any body remember ff7 being converted....
- Thread starter Shitface
- Start date
Agrees!
You sure? I can see the caracters through the spell effects. Not all of them but some. Check these pics :
This pic shows quite clearly that you can see through it all.
This is a good example.
Support spells uses some kind of palette-changing textures. You can see the caracters through them to.
Things can be seen through the ice.
Other nice examples.
When using the heal-spell you can see the caracters behind the rays of light.
Well, there are other examples to.
Not to say that you are wrong, but I always thought these used some kind of special programming, However, they look fantastic whatsoever.
Also, I know the background objects dissapear in mostly spells, but in some they don´t. For example, when the hydras breath fire, the effect is transcluent and all background objects stay.
Looking at all those fantastic pic makes me quite shure, FF7 would work on Saturn. Without problems if programmed correctly.
60 fps REALLY helps games that have their 3D camera move into the picture (racing and fps games being prime examples). The extra frames and slight adjustments they cause give the images a smoother look. Other types of games that don't have the camera moving along the z axis don't benefit as much from it.
my my how embarassing!
i meant SOUL BLADE not soul calibur.
virtua fighter 2 certainly is a lovely piece isnt it.
if the saturn is indeed as graphically (3d) capable as the psx then why oh why isnt it shown in the software?
becuase it was "hard to program"? how could sega's own in house developers make such shit?
or .. why didn't sega consider the difficulty to program the saturn in the first place?
obviously they didnt make the same mistake twice as the dc shared so much with the pc.
it is a nice dream to think the saturn could pull off metal gear solid but the fact is nothing that even comes close to it was made reality. not even by sega.
sure vf2 is beautiful, but its a 1 on 1 fighting game, all the power goes on the fighters appearance. we saw what happened to the marvelous vf2 graphics when they chucked in some scenery (fighters megamix)
isn't it strange how threads can change into a whole different topic like this?
i meant SOUL BLADE not soul calibur.
virtua fighter 2 certainly is a lovely piece isnt it.
if the saturn is indeed as graphically (3d) capable as the psx then why oh why isnt it shown in the software?
becuase it was "hard to program"? how could sega's own in house developers make such shit?
or .. why didn't sega consider the difficulty to program the saturn in the first place?
obviously they didnt make the same mistake twice as the dc shared so much with the pc.
it is a nice dream to think the saturn could pull off metal gear solid but the fact is nothing that even comes close to it was made reality. not even by sega.
sure vf2 is beautiful, but its a 1 on 1 fighting game, all the power goes on the fighters appearance. we saw what happened to the marvelous vf2 graphics when they chucked in some scenery (fighters megamix)
isn't it strange how threads can change into a whole different topic like this?
antime
Extra Hard Mid Boss
My favourite examples are Wipeout 3 and Rollcage 2. Especially effects like the videowalls in Wipeout 3 would be impossible on the Saturn at that resolution and framerate. Sony made a very wise decision when it made framebuffer accesses that fast. The texture cache helps too.
<!--QuoteBegin-Tagrineth@May 24, 2003 @ 05:03 PM
Konami kept that system for the Saturn - as far as I know, everything in Aku DX is run on VDP1 - baaaaaad bad bad Konami - and it's done in "3D" mode, not regular 2D, which slows things down even more[/quote]
Several of the effects are designed with this in mind. Look at the parallax in the woods scene in the intro, there's over four overlapping layers if I counted correctly which means the Saturn's four backgrounds would be exhausted. Anyway, I've mostly noticed slowdowns when there's sprite-sprite transparencies on the screen which are very slow on the Saturn.
Well, there's no-one else around to do it. The SCU DSP doesn't do divisions, so unless you do log tables or other trickery you'll have to do it with one of the main CPUs. Of course, in a 2D game like SotN you can do everything in a plane, no need for projections there.
As for the original subject of the thread, my comment is that FF7 is a first-gen Playstation game and in not taxing in any way. A conversion would have to compromise on certain effects (eg. the feedback battle transition, transparencies) but on the whole the 3D models have extremely low polygon counts and consist mostly of flat- or gouraud-shaded triangles and quads.
did they make it 'that' fast then? I thought it very stupid of them to arrange the framebuffer in pixels with a fixed resolution instead of linear bytes; but the most ridiculous thing would be the fact that the framebuffer *needs* to be accessed through the GPU (or DMA) instead of directly through the CPU's bus... and as the Saturn's VRAM is mapped into the SH2 memspace that should make read/modify/write (e.g. transparencies) a bit faster or at least easier, maybe you can use one SH2 for that (dunno exactly how VRAM access is shared between the two cpu's).
antime
Extra Hard Mid Boss
Since the PSX's video memory isn't directly accessible the system can utilize the bus better, and why should the CPU have to calculate transparencies or indeed plot into the framebuffer directly at all? That is the video processor's job! However, my comment was more directed at the type of memory used: the Saturn uses normal SDRAM which is at least partly why transparencies are so slow while the Playstation uses dual-ported WRAM.
I don't know enough about electronics, but it seems to me as though the Saturn shouldn't suffer from this for the most part - the source textures are kept in a separate memory from the framebuffer - but as soon as you have to do read-modify-write operations you really start to suffer.
(Of course this is all just empty talk until someone does some exhaustive benchmarking.)
I don't know enough about electronics, but it seems to me as though the Saturn shouldn't suffer from this for the most part - the source textures are kept in a separate memory from the framebuffer - but as soon as you have to do read-modify-write operations you really start to suffer.
(Of course this is all just empty talk until someone does some exhaustive benchmarking.)
The difference, however, is that pressing "UP" in Fighter's Megamix caused your guy to jump.
In Virtua Fighter 2, it causes threm to slowly begin levitating off the ground until they reach a height of 9 body lengths abover the other guy, then they fall back down.
It reminds me of the jumping in The Matrix: Reloaded.
Ops, the SFIII pics screwed up. Oh, well. Forget about that then.
Well, it might not be natural
but I think it suits the game. If you want faster jumping, play Last Bronx.
I hope your not serious! Just think of Sega Rally (fantastic), Decatlethe (also ran in hi-res but with much more background details) and so did Winter Heat, Nights and Burning Rangers (needs no explanation), Virtual Cop 1-2 (how can anyone complain about this : mid-res gfx, loads of chars on screen at the same time, fast gameplay without any slowdown and no pixelisation whatsoever), Daytona CCE (few racinggames have that well-made tracks), Last Bronx (like VF2 but with much more detail), Virtual On (extremely nice with loads of effects), Manx TT, The Panzer Dragoon games and so on... you still think Segas inhouse teams made shit?
Well, it might not be natural
With regards to dracula x - a different design team did the saturn port compared to the psx version, they didnt have the resources to polish it up correctly. If they did it would've been alot better than the psx version.
As for the SF3 transparencies: dude lemme clarify one thing.
Shining Force 3 uses a a SPRITE against BACKGROUND transparency, an all possible combinations . What I defy you to find is a single scene where you can see a POLYGON behind another transparent polygon.
Detailed explanations:
You can't see Wendigo when he goes below the wavy water. They are both made of sprites, and a sprite can't show another sprite, in this transparency mode.
Not quite. The spell "mandala" is done by the VDP2 and rendered as a window, so it's transparency is applied on top of everything. The Wendigo model is also transparent against the scenery background layers. If the camera were to move and show that scene from outside Wendigo's mouth, you would not see the charatcer inside it.
The glow transparency is behind all characters. Again, the ground plane is not made of polygons: it's a background layer with "mode7" distortion.
You can see the *backgrounds* through them. But in this case the animated textures have some full-transparent areas, that allows you to see the characters behind. But you won't see the transparency color affect the character color.
Things can be seen through the ice.
Same effect as before. "Things" stand for "VDP2 planes", not the acual characters.
On this one you can see the limitation on the triangles that are on front of the glow effect. They are making HOLES in the glow, because they can't composite against the other transparent models. On this transparency mode, it's as if each model absolutely ignored the existance of others.
(damn, I need to free some internal memory and play Scenario 3! that kicks ass!)
*ahem*, the pretty images are rendered as windows, so they are transparent to everything. But they are 2D.
Nay, you can't. This was the spell that gave me out the trick when I first played SF3. When a beam is right over the character you can only see the background and the ground plane (also a background), but not the character itself, nor the other beams.
You are right, the 2D background stays. As I stated, on this mode the polygons are composed against the backround *ONLY*. You can't see the charatcer, the monster, and any 3D object that hapens to be in the background. Scenario 1 had few 3D objects, but in Scenario 2 and 3 some battle scenes are almost full 3D (they could make a darn good looking fighter out from this - the SF3 battle engine looks FAR smother than Fighters Megamix's), so you often see the transparency effects make "holes" in the 3D objects.
Again, the ground plane is a distorted background, so it can also be seen through the transparency.
Yes, the SF3 games sure do look awesome, but it's nothing as hackish as Burning Rangers. They doesn't even use the DSP for extra processing, as some later games (BR included) do.
And that is what I like most: Shining Force 3 simply uses standard Saturn features, that every developer could use, but dismiss and instead used the ugly mesh transparencies because they would need some clever design to get around the limitations.
Shining Force 3 was one of the few Saturn games (and maybe the first 3D one) that used the sprite-background transparency mode without worrying about the "but you can't see the models behind these!". They succeeded, since most people can't notice the limitations in the overlay, and see an effect they could only expect on a PSX.
After you actually play Scenario 2 and 3, you see that there's no reason it couldn't do a FF7 clone.
I hardly played Scenario 3 (needs to free space, and needs time), but I got the Premium Disc, that shows all 3D models from all scenarios. Some of those models are unbeliveable. The Scenario 3 character models have so much detail, like armor plates, little decorations hanging in the clothing. Many monsters were also tweakened, and have more faces, and more detailed textures.
When you see the "summons" in Scenario 2 and 3, then you lose all doubts
. The wind summon (can't remember the name), where a goddess wearing a long green dress and with wings instead of hands fades in, and blows the enemies away. Her face has loads of quads, it's so smooth.
Actually... some summons in Scenarios 2 do have a visual resemblance to FF7 summons... maybe Camelot did it on purpose to say "hey, see this? It's as good as FF7! No, wait! These models have textures!".
Shining Force 3 uses a a SPRITE against BACKGROUND transparency, an all possible combinations . What I defy you to find is a single scene where you can see a POLYGON behind another transparent polygon.
Detailed explanations:
You can't see Wendigo when he goes below the wavy water. They are both made of sprites, and a sprite can't show another sprite, in this transparency mode.
This pic shows quite clearly that you can see through it all.
Not quite. The spell "mandala" is done by the VDP2 and rendered as a window, so it's transparency is applied on top of everything. The Wendigo model is also transparent against the scenery background layers. If the camera were to move and show that scene from outside Wendigo's mouth, you would not see the charatcer inside it.
This is a good example.
The glow transparency is behind all characters. Again, the ground plane is not made of polygons: it's a background layer with "mode7" distortion.
Support spells uses some kind of palette-changing textures. You can see the caracters through them to.
You can see the *backgrounds* through them. But in this case the animated textures have some full-transparent areas, that allows you to see the characters behind. But you won't see the transparency color affect the character color.
Things can be seen through the ice.
Same effect as before. "Things" stand for "VDP2 planes", not the acual characters.
On this one you can see the limitation on the triangles that are on front of the glow effect. They are making HOLES in the glow, because they can't composite against the other transparent models. On this transparency mode, it's as if each model absolutely ignored the existance of others.
Other nice examples.
(damn, I need to free some internal memory and play Scenario 3! that kicks ass!)
*ahem*, the pretty images are rendered as windows, so they are transparent to everything. But they are 2D.
When using the heal-spell you can see the caracters behind the rays of light.
Nay, you can't. This was the spell that gave me out the trick when I first played SF3. When a beam is right over the character you can only see the background and the ground plane (also a background), but not the character itself, nor the other beams.
You are right, the 2D background stays. As I stated, on this mode the polygons are composed against the backround *ONLY*. You can't see the charatcer, the monster, and any 3D object that hapens to be in the background. Scenario 1 had few 3D objects, but in Scenario 2 and 3 some battle scenes are almost full 3D (they could make a darn good looking fighter out from this - the SF3 battle engine looks FAR smother than Fighters Megamix's), so you often see the transparency effects make "holes" in the 3D objects.
Again, the ground plane is a distorted background, so it can also be seen through the transparency.
Yes, the SF3 games sure do look awesome, but it's nothing as hackish as Burning Rangers. They doesn't even use the DSP for extra processing, as some later games (BR included) do.
And that is what I like most: Shining Force 3 simply uses standard Saturn features, that every developer could use, but dismiss and instead used the ugly mesh transparencies because they would need some clever design to get around the limitations.
Shining Force 3 was one of the few Saturn games (and maybe the first 3D one) that used the sprite-background transparency mode without worrying about the "but you can't see the models behind these!". They succeeded, since most people can't notice the limitations in the overlay, and see an effect they could only expect on a PSX.
After you actually play Scenario 2 and 3, you see that there's no reason it couldn't do a FF7 clone.
I hardly played Scenario 3 (needs to free space, and needs time), but I got the Premium Disc, that shows all 3D models from all scenarios. Some of those models are unbeliveable. The Scenario 3 character models have so much detail, like armor plates, little decorations hanging in the clothing. Many monsters were also tweakened, and have more faces, and more detailed textures.
When you see the "summons" in Scenario 2 and 3, then you lose all doubts
. The wind summon (can't remember the name), where a goddess wearing a long green dress and with wings instead of hands fades in, and blows the enemies away. Her face has loads of quads, it's so smooth.Actually... some summons in Scenarios 2 do have a visual resemblance to FF7 summons... maybe Camelot did it on purpose to say "hey, see this? It's as good as FF7! No, wait! These models have textures!".
Ok, well I think ill get it now. These programmers really are clever. I should try to get scenario 2 and 3. After all, its a wonderful game, its not only looking good.
I have also thought about the idea. Think about the quite bad port of Toshinden for Saturn, well image how it would look with this engine...
I have also thought about the idea. Think about the quite bad port of Toshinden for Saturn, well image how it would look with this engine...
Yeah, it would make a nice fighting engine, *with* full 3D arenas.
The idea plagued my mind after the later battles in Scenario 2. When a large chunk of the party is captured when you return to Saraband, and after you rescue them, there is a battle in a garden in governor Garvin's mansion.
The battle scenery there is almost a smaller version of the garden battlefield, with bush walls, pine trees - with 3D volume, not billboarded - towers and walls with those archer standpoints, also with full 3D volume and details, not flat sprites. The only background things in there are the sky and the ground plane. And the scenery is so smooth. The textures have subtle pixelation when up close and won't become a shimmering pixel mess when viewed from a distance (but 80% of the SFIII textures have such awesome quality anyway - they just expanded the trick on some battle sceneries too).
It's bad that screenshots are scarce. And using emulators isn't really an option now, since GiriGiri won' show the sprite-to-background transparencies, deactivating the effect completly (only window layers have their transparency more or less working), and SSF, while emulating the game near perfectly, is too slow and requires someone with MAJOR balls to play further in those games.
The idea plagued my mind after the later battles in Scenario 2. When a large chunk of the party is captured when you return to Saraband, and after you rescue them, there is a battle in a garden in governor Garvin's mansion.
The battle scenery there is almost a smaller version of the garden battlefield, with bush walls, pine trees - with 3D volume, not billboarded - towers and walls with those archer standpoints, also with full 3D volume and details, not flat sprites. The only background things in there are the sky and the ground plane. And the scenery is so smooth. The textures have subtle pixelation when up close and won't become a shimmering pixel mess when viewed from a distance (but 80% of the SFIII textures have such awesome quality anyway - they just expanded the trick on some battle sceneries too).
It's bad that screenshots are scarce. And using emulators isn't really an option now, since GiriGiri won' show the sprite-to-background transparencies, deactivating the effect completly (only window layers have their transparency more or less working), and SSF, while emulating the game near perfectly, is too slow and requires someone with MAJOR balls to play further in those games.
Sprite-sprite transparencies aren't used by Aku DX. Effects like the Mist were modified for the Saturn to avoid even attempting to use transparency.
And VDP2 does five layers max, or two with scale/rotate (I think it can still do 3 normal if only one layer is moved around).
That's what I mean. Aku DX uses full projection, despite being a fully 2D game, because of some use of 3D backgrounds (the clock tower in the background, in the large room before fighting Richter comes to mind) and other 3D effects (Save rooms).
IMO Konami should have modified some of the backgrounds to use fewer planes so VDP2 could be used, and/or maybe take out the 3D objects in backgrounds (the clock tower is the only one, IIRC, and I wouldn't particularly miss it).
Except during battle. In battle the 3D models are much higher-poly and have textures on them... but I still doubt Saturn would have too much trouble running FF7's battle scenes, judging from Shining Force 3.
And finally-
Panzer Dragoon Zwei?
Duke Nukem 3D?
Quake?
It's already confirmed that some of the most impressive-looking scenes in MGS used up to around 300 polygons. That isn't much.
And again, Saturn could get away with fewer polys - for example, there are a lot of crates in MGS. A six-sided cube on the PlayStation requires 12 polygons - two triangles for each square side. On the Saturn, OTOH, one could use six quads, one for each side. No problems. And the quads can be deformed to make tapered objects, and such.
I really don't see how MGS would've been altogether impossible on Saturn. The only effects I can think of that would HAVE to be taken out:
- Snow (simply too many quads needed)
- Underwater transparency
- Motion blur in cutscenes
antime
Extra Hard Mid Boss
Are you certain? I'm thinking especially of the bull-like creatures at the start. When you kill them, they get overlaid with this flame animation and the game slows down for a few frames. I admit I'm using composite through a capture card, so the details are kind of hard to see.
Yes, on second reading it does seem that one of the rotation backgrounds can be displayed together with the four normal layers. The VDP2 manual isn't totally clear in its wording. (There are four normal layers and two rotation layers, if the second rotation layer is enabled the normal layers can't be used.)
EDIT: According to one of the Saturn introduction manuals, the following combinations can be used (normal-rotation): 4-0, 2-1, 0-2. Maybe they're counting the line and back screens in their marketing?
Have you disassembled the game?
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