Fan-made tech demo of Starfox on the Genesis

[NeoVamp]

Nintendo DS version ain't bad either.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Honestly the DS version is the definitive version to have these days. You can tweak the settings to make it like either the PS1 or SNES versions for the cutscenes, and it has a new translation, new dungeons added, and a new ending on top of other nice things.

[NeoVamp]

You know.. I was wondering, this demo seems very promising but ultimatly the Genesis seems to not have quite the horse power that's needed to pull it off.
Even with optimized coding it might just end up a little bit under the Snes Star Fox speed, but even that was not super fast.

So I'm curious, lets say Stef replaces the 3D models with different fan made models, and the engine is used for a fan made game that only resembles Star Fox in gameplay,

Now my question is.. would it be possible to design a cheap yet powerful FX like chip for the Genesis to be used in such a homebrew?

I still feel very strongly about seeing if its possible to run Star Fox on a stock Genesis, but I'm thinking beyond the demo here..

First Pier Solar the enormous Sega RPG, then a fast 3D Space Shooter, with colorful planets and lotsa enemies, space fights and wormholes..

Hmm?

[sheath]

Even when this version is at 7FPS it is still completely playable. I don't see a problem with it at all, plus with the 68k overclocked it hits 20FPS!

As for a new development having a "special chip", I don't see why an FPGA couldn't be used but then I wouldn't see it as a legitimate Genesis game anymore.

[evildragon]

Well, even at 7fps, it isn't even optimized yet. It's not fair to say it can't do it well, when the code isn't even optimized.

[NeoVamp]

but then I wouldn't see it as a legitimate Genesis game anymore.

Meh, for me it would just be a Genesis game that runs at a faster clockspeed.. it would still be a cartridge that you can just stick in a standard Genesis.
That's always been the problem I've had with 32X and Sega CD, you need to have these bigass expansions, so when someone says "oh port to 32X I just see this enormous loss of a userbase"

That was the beauty of Starfox/Virtua Racer/Mario Kart you could just stick it in your genny/snes.

I dunno, I just see an opportunity beyond the demo, something that looks like the intro to StarCruiser but then an actual full game,
maybe travel from planet to planet, sometimes a space station, maybe free roam and you have to use your star map?

Something like Star Flight meets Star Fox kinda thing.

[Stef]

Isn't it possible to resign a renderer that draws directly in cell (tile) order so no conversion is needed? I remember Tiido specifically mentioning that this is the fastest route, though also tougher to program compared to linear bitmap frames.

In any case, you could still opt to double buffer the framebuffer window tiles in VRAM and page flip between them as needed. Optining for a single buffer has other advantages, but since Star Fox deals with similar VRAM constraints and double buffers anyway, I don't see this as being problematic.

Drawing in cell form cost a lot in the renderer code, honestly i'm not sure you are faster at end.
I had a special bitmap engine called FF Bitmap in SGDK (removed in last version) which was using plain tile for Fast Filling. But the code to draw polygon was too much complex (had to take care of updating tilemap correctly then doing tiles mixing on edge...) that all gains were lost in the complexity. I also tried scanline rendering but again handling scanline part fusion killed all the advantages... I guess it could work in some specific cases but for a generic bitmap engine i still believe a very fast but classic rendering code is still the best solution =)

I can't keep the VRAM double buffer... SGDK use some tiles for plain color tiles and more over the font. Then take that i have to use 64x64 tilemap size for both plan, have to keep space for probable future sprites and of course for the background and then you can see i just run out of free tile to store a double buffer in VRAM.
SNES Starfox store sprites table in dedicated memory, tilemap are probably smaller, well i guess they are very short on free vram. I could probably optimize my vram usage but i know i will meet problems later with that so that will happen in last.

[Stef]

You know.. I was wondering, this demo seems very promising but ultimatly the Genesis seems to not have quite the horse power that's needed to pull it off.
Even with optimized coding it might just end up a little bit under the Snes Star Fox speed, but even that was not super fast.

So I'm curious, lets say Stef replaces the 3D models with different fan made models, and the engine is used for a fan made game that only resembles Star Fox in gameplay,

Now my question is.. would it be possible to design a cheap yet powerful FX like chip for the Genesis to be used in such a homebrew?

I still feel very strongly about seeing if its possible to run Star Fox on a stock Genesis, but I'm thinking beyond the demo here..

First Pier Solar the enormous Sega RPG, then a fast 3D Space Shooter, with colorful planets and lotsa enemies, space fights and wormholes..

Hmm?

We could probably simplify models and adapt game to make it more playable but again i do not see the point of using a chip helper to boost genesis capabilities.
Nobody will be able to actually play it and as someone else said, that is not anymore megadrive then...

[Zebbe]

You know.. I was wondering, this demo seems very promising but ultimatly the Genesis seems to not have quite the horse power that's needed to pull it off.
Even with optimized coding it might just end up a little bit under the Snes Star Fox speed, but even that was not super fast.

So I'm curious, lets say Stef replaces the 3D models with different fan made models, and the engine is used for a fan made game that only resembles Star Fox in gameplay,

Now my question is.. would it be possible to design a cheap yet powerful FX like chip for the Genesis to be used in such a homebrew?

I still feel very strongly about seeing if its possible to run Star Fox on a stock Genesis, but I'm thinking beyond the demo here..

First Pier Solar the enormous Sega RPG, then a fast 3D Space Shooter, with colorful planets and lotsa enemies, space fights and wormholes..

Hmm?

As much as I'd love seeing this, I think making a chip is too costly and troublesome to make. I hope someone proves me wrong though.

[Vector2013]

Stef, maybe make the ship go through Bermuda Triangle time warp vortexes (like guy in Miami claims in 70s) then turn ship black (stealth bomber) and fly over ancient Rome attacking them then go in time warp vortex go in present (your game) then go in time warp vortex go in future but make ship white and brown like a old WWI plane attacking futuristic ships with lava on ground. Sound weird ? Maybe as weird as a human head on a fish talking to it on mic on a DC ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL2Z0vFKxYU

[NeoVamp]

We could probably simplify models and adapt game to make it more playable but again i do not see the point of using a chip helper to boost genesis capabilities.
Nobody will be able to actually play it and as someone else said, that is not anymore megadrive then...

I don't think you really understood what I meant, with replacing models I mean replacing them with models that are not property of Nintendo,
then you would have a game with art and models that is all yours, the chip would only serve to overcome the lack of cpu power,
the game itself would still be a Genesis game, just running with a faster speed, kind of like running a game on an overclocked Genesis.

As for what you said about nobody being able to play it, I don't understand that, if its an actual game in a cart that people can buy.. why wouldn't they be able to play it?

And it would still run on the Genesis, its not like it magically gets more colors or better sound, just.. more horse power to render the 3D models in spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

Mario Kart did it, Virtua Racing did it, both well known games for the systems they were on.

Yeah I'm a puritist too, I'd love to see Star Fox running on the Genesis without a chip, but if you got the engine written it would be a waste not to do anything else with it.

But that's just my 5 cents.

[Vector2013]

Why not do a Sega Fox MD (no chip) and a Sega Fox MD Deluxe with chip then ?

[Vector2013]

Sort of like the 2 Final Fight 1's on SNES ha ha.

[JimmothyDuffman]

Dare I say it...
Alright, I'll say it.

GENESIS DOES!

[kool kitty89]

The currently "accepted" answer is that the SNES was originally supposed to have backwards compatibility with the NES, and that was cut at the last minute. Personally this doesn't make much sense to me as the rest of the hardware shows no resemblance to the NES. Maybe the idea was to release an adapter later? I dunno.

The CPU (besides being horrible to program for) is actually really powerful, it's more efficient than the 68k, the issue is the speed at which it runs (2.68 MHz while reading RAM, 3.58 MHz if accessing ROM). At that speed, specially 2.68, it's not even close, the 68k just points and laughs.

Why that speed? Cost. Exactly why I'm not sure, the PCE didn't have any problem having super fast ROM and RAM.

Nintendo wanted 128 kB of work RAM for whatever reason, and they pushed the cost envelope in other areas already (like the sound system and arguably parts of the graphics system). Fast ROMs wouldn't have been feasible due to cost issues in general (NEC got around that with their in-house production, though it still must have added some cost too -probably explains why early MD games were larger on average than contemporary PCE games, even with the CD format not dominant yet).

120 ns SRAM really shouldn't have been unreasonably expensive though (32 kB at least should have been realistic at the time without any other compromises) . . . and that's if they wanted 7.16 MHz. If they stuck with 3.58 MHz, they could have used 250 ns SRAM (honestly, with a bus latch, cheap DRAM should have managed that -the same speed range the Amiga and ST's DRAM used), but much faster grades were already the dominant cheap commodity types of SRAM, and anything beyond 150 ns probably wouldn't save you much, so at least 5.37 MHz should have been doable (late model SMS and Z80 SRAM in the MD tended to be 120 ns anyway, maybe occasionally 150 ns). You'd have to deal with slow ROM, but at least you'd have the ability to optimize around working in fast RAM. (including use of Zero page)

Okay, that top one was the article that makes me think the SFX was going to be the main processor for the SNES CD.

The original Sony-Nintendo plans were in the works around the same time (or possibly earlier) than Sega's own CD design efforts, and I doubt the hardware would have gone beyond what Sega did (quite possibly closer to what NEC did with the Super CD -probably with more RAM at least).

However, the totally separate design Nintendo moved on with in the early 90s (with the Philips licensing partnership) was to use the same NEC V810 RISC CPU as the Virtual Boy and PC-FX. No idea about any added graphical capabilities though. (software rendering on the V810 would have been beyond the Super FX2 or SVP at the very least though)

Even when this version is at 7FPS it is still completely playable. I don't see a problem with it at all, plus with the 68k overclocked it hits 20FPS!

You've got to keep the gameplay speed consistent though. A little slowdown is OK, but going between 7 and 20 FPS (and changing gameplay speed alongside that) is not OK . . . if you time the game indepdently of framerate, that might work OK too though. (otherwise it's probably better to lock the actual framerate to something closer to the minimum -whatever that ends up being) In the case of SNES Star Fox, you have a pretty even framerate most of the time, with occasional slowdown, and that's perfectly fine.

As for a new development having a "special chip", I don't see why an FPGA couldn't be used but then I wouldn't see it as a legitimate Genesis game anymore.

Yeah, with the modern context of possibilities, that pretty moot and pointless. Hypothetical discussions on what would have been cheap and/or practical for the early 90s is another though. (MD would have needed a lot less "help" than the SNES to get Super FX level graphics -probably closer to the cheap DSPs Nintendo had been using from day 1)

On the not of actual homebrew though, it would be really interesting to see this sort of 3D being pushed on the Sega CD. (given current interest in that, we'll probably see Wolf 3D demos before that happens . . . unless other people take a specific interest in pushing polygons before Chilly Willy gets around to his stuff)

I can't keep the VRAM double buffer... SGDK use some tiles for plain color tiles and more over the font. Then take that i have to use 64x64 tilemap size for both plan, have to keep space for probable future sprites and of course for the background and then you can see i just run out of free tile to store a double buffer in VRAM.
SNES Starfox store sprites table in dedicated memory, tilemap are probably smaller, well i guess they are very short on free vram. I could probably optimize my vram usage but i know i will meet problems later with that so that will happen in last.

Ah, so best to leave any possibility for double buffering until after you've got other things pegged down. I assume it's pretty tight on Star Fox too, so they probably optimized around those limits specifically.
There's almost no use of sprites too, just the sparse use with the status display.

And, in any case, for the amount of work RAM and VRAM you're reserving for framebuffer space, it still seems like something close to 280x152 would work well for that (for switching to H40). If you wanted to keep it no larger than the existing 256x160, something like 272x150 or 280x146 would be decent compromises. (or round that a bit if you want to stick with complete 8x8 tiles without clipping the tops/bottoms at all)