Thinking about a 3DO

[j_factor]

I have never had the desire to get a a 3DO I do remember the CD32 though is it better than the 3DO?

Tough to say. I own a CD32 myself... Although the two are actually close in capabilities, in general the 3DO "feels like" a less powerful version of Playstation or Saturn, whereas the CD32 "feels like" a really advanced version of a 16-bit console. The CD32 is a better system "in theory" than in reality. What I mean by that is, if you look at a list of games released for it, its library sounds awesome. And then you learn that you can expand it to make it play Amiga games, and it sounds like the ultimate 16-bit(-style) machine (you can even run Amiga Workbench, various Amiga programs, install a hard drive, upgrade the RAM, etc.). But a lot of CD32 ports are disappointing. Some of them are literally Amiga games pressed to a CD. That's not always a bad thing (I'd be happy with any great Amiga game on CD instead of floppy), but it can be rather lame. The most heinous case is probably Battletoads, which only uses one button on the controller. Many Amiga games used just one button because some people only had one-button joysticks. But it just doesn't work with Battletoads, which uses up to move in that direction (and in this case, also to jump); the port is ruined by it. They released it in exactly the same form on CD32, which is insulting when the CD32 controller has four face buttons. There are also a few games, designed with lower-end Amigas in mind, that allow you to choose music or sound effects, but not both (to allow for lower-memory machines). It's ridiculous when they keep it that way on the CD32, and it's just a side-scrolling platformer. Even when the ports don't have these problems, they're usually not exactly impressive. But, all else equal, I'd rather have a CD-ROM than a floppy disk, so the CD32 kind of wins by default when the ports aren't FUBAR'ed. Also, some games require a mouse and keyboard. Anyway, aside from the bad ports, the CD32 also has a video problem if you live in an NTSC country. Even though there are NTSC systems, almost all the games were only designed for PAL and don't display correctly. One way to get around this problem is to hook it up to an RGB monitor (sadly not VGA), but you can only do that with one of the add-ons that turns it into a computer, which will cost you a minimum of $70 (plus they're pretty rare, plus the cost/hassle of obtaining an RGB monitor).

So, CD32 has a ridiculous cost of entry, for it to be "useful". Once you have all these things -- keyboard, mouse, SX-1 or SX-32 add-on, RGB cable, RGB monitor, floppy drive (optional) -- and make sure to research every game before buying, then, yes, it is a better system than 3DO. But for most people, it's way too much of a hassle.

[kool kitty89]

I think the 3DO is more powerful in general context, and almost certainly when it comes to 3D, it had hardware support for texture mapping, gouraud shading, polygon rasterization (well quads like saturn actaully) and a matrix coprocessor for handling 3D math like PSX did, and could display in highcolor (16-bit) and truecolor (24-bit) modes I beleive. (not sure how the Amiga blitter compares overall) I think the CPU is a good bit more powerful as well.

[Chilly Willy]

The Amiga chipset (both the graphics and the blitter) is geared towards 2D. It was the King of 2D. While you could do 3D, it had to ALL be done by the CPU, which was merely a 14MHz 68020. It was a nice system, but it couldn't compete (technical wise) with the 3DO, PSX, or Saturn.

[j_factor]

People call 3DO the first 3D machine, but the games don't really convey that to me. Road Rash, for example, gives the illusion of a 3D game, but it's really not, it just has polygonal buildings. Crash n' Burn is "real 3D" but the tracks have fairly little detail, the cars are still sprites, and even within these limits it runs at less than 30 fps.

Of course it's more powerful than the CD32, though. Except it's not quite true that "all 3D" is done strictly by the CPU -- it has the Akiko chip too. The only problem is, very few games were actually created for the CD32, and fewer still used the Akiko chip. It's hard to gauge its usefulness (although I'm sure it's not amazing).

In any case, I did not mean to derail the thread. My original comment bringing up the CD32 was just a bit of facetiousness. I would only recommend a CD32 to a hardcore classic gamer who knew what they were getting into, did not already own an Amiga (or at least not an AGA Amiga), had a good amount of money to spend, and didn't mind researching every game before purchasing. 3DO is cheaper, less obscure (at least in the US), easier to find games for, and doesn't suffer from technical problems like the CD32 has.

[kool kitty89]

I don't know what the Amiga 1200/CD32 blitter is capable of, it might be useful for some effects associated with 3D games, like texture mapping. A game like doom isn't helped at all by polygon pushing features as it uses raycasting, not a polygon based rasterization system, hardware texture mapping would help with it though. (I'm pretty sure the PSX port is still using software raycasting) Hence why Doom ran so poorly on 3DO, not a huge amout of CPU resourse and the GPU fighting with the CPu over main bus time. (no caching for either CPU or GPU, the GPU has 1 MB of dedicated VRAM, but need to work in the 2 MB of main also tied to CPU for as the sourse and VRAM as the destination; PSX had chaches for both GPU and CPU and almost 3x the bandwith on top of that, plus more powerful processors)

A game like Starfighter shows off the 3DO pretty well IMO, maybe Need for Speed as another.

Mut again, the CPU and GPU were alway in contention for the main bus, so you could get great tech demos with no game logic and almost no CPU usage, but much more limited games as you use more and more bandwidth for CPU.

[Silanda]

Hence why Doom ran so poorly on 3DO, not a huge amout of CPU resourse and the GPU fighting with the CPu over main bus time. (no caching for either CPU or GPU, the GPU has 1 MB of dedicated VRAM, but need to work in the 2 MB of main also tied to CPU for as the sourse and VRAM as the destination

It also didn't help that 3do Doom was ported in about six weeks, leaving no time for things like optimization or tailoring the engine to more suit the hardware.

[Chilly Willy]

Of course it's more powerful than the CD32, though. Except it's not quite true that "all 3D" is done strictly by the CPU -- it has the Akiko chip too. The only problem is, very few games were actually created for the CD32, and fewer still used the Akiko chip. It's hard to gauge its usefulness (although I'm sure it's not amazing).

AKIKO had nothing to do with 3D. AKIKO was a chunky to planar converter - it took 8 bit chunky graphics like used in VGA games, and converted it to 8 planes as used by the Amiga graphics. That's ALL it did - nothing else. CBM added it to make it easier to port VGA games to the CD32. You could leave the game drawing in chunky-style 256 color mode, then use the AKIKO to quickly convert the screen data into Amiga planar format. It's operation was really simple - you stored 8 longwords of chunky data to AKIKO, then read back 8 longwords of planar data.

The blitter could also be used in multiple passes to convert chunky to planar. My port of Doom on the Amiga was designed to do three different forms of chunky to planar: straight CPU-only (for people with 68030 or better), AKIKO (for people on CD32), and BLITTER (for people on stock A1200). It also had support for CyberGraphics (for people who had a video card in their Amiga).

[MN12BIRD]

People call 3DO the first 3D machine, but the games don't really convey that to me. Road Rash, for example, gives the illusion of a 3D game, but it's really not, it just has polygonal buildings. Crash n' Burn is "real 3D" but the tracks have fairly little detail, the cars are still sprites, and even within these limits it runs at less than 30 fps.

Need for Speed is a better example. The backgrounds and the cars are true 3D.

[j_factor]

Need for Speed is possibly the most impressive 3DO game, but even so, it still uses a lot of sprites (for objects other than cars). It is a fully 3D, texture-mapped game, but the graphics are about as basic as you can get within that. It still beats the pants off anything for the Jaguar (or CD32), but if that's the best 3DO can do, I still say it's not much of a 3D system.

[kool kitty89]

Need for Speed is a better example. The backgrounds and the cars are true 3D.

Need for Speed is possibly the most impressive 3DO game, but even so, it still uses a lot of sprites (for objects other than cars). It is a fully 3D, texture-mapped game, but the graphics are about as basic as you can get within that. It still beats the pants off anything for the Jaguar (or CD32), but if that's the best 3DO can do, I still say it's not much of a 3D system.

Ahem...

Starfighter shows off the 3DO pretty well IMO, maybe Need for Speed as another.

Really, look at Starfighter: http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...rch_type=&aq=f

[j_factor]

Uh, that game looks pretty bad. I own the Saturn port, and it's pretty good gameplay-wise, but it's an ugly game. Terrible draw-in, everything's very blocky, and what is up with those squared explosions? Actually I'd probably put Total Eclipse ahead of it. The only problem with Total Eclipse was that everything looked exactly the same.

[MN12BIRD]

Dude the machine came out in NA in 1993... it predates the Saturn and PS1 by 2 years over here! I think that has to be taken into consideration when comparing its 3D graphics to these other systems.

[Silanda]

Bladeforce was another game that looked pretty good. It used a lot of fog along with a pretty short draw distance, but it was nice and smooth IIRC. It was a pretty good game too.

[j_factor]

Dude the machine came out in NA in 1993... it predates the Saturn and PS1 by 2 years over here! I think that has to be taken into consideration when comparing its 3D graphics to these other systems.

I see it as a one year difference; the first launch of the 3DO was in 1993 and the first launches of Saturn and Playstation were in 1994. Besides, time difference doesn't really tell the whole story. In Japan, the time difference between the Dreamcast launch and the Gamecube launch was greater than between Dreamcast and N64 (and all of these systems debuted in Japan). I think we'd all agree that Dreamcast is closer to Gamecube graphically. Hell, Genesis predates SNES by 2 years (everywhere), and yet I wouldn't say SNES blows it away.

[MN12BIRD]

Yeah and compare the 3DO to anything before it. Point is it was far ahead of anything else at the time. Most video game systems come out earlier in Japan so I don't count that date. I count when they came out here. Heck when the PS1 came out in Japan I didn't even know about it seeing I was in grade school and wouldn't have had the internet at that time. No one I knew had any idea what it was.

Plus you can't compare the time between the N64 and anything afterward. The mid 90's was a big change in computer hardware. I mean once 3D hardware acceleration became common things started to improve much quicker than they ever did before. But in 1993 3D acceleration was unheard of in consumer electronics.

The 3DO is a strange anomaly. Being Developed in America and released here before Japan. It was basically a multimedia computer and to have that power in a kids toy was unheard of. Hence it cost way to much was geared towards videophiles. Once Sony came in, they could afford to mass produce consoles at lower costs and even sell them without making profit. They had the confidence they would sell enough games to make it back. I doubt 3DO could have done that. Sega couldn't even do that. Pricing wise I mean the Saturn couldn't compete with the low cost manufacturing of the PS1.