Hardware pushed to the limits according to Sega-16 members

[Ryoandr]

I always found SMS Fire & Forget II very impressive, tho it's probably some cheap trickery. Nevertheless it's by far the best version of the game, supposedly the game was dev'ed on SMS and then ported. Some catchy PSG music also. Note that being an euro game it should be played on 50hz, on 60hz it's nearly unplayble.

Only vid I could find that was played in 50hz

[segarule]

goldenband, what you think about this?

See footbag

[goldenband]

^It's a cleverly designed and very good game, but AFAIK all the techniques it uses are well-known tricks on the Atari 2600: varying color by scanline, using sprite cloning to create copies of objects (like the second row of trees), etc.

The player character is colorful and large, but easy to build since there's nothing else happening on those scanlines (except the super-simple footbag sprite, which I'm guessing uses the ball object).

[zetastrike]

Goldenband, what about Killing Time for 3DO? I remember Ewhac and Gammadev mentioning in their videos how it uses a true 3D engine and (I'm trying to remember specifics and failing) that it's doing a lot of things at the same time with the map and enemies, which is why it runs rather choppily.

[saturndual32]

Goldenband, what about Killing Time for 3DO? I remember Ewhac and Gammadev mentioning in their videos how it uses a true 3D engine and (I'm trying to remember specifics and failing) that it's doing a lot of things at the same time with the map and enemies, which is why it runs rather choppily.

Yeah Killing Times level structure is pretty impressive for the 3DO... and console FPS of its time in general. That game is a couple frames per second from being my favorite 3DO game.

[tomaitheous]

I always found SMS Fire & Forget II very impressive, tho it's probably some cheap trickery. Nevertheless it's by far the best version of the game, supposedly the game was dev'ed on SMS and then ported. Some catchy PSG music also. Note that being an euro game it should be played on 50hz, on 60hz it's nearly unplayble.

Only vid I could find that was played in 50hz

What do you find impressive about it?

[goldenband]

Yeah Killing Times level structure is pretty impressive for the 3DO... and console FPS of its time in general. That game is a couple frames per second from being my favorite 3DO game.

I think that's probably why I'd hesitate to name it to a "hardware pushed to the limits" thread, since other FPSes on the system managed a much better framerate. Pretty impressive game even so, though it suffers from a nasty bug that had to be addressed with a mail-in replacement disc.

[Sik]

Which is also why I don't like when people say the Shenmue proto on the Saturn is impressive, it runs at a slideshow framerate. Although admittedly it was a debug build that had optimizations turned off, but even then. Besides most of the best looking stuff was just good texturing, not detailed models.

Also back to the point, 3DO has this (somehow better than the PS1 and Saturn ports):



Or heck the game bundled with the Panasonic 3DO (skip to 3:22 for gameplay)



Or like several other games. Really, the 3DO was always meant for 3D games so 3D in itself isn't impressive. Also looked up Killing Time and it's nothing compared to the two videos I just posted.

[segarule]

What do you find impressive about it?

I agree with you. I dont see nothing impressive about it. But you could say to us if you point some SMS game that you think that pushed the hardware to limits in your opinion?

[saturndual32]

Which is also why I don't like when people say the Shenmue proto on the Saturn is impressive, it runs at a slideshow framerate. Although admittedly it was a debug build that had optimizations turned off, but even then. Besides most of the best looking stuff was just good texturing, not detailed models.

Wasnt the Saturn Shenmue demo running at about 15 FPS?, thats not too bad for its generation. After all, N64 Zelda games ran at barely 20 FPS, didnt they?. Its also close to the framerate of Panzer Dragoon Saga. And of course the Shenmue demo had room for improvement. Even at that frame rate, nothing on that genre looked that good for the Saturn.

Or heck the game bundled with the Panasonic 3DO (skip to 3:22 for gameplay)



Or like several other games. Really, the 3DO was always meant for 3D games so 3D in itself isn't impressive. Also looked up Killing Time and it's nothing compared to the two videos I just posted.

But Crash and Burn is using some sort of prerendered track, didnt it?. And the cars are prerendered too. Looks great and moves smooth, but t feels really limited.

[Sik]

But Crash and Burn is using some sort of prerendered track, didnt it?. And the cars are prerendered too. Looks great and moves smooth, but t feels really limited.

Tracks aren't prerendered (note how the camera always stays centered on the car, it wouldn't be able to do that if the track was prerendered), cars seem to be sprites though. But again, don't forget this is a launch game on a console during a time where 3D was a complete rarity everywhere.

[goldenband]

Also back to the point, 3DO has this (somehow better than the PS1 and Saturn ports):

While some of the issue is probably just lazy/rushed porting, the 3DO did have a few interesting hardware advantages over the PS1 (not sure about the Saturn). Here's what I wrote a while ago when my memory was fresher:

I also think the 3DO was more flexible in dynamically allocating color bit depth to textures and/or polygons; IIRC it had all kinds of different options, whereas the PS1 was far more granular, which in turn caused memory shortages and/or reduced color counts when games were ported from 3DO > PS1. ewhac and gammadev talk about that at some point.

I'm pretty sure it was in their Star Fighter gameplay video that they discussed that one.

Tracks aren't prerendered (note how the camera always stays centered on the car, it wouldn't be able to do that if the track was prerendered), cars seem to be sprites though. But again, don't forget this is a launch game on a console during a time where 3D was a complete rarity everywhere.

FWIW Crash 'n Burn does use a trick to improve rendering times, though I'm not sure how standard it is. Again, quoting myself (but more recently):

Crash 'n Burn - streams pre-compiled "lists of visible parts" from disc so that the program already knows what the player can/can't see and doesn't have to calculate it, yielding massive improvement in performance

Apparently they used a program to simulate driving down the track, put together those "lists of visible parts", and went from some pathetic number of FPS to the result we now see.

[Barone]

“As part of the crew back then, we had Mark Cerny as our resident super genius programmer. Even then, he had brilliant design insights. He had done Marble Madness and Sonic 2; in fact, a lot of the early crew came from Sega. Madeline Canepa came from Sega. Mark Cerny had come from Sega. He was really instrumental in creating our early engines that were able to draw these 3D streaming worlds. Crash n’ Burn, Total Eclipse, and Off-World Interceptor were all based on that core technology.”

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...-dynamics.aspx

[goldenband]

The post I had in mind came from one Gregg Tavares at Crystal Dynamics, FWIW:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...do/2297E2KsDOI

[Barone]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to goldenband again.

This is the best part IMO:

On CnB we wrote a program that would 'drive' down the track and for each section of the track it makes a list of all the parts that can actually be seen. These 'lists of visible parts' are then stored in the CD and as you drive down the track the 'list' for the part of the track you are currently on is loaded. This makes it run faster because we don't have to do all the calculations for which things are visible while you are racing.