Silanda
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Posts posted by Silanda
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On 4/11/2021 at 3:30 AM, jgkspsx said:I always wanted to play this but have never had a 3DO. Neat to see this! Is the game complete-ish?
I haven't played very far but I believe so. It's got what basically amounts to a trainer menu at the start, so you can turn invulnerability, infinite ammo, debug info, etc, off if you want to play it properly.
I did notice one bug: it's possible to throw yourself out of bounds if you strafe at the same time as turn 180 (i.e. L1 or R1 + L2 or R2). You seem to be able to just walk yourself back into the map again though.
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Played a bit of this now, and it's pretty much as I thought. The Playstation version runs better, the 3DO version looks better. The 3DO version is more colourful and it uses LOD textures so that the textures are replaced by low detail ones when they get far from the viewport. I'm not convinced doing that looks great in this case, but perhaps there was a technical reason for it. Whatever the case, this technique appears to be missing in the Playstation version. Also missing in the Playstation version is the seamless loading between stages. There are no obvious load times on the 3DO version so all the stages connect together and feel like one large map. The Playstation version has "now loading" pauses between stages.
It's a shame this wasn't released though. I've never understood why they did that with completed disc based games where the manufacturing costs weren't that high. It wasn't like with cartridges where there was a large, up-front, manufacturing cost.
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My Japanese FZ-10 has the input voltage (along with Japanese text) printed on the bottom of its case.
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On 9/22/2020 at 3:51 PM, Leeroy ST said:That's what I heard, but there may be some truth to that given the video quality and animation of the characters in the link Zetastrike posted and the original 3DO version:
Late to the party, but it looks like another 3DO to PS1 port that would have suffered from the Playstation's texture format limitations. AFAIK the 3DO was more flexible in terms of texture/sprite colour formats than the PS1. If I understand things correctly, on the PS1 you had a choice of 16, 256, or 32768 colour textures/sprites. Trouble was that the 3DO could use other colour depths such as 64 colour, necessitating format conversion. The PS1 usually didn't have enough VRAM to allow all textures and sprites to be converted to 256 colour though, so 16 colour had to suffice instead and detail was lost accordingly. The texture and sprite work in virtually every 3DO to PS1 port took a hit even if the games themselves ran better. Hell, even the UI in Psychic Detective on the PS1 looks less colourful than its 3DO equivalent.
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What amused me slightly was the disconnect between the meter he used and the way he went about things. Fluke meters aren't cheap, and typically you'd choose one over a much cheaper meter, that might actually have more functionality, because you want one that is safe and reliable. Having the most reliable or expensive meter in the world is going to be of no benefit to you if you're going to ignore what it's telling you (e.g. not a dead short), and have a recklessly cavalier attitude.
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Unlikely, but I'm honestly wondering if he could have done this for clicks knowing that there would be a brewhaha about it. Otherwise I just don't get why anyone who's worked with electrical/electronic equipment would do what he did. The output he bridged must have been power and CRT monitors usually have a mains input, explaining the three pins. It's a near "setting your meter to current and sticking it in the mains" level of mistake.
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I usually like his videos but that one was just painful. There were multiple basic warning signs that his paper clip idea was a terrible one. Hell, bridging unknown pins with a paper clip is always a terrible idea if you like your hardware to not be destroyed.
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If this is supposed to be a beta test, how about these testers specifically play through games that are known to have problems on the emulators the Polymega's based on? I notice that Virtua Fighter Remix has exactly the same problems as on Mednafen, and Fighters Megamix actually has a problem that I reported and the latest release of Mednafen fixed.
Yeah, I'm kind of sceptical about whether this is a genuine attempt at testing or a mutually beneficial way to drum up hype/get clicks.
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Oh no! You've helped them narrow down your location!!
I know. I'm barricading my doors and looking out from the roof just in case a legal strike team is inbound.
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Funny thing about libel laws, they can only be applied if it's proven that baseless slander is being used, and while some companies and people have threatened to sue for such it's usually to strong arm critics. Other than saying that they're full of shit, which is a blanket statement and cannot be easily proven to be libel, most people here have not duly slandered the man or made personal attacks on him or his character.
I'm in the UK. Our courts have been abused for libel and slander cases as AFAIK our law demands that those accused prove that they haven't libelled or slandered the complainant rather than the complainant having to prove their case against the accused. I think that the Polymega smells very off, but I'm cautious about making accusations as if from a position of authority because of that. I'm probably being paranoid, but hey ho.
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Ground Zero Texas, ESPN Baseball Tonight, and Sensible Soccer (if that's what it is). I own them all anyway.
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That's literally the definition of giving them the benefit of the doubt. They've haven't shown any evidence that they've built what they said they did. When you say "maybe they haven't shown us everything," you're erring on the side of believing their promises, even though you have zero reason to do so.
For the record, I suspect they have shown us everything they've got, hence their refusal to post videos of actual hardware in operation and periods of radio silence, and I question whether they will be able to deliver what was promised.
However, I was talking about the non-zero possibility that any developments for Polymega contractually could not be incorporated into Mednafen, and therefore my suggestion that Mednafen's lack of Saturn improvement could throw further doubt on whether it could run on the proposed hardware probably isn't evidence even though I suspect that I'm right. Whether Polymega's a scam or not though, based on the deleted tweets and comment on Mednafen's board, Ryphecha has almost certainly worked on its emulation and could be contractually bound to not use that work elsewhere or for a certain amount of time.
What I posted is not about giving Playmaji the benefit of the doubt, it's just honest acknowledgement that my suspicion is only a suspicion, has possible alternate explanations, and proves nothing. Based on what they've shown and what they haven't, I wouldn't put a cent towards Polymega and would advise that no-one else does. However, libel and slander laws are real, and I'd rather avoid publicly accusing a company of being liars and scam artists unless I can prove it, or suggest that something is proof of them being that when it's not. To quote "A Few Good Men": it doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove.
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Wow that is beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. There certainly is a reason why you don't see the bootup screen. Only the game playing is shown. We all know why.
It's not that I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, it's that I'm erring on the side of caution because I could be publicly drawing conclusions with insufficient evidence, and I don't like doing that.
I'm drawing the conclusion that the lack of recent significant improvement to Mednafen's Saturn emulation suggests that the talk of a perfect and optimised Saturn emulator is unlikely as I would have expected to see the improvements rolled back into Mednafen releases. That might not have been too clear in my previous post. I'm being cautious as I have no insight into Mednafen's development, so I could be talking out of my arse. To be clear, I think Playmaji have been less than truthful in the best case scenario.
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So, nothing's happened then? I'd love to be wrong. I'd love for them to deliver the product and I could chalk my doubts up to being a cynical bastard, but If the project is legitimate as they claim, these month long periods of radio silence don't look good. They still haven't produced the video of operational hardware yet, have they?
I'm curious about whether the latest release of Mednafen suggests anything or not. Mednafen's Saturn emulation is quite demanding and still has quite a few bugs, but I figured that if significant bug fixes and optimisations had been made for Polymega there's a good chance that they would find their way into to the stand alone releases. However, the last release from December (the first since Polymega announced Saturn support) has hardly any Saturn bugfixes, with Apple II support being the major change.
I suppose it's possible that Mednafen's author could be contractually forbidden from incorporating work done specifically for the Polymega's emulation, but it's just another thing that makes me wonder exactly what hardware they were running to produce those videos.
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So they have time to download and run a specialized benchmark on their "custom" OS (possibly requiring that they modify and recompile the code for their "custom" hardware), write down the results, and post them (and even look up the exact model number of the monitor) BUT they're too busy to take out an iPhone and record somebody inserting a Saturn disc into their allegedly complete console and show it boot up from scratch (instead of loading from a save state)? Riiiiiight...
Don't forget time to do interviews!
This is the thing I find most suspicious at this point. If everything with regards to this project is how they are trying to portray it, why not do a very simple thing and show what people have asked to see? I'm just left with the impression that they either don't have completed hardware, don't have working HLE BIOS emulation yet, or both. They could actually come clean and be open about it if either of those are true, but it would call that projected launch date into question (especially a potential lack of finished hardware).
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I'll cut them some slack on the BIOS thing. SSF can run without a BIOS, and there's at least one Playstation emulator that can too, so I assume that Mednafen could be modified.
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No updates on Twitter either.
This isn't filling me with confidence. Getting camera footage of a prototype in operation shouldn't take more than ten minutes, yet they've posted none despite being asked by a number of people, and didn't sound enthusiastic about doing so. They really need to do it if they can because failure to do so is simply going to lead people to the conclusion that they don't have a hardware prototype that functions as claimed.
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What let me baffled is why would people "have faith" and try to mediate the situation on their own, attempting to make skeptics "go away", what's the freaking point?
There's a recent thread at Resetera about a similar, and I believe related, phenomenon: why do some people get so invested and defensive about games that haven't released yet? Why do some gamers get on a hype train and then attack people who don't share their enthusiasm?
I may be utterly jaded at this point, but it's something that I really don't understand; I can be excited about something, but I'm not going to attack someone because they're not. Generally speaking, games\products\companies need to win me over and convince me to part with my money. I'm not willing to uncritically believe promises on faith, and I'm certainly not going to go into bat for a company against people asking fair questions and expressing reasonable doubts.
In the case of Polymega, it concerns me that they weren't open about the complete change in spec until pre-orders opened, it concerns me that they haven't shown any footage of the the new hardware itself running, and it concerns me that they're running their own crowdfunding scheme rather than going through something well established like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
An Intel i7-8809G has a TDP of 100W.
And NUC8i7HVK, about the size of a paperback book, dissipates it just fine.
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Machine-NUC8i7HVK-Radeon-Graphics/dp/B07BR5GK1V
..so power dissipation and cooling issues should be the least of anyone's concern.
Where I'm concerned with cooling is that small format systems designed for higher TDP processors tend to have quite a lot of venting. Renders of the Polymega show no vents at all apart from those slits on the top, assuming there are vents there. That doesn't mean that the system can't dissipate the heat, or can't be made to, but it does raise some doubts in my mind about how hot the thing will get during prolonged use.
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Isn't Sega Saturn emulation still problematic and fickle under the best of circumstances?
Can be. There's a few games that seem to be particularly tricky, and it's not necessarily the ones that you'd think would cause trouble. I'd like to see Virtua Fighter Remix running, as that one's problematic in Mednafen, and requires significant messing with the settings in SSF.
I see that quite a few people, myself included, have called on them to show camera footage of these games running on a prototype rather than direct capture footage, so it will be interesting to see if they oblige.
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3DO will not read discs... stepper motor problem?
in 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
Posted
Just to double check: there's no sign of a hairline crack in the cog gear is there? That's an extremely common point of failure in the 3DO's drive mechanism, and as it's probably caused by plastic becoming more brittle or shrinking over time, it can occur even when the console hasn't been used for years. The crack can be so small that it looks like it wouldn't cause a problem, but it does.