Printable View
How powerful would a Genesis with the Sega CD+32X combo, and any and all enhancement chips (such as the Sega Virtua Processor) would be? Would it be able to use both the catridge slot and the disc slot for one game? Groups like Traveler’s Tales and Treasure were already able to push a base Genesis to the limit, now imagine what would happen if all three units plus the SVP were all being pushed like that?
it would be even harder to manage than the Frankenstein's monster that was the Saturn. Now, a Sega Neptune console, with at least a 2X CDROM drive would have had the potential to kick the crap out of the Neo Geo CD. The problem is, with 3D graphics being the hot, new thing, no company would be allowed by their stockholders to hone the blade that is sprite graphics. "Make more of them 'threedy graffix' and do it fast!" Ah, what could have been.
This has come up from time to time... I think the way to go would be to run the game off of the CD, loading as much as you can into a 32meg RAM cart atop the 32X. Have the Sega CD handle all audio while the Genesis handles the background layers (using the sprites to add additional layers/colors). Use the 32X to render polygons over that. I don't know if that would be the maximum but at least every component can do something. Not sure where you would use the SVP, maybe put it in the RAM cart to decompress data.
For the type of game I'd go with something linear where you always advance in one direction (maybe a rail shooter?) so it's predictable when you will need to load data from the CD and you won't have to update the entire RAM cart at once. Doubt it will ever happen though as it would be very expensive and not that many people have all the hardware.
A RAM cart with 32MEG would take around 27 seconds to fill from the CD.
And maybe more right, if the data isn't one contiguous block?Quote:
Originally Posted by matteus
I guess the only way to avoid that is to have a cart (ROM) in the 32X plus a CD, so basically two games that work together. Is that even possible? The only parallel I can think of would be some of the DS games that could read a cart in the GBA slot.
Good idea! I wonder if the use of disc-switching (like several PS1 games) and/or dual-sides discs would help with storage? You can already do a lot with bank switching, so imagine this taken to a whole new level.Quote:
Originally Posted by axel
Let's say it works and you have say, 5 discs for your game. What will you put on them? Hopefully not FMV! It's not like the 32X can handle huge textures either. For low res pixel art I'd think one CD should be plenty.Quote:
Originally Posted by miru
Storage space has almost never been MD ecosystem's bottleneck.
If anything, it would be interesting to see if the Sega CD could pull off the same CD + RAM cart caching that Capcom and SNK pulled off with the Saturn. That would hopefully help with the load times. I unfortunately don't know anything about the hardware, so I don't know if that would help with stuff like video playback and data decompression.
I dunno, I think that games like Soulstar, Ranger-X, and Adv. of Batman & Robin showed what the Genesis could do. The Sega CD is pretty awesome at scaling and rotation, and and the Genny has a great soundchip.
Batman and Robin in particular was a technical marvel, considering the hardware. Not to mention the soundtrack sounded beyond what you'd think the YM2612 could produce.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Jones
I'd also say Contra Hard Corps pushed the hardware pretty hard too and used some really neat effects and what appeared to be all sorts of sprite scaling. All with minimal to no slowdown.
People have a very weird perception of what the CD can do :) Hopefully my next video will help clear a few things up!
I'd like to see that. I look at the few CD32X games that are able to send data from the CD side over to the 32X in real time, so I figure it could feed a RAM cart atop the 32X too. Half a minute of loading at power on is not a huge deal (people are used to loading from flash carts etc) but I think the challenge would be keeping loading times to a minimum during the game itself. That's why I would try to use the 32X just for flat-shaded polygons that don't use up huge amounts of memory.Quote:
Originally Posted by matteus
Unless I'm totally misunderstanding how things work, in that case please educate me =)
My 32x knowledge isn't too hot at the moment but my understanding of the CD is :) The way memory works in the CD combined with the slow drive makes things difficult to shift data around very efficiently. Don't want to ruin my video before I've even released it haha
I spoke to Chilly Willy a while back regarding the Yeti3D engine. He said you could mix textures with Gouraud shaded surfaces to improve the render speed.
My experience with 1X drives is that if you stick to sequential reads they tend to do OK, but if you need random access things get a lot slower (and less predictable). With the memory limitations and bottlenecks between the 32X-Genesis-CD I expect it only gets worse. That's why I think the ideal setup is where each component can do one thing well without having to move a ton of stuff around.Quote:
Originally Posted by matteus
Gets a bit difficult as at the end of the day everything has to travel to the MD's VDP or the 32x and fight for priority to get there.Quote:
That's why I think the ideal setup is where each component can do one thing well without having to move a ton of stuff around.