Voxels?

Just wondering if anyone has tried old school voxel rasterizing IE. squares or raycasting cubes on Genesis, SCD, or 32X? Seen a Snes S-FX demo try it but thought maybe the Sega platform might do a better job of it. Was wondering if memory is a bottleneck since voxels seem to use a lot I read or is it a CPU matter?

Not a programmer but the basic concept was a short radius of landscape polygons(cubes) followed up with 2D voxels, as the voxels look crappy up close but they render fast and look okay at a distance. Feel free to cut to the bone, I'd rather know too much of what doesn't work rather than continue being ignorant with a game design idea. Can always adapt or maybe consider it for 32X or other platforms in that range.

Have you seen Phase Zero for the Atari Jaguar?, it wasnt released BITD, but a proto sufaced a while ago. That game with its voxel engine, looks way better than most Jaguar polygon games. Also, the Atari Owl project (currently canceled), was a Zelda style 3d act-rpg, that was using a voxel engine for its outworld enviroments. It was looking pretty sweet.
Its a shame that we rarely saw voxel engines for the home consoles (like Sega Saturns Amok), they provided a pretty interesting look.

I plan to work on some voxel stuff on the 32X, just haven't gotten to that part of the TODO list yet. The voxel code used on old 680x0 and 386 computers would be perfect for the 32X. To get an idea of how a 32X voxel racer would look, check out this GBA voxel game.

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Originally Posted by saturndual32

Have you seen Phase Zero for the Atari Jaguar?, it wasnt released BITD, but a proto sufaced a while ago. That game with its voxel engine, looks way better than most Jaguar polygon games. Also, the Atari Owl project (currently canceled), was a Zelda style 3d act-rpg, that was using a voxel engine for its outworld enviroments. It was looking pretty sweet.
Its a shame that we rarely saw voxel engines for the home consoles (like Sega Saturns Amok), they provided a pretty interesting look.

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Yep I've seen Phase Zero, looks so good that I hope it finds release some day. Aww, didn't know Atari Owl was cancelled, a little rough looking but it has potential. Yeah I like the look of voxels since it can form organic shapes more quickly with proportionally less hardware specs than polygons but like I mentioned not so good close up or for straight flat surfaces, thought Outcast had the right compromise of buildings being polygonal on hills of raster voxels.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

I plan to work on some voxel stuff on the 32X, just haven't gotten to that part of the TODO list yet. The voxel code used on old 680x0 and 386 computers would be perfect for the 32X. To get an idea of how a 32X voxel racer would look, check out this GBA voxel game.

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Yep I've noticed how busy you've been lol, love Wolf32X and look forward to the Doom project. :rock: 386 you say, well that gives me an idea of spec range, been looking at every 3D game pre-texture mapping from Amiga to ZX Spectrum. Read some other threads like the Star Blade one, very interesting, forgot about the memory cost of each polygon thus voxel questions.

Yeah the Banjo prototype is cool, not sure what they switched to in the actual release, maybe that engine Raylight Studios made, I think it got used a few times.

Do you think I should post mockups or targets for review, mostly what I have now are "concepts" on 16-bit 3D engines? IDK some of it really isn't about voxels but rather 'limited 3D' in general, maybe a different thread is needed to discuss it more broadly on what worked and didn't in retrospect before games went full 3D.
Mostly just curious about voxels but if you think they might be doable on 32X that gives me some hope on the concept, hopefully I'll have a 32X when you try voxels. Should have bought the last one I saw, $50 boxed sounds pretty good now compared to not finding anymore of them locally. :|

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Originally Posted by BladeJunker

Yep I've noticed how busy you've been lol, love Wolf32X and look forward to the Doom project. :rock: 386 you say, well that gives me an idea of spec range, been looking at every 3D game pre-texture mapping from Amiga to ZX Spectrum. Read some other threads like the Star Blade one, very interesting, forgot about the memory cost of each polygon thus voxel questions.

Yeah the Banjo prototype is cool, not sure what they switched to in the actual release, maybe that engine Raylight Studios made, I think it got used a few times.

Do you think I should post mockups or targets for review, mostly what I have now are "concepts" on 16-bit 3D engines? IDK some of it really isn't about voxels but rather 'limited 3D' in general, maybe a different thread is needed to discuss it more broadly on what worked and didn't in retrospect before games went full 3D.
Mostly just curious about voxels but if you think they might be doable on 32X that gives me some hope on the concept, hopefully I'll have a 32X when you try voxels. Should have bought the last one I saw, $50 boxed sounds pretty good now compared to not finding anymore of them locally. :|

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Mock-ups are always interesting to see.

Given how a number of voxel demos looked on a stock Amiga with a 68000, the 32X should be plenty for a good voxel game. Another existing new voxel game is Fallen Angels by DrTypo for the Jaguar. It is an update of the old Atari 8-bit classic, Rescue on Fractalus. It uses voxels for the world. That would also be an awesome game to see on the 32X.

Hey Chilly.
I remember reading some years back, at Atari Age, from a Jaguar coder, that the Jag had better potential for a voxel type engine than Saturn and Playstation, since the Jaguar hardware was more flexible, and not catered so much toward polygons. He also mentioned many times, that the Jaguar was better at pixel shattering effects, like those in Tempest 2000, than the Saturn and PS1.
Any true to that?

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Originally Posted by saturndual32

Hey Chilly.
I remember reading some years back, at Atari Age, from a Jaguar coder, that the Jag had better potential for a voxel type engine than Saturn and Playstation, since the Jaguar hardware was more flexible, and not catered so much toward polygons. He also mentioned many times, that the Jaguar was better at pixel shattering effects, like those in Tempest 2000, than the Saturn and PS1.
Any true to that?

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No. There's nothing I can think of that would make the Jaguar better than either the Saturn or PS1 at ANY kind of game. The BLITTER in the Jaguar is geared toward 2D blits (which both the Saturn and PS1 can do... the Saturn better than either), and raster line rendering for polys (only handles individual lines instead of the whole poly like both the Saturn and PS1). The GPU in itself isn't as powerful a processor as the SH2 in the Saturn, or the MIPS R3K in the PS1. The 68000 in the Jaguar is a nice processor, but not powerful enough to make any real difference, especially against the extra SH2 in the Saturn. The Saturn has more raw power (in its processors) than either the PS1 or the Jaguar. The GPU, DSP, and 68000 combined MIGHT possibly be more powerful in total than the one MIPS processor in the PS1, but getting 100% out of multiprocessor systems is near impossible. In common usage, the power utilized in the Jaguar is well below the PS1 and Saturn. The Jaguar simply wasn't a match for any of the next gen systems, which was why Atari was hard at work on the Jaguar 2 when the whole division got sacked.

Anywho, any voxel code the Jaguar can run could be done at least to the same level in the PS1 or Saturn... probably better by the Saturn. Given the performance of the PS1 with full polys, there really wasn't a need for voxels. Look at games like Ridge Racer - why replace the full poly tracks with voxels? The Jaguar lagged on poly performance due to the need to rasterize the polys using the GPU before the BLITTER rendered each raster line, so voxels would be better for the Jaguar than full polys. Likewise, the 32X doesn't have any hardware support for anything more than filling a line with a single color, so voxels would be a better fit for the 32X than full polys as well.

Not knowing much about coding myself, i had believed for years that the Jaguar had some special hardware that gave it an advantage at voxel engines, hehe. Thanks for clearing that up Chilly.
And yeah, it would be great to see some voxel stuff on the 32X!

A.M.O.K. on Saturn is essentially a 32X port, I'm sure it is enhanced from the 32X game in some way but nobody has commented on how. I'd say Scorcher would have been a 32X game as well, but who knows what the speed difference would have been. When I first saw A.M.O.K. I seriously wished that all of the shoddy ports of PS1 games to the Saturn had ground up voxel engines instead, especially Thunderstrike II.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXfWErZk7pY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3lyBL-FOkc

This topic made me remember that old PC game outcast.

Looked around a bit on youtube to watch some gameplay footage for it only to come accrost a kickstarter video for it to reboot it, and a link to the failed kickstarter for it.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

Mock-ups are always interesting to see.

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Alright I'll do my best to relate my concepts to voxels and keep this on topic mostly.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

Given how a number of voxel demos looked on a stock Amiga with a 68000, the 32X should be plenty for a good voxel game. Another existing new voxel game is Fallen Angels by DrTypo for the Jaguar. It is an update of the old Atari 8-bit classic, Rescue on Fractalus. It uses voxels for the world. That would also be an awesome game to see on the 32X.

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Can't say I saw that one, looks good, hope the bug eyed alien from Fractalus can make an appearance. Jaguars are quite rare and expensive where I live, I think I'd like one more for the demo scene than its small game library that although has good games, many are easier and cheaper to play elsewhere. :|

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Originally Posted by sheath

A.M.O.K. on Saturn is essentially a 32X port, I'm sure it is enhanced from the 32X game in some way but nobody has commented on how. I'd say Scorcher would have been a 32X game as well, but who knows what the speed difference would have been. When I first saw A.M.O.K. I seriously wished that all of the shoddy ports of PS1 games to the Saturn had ground up voxel engines instead, especially Thunderstrike II.

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No kidding, been looking for a Saturn copy, just started with Saturn gaming recently. Well I'm not surprised as that old VHS of 32X demos featured the developer and some graphics not unlike A.M.O.K.s. Yeah I can see how voxels would help with long rolling hills and distance rendering, certainly worked for Novalogic.

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Originally Posted by madmax2069

This topic made me remember that old PC game outcast.

Looked around a bit on youtube to watch some gameplay footage for it only to come accrost a kickstarter video for it to reboot it, and a link to the failed kickstarter for it.

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Yeah sad really, never bought it but tried the demo back in the day. Kind of a tough sell to me on Outcast, not really fond of French Sci-Fi art design, and looking back something about low poly counts and France didn't integrate well since games of the region had very awkward and freaky looking low poly meshes EGs. Omikron, City of Lost Children. Although France did pioneer a lot of polygon use in games before it became standard practice and Twinsen was cool.

I think a mix of voxels and polys would be ideal. Think of something like Star Fox with a voxel ground instead of a checkerboard. That would be relatively easy for the 32X, but look awesome!