Gamehut on how hard it was to code for Saturn

[deepthaw]

This video seems particularly timely especially after some discussion in another thread about how difficult it was or wasnt to develop for the Saturn.

 

[DJ Clae]

You had to use every part of the hardware. Just like how Native Americans on the plains used every part of the buffalo.

[Gamemoose]

You had to use every part of the hardware. Just like how Native Americans on the plains used every part of the buffalo.

Now THERE'S a comparison I didn't think I'd ever see...

[Osgeld]

while it sounds complicated I really have no idea how that compares to other dedicated 3d hardware of the time like a playstation or a pc with an accelerator

[CatPix]

Well it would be less complex, as the coder would only have to manage CPU and one 3D chip (for the PS1) or for PC; altoug coding on PC would be different, especially in 1996 where direct hardware access would be replaced by having the OS (DOS or Windows) dealing with it.

 

While the 3DO also have two graphic co-processors (Clio and Madam) but the 3DO have it's own OS, so programming on the 3DO is more akin programming on PC, with no direct hadware access (basically).

The Philips CD-i use OS/9 which does the same thing, more or less.

[DJ Clae]

Now THERE'S a comparison I didn't think I'd ever see...

Lazy Saturn programming is wasteful.

 

You're wasting all that power...

 

The power. The POWER!

 

[00010000]

Gamehut stuff is pretty good quality; one of the more informative videos on Saturn hardware along w/ that Japanese video and the one talking about the copy protection being cracked.

 

I do feel many overstate how difficult it was to code for the system; the stuff mentioned in that vid (especially w/ the DSP) may sound extremely complicated to most of us, but honestly how much harder is that vs. say getting results out of the Cell and RSX of PS3, or PS2's Emotion Engine? Those systems had the money (thus marketing, media, and publishers) behind them to just "grunt through" the difficulties and get great results regardless; Saturn didn't really enjoy that luxury so the stories of it being "hard to program for" aren't really exclusive to it, it's just an oddity in that developers and the press openly talked about it whereas normally they would shy away doing that if it were the market leader or a health 2nd (like Nintendo was that gen...even there the microcode bs got out in the day).

 

Saturn definitely has its quirks and some bottlenecks in its design but I don't feel it was on this whole other level of engineering complexity even compared to the other systems of the time, let alone something like the PS3.

[Pixelboy]

Gamehut stuff is pretty good quality; one of the more informative videos on Saturn hardware along w/ that Japanese video and the one talking about the copy protection being cracked.

 

I do feel many overstate how difficult it was to code for the system; the stuff mentioned in that vid (especially w/ the DSP) may sound extremely complicated to most of us, but honestly how much harder is that vs. say getting results out of the Cell and RSX of PS3, or PS2's Emotion Engine? Those systems had the money (thus marketing, media, and publishers) behind them to just "grunt through" the difficulties and get great results regardless; Saturn didn't really enjoy that luxury so the stories of it being "hard to program for" aren't really exclusive to it, it's just an oddity in that developers and the press openly talked about it whereas normally they would shy away doing that if it were the market leader or a health 2nd (like Nintendo was that gen...even there the microcode bs got out in the day).

 

Saturn definitely has its quirks and some bottlenecks in its design but I don't feel it was on this whole other level of engineering complexity even compared to the other systems of the time, let alone something like the PS3.

It kinda depends on the dev tools that were available at the time. If developers didn't have advanced tools that crunched the numbers automatically for all the complicated matrix stuff, then sure, it must have been hell to program for the Saturn.

[CatPix]

Yep.

I've read several testimonies on the Jaguar programming tools that were poor, lacked documentation, and that even contained a bug that made them unable to compile any working program at first.

 

Saturn definitely has its quirks and some bottlenecks in its design but I don't feel it was on this whole other level of engineering complexity even compared to the other systems of the time, let alone something like the PS3.

For almost half of it's lifetime, the PS3 got inferior games compared to the Xbox360 because the programmers didn't wanted to harness the power of the PS3.

It's only when the developpers really went at it (and/or Sony threw more money in better developping tool?) that the PS3 crushed the Xbox 360 and that multi-platforms games got better on PS3 and poor on Xbox 360.

 

Though, the lack of success of the Saturn is more a failure of Sega to market it, in addition to the overwhelming succes to the Playstation more than difficulties to program the system.

[Bubsy3000]

Yep.

I've read several testimonies on the Jaguar programming tools that were poor, lacked documentation, and that even contained a bug that made them unable to compile any working program at first.

 

For almost half of it's lifetime, the PS3 got inferior games compared to the Xbox360 because the programmers didn't wanted to harness the power of the PS3.

It's only when the developpers really went at it (and/or Sony threw more money in better developping tool?) that the PS3 crushed the Xbox 360 and that multi-platforms games got better on PS3 and poor on Xbox 360.

 

Though, the lack of success of the Saturn is more a failure of Sega to market it, in addition to the overwhelming succes to the Playstation more than difficulties to program the system.

PS3 never crushed the 360 in multiplats, the 360 still got the better versions the majority of the time all the way till the end. The exceptions built up later on, but most of those were games that were better tailored to Sonys cinematic playstyle, and those cinematic games were the majority of the superior multiplats to the 360. I think there were only two open-world games of any genre that looked better.

 

While some developers were "lazy" about learning the PS3's architecture, you have to remember there were some real issues with the PS3 tools. The architecture was made for the Cell to be the primary unit for graphics and central processing, but due to the 360's surprise specs they threw in the RSX. You also have to realize that the idea when they launched the PS3, would be to assume it would work like the PS2. They expected devs to mostly focus on the PlayStation console, and so would spend most of their time trying to develop for the PS3 and ignore the 360, knowing full well it would take some time.

 

Instead Micrsoft made development much easier than they expected right from the start, and their plan ended up backfiring. The RSX also made development harder because you had to code through the cell first and then try to get the RSX to do the work the cell couldn't and vice versa. it was meant to cover the weaknesses of the cell and in turn the cell would cover the weaknesses of the RSX, which did not work the way they expected.

 

The real reason the PS3's weaker third-party ports didn't effect it as much the 2nd half of its life, was a combination of Sonys games not looking THAT much worse compared to the first half of its life, where differences were much larger, and the fact the Kinect was taking off. Sony's downgraded multiplats where replaced in the conversation by Microsoft chasing the Wii audience.

[Punisher5.0]

That was an interesting video, thanks for posting it. Id like to see him do some SNES videos in the same format.

[MrMaddog]

I hate to bring up the old "quad vs. triangles" arguement but if you watched the other video (Fading in Sonic R), the fact that the Saturn used sprite-based textures on warped quad shapes made it hard to convert to and fro the more traditional 3D triangles used by other systems. It could be done by making the 4 pointed polygon 3 pointed by collasping two points into one, but it only added more complication. And it took quite a while before Sega released dev kits to let programers do the same stuff they already had done for Playstation & PC's.

 

That said, I'm startting to get more interested in the Sega Saturn as a 2D and sort-of-3D system it was meant to be in Japan. I already had my fill of 3D polygons from the 90's onward if that makes any sense....

[DJ Clae]

That was an interesting video, thanks for posting it. Id like to see him do some SNES videos in the same format.

This is the only channel you need:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwRqWnW5ZkVaP_lZF7caZ-g

[CatPix]

PS3 never crushed the 360 in multiplats,

I meant in sales, but that was mostly in Europe, with the PS3 ending up outselling the Xbox 360 by as much as a third. (34 millions PS3 sold in Europe VS 25 millions for the Xbox360). I clearly remember that soon after the release of the PS3 slim, it became the big thing and Xbox 360 sales went down.

Edited September 29, 2018 by CatPix

[boxpressed]

Dont mean to derail or start a debate, but which multiplats were superior on the PS3? I came late to both platforms and would like to buy the better versions.

[Bubsy3000]

I meant in sales, but that was mostly in Europe, with the PS3 ending up outselling the Xbox 360 by as much as a third. (34 millions PS3 sold in Europe VS 25 millions for the Xbox360). I clearly remember that soon after the release of the PS3 slim, it became the big thing and Xbox 360 sales went down.

In Japan sure, but I don't know about Crushed, I'd say it got clobbered a bit, but Kinect did slow that widening gap down a bit.

 

But yeah you're right, thing is 360 mismanaged Europe a bit, not so much UK, Italy, and Eastern Europe, but more the rest of the countries. Germany was their biggest misstep and they pissed off several distributors there and the nordic countries/Netherlands.

 

But at least it was better than calling multiple countries "Tier 2 in relevance" like with the Xbox One so...