New 3d Saturn homebrew demos by mic!

[RockinB]

What a surprise when I saw these two new Saturn demos by mic. The thing that is so special about these demos is, that they don't use any SEGA libraries.

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Public domain Saturn libraries have been developed and used by only a few (4, now 5-6) people and I have always been very fascinated by the work of Charles MacDonald.

Now mic started from his work, which already featured 2d VDP1 rendering and he added 3d polygon object transformation, projection and even flat shading!

Here are the files(binary + source):

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Great work, mic! :agree

 

[ExCyber]

This is great news. With texturing support this could evolve into the basis for some very nice games/demos...

 

[mrkotfw]

I already have textures (4-bit, 15-bit) working on a rotating cube. mic helped me a lot with getting my cube to display correctly 🙂

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by Piratero@Fri, 2006-02-24 @ 12:35 AM

I already have textures (4-bit, 15-bit) working on a rotating cube. mic helped me a lot with getting my cube to display correctly 🙂

[post=144629]Quoted post[/post]​

Is that so. When will you publish your source code?

 

[mrkotfw]

I will publish my sources as soon as I get my vdp1/vdp2 graphic tool to fully work with all graphic formats. I also want to clean up my sources and replace them with useful functions. By the way, how goes your "DXF" tool? I need to learn how to model myself a cool looking saturn controller! *hint* :cheers

 

[vbt]

Time to update the saturn dev section soon 🙂

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by Piratero@Fri, 2006-02-24 @ 08:42 AM

By the way, how goes your "DXF" tool? I need to learn how to model myself a cool looking saturn controller! *hint* :cheers

[post=144638]Quoted post[/post]​

I haven't worked on RB_SaturnDXF and the Blender SGL export plugin since spring/summer last year, since I was not dealing with demanding 3D anyways.

 

[mrkotfw]

Is the source going to be released any time soon? I remember I had a hard time getting it to work under wine...

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by Piratero@Sat, 2006-02-25 @ 10:10 PM

Is the source going to be released any time soon? I remember I had a hard time getting it to work under wine...

[post=144687]Quoted post[/post]​

I can send it by e-mail, my addy is C4_2005@rockin-b.de

 

[Zaksund]

This is sweet! :cheers

I think for the most part we're all dreaming of the day when everyone can move away from SGL/SBL, so it's always encouraging to see the work that doesn't use them getting more and more advanced.

 

[mrkotfw]

It really doesn't take much to move away from the libraries. All you really have to do is look at Charles' code as a reference. I rewrote Bart's linker/crt0 scripts to allow ".lwram" and ".hwram" sections. Don't forget to give me credit if some of you decide to use my scripts 🙂

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by Piratero@Thu, 2006-03-02 @ 11:57 PM

I rewrote Bart's linker/crt0 scripts to allow ".lwram" and ".hwram" sections. Don't forget to give me credit if some of you decide to use my scripts 🙂

[post=144831]Quoted post[/post]​

Thanks for the release, but to be honest: this isn't much.

Some questions:

- Why is everything put into cache through regions? This will cost speed, the cache is already very small, but this way there is no cache at all.

- Why is the binary size limited to 512 kB? Why have you devided high work RAM into binary and other space, a section that must be clearly assigned to be used

What I would really like to see is a cache through section, such that there are no conflicts, because cache through and non-cache through use the same physical memory. (a cache-through section is useful when communicating with the slave)

And I'm looking forward to the sourcecode of your demos, these would surely be worth giving credit.

 

[mrkotfw]

Oh, I know it isn't much. I think 512K is a reasonable size. Don't forget you have around 496K to play with. What do you mean by cache? I used Jeff's GBA scripts as a reference... I could try to implement GBA's "CpuFastSet" routine for the Saturn.

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by Piratero+Fri, 2006-03-03 @ 10:12 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Piratero @ Fri, 2006-03-03 @ 10:12 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>Oh, I know it isn't much. I think 512K is a reasonable size.

[post=144849]Quoted post[/post]​

[/b]

Examples for games with binary size bigger than 512 kB:

- SNES emu

- MineSweeper

- "Sonic steals a ring" demo

If the binaries contain data, then the size can be easily reached.

<!--QuoteBegin-Piratero@Fri, 2006-03-03 @ 10:12 PM

What do you mean by cache?

[post=144849]Quoted post[/post]​

[/quote]

The leading 2 in the memory addresses means cache-through access. So every read access will not generate a hit in the fast cache, but will be loaded from slower RAM. The normal memory address is without leading 2.

(writes are always cache through)

 

[mic]

For those of you who haven't seen them already, I've put up two more Saturn demos on my site (you can find them here)

 

[RockinB]

Originally posted by mic@Fri, 2006-03-10 @ 07:11 PM

For those of you who haven't seen them already, I've put up two more Saturn demos on my site (you can find them here)

[post=145020]Quoted post[/post]​

Although you don't seem to like conversation I say "Well done, keep it up!".

 

[vbt]

Added in Saturn programs page 🙂