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Would you play Resident Evil on the jag?


greencoman

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I feel the passion in here. I guess all this simply means between the lines"we would love to see it done" which is good. With all this strong interest I do not see why it would not be worth a look into. Thanks guys for your input.

 

Discussion of possibilities is fun. 'looking into' is where you get into the stumbling stones that many here mention. There are not many with the skill/time or inclination to push the envelope on the Jaguar. We really need the new tool set finished. (are you listening SubQ?) Its like 90% finished. That would be a good start.

 

I have beat this to death but I dont care. We need a full fledged C compiler for the Jaguar's GPU to help ease development towards maximizing potential. We need more tolerance in the community towards one another. We need more patience for each others thoughts, wishes and ideals. We need to encourage each other more rather than be at odds. These things are good for life in general not just a hobby message board.

 

A few posts back someone mentioned that the Jaguar is too constrained to do what developers would want to do'. Hell there is probably no system that that doesn't apply to in some way. We know that the Jaguar can never do Resident Evil or any PSX game exactly the way the PSX or Saturn could do them. What is implied is how to best do that type of game on the Jaguar.

 

Being a fantasy 'what if' thread a few things IMO are implied.

 

- In a perfect universe the Jaguar's tool set is fully developed and/or keeps maturing and all tricks and hacks known for the Jag are public knowledge. (Blitter trick etc)

 

- Nothing we've seen so far is the end-all be-all of the Jag's potential, whether it is in 2-d or 3-d. Not even Hover Srike CD, with its really awesome smooth clean textures.

 

- In a perfect universe skilled developers are tinkering away in these directions now and someday we may see what may actually be possible.

 

- when talking about RE on the Jaguar, or any other game from another platform coming over to the Jaguar, a complete rebuild for the Jaguar is understood to be needed and not a port.

 

- the Jaguar will never be able to do Resident Evil or System Shock exactly like it was on the PC or the PSX, Saturn. What IMO we wish to discuss is how the Jaguar can do either the exact game being discussed, or that type of game, IN THE JAGUAR'S OWN FUN WAY. Some areas actually may see improvement in graphics such as pixel shuffling etc. Obviously any poly texture mapping will take a hit compared to the other systems.

 

- if any of you here do not like fantasy threads like this, then please ignore them.

 

Lets have fun :)

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This post actually makes sense! :)

 

We really need the new tool set finished. (are you listening SubQ?) Its like 90% finished. That would be a good start.

 

SLN/SMAC are pretty much complete. There's only a few issues remaining with them and they are all work around ones. Not sure what else you mean by "toolset".

 

I have beat this to death but I dont care. We need a full fledged C compiler for the Jaguar's GPU to help ease development towards maximizing potential. We need more tolerance in the community towards one another. We need more patience for each others thoughts, wishes and ideals. We need to encourage each other more rather than be at odds. These things are good for life in general not just a hobby message board.

 

A C compiler would drastically lower the entry requirements for new people. The rest of that.. +1 :)

 

A few posts back someone mentioned that the Jaguar is too constrained to do what developers would want to do'. Hell there is probably no system that that doesn't apply to in some way. We know that the Jaguar can never do Resident Evil or any PSX game exactly the way the PSX or Saturn could do them. What is implied is how to best do that type of game on the Jaguar.

 

Finally. A Jag fan willing to admit its not a supercomputer to take on the world :)

 

In a perfect universe skilled developers are tinkering away in these directions now and someday we may see what may actually be possible.

 

We're working on something in conjunction with another developer that will significantly reduce the entry level requirements for budding Jag coders without them having to compromise on performance.

 

r.png

 

Lets have fun :)

 

Push the button!

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- the Jaguar will never be able to do Resident Evil or System Shock exactly like it was on the PC or the PSX, Saturn. What IMO we wish to discuss is how the Jaguar can do either the exact game being discussed, or that type of game, IN THE JAGUAR'S OWN FUN WAY. Some areas actually may see improvement in graphics such as pixel shuffling etc. Obviously any poly texture mapping will take a hit compared to the other systems.

 

Exactly what people need to understand. The Jaguar, while a cool little system, is not really capable of games past first generation Playstation/Saturn. Not to say that this is a bad thing though as I personally really love that stuff. I always thought it was sad that we didn't see more games with FMV Cinematics in them. Not saying I want more FMV Games though. Games with FMV cinematics, at the time, was pretty cool. Wing Commander III is a great example of this. Not saying that anything these days would be able to be done on that scale though, just from the cost standpoint alone! Still, realistically speaking, the Jaguar was illused in the 2D area and it would be nice to see more done for it.

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Exactly what people need to understand. The Jaguar, while a cool little system, is not really capable of games past first generation Playstation/Saturn. Not to say that this is a bad thing though as I personally really love that stuff. I always thought it was sad that we didn't see more games with FMV Cinematics in them. Not saying I want more FMV Games though. Games with FMV cinematics, at the time, was pretty cool. Wing Commander III is a great example of this. Not saying that anything these days would be able to be done on that scale though, just from the cost standpoint alone! Still, realistically speaking, the Jaguar was illused in the 2D area and it would be nice to see more done for it.

 

FMV... I used to be so impressed with that, and I think at one time a game used used to sell with screen shots of FMV material as if that was the system was capible of doing.

 

Honestly I think the fact that the Jag can play movies at all is kinda cool. I like the Jaguar movie CD's that have come out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We all know that the Jag cant handle an identical port of Resident Evil on Playstation. The backgrounds are no problem since the Jag has the color, resolution and cd media to match what PS1 is doing. Probably you would have to load areas more often due to having less RAM. Now, the biggest problem would seem to be the textured mapped polygonal models, which are mostly used for the zombies and human characters, as well as some interactive objects found in some scenes.

 

So it got me thinking about that mid 90s pc game called Blade Runner, That one uses prerendered backgrounds like RE, but for the characters it uses voxel models, and the Jaguar happens to be very good at voxels, right? So that could be a good option for this "imaginary" port of RE for the Jaggy.

 

Also, how good would the Jag be at handling "elipsoids", there is another mid 90s game called Ecstatica, which also used prerendered backgrounds, but the character were built with said elipsoids, which seem to be spherical objects.

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We all know that the Jag cant handle an identical port of Resident Evil on Playstation. The backgrounds are no problem since the Jag has the color, resolution and cd media to match what PS1 is doing. Probably you would have to load areas more often due to having less RAM. Now, the biggest problem would seem to be the textured mapped polygonal models, which are mostly used for the zombies and human characters, as well as some interactive objects found in some scenes.

 

So it got me thinking about that mid 90s pc game called Blade Runner, That one uses prerendered backgrounds like RE, but for the characters it uses voxel models, and the Jaguar happens to be very good at voxels, right? So that could be a good option for this "imaginary" port of RE for the Jaggy.

 

Also, how good would the Jag be at handling "elipsoids", there is another mid 90s game called Ecstatica, which also used prerendered backgrounds, but the character were built with said elipsoids, which seem to be spherical objects.

 

These seem like viable solutions to possible problems. Exactly what I was thinking in terms of there has to be ways around this or that. Thanks for this comment there still may be some hope in the idea of this.

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Thanks for this comment there still may be some hope in the idea of this.

 

Hope for what exactly? I mean it's nice I suppose that we've come to the conclusion that some people would like to play a somewhat theoretically possible watered down version of a game that's not ever going to be made, but I don't see where you go from there in any fashion other than more 'discussion'...

 

:D

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Judging from games like the unfinished Phase Zero, and the amazing Atari Owl project, yes, the Jaguar seems to be pretty darn good at handling voxels. I have read coments from coders and people who know about this stuff, that the Jag is better suited at handling voxels than even the Saturn and Playstation.

Only guys like Atari Owl can tell if it is too taxing for the Jag to handle, say, 4 characters (3 zombies and the player), built of voxels that somehow resemble the Playstation counterparts, on top of a prerendered background,

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Judging from games like the unfinished Phase Zero, and the amazing Atari Owl project, yes, the Jaguar seems to be pretty darn good at handling voxels. I have read coments from coders and people who know about this stuff, that the Jag is better suited at handling voxels than even the Saturn and Playstation.

Only guys like Atari Owl can tell if it is too taxing for the Jag to handle, say, 4 characters (3 zombies and the player), built of voxels that somehow resemble the Playstation counterparts, on top of a prerendered background,

 

We dont know for sure until we actually see it but one of the advanced Jag coders looked at some PSX voxel demos and said from what he seen the Jag could do a voxel engine that would gag a PSX. [paraphrased].

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And was said voxel engine on the PSX highly optimised? (we'll never know) and did said "advanced Jag coder" actually bother to write any code to prove his point? (probably not)

 

The fact that the Phase Zero demo runs smoothly has more to do with the coder than the hardware. I doubt we'll see a 50/60fps voxel based game appear on the Jaguar any time soon.

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I have read coments from coders and people who know about this stuff, that the Jag is better suited at handling voxels than even the Saturn and Playstation.

 

Hm, perhaps. I'm not sure about the PlayStation (were there any games on it that used voxels?), but I think the Saturn could provide some very stiff competition provided these coders' statements are true. All one needs to do is take a look at AMOK to see what I mean. There's a lot going on voxel-wise, but it even manages to toss in some polygonal objects on top of it as well, while never slowing down. It's pretty impressive, in my opinion anyway.

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The thing is, there really isn't any such thing as "hardware that's good at voxels" (maybe you could use some 3D hardware to help position them). It's a concept that so far as I know has only ever been implemented in software, and as long as you can write to a framebuffer, you can do it. The people who are saying the Playstation would be very poor at them -- I'm not really sure what they are basing that statement on but I'd be very interested in hearing the reasoning behind the statements rather than just the statements themselves. Otherwise, nobody has learned anything, it's just a hearsay opinion, which people argue over. ;)

 

Voxels can produce nice results for some applications. They're great for landscapes, for instance. I haven't seen very much that ever tried to use them for sprites, that seems pretty seriously overkill. (I've seen some demos, and I think some 3DO title claimed to use them for sprites? But it's rare.)

 

A voxel is basically a 3D pixel. So think about how many pixels you would need to create a solid-looking 3-dimensional character. Every one of those pixels needs to be rotated and translated every frame. Now think about the data you need to store to animate all of those pixels in 3D space, for instance, for a run cycle. They can be expensive to store and to calculate, and in fact polygons can end up cheaper, because in this case you only need to rotate and translate the corners of the polygons. So polygons on top of voxels probably takes /less/ CPU time to render than all voxels would.

 

You don't have this issue with landscapes, because you have enough "knowns" about how the landscape will be drawn to be able to take a lot of shortcuts. Voxel landscapes cheat a lot and still look great, taking very little CPU time. This is an old book, but it covers voxel landscape engines well: http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Game-Programming-Gurus-Andre-Lamothe/dp/0672305070 (and the sequel http://www.amazon.com/More-Tricks-Game-Programming-Gurus-Cd-Rom/dp/0672306972 was decent, too). They also cover ray-casting engines (like Wolf 3D) very well. Learning the concepts behind how these tricks work can demystify them a lot.

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I haven't seen very much that ever tried to use them for sprites, that seems pretty seriously overkill. (I've seen some demos, and I think some 3DO title claimed to use them for sprites? But it's rare.)

 

I read recently that some decade-old PC real time/strategy games used them for rendering the units, not sure where it was I read it now though.

 

There's a preview of a pure voxel game on YouTube called

that looks quite interesting - nice and retro yet 3d and fun, not a common combination.
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That does look pretty neat... but look at the size of the pixels. :) I counted a corner and then estimated from there to get a flat grid resolution of about 100x100 (though it's probably a multiple of 8), that's 10,000 voxels just for the flat plane. Of course, it doesn't look like the ground rotates, so it can cheat a fair bit on drawing that. Oh, and it's running on modern hardware, so "limits? what limits?" ;)

 

That is always cool, though, to see old-school concepts pushed to ridiculous extremes on powerful hardware. ;)

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I will lock this topic I guess it it seems to annoy people. Was just a thought in the begining that was all.

 

Well, personally I'm not annoyed so much as just wondering what this

 

 

Thanks for this comment there still may be some hope in the idea of this.

 

means.

 

 

There isn't 'hope' of this or any other wishful imagination topic of the same vein becoming reality...

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There's a preview of a pure voxel game on YouTube called

that looks quite interesting - nice and retro yet 3d and fun, not a common combination.

 

That looks awesome! Reminds me of 3D Dot heroes on the PS3... wonder if that is Voxel based too, certainly looks it...

 

I think I will add Voxels to my list of stuff to play with :D

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  • 5 weeks later...

There's a preview of a pure voxel game on YouTube called

that looks quite interesting - nice and retro yet 3d and fun, not a common combination.

 

Voxatron is now available for "pay what you want" at the Humble Indie Bundle website. It is still in alpha but you get the full version too if it is finished. Still 11 days left to get it cheap and support charity too.

 

Robert

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That'd be bitchin. FF VII could totally be played on the Jag CD too - it's just prerendered backgrounds for the most part.
Adventure parts, maybe. The battles are full 3D.

 

Basically there's no point in dreaming about 3D on the Jaguar. Sure, it can do some, but it's really hard to do if you want the framerate to be decent, and the result will look poor compared to a PS1. The Jaguar was designed to be a 2D powerhouse, so let's have good 2D games instead of mediocre 3D ones :)

 

 

Yes - No one under any circumastances should make any effort to push the Jag's capabilities. :roll:

 

You know what.. this seems to be becoming something of an orthodoxy around here these days.

 

Personally I'd rather see all kinds of projects attempted, both larger ambitious projects as well as smaller mini or midi game projects. Surely there's space enough for both?

And on top of that, you could make the same argument for 2D stuff . . . there are much more powerful systems for 2D homebrew development too, and ones with far lesser barriers to entry (like the Dreamcast ;)).

 

It's kind of the same argument for developing for any retro platform at all (in 2D or 3D -or pseudo 3D).

Part of the interest in homebrew is proving what can be done on the system (or what could have been done -in a hypothetical historical context), and having fun while doing it obviously. (both for the programmers/developers and the players)

 

 

However, that's not to say that it isn't more sensible to try and play to any system's strengths, in 2D or 3D . . . including pushing alternate rendering methods instead of the defacto standards. (like height maps on the Jaguar . . . and mixed rendering methods -ie mixing polygons, scaled 2D objects, and height maps -the latter including Doom/Duke3D style textured spans and "voxel" type height maps)

And for actual polygonal 3D, the Jaguar's biggest strong points are obviously in smooth shaded polygons. (both in the blitter's speed at g-shading and the overall smoothness of CRY)

 

The same would apply to the 32x in some respects . . . at least as far as pushing non-standard rendering (even more so in some respects, since the 32x is all software like old PC games, so there's no bias towards hardware acceleration -aside from line fill and screen/line scrolling supported by the VDP . . . and the Genesis VDP).

 

Though in terms of trying to push PSX-style 3D on the Jaguar (or 32x for that matter), there's one major compromise that few commercial games took, but could really offer the most realistic chance of playability: running at low resolutions.

Blocky pixels are a major trade-off, but as long as the screen size is reasonable, the framerate/detail possible at 1/2 or 1/4 the screen resolution (ie ~160x200 or ~160x100) could be reasonably acceptable (especially with full-res status overlays/text).

Short of more efficient coding, there's several commercial Jag games that probably would have been much better off at lower resolutions due to the framerate issues. (and some games with decent framerates with very limited detail that arguably could have looked better at low res with more complexity -albeit some of that takes more ROM space) AvP is definitely one case where a lower res should have been used IMO, especially being a ray-casting column renderer (so running at 1/2 H-res would have roughly doubled the framerate) . . . Doom would have been far less playable if not in low detail. (same for the 32x and SNES versions . . . and the 3DO version suffered badly from being stuck in high-detail mode -odd that it supported screen shrinking but not low detail rendering)

 

Though even for full 3D, there's still some specific aspects of games that would fit better on the Jaguar. (like lighting effects mostly/totally oriented around shading towards black . . . something that the first few Tomb Raider games do as well as several early FPSs -including Doom/Build engine based games and Quake . . . the Tomb Raider games in particular using "fade to black" to hide draw distance limitations -like several Jaguar games do)

 

 

 

 

I don't see why the Jag couldn't do Resident Evil tbh

 

But that's not the point... the Jaguar will only do what people such as your good self will make it do, who gives a flying Frog Feast what the Jaguar could do, it's only the stuff people are actually making it do that's at all interesting, surely? ;-)

 

True, BUT! :) I would never have thought of a resident evil style game on the jag if this thread wasn't about. So random threads about "oo wouldn't this be cool on the Jag" can be handy for getting the cogs turning :) (in my case anyway :D )

 

Not that I have a list of stuff I am thinking about adding to the list of stuff I have already decided I want to write :D

 

1st I need to finish off what I have started.. damn life getting in the way! :D

Well, yes, and there's also a few different perspectives on the issue:

there is the hypothetical "what could have been" side of discussion . . . and in some respects, homebrew projects/demos push into that area (showing what could have been done with the Jag -or Atari in general- under better conditions), and then there's the general issue of "what can still be done" for fun/hobby/etc purposes . . . or profit (but I doubt any homebrew devs go into this specifically expecting profit ;))

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have beat this to death but I dont care. We need a full fledged C compiler for the Jaguar's GPU to help ease development towards maximizing potential. We need more tolerance in the community towards one another. We need more patience for each others thoughts, wishes and ideals. We need to encourage each other more rather than be at odds. These things are good for life in general not just a hobby message board.

There's a reason that Chilly Willy's 32x toolchain is heavily oriented around C support. ;) (albeit that has the benefit of the SH2s already having good compilers available . . . )

 

High-level language support isn't just important for ease of development for the specific platform, but also for possible multiplatform projects (as some homebrew games end up being), or games built on open-source game engines. (obviously, in all cases you'd want many system-specific tweaks/optimizations -both at high level and low-level programming)

 

- In a perfect universe the Jaguar's tool set is fully developed and/or keeps maturing and all tricks and hacks known for the Jag are public knowledge. (Blitter trick etc)

This is the way most homebrew dev communities work from what I've seen, granted sharing knowledge doesn't necessarily mean sharing actual code (or making things open source -though there's a lot of open-source dev work too . . . like all of Chilly Willly's stuff), and that still includes giving credit to the original creator of a method/technique.

 

- Nothing we've seen so far is the end-all be-all of the Jag's potential, whether it is in 2-d or 3-d. Not even Hover Srike CD, with its really awesome smooth clean textures.

For some reason this made me think of the N64 of all systems . . . odd to think of such a relatively (commercially) successful platform as being deprived of showing it's full potential, but with the way Nintendo (and SGI) restricted its documentation/tool support and the fact that it was pretty weak in some regions in general (especially Japan) gives a different context. 3D stuff was pushed probably reasonably close to the "max" in some respects, but there was a general lack of 2D support (and generally limited interest in 2D software) as well as no pushing pseudo-3D methods either. (and the flexible/general purpose coprocessing architecture should have greatly facilitated use of non-standard rendering methods . . . sort of like the Jaguar, or software renderers -actually, the PS2 may have had some potential for that too, with the VUs in place of more fixed-function graphics hardware a la PSX/DC/GC/Xbox/etc -actually, the PS2 is a bit of a spiritual successor to the N64 in several aspects, being SGI related, using RDRAM on a narrow/fast bus with related latency trade-offs, etc . . . except it had much more complete documentation and massive market and 3rd party development interest compared to the N64)

 

- In a perfect universe skilled developers are tinkering away in these directions now and someday we may see what may actually be possible.

 

- when talking about RE on the Jaguar, or any other game from another platform coming over to the Jaguar, a complete rebuild for the Jaguar is understood to be needed and not a port.

 

- the Jaguar will never be able to do Resident Evil or System Shock exactly like it was on the PC or the PSX, Saturn. What IMO we wish to discuss is how the Jaguar can do either the exact game being discussed, or that type of game, IN THE JAGUAR'S OWN FUN WAY. Some areas actually may see improvement in graphics such as pixel shuffling etc. Obviously any poly texture mapping will take a hit compared to the other systems.

 

- if any of you here do not like fantasy threads like this, then please ignore them.

 

Lets have fun :)

True, fantasy/hypotentical discussions can be really fun . . . and honestly a big part of my interests in video game/computer history in general. (or a broader interest in tech history for that matter)

Though in the "realistic" side of things, for actual homebrew possibilities, we obviously won't be seeing a RE game on the Jaguar due to licensing issues. (the only actual ports of existing games would be open source stuff . . . )

 

However, a homebrew survival horror game with related themes to RE might be an interesting possibility.

Though it may be possible to actually have a RE fan game, but not a port/remake. (but that's usually limited to not for profit stuff, and depends on the company -some companies seem to be fine with that, but others aren't -like how Sega hasn't had problems with many of the homebrew Sonic games, but Nintendo has taken some serious actions as such -like the recent issue over SMBX)

 

 

 

 

 

We all know that the Jag cant handle an identical port of Resident Evil on Playstation. The backgrounds are no problem since the Jag has the color, resolution and cd media to match what PS1 is doing. Probably you would have to load areas more often due to having less RAM. Now, the biggest problem would seem to be the textured mapped polygonal models, which are mostly used for the zombies and human characters, as well as some interactive objects found in some scenes.

 

So it got me thinking about that mid 90s pc game called Blade Runner, That one uses prerendered backgrounds like RE, but for the characters it uses voxel models, and the Jaguar happens to be very good at voxels, right? So that could be a good option for this "imaginary" port of RE for the Jaggy.

 

Also, how good would the Jag be at handling "elipsoids", there is another mid 90s game called Ecstatica, which also used prerendered backgrounds, but the character were built with said elipsoids, which seem to be spherical objects.

There's also the option of using scaled/animated 2D sprites . . . or full polygons with emphasis more on g-shading and minimal textures (with art design to match that), and/or you could have the polygonal models at a lower resolution than the BG to cut overhead. (ie a BG playfield and a foreground playfield -albeit more memory needed for the added low-res framebuffer and more bandwidth for the OPL to scan both buffers . . . and big jaggies on polygons, but a more realistic chance of significant texture use at reasonable framerate)

Using fewer textures would also save on RAM usage though. (simpler models would also cut memory use somewhat)

 

Using non-polygonal methods would have more trade-offs than just rendering speed/overhead too . . . some may take more memory than polygons (especially animated sprites), so that would be something to consider. (if voxel models were used, finer pitch voxels would take more memory than coarser ones -and coarser ones could also be faster to render)

And we're not talking just height-mapped voxels here either, but actual 3D models represented as voxels instead . . . so that could be a serious memory consideration unless very coarse/low-res voxels were used. (and at some point, rendering polygonal models at a low screen resolution would be faster and look better anyway)

 

 

 

 

 

The thing is, there really isn't any such thing as "hardware that's good at voxels" (maybe you could use some 3D hardware to help position them). It's a concept that so far as I know has only ever been implemented in software, and as long as you can write to a framebuffer, you can do it. The people who are saying the Playstation would be very poor at them -- I'm not really sure what they are basing that statement on but I'd be very interested in hearing the reasoning behind the statements rather than just the statements themselves. Otherwise, nobody has learned anything, it's just a hearsay opinion, which people argue over. ;)

Yes and no . . . it's usually implemented in software, but not always on CPUs (could be on a DSP/GPU coprocessor if flexible enough -PSX's GTE obviously is too fixed-function, but N64's RSP or perhaps the PS2 VUs could be useful . . . or some modern GPUs -and the J-RISC processors, obviously . . . and the old TMS340 GPUs). And in addition to CPU/coprocessor resource, blitters can assist as well. (even the PSX's GPU should assist in acceration in that respect -CPU doing all the calculations and GPU doing the actual drawing -more so for simpler height-map implementations where the GPU would just be drawing columns . . . )

 

Voxels can produce nice results for some applications. They're great for landscapes, for instance. I haven't seen very much that ever tried to use them for sprites, that seems pretty seriously overkill. (I've seen some demos, and I think some 3DO title claimed to use them for sprites? But it's rare.)

Depending on how they're used, there might be some useful shortcuts to voxel models in certain circumstances (aside from terrain) . . . though I'm not sure what Blade Runner was specifically using. (or how that would compare to a similar detail polygon renderer)

It's also a 1997 PC game, so a bit of a different context there too. (ie in term of CPU resource available)

 

Here's some decent screenshots if you haven't seen the game before:

http://www.cyberpunk...k-games/page/2/

and some video:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3vboyAMWlI

 

 

A voxel is basically a 3D pixel. So think about how many pixels you would need to create a solid-looking 3-dimensional character. Every one of those pixels needs to be rotated and translated every frame. Now think about the data you need to store to animate all of those pixels in 3D space, for instance, for a run cycle. They can be expensive to store and to calculate, and in fact polygons can end up cheaper, because in this case you only need to rotate and translate the corners of the polygons. So polygons on top of voxels probably takes /less/ CPU time to render than all voxels would.

 

You don't have this issue with landscapes, because you have enough "knowns" about how the landscape will be drawn to be able to take a lot of shortcuts. Voxel landscapes cheat a lot and still look great, taking very little CPU time. This is an old book, but it covers voxel landscape engines well: http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/0672305070 (and the sequel http://www.amazon.co...m/dp/0672306972 was decent, too). They also cover ray-casting engines (like Wolf 3D) very well. Learning the concepts behind how these tricks work can demystify them a lot.

Yes, voxel landscapes can be done with much simpler ray cast height-map techniques (similar to Doom) . . . and that's the most common/significant way that they're used.

 

Doing a full-3D voxel engine or voxel models can be far more complex, and more complex/intensive than polygon rendering depending on the resolution of the voxels used (and high-res voxel models can take tons of memory too).

As such, the Jaguar's general purpose coprocessing might still given an advantage over the PSX for 3D voxel models (or 3DO, and perhaps Saturn -depending on trade-offs between SH2 and J-RISC performance), though the general performance in both cases would likely be so limited as to be unattractive compared to alternative methods.

 

However, if you did have a system that was both general purpose and powerful enough to push full 3D voxel graphics at good detail, there's some really neat things that are possible over polygons. (like highly detailed interactive destructible environments and possibilities for 3D models beyond what conventional polygons offer)

Albeit, there's also the more realistic possibility of mixed-renderers using polygons and voxels together (and perhaps a mix of full 3D voxels and simplified voxels for areas where "shortcuts" apply).

With the increased general-purpose nature of modern GPUs (and extensive CPU resource), it's more a matter of API support to use the hardware in non-standard ways than anything else. (ie without graphics card manufacturers providing API support for such -or supplying detailed hardware documentation to 3rd parties to develop custom APIs -be it consoles or PCs, then there's only the CPU rendering option)

 

And, as it is, the most advanced voxel/mixed rendered commercial games have taken the software rendering option as such . . . and Outcast is the latest/most advanced example of that. (albeit limiting use of voxels to the simple/fast height map method -seems to be use of some Doom-like textured spans as well- with polygon rendering complementing that -I think that's all in software too . . . presumably due to difficulties with meshing standard APIs with the custom renderers)

Edited by kool kitty89
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  • 3 years later...
Refloated this thread a few years ago, that to date anyone been able to carry a set of these features and now that have appeared new 3D engines like Raptor not know if this would be possible, aber if peers can contribute something respect.


I would love to have this game on my jaguar and buy it without thinking.

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