Could Road Rash (3DO) be ported to the Jaguar?

[phoenixdownita]

....

 

Counter questions: If a version of Road Rash 3 from the Genesis or 3DO RR had been ported to the Jag 20 years ago, and was as good or better than either of those games, would you get a copy of it for the Jag? And if so, then since you recently got a Jag and it's all kind of new to you, what difference would it make if that game was made for the Jag 20 years ago or recently? Would your answer be different if you have the other systems and versions or not?

 

....

I first saw RR on PS1 and thought the music and still artwork were excellent, but the game never really won me over.

In recent times I tried the Genny, SMS, and 3DO version and my opinion about the actual game didn't change ... so there's that.

 

Wrt modern efforts to port games to old consoles I am not personally interested, in my quest I wanted to see what was available at the time the console was sold, nothing else. I understand some people are interested but it is just not my cup of tea, there's so many games already as it is.

 

So no I would not buy a modern port/game, if the game had been made back then I would consider it, I did buy 20 Jag games as there's no flashcart for it, not sure I enjoy more than 6 or 7 out of that.

[Otto1980]

'We' could of added their views to those of people like BJ West etc and gotten some sort of idea of what we could of realistically expected from 3DO conversions, it would of sat nicely with information from people like Mike Diskett who attempted to convert Magic Carpet from the PC, found Jaguar could'nt handle the Texture-Mapping, so went with plain polys etc...

 

i dont agree with mr. diskett.. especially as some other jaggames show nice (and more detailed/colorfull) textures than magiccarpet did

plus M.Diskett never did any 3d coding on the jag or even 3d coding until 1995 (as mobygames say) and i dont think he concerned a lot with the jag architecture in terms of 3D or any ideas of workarounds, tricks, etc...

 

to roadrash

its mainly the presentation, music and the artwork and intuitive gameplay that makes this game so popular

technicaly its not that strong.. its on rails.. nearly everythink is done by 2d objects.. the tracks (roads) look like some afine or similar routine.. only some houses and sideobjects (hills e.g.) look like true 3d textured objects..

 

i think we should not overestimate the 3do RR technics..

[LianneJaguar64]

 

How about life...I'm 47 now and I'd love to be 16 again. But guess what? If I had the choice to be 16 today or to go back to 1984 when I was 16 I'd pick 1984 in a heartbeat...for nostalgia. Or even 26 years old again now or in 1994, but I'd take 1994 over today in a heartbeat. I would want to make different choices and change things, not just live a complete rerun (though I'd accept a complete rerun too, if I didn't remember it all already), but I'd rather live in that day and age at 16 rather than 2015 at 16. Nostalgia. The good old days. friends and family long gone. And even if I am playing a new game on an old system or a port of an old game on an old system, I'd love them just as much, maybe more, than a new Road Rash on a new console.

 

That's about the best I can explain why I'd personally like to see a game like RR on my old Jaguar.

Or if you are me, you are 18 and just want to see some awesome new games on the Jaguar to play xD

[PlaysWithWolves]

Off-topic, but there's an intriguing theory that Jar-Jar Binks was the Phantom Menance and intended to be a "drunken master"-style dark Force user.

I mean, it's not like we were ever head-faked by a silly puppet before in the Star Wars universe..

Also a theory on who he may be in SW:TFA.

Edited November 2, 2015 by PlaysWithWolves

[Bill Loguidice]

I think it would be a bit misguided to try 3D homebrew anything on the Jaguar since that type of thing can be done so much better on other systems. For my personal preference, as others have indicated on here, I'd like to see a truly blown out 2D showcase that plays to the platform's strengths. So if Road Rash were ever attempted (unlikely as it is), I too would prefer to see a maxed out Genesis-style version over a mostly there 3DO version. The Jaguar, like other systems of that era, is never going to really impress anymore with 3D stuff, but with something 2D, that would certainly still be possible (and again, I realize this gets into the debate of how modest many of today's Jaguar homebrew releases are audio-visually, which is not the end-all, be-all that gameplay is, but certainly something Sturmwind-like, for example, would change a LOT of opinions about what the Jaguar is or is not capable of).

[Lost Dragon]

@Otto1980:Mike Diskett would of simply been 1 of many coders who's thoughts on coding 3D games for the Jaguar i'd of used as a reference for what we could of realistically expected and why, there's a wealth of info out there from ATD regarding Battlemorph, Zero 5 coders, Lee B (WTR), High Voltage, Missile Command 3D coder even Rebellion (Skyhammer) and Imagitec etc etc and we 'know' that frame rate took a massive hit when Atari wanted texture-mapping galore to compete with things like Shockwave on 3DO.

 

I'd of liked to have gotten views from 3DO coders of things like Starfighter, Bladeforce, NFS etc to hear their thoughts on polygon performance of 3DO, how much more could of been done and possibly how games might have been handled on the Jaguar, if they were familar with that platform as well.

[Otto1980]

Otto1980:Mike Diskett would of simply been 1 of many coders who's thoughts on coding 3D games for the Jaguar i'd of used as a reference for what we could of realistically expected and why, there's a wealth of info out there from ATD regarding Battlemorph, Zero 5 coders, Lee B (WTR), High Voltage, Missile Command 3D coder even Rebellion (Skyhammer) and Imagitec etc etc and we 'know' that frame rate took a massive hit when Atari wanted texture-mapping galore to compete with things like Shockwave on 3DO

 

maybe the thell you this.. but all of them (except ATD and Rebellion) did just one project which was also their training/learning lesson

as you maybe know you have no devLib as the 3do has.. (so on Jag-side more disadvantage than advantage, depending on how good you are)

 

and as you see... they (atd and rebellion) did huge steps in terms of 3d between their games @ the jag

 

to make good 3d on the jag, expecially textures you have to customize your routines fitting for your needs and use blitter/GPU Pipelining in clever way

plus you need good 3d math understanding (matrixcalculation, worldcoordinates etc..)

i think you also have to adjust the game- and graphic-design (espacially textures) siutable to get good results

a lot of things that a 3do coder not has to do in that complicated / lowlevel way

 

framerate.. hm.. yes might be aproblem but games like HS CD show how it could work.. (complete game except music runs in jaguars 2mb ram)

sure you dont have high framerate (but you also got 3DOs "texture" games like Killingtime or even WCIII with between horrible and low framerate)

also you got on HS CD lightsources, colorfuller textures and texturefilters plus Gouraud shading that you never would see on 3do games in that quality..

 

i think we all should consider this points when comparing the "weak" 3d capabilities of the jag with the "strong" 3d capabilities of the 3do

removing this "extras" could gain the framerate a lot i think

 

what also happens on 3do when you do "true" 3d you can see on the late racinggames "autobahn tokio" or "F1 GP"

even WTR looks good and smooth compared to them

RR and Need4Speed are very limited in their 3D world (not even CD, CF or wtr are that "3D - World" limited)

think about it..

 

they did a good and clever job on N4S and RR but they also used their tricks..

Edited November 3, 2015 by Otto1980

[+CyranoJ]

 

maybe the thell you this.. but all of them (except ATD and Rebellion) did just one project which was also their training/learning lesson

as you maybe know you have no devLib as the 3do has.. (so on Jag-side more disadvantage than advantage, depending on how good you are)

 

 

Thats one more than you, which invalidates all your armchair theories

[Otto1980]

lol same told me a grumpy housewife after i told her my opinion

"you dont have a own child, so you cannot say that"

"no but its nevertheless the truth what i told" i say

 

are you grumpy housewife too?

 

once again i miss the "kiss" emoticon

Edited November 3, 2015 by Otto1980

[+CyranoJ]

once again i miss the "kiss" emoticon

 

Wrong forum.

[VladR]

I wonder if there is something about the way that game is coded that would make trying to run it on Jaguar a nightmare. Thoughts?

Yes - the city segments, that have textured buildings, basically cover whole screen - so we are talking about full-screen texturing here (something we know jag was not designed to do), as the road is also a 3D textured mesh (not just an old-school 2D road with rolling hills).

 

You can easily get 60 fps on these portions of the game: trees, bikes, cars, people, roadside props, signs - as they are simple scaled 2D bitmaps (e.g. rendered by Object Processor for '~free'), and you only need to transform 1 3D point of these objects (which is fast enough to do even on 68000, let alone GPU/DSP - but of course we'd transform them on GPU, to free the bus).

 

However, texturing of buildings / the road mesh / roadside terrain, that would be quite problematic to get running at more than 30 fps, even at 175x200, of course even with using DSP/GPU/Blitter.

 

You'd still get the fluid - 60 fps - motion of bikes/cars/trees - so that would offset the ~20-30 fps of the road/terrain - e.g. make it look and feel smooth (as terrain is -mostly- quite far from you - so the lower framerate there would not be so dramatic).

 

But the city segments - where the buildings are literally right next to you and occupy awfuly large portion of the screen - that is where the 20-30 fps of those elements would certainly suck.

 

 

 

If this was to be attempted (which will never happen), I would rather propose that we convert the road to old-school 2D textured road - as that would give us 60 fps also for the road - which we look at 100% of the time.

 

Then, the only 3D elements would be the buildings and roadside terrain - which now (as we do not texture the road anymore) should be possible to lock down to 30 fps without framedrops.

[LianneJaguar64]

 

Yes - the city segments, that have textured buildings, basically cover whole screen - so we are talking about full-screen texturing here (something we know jag was not designed to do), as the road is also a 3D textured mesh (not just an old-school 2D road with rolling hills).

 

You can easily get 60 fps on these portions of the game: trees, bikes, cars, people, roadside props, signs - as they are simple scaled 2D bitmaps (e.g. rendered by Object Processor for '~free'), and you only need to transform 1 3D point of these objects (which is fast enough to do even on 68000, let alone GPU/DSP - but of course we'd transform them on GPU, to free the bus).

 

However, texturing of buildings / the road mesh / roadside terrain, that would be quite problematic to get running at more than 30 fps, even at 175x200, of course even with using DSP/GPU/Blitter.

 

You'd still get the fluid - 60 fps - motion of bikes/cars/trees - so that would offset the ~20-30 fps of the road/terrain - e.g. make it look and feel smooth (as terrain is -mostly- quite far from you - so the lower framerate there would not be so dramatic).

 

But the city segments - where the buildings are literally right next to you and occupy awfuly large portion of the screen - that is where the 20-30 fps of those elements would certainly suck.

 

 

 

If this was to be attempted (which will never happen), I would rather propose that we convert the road to old-school 2D textured road - as that would give us 60 fps also for the road - which we look at 100% of the time.

 

Then, the only 3D elements would be the buildings and roadside terrain - which now (as we do not texture the road anymore) should be possible to lock down to 30 fps without framedrops.[/quote

Why not use an altered version of the Super Burnout engine to try and do it?

[Lost Dragon]

@Otto1980:Well, the only 1 project is somewhat a mute point, as even ATD only did Battlemorph as they were under contract and game had to be delivered, they wanted to be developing on PS1/Saturn by that point, so i don't think anyone can 'blame' developers for moving onto platforms that were doing well at retail, rather than investing time and resources into further Jaguar projects.

And the idea of having 'voices' if you will, of as many of those who did code 3D games on Jaguar, in whatever stage they reached, you'd get some idea of what the machine was capable of.

They worked on it, i did'nt, so yes, i'd have to go on what they told me, espically since i've yet to see anything that goes beyond the commercial releases in terms of pushing the 3D.

As i said elsewhere, i personally cannot judge likes of Dactyl Joust, as it was at such an early stage, basic A.I, sound FX etc etc.

If it'd be finished, it would of been a more viable benchmark perhaps.

[Gunstar]

Yes - the city segments, that have textured buildings, basically cover whole screen - so we are talking about full-screen texturing here (something we know jag was not designed to do), as the road is also a 3D textured mesh (not just an old-school 2D road with rolling hills).

 

You can easily get 60 fps on these portions of the game: trees, bikes, cars, people, roadside props, signs - as they are simple scaled 2D bitmaps (e.g. rendered by Object Processor for '~free'), and you only need to transform 1 3D point of these objects (which is fast enough to do even on 68000, let alone GPU/DSP - but of course we'd transform them on GPU, to free the bus).

 

However, texturing of buildings / the road mesh / roadside terrain, that would be quite problematic to get running at more than 30 fps, even at 175x200, of course even with using DSP/GPU/Blitter.

 

You'd still get the fluid - 60 fps - motion of bikes/cars/trees - so that would offset the ~20-30 fps of the road/terrain - e.g. make it look and feel smooth (as terrain is -mostly- quite far from you - so the lower framerate there would not be so dramatic).

 

But the city segments - where the buildings are literally right next to you and occupy awfuly large portion of the screen - that is where the 20-30 fps of those elements would certainly suck.

 

 

 

If this was to be attempted (which will never happen), I would rather propose that we convert the road to old-school 2D textured road - as that would give us 60 fps also for the road - which we look at 100% of the time.

 

Then, the only 3D elements would be the buildings and roadside terrain - which now (as we do not texture the road anymore) should be possible to lock down to 30 fps without framedrops.

You are forgetting that even on the 3DO the game only runs about 20-24fps! Not that any of your statements are invalidated for that reason, just reminding you that even the 3DO couldn't pull it off at 30fps.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

@Otto1980:Mike Diskett would of simply been 1 of many coders who's thoughts on coding 3D games for the Jaguar i'd of used as a reference for what we could of realistically expected and why, there's a wealth of info out there from ATD regarding Battlemorph, Zero 5 coders, Lee B (WTR), High Voltage, Missile Command 3D coder even Rebellion (Skyhammer) and Imagitec etc etc and we 'know' that frame rate took a massive hit when Atari wanted texture-mapping galore to compete with things like Shockwave on 3DO.

 

I'd of liked to have gotten views from 3DO coders of things like Starfighter, Bladeforce, NFS etc to hear their thoughts on polygon performance of 3DO, how much more could of been done and possibly how games might have been handled on the Jaguar, if they were familar with that platform as well.

I never really understood why people use Shockwave on the 3DO as any kind of 3D bench mark. the terrain was limited and completely flat in many areas, the buildings that are polygons are sparse too. The Jag could easily have done that game at the same frame rate. Now Shockwave 2 is more impressive, but just like HoverStrike on the Jag, neither uses the full screen either, 1/3 is hidden by the cockpit. Starfighter is a much better example of 3DO 3D. Starfighter and Bladeforce were both very late in the 3DO's life cycle where they had much more experience in squeezing performance out of the 3DO. The Jag developers were still less experienced with the hardware, and didn't have the big budgets or big development teams the 3DO had. Even though Skyhammer is a late Jag life cycle game, it's on cartridge and didn't have the CD advantages of space and streaming the 3DO had. HoverStrike CD shows a bit what a difference can be had between Jag cart (original HS) and CD, but again, this was a first-gen Jag CD game and we never saw anything beyond first-gen Jag CD games, even Battlemorph could have been a cartridge and obviously we all know IS2 can be done on cart, so even IS2 CD wasn't using the Jag CD's potential, none of the Jag CD games do. All we got from the Jag CD was CD quality soundtracks, FMV and some games with more levels than could have fit on a 4MB cart, and Atari was never going to use 6MB carts, especially after the Jag CD was launched.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Gunstar

[VladR]

Why not use an altered version of the Super Burnout engine to try and do it?

Because Super Burnout was designed from scratch to process just 2D elements. Trying to insert a 3D rasterizer into it would be an order-of-magnitude more work, and would still result in lots of bugs simply because it is pure-2D engine (which, BTW, was a very smart choice, as it plays exactly to the jag's strength - e.g. Object processor that can scale/rotate bitmaps at 60 fps for -almost- free.

 

 

You really have to design the engine from scratch in an extremely modular way, with as little dependencies between subcomponents, as possible - so that - at any time - you can page in/out small portions of code into either GPU or DSP (depending on their actual benchmark characteristics - which you do not know unless you got the code already up&running).

 

This is why jag never saw these games - because to get an identical result as from, say, 3DO / PS1, you gotta invest 10 times more effort as a coder.

Who, in their right mind, during `90s, would finance something like that, on a jag ?

 

 

A naive approach of just calling transformation / culling / texturing routines, on top of Super Burnout engine overhead, would, of course, 'work'. You just couldn't expect to get more than 5-10 fps of those routines. Not unless you are willing to burn hundreds of hrs trying to bend the engine into something it simply wasn't designed to do.

 

It's like Matrix. It's not the spoon that bends, it's you - being bent by jaguar, so it can take you from behind, in any pose it wishes, dangling its sharp claws over your neck. You just don't f*ck with jaguar - his mother didn't teach him 3D survival techniques - her ecosystem was still very much 2D, so it's very angry if you do try...

[VladR]

You are forgetting that even on the 3DO the game only runs about 20-24fps! Not that any of your statements are invalidated for that reason, just reminding you that even the 3DO couldn't pull it off at 30fps.

Wait, it wasn't 60 fps ? I always thought/heard NFS/RR were rock-solid 60 fps on the 3DO ? YT videos that are corss-interpolated make it impossible to guesstimate the framerate.

Though, I did notice quite a lot of framedrops in YT videos - I thought those were drops from 60 to 30fps ?

 

I never really saw a working 3DO (just a broken one with a copy of NFS that was hence no use), so I wouldn't know.

[Gunstar]

Wait, it wasn't 60 fps ? I always thought/heard NFS/RR were rock-solid 60 fps on the 3DO ? YT videos that are corss-interpolated make it impossible to guesstimate the framerate.

Though, I did notice quite a lot of framedrops in YT videos - I thought those were drops from 60 to 30fps ?

 

I never really saw a working 3DO (just a broken one with a copy of NFS that was hence no use), so I wouldn't know.

Nope, both games averaged about 20fps, 24fps max. Same with Starfighter and Bladeforce. But 24fps was the standard bench-mark for 3D back then, before the Saturn and PSX started doing 30fps. But 24fps isn't bad, that's what motion pictures run at, or at least ran at until everything went digital in theaters.

 

Even though 3DO RR has 3D polygons and 2D sprites, compare it's frame rate to Super Burnout's 2D on the Jag, it does run at 60fps. You will see a HUGE difference in smoothness.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Gunstar

[Bill Loguidice]

Nope, both games averaged about 20fps, 24fps max. Same with Starfighter and Bladeforce. But 24fps was the standard bench-mark for 3D back then, before the Saturn and PSX started doing 30fps.

 

I don't think we have an example of an actual Jaguar game with textures achieving anywhere near that 20 - 24 fps frame rate, right? From what I've read, accessing RAM is too slow for it on the Jaguar. As evidenced by games like Zero 5, it did great with flat shading, though (and a drop to an 8-bit color depth). Of course that still points to the ideal Road Rash version on Jaguar being a 2D tour de force like a souped up Genesis version rather than an attempt at 3D.

[Gunstar]

 

I don't think we have an example of an actual Jaguar game with textures achieving anywhere near that 20 - 24 fps frame rate, right? From what I've read, accessing RAM is too slow for it on the Jaguar. As evidenced by games like Zero 5, it did great with flat shading, though (and a drop to an 8-bit color depth). Of course that still points to the ideal Road Rash version on Jaguar being a 2D tour de force like a souped up Genesis version rather than an attempt at 3D.

I think Iron Soldier 1&2 run at about 20fps, and Battlemorph is about 20-24fps. Zero-5 is 30-35fps (NTSC/PAL), Battlesphere is 30-60fps. But yeah, none of those are totally textured. Hoverstrike CD can max out at 20fps, but generally is between 15-20fps (HS cart is 10-15fps generally averaging 12fps). WTR is 15-20fps depending on the track and about 10-12fps split-screen. Skyhammer is 15-20fps average, and don't judge it's frame-rate without having your craft beefed up to the max level 8 engine (this can be done with cheats so you don't have to play it long enough to work up to level 8 engine) in Skyhammer, it starts out slower on purpose. Sort of like not judging AvP's frame-rate by the marine scenario, judge it by the much faster Alien scenario.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Gunstar

[VladR]

Nope, both games averaged about 20fps, 24fps max. Same with Starfighter and Bladeforce. But 24fps was the standard bench-mark for 3D back then, before the Saturn and PSX started doing 30fps. But 24fps isn't bad, that's what motion pictures run at, or at least ran at until everything went digital in theaters.

 

Even though 3DO RR has 3D polygons and 2D sprites, compare it's frame rate to Super Burnout's 2D on the Jag, it does run at 60fps. You will see a HUGE difference in smoothness.

Well, if we are talking about 20 fps, that's a whole different ballgame (from coder's perspective). That means you have 3 vblanks to generate the frame.

 

I'm pretty sure - from my current coding experiments with 3D texturing on jag - that you wouldn't have to crazily swap lots of routines between DSP/GPU - if you are guaranteed 3 vblanks (e.g. 60 / 3 = 20 fps) to generate the textured landscape in 175x200. You should be able to -lazily- texture them [into main slow RAM] using just brute force from within GPU in one simple loop over all triangles.

 

This could simplify the engine quite a lot actually.

1. DSP would take care of the 60-fps items (e.g. trees/cars/props) - e.g. just update the OP List

2. GPU would have 3 vblanks to transform, clip and texture the terrain/road

3. 68000 would process input/AI and coordinate GPU/DSP code chunks.

 

 

As for the comparison, unless one has both platforms at home, it's impossible (YT only "helps" so much).

 

As for the 20-24 fps, even movies stutter - if you have a fast-moving object moving across the screen, it simply "jumps" - the motion blur helps, but only to a certain degree.

Racing games at 20-30 fps suck. To be real good at them, you need 60 fps control.

[Gunstar]

Well, if we are talking about 20 fps, that's a whole different ballgame (from coder's perspective). That means you have 3 vblanks to generate the frame.

 

I'm pretty sure - from my current coding experiments with 3D texturing on jag - that you wouldn't have to crazily swap lots of routines between DSP/GPU - if you are guaranteed 3 vblanks (e.g. 60 / 3 = 20 fps) to generate the textured landscape in 175x200. You should be able to -lazily- texture them [into main slow RAM] using just brute force from within GPU in one simple loop over all triangles.

 

This could simplify the engine quite a lot actually.

1. DSP would take care of the 60-fps items (e.g. trees/cars/props) - e.g. just update the OP List

2. GPU would have 3 vblanks to transform, clip and texture the terrain/road

3. 68000 would process input/AI and coordinate GPU/DSP code chunks.

 

 

As for the comparison, unless one has both platforms at home, it's impossible (YT only "helps" so much).

 

As for the 20-24 fps, even movies stutter - if you have a fast-moving object moving across the screen, it simply "jumps" - the motion blur helps, but only to a certain degree.

Racing games at 20-30 fps suck. To be real good at them, you need 60 fps control.

This is all why I do believe the Jag could pull off 3DO Need for Speed or Road Rash, especially if done with the Jag CD using a streaming engine like the 3DO.

 

Yes, it's hard to compare without both systems like I have. And yes, never trust a game frame-rate by YT.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Gunstar

[LianneJaguar64]

Oh sorry chaps. My point was a super pimped up 2D version of Road Rash using the Super Burnout engine... You could then just redraw certain sprites and add a Combat system. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not a coding expert... Add some cool rock music and an FMV sequence and you"ve made a Jaguar CD game 'D

[VladR]

This is all why I do believe the Jag could pull off 3DO Need for Speed or Road Rash, especially if done with the Jag CD using a streaming engine like the 3DO.

 

Yes, it's hard to compare without both systems like I have. And yes, never trust a game frame-rate by YT.

Streaming from CD can result in a terrible player's experience. The game halts, CD spins, keeps trying to read a sector, but can't, so it spins and spins and then - after 5 seconds of being halted - throws an error message.

 

Imagine that in the middle of a curve in NFS. Yes, as long as CD player and medium are clean and in working condition, it can work. I would personally prefer less varied environment, but be guaranteed it would never halt in the middle of the game.

 

Plus, of course, once you devote large portion of 2 MB to streaming buffer, you then must stream almost everything...

[VladR]

Oh sorry chaps. My point was a super pimped up 2D version of Road Rash using the Super Burnout engine... You could then just redraw certain sprites and add a Combat system. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not a coding expert... Add some cool rock music and an FMV sequence and you"ve made a Jaguar CD game 'D

Oh, you mean something like Interstate 76 ? Guns on a car ? That would probably suck in a corridor-like environment like SuperBurnout/NFS/RR.

 

That could actually be "inserted" into game like Checkered Flag (hope I got the name right, as I keep mixing those 2 racing games on jag ), as it is free-roaming and flat-shaded.

 

Now THAT would be a fun mod.