Jaguar vs. 3DO?

[andym00]

Game logic and AI is my job at 3DS in case you we reall wondering. I also do the 3D modeling for whichI wrote my own modeler for.

 

Who ? Link ?

Edited July 31, 2007 by andym00

[A Sprite]

The website is rather lacking...

[Gorf]

The website is rather lacking...

 

 

Sadly. Terance is working on that as we speak. We have not touched it

since right after the fiasco that was Gorf's release. le sigh....

[fishsandwich]

The website is rather lacking...

 

 

Sadly. Terance is working on that as we speak. We have not touched it

since right after the fiasco that was Gorf's release. le sigh....

 

I'm fairly new here. What happened with Gorf's release? Why was it a fiasco?

[Gorf]

The website is rather lacking...

 

 

Sadly. Terance is working on that as we speak. We have not touched it

since right after the fiasco that was Gorf's release. le sigh....

 

I'm fairly new here. What happened with Gorf's release? Why was it a fiasco?

 

Rights issues and my misunderstanding of those rights issues. My fault

and it's done and over with. It has all been rectified since.

Edited July 31, 2007 by Gorf

[spiffyone]

Gorf, good to see you back.

 

Now, back to the verbal bar fight -

 

Can someone post a close-up of a good Jag texture, compared to the best textures of PSX ( Tobal 2, Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot: Warped ) N64 ( Rare's work, Rayman 2 ) Saturn ( Nights, Panzer Dragoon Saga ) and 3DO ( Your guess is as good as mine. )?

 

TBQH, I think more than pics are needed. Vids are needed.

 

The textures on many N64 games, even the best ones, were sometimes "muddied" compared to those on PSone and Saturn (and possibly even Jag and 3DO) due to how the video was handled in N64.

 

But in vids, PSone has a really, really bad problem with texture warping even in its best games. From early games like Twisted Metal to MGS to Tekken 3, all suffered texture warping. I think the games that suffered less from it (but it was still there) were games released late in the life cycle like Omega Boost that were written "to the machine" (I gather in direct machine code).

 

Saturn suffers with it to a lesser extent, depending on which game. Games that used one processor and one VDP, like Tomb Raider on Saturn (iirc), suffered. Games that used both properly didn't really suffer from texture warping (Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers come to mind). As most games that didn't use the system properly were 3rd party games...well, we can see where the idea that PSone had far superior graphics capabilities than Saturn came to be. Judge them against Sega 1st party games (and 2nd party too) and you'll see Saturn games that are comparable and in many ways graphically better than PSone games (especially because of that lack of texture warping).

 

A few 3DO games suffered from warping. Autobahn Tokio, Star Fighter, and some others. None of the EA games did, though. And the texture warping with those games I mentioned, while pretty bad, only really had an effect at the bottom of the screen (as you were passing things) and only then on the immediate textures on the ground. On PSone, there were a lot of games where texture warping would occur at the top of the screen on down.

 

N64 didn't really suffer from it all that much at all. Neither did Jag all that much from what I could tell.

 

So I think quality of sharpness of textures is only one part of the story. How they look in movement is very important too. And in my view PSone or 3DO were probably the worse in that regard.

[spiffyone]

Oh, and ironically enough the textures in the 3DO games I mentioned (Autobahn Tokio, Star Fighter) aren't the best on that console. Quite lacking, actually.

 

Well, no...the textures on Star Fighter are pretty good for 3DO, but like PO'ed the "go anywhere, "large" 3D world" puts a crimp on texture quality. Good, but could be a lot better, and Star Fighter suffers from texture warp was you pass by things on the ground.

 

But Autobahn Tokio aren't good at all really.

 

Best textures on 3DO...hmmm...probably something like Shockwave 2 or Need for Speed. Wing Commander III has some good textures for a space combat game on 3DO. Killing Time has some good texture quality.

 

No, wait...all in all I'd say the strongest textures in a 3DO game are in Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels. Oh, and Foes of Ali. Yeah, definitely those two games. Foes of Ali especially.

[sd32]

I was wondering how the texture mapping in Sky Hammer compares with Hoverstrike CD. I own HSCD, but have never seen Sky Hammer in person, just screenshots, anyone got a good quality video of it?

spiffyone, you are right, Saturn rarely suffered from texture warping, actually, only the first level of Panzer Dragoon Zwei (a terriffic game) comes to mind righ now. But damn, Saturn textures were always so low-res, is it true that it used sprites on the polygons to achieve the texture mapping?. Then again, Virtua Fighter 2 looks so clean, that i am still impressed by its looks today, and its graphics have aged better than most fighting games for the PSX from that era.

Edited August 2, 2007 by sd32

[spiffyone]

Don't know about the sprites on polys as textures.

 

I do know that VF2, which I agree has aged well for a "3D" fighter from that generation of consoles, is in Saturn's "high res" mode, and that Saturn games can have higher resolutions natively than PSone or 3DO games. Jaguar can have games in those higher resolutions too, as Gorf stated earlier.

 

3DO's signal is really 320 x 240 "blown up" to 640 x 480. Same deal with PSone. Saturn and Jag could do that, but they could also do true 640 x 480 natively, iirc, and indeed higher resolutions (I think some Saturn games are 720 x 480 or thereabouts, indicating 16:9 ratio rather than the 4:3 of 480i).

[Gorf]

So I think quality of sharpness of textures is only one part of the story. How they look in movement is

very important too. And in my view PSone or 3DO were probably the worse in that regard.

 

Awful actually. I just wish someone reworked the Hoverstrike engine for Risc only.

We'd not be discussing this right now. Accursed 68k!!!!! (gorf shakes fist with vigor.)

The jag so blows the other three away in texture quality/clarity and sharpness.

 

That engine could have been a good basis for a lot of very excellent JAg games,

fully textured cleaner than the other 3 systems at 30+ FPS.

 

I cant wait to get back to my jag projects. With out changing the renderer(which is Atari's

sample and sucks) I'll increse the frame rate again. Then the new renderer will greatly

improve what we are getting now...with game logic and all.

 

Oh if the tank/chopper textures in Iron Soldier dont convince you I dont know what will.

[Gunstar]

Oh, and ironically enough the textures in the 3DO games I mentioned (Autobahn Tokio, Star Fighter) aren't the best on that console. Quite lacking, actually.

 

Well, no...the textures on Star Fighter are pretty good for 3DO, but like PO'ed the "go anywhere, "large" 3D world" puts a crimp on texture quality. Good, but could be a lot better, and Star Fighter suffers from texture warp was you pass by things on the ground.

 

But Autobahn Tokio aren't good at all really.

 

Best textures on 3DO...hmmm...probably something like Shockwave 2 or Need for Speed. Wing Commander III has some good textures for a space combat game on 3DO. Killing Time has some good texture quality.

 

No, wait...all in all I'd say the strongest textures in a 3DO game are in Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels. Oh, and Foes of Ali. Yeah, definitely those two games. Foes of Ali especially.

 

Spacehulk on the 3DO has pretty incredible textures and I've never noticed any warping at all either.

OOPS! I see you did mention it at the bottom; serves me right for not scrolling down all the way: the last two lines were cut off on the bottom of my screen when I posted this reply.

Edited August 5, 2007 by Gunstar

[sd32]

Deathkeeps textures are really good too, one of the best 3DO looking games on my opinion. Just be patient and get past the initial level wich is frustrating to play because of the ice and water.

[Gorf]

Deathkeeps textures are really good too, one of the best 3DO looking games on my opinion. Just be patient and get past the initial level wich is frustrating to play because of the ice and water.

 

 

Those are low poly counts too and they still look good.

[spiffyone]

One thing I just learned the other day was that 3DO had an OS that apparently was a resource hog and kept people from "writing to the machine" as was done for Jag, Saturn and N64. In that way it was similar to PSone, except, of course, tha PSone had C compilers in the tool kit. 3DO had an OS.

 

I wonder if it was as much of a resource hog as something like WinCE was on Dreamcast, where using that resource hogging OS basically cut the system's power by almost half.

 

Anyone know if any of the games on 3DO were coded to the machine?

[Gorf]

There is NOTHING preventing anyone from writing directly to the Jaguar's hardware. Unlike all the other systems,

It had no such operating system. No layers in the way. It also had ass for tools and that never improved.

 

Writing to the hardware can be a worse nightmare than dealing with an OS. At least an OS

has a lot of the work done for you. The JAguar is a software less machine after boot. The boot

rom does just that...boots...there is no OS, no subroutines or anything of any use to the user.

 

The best you can do with it is a debug stub like the alpine. Everything you have every seen

done on the Jaguar is hand coded by the developers for the most part and not ONE useful

library was included....inefficient examples at best. Hang tight....the tools are on their way.

Edited August 7, 2007 by Gorf

[jesusc]

are these going to be free tools, or will there be a licensing structure in place?

[Gorf]

are these going to be free tools, or will there be a licensing structure in place?

 

Reasonably priced....lets just say that.

[jesusc]

how reasonable is reasonable?

[A Sprite]

One thing I just learned the other day was that 3DO had an OS that apparently was a resource hog and kept people from "writing to the machine" as was done for Jag, Saturn and N64. In that way it was similar to PSone, except, of course, tha PSone had C compilers in the tool kit. 3DO had an OS.

 

I wonder if it was as much of a resource hog as something like WinCE was on Dreamcast, where using that resource hogging OS basically cut the system's power by almost half.

 

Anyone know if any of the games on 3DO were coded to the machine?

 

Don't make Trip smack a bitch.

 

Section 4 - System and Application Software

[4.1] What about the 3DO operating system?

A: The 3DO OS is a fully-featured 32-bit multitasking operating system written specifically for the 3DO by NTG. Developers *must* use the OS for a variety of reasons, the main one being to maintain compatibility with all 3DO consoles and future next generation 3DO consoles. The OS is loaded from an application's CD when the system starts up, and is not in the consoles ROM. Contrary to rumors, there is no way to bypass the OS and "hack" directly on the hardware.

 

See that? Trip knows what you need, baby. He hurts you because he cares.

Edited August 7, 2007 by A Sprite

[kevincal]

lol @ Trip Hawkins...

[Gorf]

how reasonable is reasonable?

 

 

When the product is finished I'll be able to determine that..

Reasonable means you will more than get your moneys worth.

Let's just put it that way. Affordable to the common Jag fan

wanting to code. How's that sound?

[spiffyone]

A Sprite, thanks for the laugh. That was great.

 

Funny thing is that Trip acted like that in all the interviews he gave. Not so overt, of course, but he had this "holier-than-thou, my-shit-don't-stink" sort of thing going on.

 

Too bad about that OS thing on 3DO. I've read it effectively kept some from getting the most out of the machine.

[A Sprite]

A Sprite, thanks for the laugh. That was great.

 

Funny thing is that Trip acted like that in all the interviews he gave. Not so overt, of course, but he had this "holier-than-thou, my-shit-don't-stink" sort of thing going on.

 

Too bad about that OS thing on 3DO. I've read it effectively kept some from getting the most out of the machine.

 

All true, but at the same time, look at this:

 

 

 

A good team will create a good game, no matter how many of their limbs you cut off - they'll program with their tongues, if need be. Gouge out their eyes, and they'll have their seeing eye dogs bark out the right pixel coordinates. You can rip off their noses, carve out a lung, pull off their fingernails and force feed them to their cats; it doesn't matter, ask EA these are all good motivational tools during crunch time - just make sure they have good tools to work with, and the check is good...

 

Bad math offends them.

Edited August 9, 2007 by A Sprite

[Pete5125]

Yeah but a majority of the good games on 3D0 where from 1 company EA. Atari only had one big company making games and that was Atari. Truth is though N64 games looked as good or beter than anything 3D0 made and it was a cartige based machine just like Atari, so to me not being CD is not a good excuse, besides Atari was CD towards the end and it still did not bring us Madden, FIFA, Need for Speed, Road Rash, or even games equivilant. Back in the day I would of said Atari was the winner because 3DO had a large majority of their 200+ games were either bad or unplayable. Atari's advantage today is that 3D0 has not aged well and state of the art games are not as impressive as they once were

[Austin]

To go with all the other necrobumps that have been happening lately..