing on copyrights or the credits indicating that. Also there's nothing in maximum speed that even resembles Daytona. Further more Tokyo Xtreme racer engine behaves extremely different from Daytona. It does alot of culling on the cars while dyatona culls almost nothing. It even renders alot of what's offscreen. IAM more willing to bet genki was lent something from Sega or amusement vision to work with.

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I didn't mean the Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 and Daytona USA 2001 engines are similar, but it seems undeniable that both engines were reused by Sammy. We'll have to wait for more opinions on this.

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Originally Posted by Cloofoofoo

Not sure what your asking. For ps2 you need pcsx2 9.8 which was the last version to allow extracting the scene using shift+f8 into an .obj file. Blender is merely a way to open the obj file. For GameCube I don't even think you need extraction, doesn't the debug info show primitives + primitives(dl) to get your polygon count per frame? For psp jpcsp supports extracting the scene to an object right off the bat. Then you can use ninja ripper on Sega hikaru and Naomi 2(demul) as it doesn't work too well on Naomi 1 and Dreamcast side.

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I tried to configure pcsx2 but there was no way, so I'm using dolphin, and how wonderful, with this emulator it is possible to measure multiplatform games, just as I did in the other thread, and this sheds light on some power controversies, for example: I noticed that Sonic Heroes is basically a Dreamcast game at its core, maybe the Dreamcast version had another name and it wasn't a team, the polygonal counts are around 26k per frame. Edit: when Sonic is at speed, the polygonal count increases to 53k :?

So I was able to install the 0.9.8 version of PCSX2 and get it running and I generated some .obj files, however they have 0 bytes and when I open them in Blender nothing happens. Is there a specific plugin I need to use to run this properly? I'm trying it with the PS2 game Wipeout Pulse just for testing purposes.
Thanks

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Originally Posted by stu

I'm trying it with the PS2 game Wipeout Pulse just for testing purposes.
Thanks

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Measuring these polygon counts is a bit of a chore, so I recommend choosing a good game, you want to test well, for example WipOut Pulse is a psp port if I'm not mistaken. The futuristic game of PS2 is Wipeout Fusion and Kinetica. both in early 2002.

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Originally Posted by Yharnamresident

Nowadays that seems believable, but even early 2000's Walkman/Tritition/PS1 Sony?

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Cash Reserves or actual money in the bank. Nintendo I seem to remember was ahead of SONY in that dept and seem to remember NCL being listed as one of Japan's most profitable companies even the days when Sky News would cover such data.
What ever the truth cash. Nintendo at the time of developing the Wii had billions in the bank and could have funded a top end GPU and CPU.

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Buggy Heat is locked 30 FPS at 20,000 polygons. The game really seems like it has no charisma, its just ghetto allover

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I quite liked it in 1999. I liked the weather effects and how the track would change on each lap and thought that the mud and water effects, were very Model 3 like. I was also impressed by the number of Internet options at the time too.

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Also the Xbone is not a super powerful console, they used very outdated RAM compared to the PS4, so they could afford bundling the gimmick

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The One is a powerful console. The story goes, that MS was hoping they would have double the RAM, untill SONY hit them for six. It's still got a capable GPU a CPU around the same power of the PS4 and a state of the art sound system (the only could thing to come from Kinect) I don't mind Gimmicks and add-ons, but really when making a console. I rather one go for the best and highest performance along with a real good joypad above all else.

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Thats the wrong response, you could see he was agreeing with you

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I wasn't attacking Nintendo and sure SONY have a huge tech empire. These days and even years back consoles developers look to PC vendors for their tech (SEGA did) and if you had the money and are willing to spend the cash the likes of AMD are more than willing and able to developers high-end GPU's to meet your requirements (ok you do need a great team of engineers to draw up design sheets, cooling solutions ect). It's not like the N64, Cube was using any NCL In-House tech

I was simply making the point, that if NCL really wanted too, it could fund and make a real High-end console. But its seems to me that Nintendo still looks at the toy market (this isn't a dig) doesn't want to be selling High-end consoles at above £400 and is leaving that to MS and SONY. I feel that's a shame, I love the Snes and I loved its high-end features (for the time).

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Originally Posted by stu

So I was able to install the 0.9.8 version of PCSX2 and get it running and I generated some .obj files, however they have 0 bytes and when I open them in Blender nothing happens. Is there a specific plugin I need to use to run this properly? I'm trying it with the PS2 game Wipeout Pulse just for testing purposes.
Thanks

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No idea what could be. I didn't have to tweak anything to get it working. The only time it would give me empty obj files is during fmv intros. All Naomi 2 ports(virtuafighter 4, king of route 66, initial d) to ps2 used pre recorded movies captured from Naomi 2 as intros. Maybe what your trying to capture isn't real time? Other wise try messing with graphics setting.

One kinda off topic question. How long does it take to get a comment approved? I had posted a comparison between world series baseball 2k1 and gekitou pro yakyuu (both made by Sega wow using same engine). It still hasn't been approved.

I know it is very labor intensive and time consuming but (if possible) I would like the polygonal counts of Silent Hill 3. mgs 3, gow, FF12, Bujingai, Katamari Damacy.

I find it hard for any of these to reach more than 100k per scene, I feel that the gen's final was around 3kk polygons for 30fps games and sub-5kk for 60fps games. I Feel there was also a loss of interest in pushing polygons, devs opted to add more light sources and textures

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Originally Posted by stu

So I was able to install the 0.9.8 version of PCSX2 and get it running and I generated some .obj files, however they have 0 bytes and when I open them in Blender nothing happens. Is there a specific plugin I need to use to run this properly? I'm trying it with the PS2 game Wipeout Pulse just for testing purposes.
Thanks

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Go to the GPU settings and change it from "D3D9hardware" to "D3D9software"