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[Saturn Dragon]

why?

first time i played dreams i thought "this is the dumbest game ive ever played" and thats still my opinion.
what am i missing?

Exactly.

 

[RoboFu]

why?

first time i played dreams i thought "this is the dumbest game ive ever played" and thats still my opinion.
what am i missing?

Good taste ?

 

[PaintTinJr]

by late in the gen there was generally more baked light/shadow details in textures generally as was a cheap way to improve graphics, saturn devs were going to try to go that way too, maybe they have a technique were they mix 1 bit or more texture masks to certain textures to make the backed shadows, it was particularly uncommon in saturn games but that doesnt mean its above what it can do in fact textures doesnt look particularly higher res and seems to use that shadows only in certain parts, also tomb raider 1 is particularly wasteful in texture space, in PSX at least it keeps the loading screens in memory when playing, it can easily improve the variety of textures many times by replacing them

I'm talking about texture resolution on Saturn that was x4 deficient to PS1 already at performance disadvantage whether they both used their maximums at 128x128 vs 256x256 or performance modes of 64x64 vs 128x128. baking would have been the same as Quake3's lightmaps on both systems, and for dynamic lightmaps they'd need a lit and unlit version so that when moving geometry moved in and out of a light place holder volume, the texels of each primitive in or out of the volume would map differently, or an intermediate texture would have been prepared as a blend of lit and unlit texture texels to fake dynamic light.

But that still wouldn't explain why the Shenmue demo on Saturn has less blocky texturing than say tomb raider meaning the texture resolution is higher, and to achieve that higher fidelity Saturn needed to take a texture size performance hit, or stick with the same texture sizes and tessellate to x4 the geometry to go up a texture tier.

 

[cartman414]

Wondering in retrospect: What would it have taken for the Saturn to be effective at pushing triangles natively?

 

[Alexios]

in this case if it is something that could equal or surpass the PS1 version

Never said anything like that, so if that's what you're arguing, Idc. And emulators may do a lot more different to real hardware than just draw at different fps. The DF Retro analysis it's taken from is also really superficial, as, again, it makes no real mention of this often massive difference:

Saturn up, PlayStation down. Whole training room and the music room past it, visible on Saturn to the left, and to the right again rendered/visible from the floor below through the door above. Clearly overkill for most of the game but also clearly hampering the visuals in open rooms on PS.

Perfect spot for it with the room past the corridor almost fully rendered on Saturn from the start of the corridor at the timestamp and on PlayStation the blackness only begins pulling back right before exiting the corridor (and other places in this and other videos but that's a good spot for it there).


Bad quality captures/media/whatever (and PAL versions with even more issues common back then) but the massive draw distance differences are perfectly demonstrated.

But again, other levels show a lot more texture variety and complexity than the shots you chose so since the Shenmue shot doesn't have any of that it could potentially afford more polygons on the character and the baked lighting texture in that one spot with the same repeating textures elsewhere.

Being a Saturn only game for all we know the floor and ceiling could be VDP2, there and in every other flat surface without elevation changes so most of the indoors and much of the outdoors. Sonic Jam's VDP2 floor shows it could even seamlessly blend with gaps/other 3D elements as in its river...


There's not much game logic running for that demo, no enemies whatsoever, but then again, fights and other interactions in Shenmue tend to be completely separate to the wandering around as well even on DC with just NPC routines and such running, it would be even more segmented on Saturn.

It's not far removed from the (super early, unfinished, with also heavy use of VDP2) Fighting Force demo shown earlier either (meant to be a rolling demo but hacked to be playable and show more levels), better art direction and modeling alone would elevate it (also not aiming to be as smooth).

 

[Parazels]

It reminds me a discussion
Homo Sapiens vs Homo Neanderthals.

 

[damiank]

Homo Sapiens vs Segalots

 

[polybius80]

I'm talking about texture resolution on Saturn that was x4 deficient to PS1 already at performance disadvantage whether they both used their maximums at 128x128 vs 256x256 or performance modes of 64x64 vs 128x128. baking would have been the same as Quake3's lightmaps on both systems, and for dynamic lightmaps they'd need a lit and unlit version so that when moving geometry moved in and out of a light place holder volume, the texels of each primitive in or out of the volume would map differently, or an intermediate texture would have been prepared as a blend of lit and unlit texture texels to fake dynamic light.

But that still wouldn't explain why the Shenmue demo on Saturn has less blocky texturing than say tomb raider meaning the texture resolution is higher, and to achieve that higher fidelity Saturn needed to take a texture size performance hit, or stick with the same texture sizes and tessellate to x4 the geometry to go up a texture tier.

yes saturn generally has less detailed textures but they can simply use 4 quads instead of 2 triangles and 4 textures instead of a big one, in the demo the outside parts look low res textures to me, inside building they have better textures, maybe is that they simply have a more detailed interior, for example in the first scene in the dojo walls disappear as well as the garage, its clear they are very aggressive removing geometry to save performance and the answer may be they are using too much to get the texture detail they wanted, the game wasn't released to saturn or in another system of the time like psx, so we cannot simply compare 1:1, we cannot compare to tomb raider we can only compare it to itself and only in the videos, saturn can make textures as good as psx but it has a higher cost its just that is not imposible, this cost can be mitigated if the game is more restricted but that is only to save performance its not for a comparison to other console or another completely different game, I dont think is a good comparison, psx is a stronger console so it can theoretically run the game better, and tomb raider works very different and has different priorities and use of the system

 

[PaintTinJr]

Never said anything like that, so if that's what you're arguing, Idc. And emulators may do a lot more different to real hardware than just draw at different fps.

I wasn't directly arguing that - even though by the thread title that is the context - I was just using it as a point of reference for my assertions in the 'Shenmue demo ran on a devkit with an accelerator rather than stock Saturn' argument.

And yes, emulators can and do hacks were required, but the great information provide by Fafalada at the top of that page confirms that the filling of the polygons was done with sprites on Saturn exactly as Esppiral's old video with a hack to make sprites blit in place without perspective projection showed, so I'm not sure what else the emulator would be doing wrong at that point.

 

[Lysandros]

Wondering in retrospect: What would it have taken for the Saturn to be effective at pushing triangles natively?

A complete reengineering.

 

[PaintTinJr]

yes saturn generally has less detailed textures but they can simply use 4 quads instead of 2 triangles and 4 textures instead of a big one, in the demo the outside parts look low res textures to me, inside building they have better textures, maybe is that they simply have a more detailed interior, for example in the first scene in the dojo walls disappear as well as the garage, its clear they are very aggressive removing geometry to save performance and the answer may be they are using too much to get the texture detail they wanted, the game wasnt released to saturn or in another system of the time like psx, so we cannot simply compare 1:1, we cannot compare to tomb raider we can only compare it to itself and only in the videos, saturn can make textures as good as psx but it has a higher cost its just that is not imposible, this cost can be mitigated if the game is more restricted but that is only to save performance its not for a comparison to other console or another completely different game, I dont htink is a good comparison, psx is a stronger console so it can run the game better, and tomb raider works very different and has different priorities and use of the system

The things is I intentionally avoided any footage that could have been an FMV like the obvious ps1 Ico video. Also the model of Ryo has higher quality textures, meaning more geometry and more data for all the animation frames, and his model typically occupies 3 times the viewport size of Lara in fast motion in the games where processing is heaviest as scenery is changing, so his overdraw would also be a new negative performance factor as would his animation geometry set and texture data size be an new memory and bandwidth burden. And this why it is a good reference IMO is because in all the data/processing metrics, Shenmue would need vastly more.

The other point I would make is that it looks closer to the Dreamcast version of the game than the gap between Saturn and Dreamcast capabilities by some margin, and looks like a mid-gen to next-gen shift consistent with using a devkit with an accelerator card - particularly as Ryo's stiff running animation looked identical, which if it was Saturn to Dreamcast there should have been headroom for new smoother animations sets..

The website page that I linked for the interview has a youtube video about the naming of Sega console codenames and release names, and in that video it was obvious that Sega had become addicted to releasing new hardware yearly or bi-yearly, given the Genesis was codenamed the Mark V, and just like the 32x, the addon board for the Saturn was happening based on the development focus of AM2 working on it up until Shenmue move development to Dreamcast when they were surprisingly informed about it..

 

[Fafalada]

So as an example, a room built of 6 sides, with each side using 40 polygons, you'd only waste 2x6 (12) vertices more than the 240 vertices with an efficiency of 240/252 (95%) if the artists were being conscientious and accounting for every resource in every model and every mesh section.

Yea good topology helps - although there's also texture changes and other things that play into it. But as I said - for optimizing transforms alone - indexing brings that number even further down (theoretical max is 1 vertex for every 2 polygons). Though that might make the process memory-bound - but it really depends what bottleneck you run into I guess.

Anyway - semi related note regarding this thread, but the notion that 'PSX had no quad support' is also false. It did (much like PS2 did) - they are also literally called 'sprites' by Sony - it's just a primitive that is always screen aligned (no distortion/rotation) so literally just meant for 2d (or screen aligned particles).
It only took 2 vertices to draw a sprite on PS1 though - which made it more effective for its intended use than triangles, or even Saturn's sprites.

How many people / how usable was the Matrix DSP in the Saturn for this?

Hard to say for sure - but my understanding is there was no divide operations on it - so it would do nothing for theoretical maximum I suggested above.
You could possibly use it to get closer to that number though if other limitations were hit (the thread you linked does suggest it wasn't so easy to keep the throughput).

Anyway while everyone is contributing obscure hypotheticals - here's one on PS1 that did release(but probably noone here heard of) - that is ostensibly closest to actually 'maxing out' hardware (at least in terms of polygon throughput). This game actually hit 200k PPs in practical terms (not just on paper discussions).
It's also... somewhat Shenmue-like in how it played (but not in the look - art budget and style was geared towards very different direction).

 

[Panajev2001a]

Hard to say for sure - but my understanding is there was no divide operations on it - so it would do nothing for theoretical maximum I suggested above.

I wonder if, instead of raising the throughput, it could be used as they suggested in that thread (there is a link to an interview with a dev from Treasure that used it quite a bit) to support more lights/more advanced lighting (as people said on N64 not more pixels but higher quality pixels ).

Thanks for the practical PS example there .

For those interested, a 120+ pages document on the GTE and optimisations suggested to solve problems such as texture warping and near plane clipping issues: https://psx.arthus.net/sdk/Psy-Q/DOCS/TRAINING/FALL96/gte.pdf

 

[Parazels]

The thread needs more modern Saturn/PS tech demos.

 

[Parazels]

Unreal, running on Sega Saturn:

 

[Seider]

Unreal, running on Sega Saturn:

 

[Parazels]

One volunteer vs big team of well paid programmers!

 

[damiank]

Unfortunately canceled

Unreal P [PSX - Cancelled] - Unseen64

Preserving Details, Screenshots, Videos & more Lost Media for Unreal P [PSX - Cancelled] Help us to remember cancelled video games!

www.unseen64.net

 

[Lysandros]

Yea good topology helps - although there's also texture changes and other things that play into it. But as I said - for optimizing transforms alone - indexing brings that number even further down (theoretical max is 1 vertex for every 2 polygons). Though that might make the process memory-bound - but it really depends what bottleneck you run into I guess.

Anyway - semi related note regarding this thread, but the notion that 'PSX had no quad support' is also false. It did (much like PS2 did) - they are also literally called 'sprites' by Sony - it's just a primitive that is always screen aligned (no distortion/rotation) so literally just meant for 2d (or screen aligned particles).
It only took 2 vertices to draw a sprite on PS1 though - which made it more effective for its intended use than triangles, or even Saturn's sprites.


Hard to say for sure - but my understanding is there was no divide operations on it - so it would do nothing for theoretical maximum I suggested above.
You could possibly use it to get closer to that number though if other limitations were hit (the thread you linked does suggest it wasn't so easy to keep the throughput).

Anyway while everyone is contributing obscure hypotheticals - here's one on PS1 that did release(but probably noone here heard of) - that is ostensibly closest to actually 'maxing out' hardware (at least in terms of polygon throughput). This game actually hit 200k PPs in practical terms (not just on paper discussions).
It's also... somewhat Shenmue-like in how it played (but not in the look - art budget and style was geared towards very different direction).

Very impressive and interesting game indeed. PS1 library is so diverse that even such a technically meaningful actual full game can remain obscure/unknown compared to let's say Shenmu's concept prototype.

 

[Alexios]

Manic Game Girl – Hardcore Gaming 101

www.hardcoregaming101.net

Not seeing what it does better than other PS games. The simple texturing and cartoony style upscale nicer than gritty stuff like Dino Crisis in emus, maybe. Solid use of vertex colors and textures as shadows though, also well segmented areas/preset camera angles to keep certain things on screen

I think Echo Night 1 & 2 are closer to something like Shenmue with being able to move freely (first person only) and examine objects/areas from different angles. Excellent environments in both but amateur character textures in the first one, which the sequel greatly upgrades. Underrated for sure.

Even more impressive considering how shoddy King's Field looked by the same developers but hey, experience and a focus on smaller more detailed environments with little "action" gameplay.​

 

[cireza]

I didn't say it was impressive - PS1 could easily have achieved that - but the requirements for Saturn to achieve that with texturing being such a performance hit compared to PS1, the texture quality in that demo are above Tomb Raider, and as I've already set my stall out, it would need 4x the geometry detail non-interpolated to get that increase, despite having more taxing geometry on display, and not because I think there is vastly more geometry in that playable Shenmue screenshot, but because Ryo's on screen size and texturing means there is more overdraw by his larger on screen projection and there is more geometry in his model because of the detailed texturing on this model by comparison to Lara.

And the lighting looks per vertex dynamic, which again allegedly hits performance, and even if not and baked reinforces my assertion that the texturing is at a level beyond the Saturn without a addon accelerator board.

How you can deduce that from your blurry, low-res screenshot is quite comical.

Prettiest corridor I have ever seen !

Except that it is just a corridor, and the Shenmue video only shows very confined areas.

Also lighting is clearly baked in the textures, as Alexios said. Simply watch the video. There is nothing beyond what Baroque on Saturn displays in these interiors. Baroque has pretty high resolution textures and baked in lighting. Runs perfectly well.


No dynamic lighting on the models during 3D exploration/gameplay. Again, watch the video. No reason for this to not run on a stock Saturn if done by SEGA Japan.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Anyway while everyone is contributing obscure hypotheticals - here's one on PS1 that did release(but probably noone here heard of) - that is ostensibly closest to actually 'maxing out' hardware (at least in terms of polygon throughput). This game actually hit 200k PPs in practical terms (not just on paper discussions).
It's also... somewhat Shenmue-like in how it played (but not in the look - art budget and style was geared towards very different direction).

Again I don't think you're being fair. You're looking to bring up a game that came out after Shenmue 2 hit the Dreamcast. C'Mon let's have a bit of fairness most major Saturn development stopped in 1994 just some 4 years after the 1st shipped, yet you want to bring up a game that came out in 2002 some 7 years after the PS1 shipped with all that extra knowledge base and advancement in tools for PS1 development, just look at the advancement from 1998 to 2002 of the internet itself, never mind the PC's for development

I get the game looks nice and has a large number of polygons but I would look to compare PS1 games that were coming out in 97/8 myself

The Mega Drive, PS1 and Neo Geo all show how much more games can advance on a technical level with a good knowledge base and long system development support

I

 

[RetroGamingUK]

It wasn't that bad and it was pushing so many polygons and looking to include all the Model 2 detail I think it was more a case of the game being released before it was finished and SEGA Japan just starting to give up on the Saturn after the mega sales of FF7 and PS overtaking Saturn userbase advantage

Yeah that makes sense to me

The quality of Sega’s output seemed to nosedive after 1996

I was recently playing Fighters Megamix and, oh boy, what a mess.

Why does the music reset each round?

Why are the graphics worse than Fighters Megamix?

Why is it so slow?

Just an example, but there’s others like House of the Dead that just seem to be lazy efforts. A far cry from the incredibly polished efforts they were putting out in 1996.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Sega Saturn is the king of 15~20fps games, I was going to make a list with the name of the games with the lowest fps on each platform but honestly, almost all PS1 games run at 30fps with occasional drops.

A company putting a weak console on the market without a gimmick is crazy as weak consoles lose their ability to impress customers very quickly, Sega has always made this mistake.
The Sega Saturn can receive ports of all PS1 games but the price is running at 15~20fps, worse textures and worse effects, good job Hideki Sato.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Sega Saturn is the king of 15~20fps games, I was going to make a list with the name of the games with the lowest fps on each platform but honestly, almost all PS1 games run at 30fps with occasional drops.

A company putting a weak console on the market without a gimmick is crazy as weak consoles lose their ability to impress customers very quickly, Sega has always made this mistake.
The Sega Saturn can receive ports of all PS1 games but the price is running at 15~20fps, worse textures and worse effects, good job Hideki Sato.

Many of the games you mention running at 15-20fps were fully polygonal games.

I’ve read suggestions that the Saturn could outperform the PlayStation when it came to pushing polygons but there’s zero proof of this, all the evidence points to the opposite.

You really needed to use VDP2 planes on Saturn 3D games, but when porting from PlayStation that takes a lot of redesigning.

Did you know Hideki Sato and Ken Kutaragi were good friends? They once had dinner together and Ken apparently teased him about the Saturn’s awkward design and how they couldn’t afford to compete with Sony on components.

Yeah Sato really dropped the ball with the Saturn, especially at a time when Sega’s developers were head and shoulders above the rest with 3D game innovation.

 

[Alexios]

almost all PS1 games run at 30fps with occasional drops.

As true a statement as this other one of yours:

the ps1 version aims for 60fps

Already proven wrong as here:

Er, no, Powerslave on PS doesn't "aim for 60fps". They increased the cap so it can reach that in the smallest, simplest rooms/corridors/views but that just meant you get a worse moment to moment variance of 60-20fps instead of 30-20fps (or less in both cases of course) and to reach even that, much like Tomb Raider had major cuts in draw distance, Powerslave has major level changes to accommodate additional culling with more walls hiding views, smaller rooms, missing decorations, even missing animations for Ramses' ghostly head providing exposition and directions, so, it doesn't perform better in the same game. Let me guess, just like 2D game animations, backgrounds, foregrounds, effects, performance and loading, here in a mostly full 3D game these cuts also don't matter (but somehow they're not equally "efficient optimizations"when Saturn ports need to do similar cuts as they result in less polygons/enemies/action on screen). Essentially removing any somewhat problematic area is totally the same as doubling the performance in the same scenario! The definitive version was the Saturn's (before the recent remaster that amalgamates both versions' best aspects and adds new stuff) even if they added some decorations here and there in the smaller scale and scope, simpler, more claustrophobic PS levels (and lack of fun bomb jumping shenanigans and analog controls). Way too much bs here, from the usual clowns. Good thing much of it is so well documented you don't have to take the word of a shitposter feigning objective & factual arguments while constantly pushing a certain narrative in bad faith with at best constant stretching of the truth as much as the potential random reader's ignorance allows and fall for it, but you can see it for yourself:

Yep, it hit 10fps as often as 60 in that video (so, once), lol. Smooth. Of course actually explaining and showing the real differences as here or in the (no cartridge) CPS2/2D examples turns someone into a "fanboy". It's so much better to spew vague bullshit like how Powerslave on PS "aims for" double the framerate with no further discussion as the like minded haters and clowns pile on the likes and never look back, busy as they are scrutinising the slightest error of any positive Saturn comment, deliberately burying core points. That's totally rad, it's the objective and full truth that is the fanboy

But sure, keep spewing completely fabricated bullshit like this while using google for 5 minutes to pretend you know anything regarding the technical aspects of the systems or games and having Lysandros and other trolls "like" all this kind of crap, all banking on the fact nobody's gonna bother dissecting each and every one of them because of their sheer volume, Geometric-Crusher . You're like a bipolar toddler emotionally, the first actions of your new alt were to praise everything Saturn and ask people to boycott nu-Sega in numerous shitty threads/posts until they cave and make Saturn mini & because it didn't happen you now shit on everything they've ever done including Saturn and their Saturn games within the limits your toddler brain deems borderline acceptable to not be called out as a clown, though you've already gone beyond those limits without realizing.

If you're gonna reply, quote the whole thing, not the last few lines to speak more bullshit over and actually explain your reasoning about your oh so true you bolded it statement regarding Powerslave versions or how what I posted and brought the actual footage receipts for is wrong and not you.​

Seems even a prominent game you proposed with a bolded statement as aiming for 60fps can't be called a steady 30 but I'm sorry, I don't have the time to dissect all the bullshit you feel like throwing and then never concede or stop repeating when proven wrong anyway, especially list wars bs.

ok I'll leave the thread, good bye.

Nothing wrong with lower than 30 fps if the game's worth it anyway, as plenty on PlayStation & Saturn or OoT you praised just earlier, even though that goes directly against your clown tag showing you're just spewing whatever bs fits in the moment even if you said the opposite a minute ago.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Nothing wrong with lower than 30 fps if the game's worth it anyway, as plenty on PlayStation,

I dunno

Playing 3D racers (with the expecting of Sega Rally, Daytona CCE, Manx TT) on Saturn is so hard to go back to.

Conversely going back to PlayStation 3D racers a much larger percentage of them run at 30fps

 

[Alexios]

Conversely going back to PlayStation 3D racers a much larger percentage of them run at 30fps

Where did I say otherwise? Seems you type just to argue and imply others said something they didn't

Not gonna go and check every shitty racer from a library of thousands of games that everyone back then played 20 max of to see if it has good performance anyway, you just play the top games.

You won't play Independence Day on PS where it's shit and you won't on Saturn where it performs better because it's still shit.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Where did I say otherwise? Seems you type just to argue and imply others said something they didn't

You said it was worth it, I disagreed.

You said there were plenty on PlayStation, I disagreed with that too

 

[Alexios]

You said it was worth it, I disagreed.

No, you made a super specific statement when I made a general one. I provided a different example as well, like OoT (or GoldenEye or Syphon Filter or any game folks enjoyed back then) there, maybe you didn't find that worth playing at which point you're free to spew all your disagreements anyway. Others thought it's worth it and thus my statement which didn't make a very, very specific narrowing down to a potentially subjective exception to a general rule, is quite true.

Games less than 30fps can be worth it. Games at 60 or 30fps conversely may not be worth it regardless. Maybe you think Quake II posted earlier to show off PS also wasn't worthwhile (even though you "liked" that post) just because it's not a steady 30 for large chunks of the game, Idk/Idc.

You said there were plenty on PlayStation, I disagreed with that too

Yes, there are plenty less than 30 fps games on PlayStation, feel free to disagree with reality but don't put words in my mouth like making a general statement like this super specific and narrowed to a given genre, style and quality of game you'd personally play.

As if I'm gonna go check every shitty racer to prove you wrong, I never argued anything even similar to what you're saying. I just play the good ones on any system. NFS III is still good (if not legendary) on PlayStation even though it's often under 30fps too.

And yes, PS has more good games than Saturn. Probably also more bad games. It has thousands, folks play what, 20 back then, maybe stretch to 100 now with easier access to the whole library. Has nothing to do with what I said anyway.

I disagreed with an "almost all' statement, not a "more than" or any "%" or narrowed to any genre and you then chimed in and disagreed with my disagreement (and thus, reality itself) & acting like I said something wholly different.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Yeah that makes sense to me

The quality of Sega’s output seemed to nosedive after 1996

I was recently playing Fighters Megamix and, oh boy, what a mess.

Why does the music reset each round?

Why are the graphics worse than Fighters Megamix?

Why is it so slow?

Just an example, but there’s others like House of the Dead that just seem to be lazy efforts. A far cry from the incredibly polished efforts they were putting out in 1996.

Fighters Mega Mix was brilliant I don't know what you are about myself other than the music reset after each round. For the most part the game runs at a constant 60FPS other than the odd bit of slowdown when armour or the 3D background were being smashed, it was bloody impressive to see the game handle all those elements and also include a ton of VF3 moves into the package too



I felt SEGA Japan thought it could win in Japan and it was to their credit was beating both SONY and even NCL. Then Tobal B1 came out with the demo of FF7 and that's when Saturn sales fell off a cliff I don't think SEGA Japan ever really recovered from that and put most of its focus then in the Dreamcast project.
House of the Dead was simply rushed with Tantless given a short deadline in the game with AM#1 being so busy with not only making NA@MI , and Model 3 games but also the team given the task of making all the Software NA@MI development tools in SEGA

I like the way you conveniently overlook polished products like Shining Force 3 Pt 2/3, Burning Rangers, World Cup '98 France: Road to Win, Pro Yakyu Greatest Nine 98 Summer Action, Deep Fear, Sakura Wars 2, Winter Heat, Dragon Force 2 and Panzer Dragon Saga from SEGA Japan in 1998 mind

 

[Team Andromeda]

No, you made a super specific statement when I made a general one. I provided a different example as well, like OoT (or GoldenEye or any game folks enjoyed back then) there, maybe you didn't find that worth playing at which point you're free to spew all your disagreements anyway. Others thought it's worth it and thus my statement which didn't make a very, very specific narrowing down to essentially a subjective exception to a general rule, is quite true. Games less than 30fps can be worth it. Games at 60 or 30fps conversely may not be worth it regardless.
Yes, there are plenty less than 30 fps games on PlayStation, feel free to disagree with reality but don't put words in my mouth like making a general statement like this super specific and narrowed to a given genre, style and quality of game you'd personally play.

Well said. The N64 was terrible for frame rates and low-resolution graphics. I also see Shadow of the Colossus and the likes of GTA San Andreas held up as PS2 classics regardless of their framerate and how many people loved Star Fox on the Snes never mind its low frame rate
I loved GTA on the PS1 even if the frame rate was all over the shop.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Fighters Mega Mix was brilliant I don't know what you are about myself other than the music reset after each round. For the most part the game runs at a constant 60FPS other than the odd bit of slowdown when armour or the 3D background were being smashed, it was bloody impressive to see the game handle all those elements and also include a ton of VF3 moves into the package too

Is it the PAL or NTSC version you’re playing?

The PAL version certainly feels sluggish to me.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Nothing wrong with lower than 30 fps if the game's worth it anyway, as plenty on PlayStation & Saturn or OoT you praised just earlier

It's not about ''lower than 30fp'' but about 20fps being the peak.
It's very presumptuous of you to compare 15-20fps games on the Sega Saturn to Ocarine of Time.
oot is an excellent game and has a graphical quality that the Sega Saturn can only dream of.
Now if you think the Sega Touring Car is worth it, that's bad taste, to say the least.

 

[Alexios]

It's not about ''lower than 30fp'' but about 20fps being the peak.

So, yeah, like OoT. Duh.

oot is an excellent game and has a graphical quality that the Sega Saturn can only dream of.

Wait, isn't it like an indie game worth $19 at most?

But sure, I never said Saturn matches N64 3D visual potential, going off on random rants that have nothing to do with anything again huh.

And yes it's excellent and a true classic despite the fps, that was my exact point with what you quoted, glad you decided to agree this time. Of course, various Sega games from back then are too. You're free to disagree, I'm not here to argue with your shitty taste that became even shittier after this:

Er, then why ever ask (well, demand, like they care you exist, lol) for a Saturn mini, just ask those companies to bring the games back (which they largely have on all sorts of platforms, especially SNK and Capcom, shit you were happy with PS1 ports right in this thread). Always tellin the truth I guess:

And if you aren't gonna leave (don't care), don't cut & stitch a "quote" (this was in the post, lol). Reply to that post's core point or not at all. At least it's linked for folks to see even if you clipped it just to repeat bs. You'd deserve to get a clown tag every other post, if you didn't already have that

I'm sure you were tooting the sales=quality horn during the Wii days and didn't call those who enjoyed its gems fanboys lol (as per said tag). The arguments you're repeating like a toddler have zero real logic, it's all strawmen, fallacies and a 5 minute google search with heavy confirmation bias

Edit: just remembered you even made a thread asking them to make a NEW console for nostalgic fans (+ their new IP), like, why, what nostalgia when you just want third party games largely available on all platforms with few exceptions that would not support a console? Get a grip or something.

Anyway, don't see what all this has to do with you making a claim about "almost all" games and me refuting that (ie, siding with reality instead of your fantasy lalaland). Keep it up, I guess.

ok I'll leave the thread, good bye.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Now if you think the Sega Touring Car is worth it, that's bad taste, to say the least.

I just can’t grasp what’s going on with that game

It’s not just the frame rate, it’s like there’s input lag with the steering or something, you go from being barely able to steer at all to suddenly oversteering. Now if this were gradual then I’d understand, turning is easier as the car slows, but Touring Car’s method is bullshit, completely unplayable with a d-pad.

Shame as Sega Rally is probably the best handling driving game of the entire generation.

 

[Fafalada]

Not seeing what it does better than other PS games.​

I mean we're discussing tech - not style choices.
The number of characters (and their detail) on screen is easily beyond the high-budget releases that even used FMV bgs - and on top this has realtime environments that are - well substantially more detailed than your SH or Vagrant Story types.
We can talk 'simple' textures all day - but the number of unique-texels on screen (and resolution) is just unusually high for a PS1 game, period. Just because they are styled to look anime it doesn't change the numbers.
But ultimately it's also still the same hardware - doubling the polycount of the best prior release - is still only double an already small number - you're not gonna get PS2 visuals out of it.

I do agree Echo Night games were another example of obscure gems (that also extends to their PS2 iterations - which did things few people even know PS2 ever did). But that's kind of pointing the obvious.

I think Echo Night 1 & 2 are closer to something like Shenmue with being able to move freely (first person only) and examine objects/areas from different angles. Excellent environments in both but amateur character textures in the first one, which the sequel greatly upgrades.​

I think comparisons to Shenmue here are more in the expansive set of mechanics (from playable arcades to tons of variety in interactions and unique gameplay) and relative free-roaming of the world with lots of NPCs doing their own things etc. Maybe Yakuza would be an even better parallel though - and that often gets compared to Shenmue too.

I wonder if, instead of raising the throughput, it could be used as they suggested in that thread (there is a link to an interview with a dev from Treasure that used it quite a bit) to support more lights/more advanced lighting (as people said on N64 not more pixels but higher quality pixels ).

Sure - that aspects gets often overlooked in 'total number of polys' discussions - but then again polycounts were so low in that era that decision to have more vs. quality was not as clear cut as it is today, or even in PS2 era.

Again I don't think you're being fair. You're looking to bring up a game that came out after Shenmue 2 hit the Dreamcast.

This wasn't about Saturn comparisons but more the sentiment that 'PS1 was maxed out in 2 years' - which clearly wasn't the case even by generation's end (PS2 launch). The fact we still had commercial releases that 'tried' this hard years later, is just an extra.

The Mega Drive, PS1 and Neo Geo all show how much more games can advance on a technical level with a good knowledge base and long system development support

Agreed - and I argued before this applies to everything, even the likes of GC, NDS or PSP (that were seen as 'easy' to push), not to even mention every other 'hard' console out there.

 

[Alexios]

The number of characters (and their detail) on screen is easily beyond the high-budget releases that even used FMV bgs

I don't see it, I don't think the Dino Crisis characters are any worse if not better models (of course not enhanced with emulation so doesn't look nearly as clean in that video). The various corridors of the complex don't lack in detail compared to the beat em up clips of MGG in that building with human enemies (and actually very short pop in distance there), nor do the offices and other special interest rooms filled with stuff like chairs, computers, screens, or whatever other props. I doubt the few MGG areas (that are often conveniently top-down camera in that video, and even more static in their angle as you clearly see the next set of NPCs pop in after going further up to the next lounge tables or whatever that area is) with multiple NPCs on screen use equally detailed models for them. Better than I'd think but seeing it on real hw as on that link I wouldn't propose it as best PS gfx. And of course simpler textures can need less ram even if they're the same res so it's not just a style difference, in many areas/objects it seems like various props/walls don't have any texture at all, just a solid color that seems more than that because of vertex colors or similar tweaks.

 

[cireza]

I was recently playing Fighters Megamix and, oh boy, what a mess.

What a mess ? This is a 96 game running high-res mode, with walls, destructible armors, dynamic lighting and a ton of elaborated animations including wall throws. And it has a ton of content on top of it. How is this a mess already ? No surprise this game lead to a sales peak for the console in the USA : it was awesome.

 

[Lysandros]

This wasn't about Saturn comparisons but more the sentiment that 'PS1 was maxed out in 2 years' - which clearly wasn't the case even by generation's end (PS2 launch). The fact we still had commercial releases that 'tried' this hard years later, is just an extra.

This is one of the often put out arguments in the purpose of serving the misconception that Playstation didn't have much 'hidden potential' compared to Saturn. I don't see how anyone can say this in good faith when we have widely known examples such as the the evolution from Ridge Racer to Ridge Racer Type 4 or from Tekken to Tekken 4 with each entry (just to name a few among the countless). I mean the sheer amount of garahical evolution seems near crazy compared to more recent systems. I remember reading the official Playstation magazine back in the day (1999 i believe) when Kazunori Yamauchi stated that the first Gran Turismo only used about 75% of the machine's power in his assessment and the team intended to use the remaining 25% to improve various aspects for the sequel. The editors and i guess the readers like me were pretty shocked at that comment since everyone thought Gran Turismo already maxed out the system.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

What a mess ? This is a 96 game running high-res mode, with walls, destructible armors, dynamic lighting and a ton of elaborated animations including wall throws. And it has a ton of content on top of it. How is this a mess already ? No surprise this game lead to a sales peak for the console in the USA : it was awesome.

It was a 97 game here and certainly wasn’t hi-res, fighters were rendered in 240 instead of 480 like VF2 and Last Bronx.

Character lighting was also slightly inferior to Fighting Vipers with less gradiants

 

[RetroGamingUK]

The editors and i guess the readers like me were pretty shocked at that comment since everyone thought Gran Turismo already maxed out the system.

Graphically Ridge Racer 4 is above and beyond both Gran Turismo in every graphical department.

Ridge 4 DID max out the PlayStation

 

[Lysandros]

Graphically Ridge Racer 4 is above and beyond both Gran Turismo in every graphical department.

Ridge 4 DID max out the PlayStation

I can agree with Ridge Racer Type 4 having the best overall graphics (environment lighting/smooth textures especially with stable geometry and some awesome effects llke light trails/motion blur in replays) compared to Gran Turismo minus the cars themselves. But to fair in the matter of racing games the competition was very very fierce on that front on Playstation. Games like V-Rally 2, Colin Mcrea Rally 2 were also at near top in in their own ways.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Yeah Sato really dropped the ball with the Saturn, especially at a time when Sega’s developers were head and shoulders above the rest with 3D game innovation.

Sato was an idiot. There's no way to forgive him, after he put in all those microchips and at the end of the day Sega Saturn being a weak PlayStation with 15-20fps and worse visual effects. It would have been better to have made the Saturn just for 2D or accepted working with the Silicon Graphics console. Believe me, Sega didn't go bankrupt for nothing.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Sato was an idiot. There's no way to forgive him, after he put in all those microchips and at the end of the day Sega Saturn being a weak PlayStation with 15-20fps and worse visual effects. It would have been better to have made the Saturn just for 2D or accepted working with the Silicon Graphics console. Believe me, Sega didn't go bankrupt for nothing.

A 2D Saturn would have been an even bigger disaster outside of Japan

Look at the best selling Saturn games in the US, all 3D, everyone was hyped for 3D and Saturn would have looked like a throwback.

 

[cireza]

It was a 97 game here and certainly wasn’t hi-res

The game uses the high-res mode of the console. I have just checked again (I was sure of it anyway), it does not have scanlines. Pretty sure it is the same with Fighting Vipers. People are mixing everything. Models being simpler than VF2 doesn't make the game 320x240. Looking at my TV, it certainly looks like 640x480 interlaced. This game pushes a lot of pixels, but the console was well designed for these types of outputs anyway. VDP2 fills the majority of the screen with high-res background.

Also it was a december 1996 release in Japan.

 

[RoboFu]

This is one of the often put out arguments in the purpose of serving the misconception that Playstation didn't have much 'hidden potential' compared to Saturn. I don't see how anyone can say this in good faith when we have widely known examples such as the the evolution from Ridge Racer to Ridge Racer Type 4 or from Tekken to Tekken 4 with each entry (just to name a few among the countless). I mean the sheer amount of garahical evolution seems near crazy compared to more recent systems. I remember reading the official Playstation magazine back in the day (1999 i believe) when Kazunori Yamauchi stated that the first Gran Turismo only used about 75% of the machine's power in his assessment and the team intended to use the remaining 25% to improve various aspects for the sequel. The editors and i guess the readers like me were pretty shocked at that comment since everyone thought Gran Turismo already maxed out the system.

Before crash bandicoot the PlayStation library for using the gte was extremely slow. Andy Gavin literally worked with Sonys engineers to be able bypass the api call to get a huge boost in performance by making his own.



PlayStation's hardware though did things in a lower quality than Saturns but produced a better result more often because they were easier to use.

For example the ps1 afine texturing and lack of zbuffer produced the wobbly textures but faster than the Saturns
Forward texturing with bilinear approximation which produces better perspective correction ( not as wobbly )

The Saturn also renders its quads in a medium polygon accuracy while ps1 used low which is why ps1 had more seam popping. Again something no one really cared about.


The ps1 can only draw pixels through its polygon engine where as the Saturn can draw with any of its processors.

Using Saturns SCU DSP plus both its CPUs it could calculate geometry much faster than the ps1s gte. Even the vdp2 had its own geometry engine .
The obvious down side was juggling all the processors so most never bothered to try.

The Saturn also had much smoother Gouraud shading using additive blend where as the ps1 used multiplicative.
Even though multiplicative doesn't produce a smooth gradient it uses half the fill rate and has more contrast so it looks more dynamic IMO. A good example is DOA which shows the difference clearly. Another example of ps1 using lower quality but better overall results.

The ps1's real advantage that barely anyone talks about again is its decompression engine. It could literally decompress textures on the fly so no need to store uncompressed textures in ram. You could also use it to stream data from a disk very fast and efficiently.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It was a 97 game here and certainly wasn’t hi-res, fighters were rendered in 240 instead of 480 like VF2 and Last Bronx.

Character lighting was also slightly inferior to Fighting Vipers with less gradiants

It was High Res just not Saturn's highest res and lots of Saturn games used different screen res of the foreground to the backgrounds and

 

[s_mirage]

The game uses the high-res mode of the console. I have just checked again (I was sure of it anyway), it does not have scanlines. Pretty sure it is the same with Fighting Vipers. People are mixing everything. Models being simpler than VF2 doesn't make the game 320x240. Looking at my TV, it certainly looks like 640x480 interlaced. This game pushes a lot of pixels, but the console was well designed for these types of outputs anyway. VDP2 fills the majority of the screen with high-res background.

Also it was a december 1996 release in Japan.

It uses high-res output, so sharper VDP2 HUD stuff, but the VDP1 resolution used for drawing the models is 320x224. I think Fighting Vipers is the same. The big give away is that they both use Gouraud shading. Using high-res quads like Virtua Fighter 2 did limits them to palletized formats, so no shading.

The Saturn also had much smoother Gouraud shading using additive blend where as the ps1 used multiplicative.
Even though multiplicative doesn't produce a smooth gradient it uses half the fill rate and has more contrast so it looks more dynamic IMO. A good example is DOA which shows the difference clearly. Another example of ps1 using lower quality but better overall results.

DoA on the Saturn doesn't use Gouraud shading at all. All lighting is baked into the textures. As above, it uses higher resolution quad rendering so is limited to palletized output with no shading.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

It uses high-res output, so sharper VDP2 HUD stuff, but the VDP1 resolution used for drawing the models is 320x224. I think Fighting Vipers is the same. The big give away is that they both use Gouraud shading. Using high-res quads like Virtua Fighter 2 did limits them to palletized formats, so no shading.



DoA on the Saturn doesn't use Gouraud shading at all. All lighting is baked into the textures. As above, it uses higher resolution quad rendering so is limited to palletized output with no shading.

Correct, none of the 4 fighting games with characters rendered in 480 (VF2, FV, VFK, DOA) have shading.