"Street Fighter III" for Jag

[sd32]

oops, double post. sorry

Edited May 14, 2009 by sd32

[sd32]

I'd like to see tobal#1 ported over to the jag....

 

even the graphics look to be like what the jag dose in 3D.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW1uyuHrPoo

 

Haha, i posted the same thing a while ago. Everytime i see Toba 1, i feel like it looks kinda like a state of the art Jag game, with its gouraud shadded untextured polygons.

[mcjakeqcool]

Well, I always thought the Jag had some good 2.5 d muscle, so why could'ent it handle SF 4? I know SF 4 is a Seventh Gen game and the Jag a Fifth Gen console, but still... ya know.

[sd32]

Well, I always thought the Jag had some good 2.5 d muscle, so why could'ent it handle SF 4? I know SF 4 is a Seventh Gen game and the Jag a Fifth Gen console, but still... ya know.

Well, SF4s graphics are made out of polygons, lets remember that the Jag can probably display around the neighboor of 30 000 polygons at a rez of about 320X240. The current machines that handle SF4 display millions of polygons per second, in super high rez modes with all kinds os special effects.

So even though the camera might be restricted to the so called 2.5D angles, it is still throwing around much more stuff than the Jag could ever hope to handle. Now, it could be somehow ported to the Jag, but with Fight For Life quality graphics (maybe even better with the knowledge homebrewers now have on the Jag)... but hey, as long as the gameplay remains good, i would have no ploblem with that!

Edited May 15, 2009 by sd32

[philipj]

I think it's just a matter of rethinking how 2.5D is being done. The Jag has a great 3D system, but it handles 2.5d really well; it's just a matter of harnesting that 2.5D goldnugget and exploiting the hell out of it to memic 3D functionalities.

[108 Stars]

Excuse me, but everyone thinking that Street Fighter IV or even anything remotedly close could be done on the Jaguar because it has "2.5D" muscles is dreaming. 2.5D is nothing but a description made for 3D graphics in games where movement is still limited to the standard 3D-scheme; left, right, up, down. The technology itself is still plain 3D polygons, and the Jaguar could never even come close to producing a game like that. The Jag´s 3D capabilities lie even behind PlayStation 1 and Saturn, so displaying anything better than maybe the mentioned Tobal No.1 is absolutely hilarious (and even Tobal is doubtful). Saying it´s just 2.5D so the Jaguar should be able to handle it is like saying the Atari 2600 could handle Street Fighter II because it´s both just 2D.

 

This is a screenshot of Street Fighter EX2 on PlayStation 1, a good looking game for PS1-standards; remember the PS1 was a 3D powerhouse for it´s time. So you have to think that a Jaguar 3D fighting game must lie somewhere on a level below these gfx.

 

 

Now look at the sheer detail on Ryu; and mind you, the pic has been scaled down to low resolution. Probably his freakin´ head alone takes more polygons than the PS1 game displays for everything on screen.

 

 

SF IV would not be possible on Jag, not on PS1, not on N64, not on Dreamcast, and not on PS2 or Xbox. None of these systems could come close to the visuals.

 

All you could hope for would be a completely reprogrammed game with the gameplay intact but far inferior visuals. For the Jag to run it at a decent speed it would probably best to turn it into a complete 2D game.

 

Now Street Fighter III is a different thing; I believe that the Jag can pull it off with some limitations. The earliest home-console that got a SF III port was the Dreamcast, far superior to the Jag; but if you lower the resolution and cut out half the frames of animation it might work.

I know Gorf is a programmer and knows the Jaguar, but you cannot judge SF III based on Screenshots alone; the main problem is that it is the most smoothly animated 2D-fighter to date, alongside maybe Garou: Mark of the Wolves. It just has a huge amount of animation frames. Saturn needed a 4 MB RAM cart to run Street Fighter Alpha 3 with all animation, and SFA 3 was less demanding than SF III...and I doubt the Jag has more 2D capabilities than the Saturn. So you bet you´d see a difference comparing SF III on Jag in motion and SF III on Dreamcast....but I could imagine it works, the many frames of animation are not neccessary for playability, and the Jag could still make it look nice and colorful.

Edited May 15, 2009 by 108 Stars

[mcjakeqcool]

Street Fighter 2 or even Street Fighter 2 Alpha could be possible on the Jag, but not Street Fighter 3, remember in terms of system capabilities, the Jag is far superior to the SNES, slighty superior to the CD32, on par with the 32x, slighty inferior to the 3DO and far inferior to the N64, so SF2 is possible or even SF2 Alpha, but SF3 is a no go.

[minuS]

Street Fighter 2 or even Street Fighter 2 Alpha could be possible on the Jag, but not Street Fighter 3, remember in terms of system capabilities, the Jag is far superior to the SNES, slighty superior to the CD32, on par with the 32x, slighty inferior to the 3DO and far inferior to the N64, so SF2 is possible or even SF2 Alpha, but SF3 is a no go.

You've made a few posts like this now, and I can't help but notice that you don't seem to have any technical expertise whatsoever... How do you qualify these assertions of yours? What does slightly inferior/superior mean, exactly? How can you say that 32X is on par with Jaguar? What is the difference between 2.5D and 3D muscle? What does 32-bit look like? Why do you sell the 16-bit generation's necessarily creative 3D capabilities short?

 

If you're not sure, ask questions. Don't speak with authority when you're talking out of your ass. There's nothing wrong with having personal opinions or basing them on the games you've played, but when it comes to actual technical terms, you sound terribly ignorant.

 

Back on topic, as far as we've established here (and there are some pretty talented hardware and software developers here who're intimately familiar with the Jaguar's intricacies), the only reason Street Fighter III can't be ported to the Jaguar is because of RAM limitations; that game simply has too many frames of animation to squeeze onto a Jaguar cart... Even the Street Fighter Alpha games are too big! Anyway, 108 Stars made a pretty informative post just above, so I won't elaborate further.

[kool kitty89]

My first note: "2.5D" is a very general term, it can be applied as is being used here, with a 2D style game, with "2D" fixed camera angles but actually using polygonal models; however it can also refer to a game simulating a 3D environment in a "fake" manner rather than true 3D, either using scaling effects like many arcade-style scrolling shooters (like Space Harrier), SNES mode 7 games, some Sega CD games (SoulStar), PC games like Wing Commander and Wolfenstein 3D, and even Doom would come under this due to the limited camera angles. (Bug! would probably too) Pluss isometric "3D" games like Sonic 3D Blast and Zaxxon.

 

 

I totally agree that any kind of real port of SF4 is completely rediculous for the Jaguar. However you could convert it into a 2D game (not really a port as it would be a totally new program) like they did with Virtua Fighter II on the Genesis. (with the exception that SF4 actually is designed to look like really high quality 2D visually and would look much closer in 2D, while Virtua Fighter is a blocky early polygonal game, though in some respects the 2D version looks smoother)

 

 

From what I've read from Gorf's assements of the Jag's capabilities, it is indeed more capable than even the Saturn in 2D when used properly, and is even pretty capable when using the 68000 as the CPU, though RAM is certainly still a limiting factor. The Jag's blitter has got some serious power.

 

As for 3D (polygon rendering) it's pretty powerful wen used properly despite it's many flaws and hardware bugs, but it's absolutely critical to keep the 68000 off the bus for this kind of stuff, and theres some other things that have to be worked around due to the buggy hardware, but when utilized properly, even in it's currently flawed form it should be able to give the Playstation and Saturn a run for their money.

Had the hardware been properly developed for arround another year, correcting all the major bugs and flaws -RISC's running at full 40 MHz, toss the 68k for an 020/030, MIPS, another Jag RISC, or even just a small unified cache for booting the system, get system ram up to 6-8 MB (which would be much cheaper a year later), and make some useful development kits, then the Jag really would have been someting to look at. It may have even competed with the N64 in 3D (at least in some areas) and would have kicked some serious ass in 2D.

 

 

Back on topic, as far as we've established here (and there are some pretty talented hardware and software developers here who're intimately familiar with the Jaguar's intricacies), the only reason Street Fighter III can't be ported to the Jaguar is because of RAM limitations; that game simply has too many frames of animation to squeeze onto a Jaguar cart... Even the Street Fighter Alpha games are too big! Anyway, 108 Stars made a pretty informative post just above, so I won't elaborate further.

 

What you describe is a ROM limitation, not RAM, if it's just data storage limitations, go with the Jag CD, but I can see how 2MB (shared/consolidated) system RAM could be a serious limiting factor.

Now that you mention the cart's though, I've seen refrences to the Jag being limited to 6MB (48 Mbit) cartridges, but would this be a practical limitation (due to costs) or a phisical tecnical limitation of available address space? If it was an address pin limitation of the cartridge/catr port, that would at least allow 8 MB to be addressed (23-bit -23-pin) addressing) because one step down to 22 pins would be only 4MB. Even if it's the 68k doing the addressing there should be 24-bit addressing, allowing 16-MB, or are only 23 address pins connected to the system for some reason? (which would leave only 6MB after the 2MB of RAM)

 

I know the SNES and Genesis were generally limited to 48 Mbits/6MB (though very few went over 32 Mbit), but I think this was mainly for cost concerns, and both technically should have been capable of 24-bit addressing -16MB. (so at least 15MB for ROM given the very limited system RAM of these, inless significant additional address space was reserved for on-cart RAM expansion)

Edited May 16, 2009 by kool kitty89

[minuS]

What you describe is a ROM limitation, not RAM

You're right, my bad; I stand corrected.

[mcjakeqcool]

I agree, the reason Street Fighter 3 cannot be made on the Jag is because of Rom limations.

[108 Stars]

No, RAM limitations

[Zerosquare]

even in it's currently flawed form it should be able to give the Playstation and Saturn a run for their money. Had the hardware been properly developed for arround another year (...) It may have even competed with the N64 in 3D (at least in some areas) and would have kicked some serious ass in 2D.

No. A software-based 3D renderer can't seriously compete with dedicated hardware, unless you have tons of processing power available to compensate. While a hardware-based solution puts a limit on what you can do (e.g., no texture filtering on the Playstation), it offers a polygon drawing speed much higher than a pure software-based one. Even the Jaguar's blitter, while powerful, is no match for a chip that can draw a textured and lighted triangle by itself with a single command.

 

If it was an address pin limitation of the cartridge/catr port, that would at least allow 8 MB to be addressed (23-bit -23-pin) addressing) because one step down to 22 pins would be only 4MB.

It is an addressing space issue. The Jaguar has a 24-bit address bus (16 MB space). The lower 8 MB are reserved for RAM. The "missing" upper 2 MB in the ROM space are reserved for the boot ROM and I/O registers. Edited May 16, 2009 by Zerosquare

[sd32]

Lets just use the Fight For Life engine for SF4 and the Double Dragon V engine for SF3, thats all...while we are it, i dont see why we couldn get GTA4 working in the Jag with the Club Dive engine, right?

[sd32]

even in it's currently flawed form it should be able to give the Playstation and Saturn a run for their money. Had the hardware been properly developed for arround another year (...) It may have even competed with the N64 in 3D (at least in some areas) and would have kicked some serious ass in 2D.

No. A software-based 3D renderer can't seriously compete with dedicated hardware, unless you have tons of processing power available to compensate. While a hardware-based solution puts a limit on what you can do (e.g., no texture filtering on the Playstation), it offers a polygon drawing speed much higher than a pure software-based one. Even the Jaguar's blitter, while powerful, is no match for a chip that can draw a textured and lighted triangle by itself with a single command.

I was wondering, we know that the Jag has trouble keeping up with PS1 when it cmes to polygonal graphics, because the Jag, as Zerosquare says, has no dedicated hardware for it. But i also hear that the Jags graphics hardware is at the same time very flexible. So how good would the Jag be at handling "ellipsoids", wich are used on the game Ecstatica. Here is a link to a review of that game so that you can see what i am talking about, although i am pretty sure a many folks here already knew about the game.

http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ecs...a/ecstatica.htm

By the way, check out the content on that site, its really good.

[philipj]

I see no reason it can't... I've always felt that 2.5D is the next level for the Jag 3D visuals. It reminds me of "

" for the 3DO system; it seem to use a very simple character animation system as well as good scaling and rotating effects. Very basic 2D effects optimized for 3D or 2.5D visualization would certaintly work for the Jag. Just look at

and

for the Jag. Edited May 16, 2009 by philipj

[kool kitty89]

even in it's currently flawed form it should be able to give the Playstation and Saturn a run for their money. Had the hardware been properly developed for arround another year (...) It may have even competed with the N64 in 3D (at least in some areas) and would have kicked some serious ass in 2D.

No. A software-based 3D renderer can't seriously compete with dedicated hardware, unless you have tons of processing power available to compensate. While a hardware-based solution puts a limit on what you can do (e.g., no texture filtering on the Playstation), it offers a polygon drawing speed much higher than a pure software-based one. Even the Jaguar's blitter, while powerful, is no match for a chip that can draw a textured and lighted triangle by itself with a single command.

 

If you get the system getting working really well as a whole, wouldn't it have been able to do more, using one of the RISC's handel the 3D calculations. The Saturn usually ended up doing this lacking something like the PSX's geometry engine, having one of the SH2's handel the 3D calculations, and in some ways the Jag would be better off with the RISC's being a little more powerful. (28.7 MHz SH2's are 25 MIPS, while Jag RISC has 100% cycle efficiency with 26.59 MIPS ar 26.59 MHz) Though even if the processing power was enough, there would still be the RAM limitations, both of the shared bus (which can be largely improoved by optimizing to work in cache), and the limited amount of overall RAM available. (both the PSX and Saturn having 2 MB dedicated to main ram, and aditional Video -1MB shared video RAM for PSX -and one 512 k block for each saturn VDP plus 2x 256 kB framebuffers)

[kskunk]

If you get the system getting working really well as a whole, wouldn't it have been able to do more, using one of the RISC's handel the 3D calculations.

 

Here's a simplified description of why the Jaguar is limited in 3D. It has a lot more to do with system issues that are not very obvious from a straight spec comparison.

 

Let's compare the Playstation to the Jaguar in 3D. Wait, let me put on my flame suit first...

 

On the Jag, to do a 3D engine like you describe, you would use one RISC (let's pick the DSP) to do all the 3D math. The other RISC (the GPU) has to babysit the blitter full time. This is because the blitter can't draw polygons, only spans, and requires full RISC attention to do that task at top speed.

 

On the PS, the 3D math is performed by the GTE and complete polygons are drawn by the GPU. Both of these systems function without RISC intervention (using DMA lists).

 

The GTE is about 3 times faster than the DSP at 3D math, and it has a 133MB/second bus interface, while the DSP has 8.8MB/second. Let's say your 3D math only needs 4MB/second (to read models and emit polygon lists).

 

So for 3D math, on the Playstation, you used 3% of the main bus bandwidth, on the Jaguar, you used 50%.

 

Let's look at texture mapping. On the Jaguar, the blitter has a peak texture mapping speed of 2.4M pixels/second in main RAM, or 3.8M/second using GPU SRAM. These peaks requires 100% of the main bus. But you already used 50% for 3D, remember? So that gives the Jaguar between 1.2M-1.9M/pixels second.

 

The PS has a peak texture mapping speed of 33M pixels/second. This uses exactly 0% of the main bus, since the PS has a dedicated video graphics bus.

 

So you can already see that for texture mapped graphics, the Jaguar is at a severe disadvantage. But we don't have a game yet...

 

Game logic in most 3D titles is complicated. Collision detection in particular is very CPU and bandwidth hungry. So far we've used 0% of the PS's RISC and 3% of the main bus bandwidth. On the Jag we've used 100% of both Jag RISCs and 100% of the main bus.

 

On the Jag, we can't use the 68K because it cannot run in parallel with the RISCs. We probably can't use the DSP for game logic either, because the DSP uses too much main bus capacity and we need all of that for graphics. We could try the GPU, but the blitter can't run when the GPU is doing something else, so there is no way to run graphics in parallel with the game logic.

 

So while game logic is 'free' on the Playstation, on the Jag we are cutting deeper into precious graphics time. Even if we optimize our game logic to need only 30% of one RISC, that's the difference between 12FPS and 7.5FPS.

 

And don't forget sound. The Playstation has a dedicated sound chip with a dedicated bus, so sound playback uses no main bus bandwidth and no CPU. On the Jaguar, you need both. A good multi-channel digital audio system will shave another 15% off the Jag's capacity.

 

Not to mention video! You have to output your frame buffer at 60FPS. Assuming 320x240 in 16-bit color (used by most Jag and Playstation games), you need another 5% of the Jaguar's main bus. The PS has yet another dedicated bus for this function, so it does not consumes graphics bus, sound bus, OR main bus time.

 

So the difference between a graphics demo and a game is ~30%+15%+5% or 50% on the Jaguar! All these costs are hidden with dedicated subsystems in the Playstation.

 

It's rumored that AvP ran smoothly as a graphics demo on the Jaguar, but as they added game logic and sound, it slowed down considerably. The Playstation does not take that kind of hit.

 

My intent is not to put the Jaguar in a bad light. It was designed and released 18 months before the Playstation, which is a full technology generation by Moore's law. Also, Sony absorbed a huge loss on each Playstation sold, while the Jaguar was sold at a profit.

 

If you consider all the technical limitations of the Jag, the 3D games we have are marvels of software engineering. There is probably not a lot of performance left untapped. Of course you're welcome to try. The dev tools are free!

 

- KS

Edited May 17, 2009 by kskunk

[sd32]

Thanks for the description kskunk, now i understand a bit better what makes the PS1 much faster at 3d graphics than the Jaggy. Its always nice to read this kind of stuff from people who know what they are talking about.

[kool kitty89]

OK, so the consolidated (not to mention limited) RAM was a big limitation on the jag, independent of processor capability (whihc was also limited), it has the advantage of shared memory being able to be used fully rather than a segmented system that results in the RAM sometimes underutilized. (and has the addes benefit of allowing peripheral RAM expansion to expand the entire system memory -as with the N64) Considering this though, a segmented layout would seem worth the disadvantages (though the Saturn took this a bit too far), with didicated video and audio ram, though possibly still having the RISC's connected to the main bus for flexibility. (definetly if a more capable "real" CPU wasn't added) And the jaguar definitely needed a fair number of modifications to really live up to the design.

 

The N64 was similarly limited by the shared system memory I think (granted it had a very fast system bus, and the aforementioned advantages with external RAM expansion), limiting it's potential.

 

I immagine the Saturn was kind of a mix of these limitations, with a somewhat more polygon oriented VDP (still requiring the CPU to do calculations, and granted, using quads instead of triangles), but lacking the shared system bus issues. (with the exception of the bus shared by the 2 CPU's)

 

It's rumored that AvP ran smoothly as a graphics demo on the Jaguar, but as they added game logic and sound, it slowed down considerably. The Playstation does not take that kind of hit.

 

My intent is not to put the Jaguar in a bad light. It was designed and released 18 months before the Playstation, which is a full technology generation by Moore's law. Also, Sony absorbed a huge loss on each Playstation sold, while the Jaguar was sold at a profit.

 

If you consider all the technical limitations of the Jag, the 3D games we have are marvels of software engineering. There is probably not a lot of performance left untapped. Of course you're welcome to try. The dev tools are free!

 

- KS

 

I'd thought some of AvP's problems were due to using the 68k as the CPU. From what I've seen it's a raycasting type game like wolfenstein (albeit with more detail and textured ceilings and floors), so it shouldn't be as intensive as something like Doom.

 

And btw I'm no programmer, just an ameture/hobby kind of retro historical intrest in this kind of stuff. Actually I'm still in (community) college working on general ed, finially decided to major computer science though, so a may very well go into programming. (I have possibly been considdering some hardare oriented stuff too) Anyway, no formal study of anynthing yet, as I said completely ameture with an interest in this making some infrences from what I've read on the topic and seen from some past discussions. (with just a general understanding of most of the concepts)

[Zerosquare]

Great post, kskunk.

I completely agree (but was too lazy to describe it in such details )

[kskunk]

OK, so the consolidated (not to mention limited) RAM was a big limitation on the jag, independent of processor capability (whihc was also limited), it has the advantage of shared memory being able to be used fully rather than a segmented system that results in the RAM sometimes underutilized. (and has the addes benefit of allowing peripheral RAM expansion to expand the entire system memory -as with the N64) Considering this though, a segmented layout would seem worth the disadvantages (though the Saturn took this a bit too far), with didicated video and audio ram, though possibly still having the RISC's connected to the main bus for flexibility. (definetly if a more capable "real" CPU wasn't added) And the jaguar definitely needed a fair number of modifications to really live up to the design.

 

I think your conclusions are right. The best way to understand the limitations of the Jaguar is to look at the Jaguar 2. Nobody knew the limitations better than the designers of the Jaguar, after all!

 

The Jaguar 2 added cache to both the RISC and the blitter. This is key to using unified memory successfully. Additionally, the blitter gained the ability to draw complete triangles without GPU help. Finally, they added a second memory bus for audio and game logic, reserving the (faster) primary bus for graphics.

 

I'd thought some of AvP's problems were due to using the 68k as the CPU. From what I've seen it's a raycasting type game like wolfenstein (albeit with more detail and textured ceilings and floors), so it shouldn't be as intensive as something like Doom.

 

Using the RISCs for game logic is not an easy task. We know Doom does, but how many other games do? Perhaps using the 68K allowed AvP to come out only a year late instead of two years late.

 

The RISCs are designed to run small kernels such as audio synthesis and graphics rendering. Game logic is large and branchy, wanting large stacks and subroutines. It generally doesn't fit in scratchpad and most people would prefer to use either C or a well-known assembly language (like 68K) for this type of code.

 

This goes back to Gorf's point about dev tools. If Atari had invested in proper tools instead of hoping to find "real programmers" who could handle cramming their game logic in assembly language into tiny scratchpads to run on buggy chips... well, maybe more people would have used the RISCs for game logic _and_ released on time. Instead, it seems only massively delayed games or games written by John Carmack were able to achieve that.

 

And btw I'm no programmer, just an ameture/hobby kind of retro historical intrest in this kind of stuff. Actually I'm still in (community) college working on general ed, finially decided to major computer science though, so a may very well go into programming. (I have possibly been considdering some hardare oriented stuff too) Anyway, no formal study of anynthing yet, as I said completely ameture with an interest in this making some infrences from what I've read on the topic and seen from some past discussions. (with just a general understanding of most of the concepts)

 

It's entertaining to rehash some of this stuff. These are just my opinions of course. I'm no particular authority. I've just tried my hand at writing Jaguar code and had a lot of 'Oh, so that's why...' moments.

 

- KS

[mcjakeqcool]

To tell you the truth, altough the ps1 is clearly a superior console to the Jag, and altough the ps1 has a larger and to some exstent better liabary then the Jag, the ps1 did not use all the power it had with most of it's games, there have been fair few occasions when Jag and even SNES/MD/GEN games have been ported on to the ps1 Myst 2 is probally a exzample of what the ps1 is capable of, of coarse though you have plenty of games such as NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, Mortal Kombat 3, Fifa 96, Raiden and Lemmings that don't even come close.

[minuS]

What you describe is a ROM limitation, not RAM

You're right, my bad; I stand corrected.

Wait, I take that back... You were right to clarify my post; my explanation kinda mashed the two together in terms of linguistics, but it's not technically incorrect. I wrote that Street Fighter III can't be ported to the Jaguar because of RAM limitations, which is probably true. Even if all of those frames of animation could be stored on a Jaguar cartridge, there's no guarantee there'd be enough RAM to load two characters' complete sets of animations at once. I followed that statement with a semicolon and then the assertion that the game simply has too many frames of animation to squeeze onto a Jaguar cart, which is also true.

 

I swear I'm not a complete moron; I'm just trying to cover my ass and minimise the the irony of my post

[philipj]

I think a good place to start with a project like that would be to look at the "Native Spirit Code" and see how it's sprite engine. I believe RAM was an issue with that game thus probably being the reason why it was never released. It was a very impressive looking game when it first hit the scene it certainly made me want to dev for the Jag.