Fixing the Sega Saturn - ADDENDUM - Texture mapping bonanza included!
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- Опубликовано: 3 авг 2024
- My video has caused some of the people who watched it to have some questions that they want answered. After enough comments came through with their ideas, questions and critiques, I've decided to make an addendum where I graphically explain the difference between texel to pixel and pixel to texel texture mapping along with elaborating on the 32x.
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Yeah the 32x splitting the hardware software teams was a huge problem along with the surprise release at E3 were big killers to the Saturn.
Something else that doesn’t get talked about as much are the amount of Saturn games that never released outside of Japan. The total for Japan is over 4 times what the US got, and some that eventually were brought to the US on PS1 (Lunar 1 and 2, Grandia for example). The Saturn technically outsold the N64 in Japan, and I believe was beating Sony in Japan up until FF7 was released.
I believe if Sega made the Saturn easier for developers, didn’t do a surprise release at E3, didn’t divert focus for the 32X, and released more of the game library to the US we’d have seen a closer console war that generation. I still don’t think Sega could have topped Sony, but at least a long lifecycle for the Saturn would put the Dreamcast in a much better place that it originally was (because the biggest killer if the Dreamcast was the Saturn).
What I would do regarding texture mapping is only automate the inner loop. Have a counter, and interpolate four co-ordinates as that counter increases, at each count copying from (u,v) texture co-ordinates to (x,y) screen co-ordinates. This would be flexible, you could do affine textured triangles like the PS1, you could do quads like the Saturn, you could even do Doom style walls and floors/ceilings.
More importantly it would allow the programmer to define the exact shape of the polygon, so if it needed to be subdivided to reduce warping, the sub polygons could follow the shape of the overall polygon exactly, and if the polygon shared an edge with another polygon, the sub polygons could seamlessly share the edge.
Regarding transparency, a simple trick would be for the VDP2 to recognize the pattern ABA and blend the adjacent pixels, turning mesh transparency into something hard to tell apart from real transparency. It would be blurry, but nicer than plain mesh transparency and more convenient than doing real transparency.
Subscribed. Made me laugh and I love the Saturn
I like that you brought up that development of the 32X probably took hands & focus away from the Saturn development that would have probably resulted in a stronger product had they remained focused on getting the Saturn up to snuff with the PS1. Development money & time spent on the 32X would have been far better spent getting a solid dev-kit for the Saturn together, at the very least.
Sega CD + $49.95 SVP LockOn that had already been finished and that everyone was excited about. Daytona USA, Virtua Racer, Virtua Fighter, and Star Wars Arcade were already developed and ready for sale in Spring.
SVP had the terrible downside of being locked to 20FPS max due to the speed of the Mega Drive data bus. It should've never been made to begin with. Virtua Racing Deluxe is an experience miles ahead of Virtua Racing on the MD due to better resolution and FPS.
Also, 3D really needs more pixel depth and shades than the MD can offer.
@@PancakeDev The ROM bus was 13MHz and just moved tiles when accessed. The VDP drew those tiles at 60fps. And we're talking 1994. PS1 wasn't launched until 1995, and decent 3D didn't show up on rival machines until late 1996-97. Given sine time, the Sega CD+SVP would've handled demakes of games like FF7 or Resident Evil.
First the VDP had to gather those tiles being generated by the SVP, a process that realistically you can have only 7kb per frame. a full 256x224 frame in the MD takes 30kb, which means no matter how fast the SVP is, it could never display graphics above 20FPS using fullscreen. You'd need to use half of the screen area to at least get 30FPS, which doesn't help with visibility having the already low color palette. Your faith in the SVP is a delusional fever dream, it would at best have served as as good 2D manipulator, just like it was the case with the SuperFX, for the very same reasons.
Theoretically by 1993, you could've just not released the CD addon for the megadrive and instead made it an independent unit and used the SVP. Of course, you'd need to change some stuff around on the Mega CD to make it actually work on its own and so you wouldn't run into issues with the bandwidth.
But at that point, why use the SVP anyways when you could make a custom chip ala the one in the 3DO, which would've been quite a lot faster.
And all of that would end up jacking the price of the console to like 399$ but you'd have something like (ballparking)
1MB of RAM and 512KB of VRAM, something like the 3DO graphics chip and possibly an SH-1 CPU as they were already present on the market in 1992, with everything else staying mostly the same (except a video compositor, ports for a cartridge and controllers, etc.).
So yeah we just reinvented the 3DO "interactive multiplayer" (what a name btw) and games still won't properly utilize it until it's too late, as Virtua Fighter launched in late 1993, and it was what pushed 3D into the mainstream, meaning that unless someone at this hypothetical SEGA was a savant or time traveller, they'd have no plans for "3D 'capable'" hardware in the new Mega CD.
Eu sou do Brazil e estou a anos planejando um video explicando sobre o fraco desempenho do saturn no 3D e seus problemas de transparencia e seus dois videos só agregaram ao assunto sempre achei que o problema estava no VDP1 e não no SCU e sim o seus videos são muito interessantes sim, aqui também vejo pessoas reclamando de porque tocar neste assunto. Para mim é algo super interessante.
How about not release the sega cd + 32x + saturn, and use the money to release the sega uranus
Correction when you claim that a lot of "SEGA" staff were focused on the 32X, this is FALSE... it was mainly and MOSTLY Sega of America's 90s management who kept their focus on the 32X as soon as they got away with having the Japanese HEADQUARTERS aka Sega Enterprises LTD Japan, approve and manufacture the 32X.
Tom Kalinske had been grand standing about refusing to sell a $400 dollar console since mid 1993 just weeks or months after the January 1993 Project Saturn official announcement in Japanese newspapers.
Tom Kalinske had been doing that in public but behind the scenes he was putting pressure on the Sega Japanese headquarters to make a CHEAPER 32X console to extend the life of 32X... originally when the Japanese agreed to make it it was gonna be simple and be a stand alone "Super Genesis" aimed at the U.S.A. market where around 16 to 19 million Genesis units had allegedly been sold to consumers however Tom Kalinske and Joe Miller met up with Hayao Nakayama and other Japanese staff in January 1994 to again put pressure to ADD more processors aka Dual SH2s and make it an add on device... something that Sega's Japanese engineers had NEVER done with previous Sega systems.
THAT is where a lot of Sega of America management pushed games were being pulled away from Sega MegaDrive and Sega Saturn (Sonic Stadium or Sonic Crackers which Tom Kalinske personally moved over to 32X exclusively) as well as requesting Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade and making remastered SegaCD live action FMV games for SegaCD 32X or MegaCD 32X which was a waste of money and resources.
Also the U.S.A. launch of 32X immediately FLOPPED... it did not sell out and neither did it sell successfully or even halfway successful because people like Tom Kalinske were giving the press the Sega of America warehouse to retailers sales, NOT the actual consumer purchases which is the TRUE reason here in the U.S.A. for retailers turning irate which was never about the Sega Saturn, it was because Tom Kalinske told and sold them the idea that 32X was gonna sell like hot cakes which never happened and tons of 32X units around 400,000 of them lay sitting in retailer shelves since the end of 1994 all the way to the end of 1995 where Sega of America's management had further sold an additional 300,000 32X units TO RETAILERS NOT consumers and thus over 700,000 32X units and game software lay sitting in store shelves until they were liquidated.
I'm sure for U.K. and European retailers the SAME thing happened and those retailers tried tactics to sell the stock they were stuck with.
The reasoning behind the 32X again lies with Tom Kalinske because he kept insisting that "a $400 Sega Saturn was never gonna sell" which was a lie, he simply did not want to sell it and pushed his own project over the Japanese under the claim that Sega of America's management was successful which was also FALSE and both those Sega of America 90s management fanboy books lied too by only telling the perspective from 90s Sega of America management and staff.
The fact us unfortunately that Sega headquarters in Japan had been slow to audit the claims from Tom Kalinske on a year by year basis... or that Tom Kalinske wad deliberately misrepresenting the actual yearly sales figures because Sega's Japanese management noticed a lack of profits coming from sales in the U.S.A. and North America... in other words other than Sonic and Sonic 2 being pack ins which sell with systems the rest of the games were not selling as they were supposed to and if Sega's Japanese management had performed an audit earlier since 1993 then they would have held Tom Kalinske accountable and prevented any 32X proposals from him from being approved.
Yeah, the 32x was an absolutely terrible idea that should've never been even considered.
Didn't the 32x still need to be greenlit by SOJ before it entered production though?
Btw there is NOTHING WRONG with the Sega Saturn hardware architecture other than whatever disruption and sabotage that Sega of America's 90s management and their 32X caused.
You should have realized that btw since YOU are highlighting Sega's internal Japanese dev team games like Panzer Dragoon Azel/Saga.
The other third parties who had no intentions of actually learning and USING the proprietary technology processors inside the Sega Saturn were still gonna produce shovelware no matter if the Sega Saturn was twice as powerful... don't believe me? Look at the Nintendo 64 and even the Sega Dreamcast... both of them have higher spec capabilities that cannot be ignored and the N64 is a ROM Cartridge system which means nanosecond access times... yet there is a huge difference between the hardcore game devs and the shovelware kings.
One fine example on the N64 is Midway Games... they did not bother to take their time learning how to program on the N64 and instead RUSHED out games to meet holiday season sales so games like San Francisco RUSH shipped with bugs subpar performance and mono sound... same with Mace the Dark Age but worst of all is Hydro Thunder... made years after Waverace 64 in the year 1999 and sporting sub par water graphics and physics regardless if you have the 4MB RAM Pack... that Waverace 64, a 1996 retail release just never used.
On Dreamcast you have slightly enhanced Sony PlayStation arcade boars games running at higher resolution and colors like Soul Calibur, Tech Romancer etc and then you have some lazy multi platform port jobs like Mortal Kombat Gold to San Francisco RUSH 2047...
The failure with the Sega Saturn happened because people like Tom Kalinske and Joe Miller were employed as management in 90s Sega of America and they pushed their ideas on the Japanese headquarters like they "knew better"... that is a huge red flag that escapes all the people who have nothing but negative things to say about the Sega Saturn.
The fact that Sega of America's Tom Kalinske got his way and made the 32X alone massively sabotaged the first year of Sega Saturn game software development alone... which Sony and Nintendo and 3DO and even Atari Corp never had to worry about.
I've outlined the issues with the Saturn's hardware, I've actually figured out that SEGA could've added an MJPEG engine similar to the PS1 into VDP-2 and then replaced the SH-1 in the CD-ROM sub-assembly with something cheaper + removed the MPEG card port entirely.
The Saturn was hard to develop for and developers weren't given proper tools and libraries by SEGA until it was too late, of course the early ports were going to suck.
Look, I don't know why you are so hell-bent on hating SOA, this was a company-wide shitstorm that sunk them, it wasn't just a clown or a group of clowns, SEGA in the mid to late 90s was the entire circus.
A GD Emu solution for the SEGA Saturn would be nice.
There's quite a few options for ODEs on the Sega Saturn
Talking shit about the 32X is the most lukewarm take ever. It's a better addon than the SCD IMO. Sure it was rough and based on brute force, but so was the Mega Drive anyways. I think most of the blame the MD addons get should fall on the MD itself for not fully having proper expansion support. The 32X itself is just a quick and dirty but effective software based video and sound expansion, something most third party devs failed to understand i think. Just like the Saturn, if the 32X had some libraries and a proper devkit at launch, it would've proven a much better platform. The system itself is so simple that i doubt it took any significant time at all to engineer. It's a dual SH2 setup with a sound DAC and a dual paged framebuffer display with a blitter.
the 32X’s issues are less about its hardware and more about the context of when it released, especially with the infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. said infighting is what led to the 32X’s existence in the first place.
The Sega CD made sense. NEC had a widely popular CD add-on for the PC Engine, and there was no reason to think Nintendo wouldn't have followed suit had things played out differently. It added enough hardware grunt & unique features to justify it existing. The 32X was an entirely pointless stop-gap that wasn't even needed as SOA ended up rushing the Saturn out earlier than expected anyway. It wasn't powerful enough to stand up to the true next gen consoles, it was rendered entirely obsolete within months. Had Sega simply held off, focused on transitioning from the MD to the Saturn (instead of SOA trying to wrestle control from their parent division) & launched the Saturn when original intended I don't think it would have fared as badly as it did in the west. The 32X is such a massive misfire that it drags down an otherwise harmless add-on with it.
@@seanmckelvey6618 The Sega CD was the better IDEA, sure, but it was so overengineered with features that failed to be fully utilized such as the graphics chip that could easily be cut out to reduce costs. The 32X was more than a stopgap, it was a budget alternative to the new generation, something that became the standard in the industry 20 years later.
The 32x took away dev time from the Saturn, basically dooming both of them.
I mean, a SSD would technically help. It was just several decades too early to impliment.
I mean a SATA SSD might be faster than the working ram on the Saturn. LOL