Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

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Originally Posted by bootsector

It will be emulated in less than 3 months after first units are shipped out.

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I agree. Especially if it sells well (which it seems to be) and there is an interest. It'll be really soon after launch. Maybe not on Fusion on Gens, but you'll be able to play it illegally in some form by the end of the year at the latest. Every physical item that can potentially be converted to digital will end up on the internet at some point. The more popular, the faster. Pier Solar was complied into a single .exe file that could be run straight form your desktop. Paprium will too. It's just the way of things now.

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Originally Posted by AggroSky

I'd figure over half of all MD/Genesis games aren't for sale in digital stores due to copyright issues.

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More likely because they wouldn't make any money!

Those old games on download stores suck so bad

They always bundle them in with old and inaccurate emulators

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Originally Posted by matteus

More likely because they wouldn't make any money!

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This is the big problem actually. Even if it was just "wrap them in an existing emulator without doing anything else", in order to release an old game legally you need to get clearance from the relevant lawyers, who will also have to spend time finding out the papers for the original contracts... and then on top of that signing any new contracts (and reacquire any licenses) just to be able to release it.

If just paying the time spent by the lawyers is likely to cost more than releasing the game (especially if the contract got tucked somewhere that nobody knows anymore, as with No One Lives Forever) then they'll just refuse because it'll be a pure loss. This means only the big sellers from back then are likely to see a rerelease.

In the podcast Fonzie said the datenmeister is something Sega herself could have done back then. I agreed. But after further thinking, something bothered me. Technology has advanced a lot, what back then was expensive now is very cheap because it's obsolete and what back then was very expensive, today is cheaper. So I wonder if a chip with datenmeister characteristics back then wouldn't be prohibitively expensive. Wouldn't it be much more expensive than the SVP?

No, it wouldn't be more expensive than the SVP.
Datenmeister works more like FX chips in SNES cartridges, while SVP works more lika a second CPU if I remember correctly.

I'm no tech expert, but I find it hard to believe that a chip running samples of that quality (beyond CD/redbook) and running over a dozen channels would have been considered for any game hardware bitd, let alone a single console game. Arcade games didn't justify it and even 32-bit gen console hardware didn't.

It's neat that new homebrew is starting to add tech that couldn't be done at the time, but I'd prefer the option of turning it off to experience authentic aesthetics.

It would be more realistic to argue that Sega could have put a 3DFX Voodoo card in its Genesis carts and that it's no different than SNES games with SFX chips inside, but that was never going to happen and isn't close to the same thing.

Both the Super FX and SVP chips are both CPUs of a sort. Super FX is a custom RISC CPU whereas the SVP appears to be derived from an off-the-shelf DSP (digital signal processor). It's not really clear what the Datenmeister truly is at this point, but if it just provides mapping and some additional PCM channels then it is almost certainly simpler than both of those.

The SuperFX was literally a processor much like the SVP (and worse, a custom-made one, unlike the SVP which was just based on an already existing one). And the SA-1 chips were also processors (basically another 65816).

The DSP chips on the SNES were also that, but they were much more limited (running off internal hardwired ROM without external memory and much more limited instruction set) so they were likely a cheaper option. I wouldn't be surprised if the Datenmeister is a DSP like those.

Something similar to the Datenmeister (a chip capable of mixing PCM audio) could have been done back in the day by Sega. Something as powerful? Probably not.

CD quality audio PCM is relatively easy to do. The real obstacle back in the day was storing the samples. An 80Mbit cart would have been crazy expensive back in the day. There a number of games that got cut down to less than 32Mbit for cost reasons and there was only 1 40Mbit game for the entire system despite a standard mapper design being available.

Now it's true that most PCM hardware on retro consoles in that era was not capable of CD quality audio, but there was no point in adding the additional cost unless you had the storage capacity to use it.

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Originally Posted by paulojr_mam

In the podcast Fonzie said the datenmeister is something Sega herself could have done back then. I agreed. But after further thinking, something bothered me. Technology has advanced a lot, what back then was expensive now is very cheap because it's obsolete and what back then was very expensive, today is cheaper. So I wonder if a chip with datenmeister characteristics back then wouldn't be prohibitively expensive. Wouldn't it be much more expensive than the SVP?

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It was possible. Just look at the VRC6 chip for the Famicom version of Castlevania 3. It added sound channels as well. As for CD audio, I'd say that space was the major limiting factor due to the expense. Now with cheap flash memory being used, space isn't a problem anymore. I think the Datenmeister is a great idea, it's using modern tech to basically bring the MD to it's full potential without adding something that changes the fundamental workings of the MD itself. It likely could have been done back then, but the cost factors made it not worth the effort.

Genesis can produce really high quality samples if played back using 68000 instead of z80, but the biggest obstacle is (was) the size of cartridges.
Sonic Next Level and other examples prove that. Hardware/chips in cartridges able to play high quality samples wouldn't be that hard to make, it's all about the memory and good programming skills.

For some reason, producers were more keen on big cartridges on SNES (perhaps because RPGs tend to be long games). There are some 40+ Mbit SNES games. I wonder if there is something that made it easier on SNES, like some Nintendo policy or something.

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Originally Posted by AggroSky

it's using modern tech to basically bring the MD to it's full potential without adding something that changes the fundamental workings of the MD itself.

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Beyond its full potential, well beyond.

I don't hate it, but we gotta admit that it both surpasses by a large margin what the stock hardware could do and also makes the development easier by not having to care about PCM mixing with the Z80 (among many other things).



Now, bringing back the usual mood of this thread:
Who here really believes that this game gets released still in 2017?