Bill Rehbock Audio Interview - Producer of Doom, Atari Karts & More!

[agradeneu]

On 8/16/2018 at 6:43 AM, VladR said:

I was a hardcore Descent player at the time, and it's much more sensitive to framerate then a Quake, which controls rather simplistic and primitive, compared to Descent's full 6-DOF (degree of freedom) axis movement.

 

I could totally perfectly play Quake 1 at sub-10 fps, but that's impossible with Descent, as there's simply not enough frames to hit enemy precisely at fast movement.

 

Even flatshaded, Descent couldn't run at more than 20 fps on jag. The engine complexity, and full-blown 6 DOF movement removes any hacks, and everything has to be brute-force.

The scene-management of the whole level, clipping, frustum culling, collision detection and all other stuff - I don't believe you can do that in just 1 frame time, you really need 2 frames for that, and rasterizing the polygons will take another frame, hence 60/3 = 20 fps.

Best case scenario. For simple rooms.

 

If somebody was crazy enough to split all the scene management work across both DSP/GPU, then you could get to 30 fps, but most of the time 20 fps, even with both chips doing scene management.

 

if you add texturing, then that would cost 3-4 more frames, hence 60/7 = ~8 fps. 8 fps with a joystick is laughably unplayable in 6 DOF. I would argue that 20 fps for such 6 DOF game is at the edge of comfortable playability with joystick.

 

 

Couple months ago, when i was doing some engine stress tests, with a Quake 3D scene, I obviously made a quick one also with Descent scene (as it's such a close game), and jag's GPU simply cannot keep up with the workload.

 

 

 

Please, no Hoverstrike comparisons, Hoverstrike is really technologically inferior to what Descent engine pulls off.

 

Descent is simply next-gen game and required some beefy HW to run smoothly. Much better HW than for Quake. I had Quake running super smooth many upgrades before I could say the same for Descent...

Bullshit detector going crazy  

[VladR]

14 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Bullshit detector going crazy  

Honey, that's a very pathetic attempt at trolling.

 

It takes half an afternoon for me to create 3d mesh of a sample Descent room inside 3dsmax and import it to my engine to see how Jag handles that particular 3d workload (even if it's just flatshaded).

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you need to do the following (on top of transform+flatshading) that the frame rate will be unplayable:

- scene management

- frustum culling

- bsp traversal few times

- per polygon collision detection (generic version, very slow)

 

Oh, and given 6 DOF, there's no way to texture the scene in Blitter stripes.

 

You must compute, load texel , store texel separately for every single on-screen pixel.

 

That's 320*200 = 64,000 times. Not to mention the considerable overhead of per polygon preparation (which is non-existent with flatshading).

 

But, hey - you sure know what you're talking about , right?

 

So, considering your crystal ball, care to share how long it takes for GPU to do that kind of texturing load even directly within its cache ?

 

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, VladR said:

Honey, that's a very pathetic attempt at trolling.

 

It takes half an afternoon for me to create 3d mesh of a sample Descent room inside 3dsmax and import it to my engine to see how Jag handles that particular 3d workload (even if it's just flatshaded).

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you need to do the following (on top of transform+flatshading) that the frame rate will be unplayable:

- scene management

- frustum culling

- bsp traversal few times

- per polygon collision detection (generic version, very slow)

 

Oh, and given 6 DOF, there's no way to texture the scene in Blitter stripes.

 

You must compute, load texel , store texel separately for every single on-screen pixel.

 

That's 320*200 = 64,000 times. Not to mention the considerable overhead of per polygon preparation (which is non-existent with flatshading).

 

But, hey - you sure know what you're talking about , right?

 

So, considering your crystal ball, care to share how long it takes for GPU to do that kind of texturing load even directly within its cache ?

 

Most people understand the Jaguar cannot do Quake, thank you. However you think your bare bones simplistic renderer is a proper tool to benchmark Descent or Quake level 3D engines for the Jaguar, do you?!  

[VladR]

37 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Most people understand the Jaguar cannot do Quake, thank you. However you think your bare bones simplistic renderer is a proper tool to benchmark Descent or Quake level 3D engines for the Jaguar, do you?!  

Clearly, you have an issue with reading comprehension.

 

If even a certain flatshaded scene is taxing the GPU, adding more pipeline stages will simply destroy framerate down to single-digit framerate.

 

That "Barebones simplistic renderer " you talk about is running in 640*240 at 65,536 colors and at around 60 fps.

 

But, please, entertain me as to how many other 3d engines on Jag achieve the same alongside the AI, gameplay , dozen RPG stats per enemy per frame and audio. Oh, and written by just one person.

 

If you are attempting trolling at least work on your reading comprehension skills, please.

Edited November 17, 2019 by VladR
Typo

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, VladR said:

Clearly, you have an issue with reading comprehension.

 

If even a certain flatshaded scene is taxing the GPU, adding more pipeline stages will simply destroy framerate down to single-digit framerate.

 

That "Barebones simplistic renderer " you talk about is running in 640*240 at 65,536 colors and at around 60 fps.

 

But, please, entertain me as to how many other 3d engines on Jag achieve the same alongside the AI, gameplay , dozen RPG stats per enemy per frame and audio. Oh, and written by just one person.

 

If you are attempting trolling at least work on your reading comprehension skills, please.

Serioulsy your engine is not even on par with Club Drive - "AI"? "Gameplay"? Are you cynical or foolish?  I've seen more impressive polygon engines on Atari ST, in the 80s. It's absoletely no benchmark for Jaguars 3D capabilities, nearly ANY other 3 D engine on that system pushes it more than your demo which just renders some simple polygonal road on screen with minimal calculations, no gameplay, no AI , no level design, no physics. It looks like a hollow, poor mans version of Stun Runner, but somehow you think this is the best thing since sliced bread.  It's quite bizarre you want to measure 6 DOF engines of Quake complexity on Jaguar when your engine does nothing of it AT ALL and probably will never do. You are known for boastful claims and "theoretical numberwang", but this time your nonsense reaches the levels of unashamed charlatanery. 

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by agradeneu

[Lost Dragon]

Hmnn.

 

Considering how well the coder of Playstation Descent, talking about how he approached the task of converting the game from PC to Console went down..

 

 

Don't suppose Jeff Minter explaining how you could attempt a Tomb Raider style game on Jaguar will fare much better, but here goes...

 

 

Jeff: You could do nice-looking
characters using Gouraud-shaded polys, but you might have to use less
textures in the environment than in actual Tomb Raider.  But you could make a nice enough environment by using the available resources well and
cheating wherever possible - that's rule #2 of videogame design.  Cheat
Like Crazy.  :-)

[Lost Dragon]

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Most people understand the Jaguar cannot do Quake, thank you. However you think your bare bones simplistic renderer is a proper tool to benchmark Descent or Quake level 3D engines for the Jaguar, do you?!  

Without dragging all the nonsense that goes hand in hand with Jaguar Quake up again...

 

I think what happened in the past is people took various quotes from Id out of context..

 

Carmack talking of targeting improved resolution and frame rate if he rewrote Doom from the ground up for the Jaguar hardware aiming for 320×480 at solid 25 fps)

 

Shawn Green initally saying Quake was headed to Jaguar after PC version finished, then later saying it wasn't likely to happen..

 

And Carmack saying all Jaguar projects were on hold after AtarI had failed to deliver on promises over the essential Xmas period (nowhere near the number of titles delivered nor machines sold).

 

There is no doubt Doom could of been better...look no further than the outstanding work done by the community to add music to it now..

 

 

And Adisak Pochanayon (HVS) described a very impressive FPS engine he had made for the Jaguar and i would of rather of seen a game using that than WMCJ personally.

 

 

But lets see something as impressive as Skyhammer (Rebellion) or the Original I.S by Eclipse, let alone the sequel, before we get dragged into new 3Dbenchmarks on the Jaguar.

 

Something even on par with  Checkered Flag in terms of frame rate, A.I , weather effects etc would be an impressive start considering the differences in terms of resources avaiable to commercial teams back then and indie developers today.   

[+CyranoJ]

 

6 hours ago, VladR said:

Honey, that's a very pathetic attempt at trolling.

 

It takes half an afternoon for me to create 3d mesh of a sample Descent room inside 3dsmax and import it to my engine to see how Jag handles that particular 3d workload (even if it's just flatshaded).

 

2 hours ago, VladR said:

But, please, entertain me as to how many other 3d engines on Jag achieve the same alongside the AI, gameplay , dozen RPG stats per enemy per frame and audio. Oh, and written by just one person.

 

If you are attempting trolling at least work on your reading comprehension skills, please.

 

8 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Something even on par with  Checkered Flag in terms of frame rate, A.I , weather effects etc would be an impressive start considering the differences in terms of resources avaiable to commercial teams back then and indie developers today.   

 

If "It takes half an afternoon for me to create 3d mesh of a sample Descent room inside 3dsmax and import it to my engine" you have to wonder how we end up with this after nearly 3 years.

 

Can this thread get back on track now?

[agradeneu]

28 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Without dragging all the nonsense that goes hand in hand with Jaguar Quake up again...

 

I think what happened in the past is people took various quotes from Id out of context..

 

Carmack talking of targeting improved resolution and frame rate if he rewrote Doom from the ground up for the Jaguar hardware aiming for 320×480 at solid 25 fps)

 

Shawn Green initally saying Quake was headed to Jaguar after PC version finished, then later saying it wasn't likely to happen..

 

And Carmack saying all Jaguar projects were on hold after AtarI had failed to deliver on promises over the essential Xmas period (nowhere near the number of titles delivered nor machines sold).

 

There is no doubt Doom could of been better...look no further than the outstanding work done by the community to add music to it now..

 

 

And Adisak Pochanayon (HVS) described a very impressive FPS engine he had made for the Jaguar and i would of rather of seen a game using that than WMCJ personally.

 

 

But lets see something as impressive as Skyhammer (Rebellion) or the Original I.S by Eclipse, let alone the sequel, before we get dragged into new 3Dbenchmarks on the Jaguar.

 

Something even on par with  Checkered Flag in terms of frame rate, A.I , weather effects etc would be an impressive start considering the differences in terms of resources avaiable to commercial teams back then and indie developers today.   

Skyhammer and Iron Soldier might be good benchmarks how  6 DOF games perfom on the Jaguar. And those are actual games with fully implented game mechanics, AI and level design. ;-) 

[jaybird3rd]

I fail to see what any of this has to do with the Bill Rehbock interview.  Let's take the other topics to a different thread, please.

[Lost Dragon]

2 hours ago, jaybird3rd said:

I fail to see what any of this has to do with the Bill Rehbock interview.  Let's take the other topics to a different thread, please.

Rehbock wanted Descent on Jaguar and was apparently trying to convince Interplay to port it over.

 

 

I brought up how it had been achieved on Playstation from PC as the issue of converting a PC title to something with far less Ram was a challenge and i thought it might be of interest to some to hear how the coder had achieved it..what was scaled back and why.

 

ValdR had in the past annouced unlike myself who had the game on Playstation and really couldn't see what all the fuss was about, he was a fan of Decent.

 

The breakdown of how games were converted from more powerful, PC systems to lower end consoles usually makes for interesting discssion.

 

I didn't think it warranted a seperate thread but didn't expect this thread to become the new Road Rash on Jaguar thread either. 

[VladR]

7 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

 

 

 

If "It takes half an afternoon for me to create 3d mesh of a sample Descent room inside 3dsmax and import it to my engine" you have to wonder how we end up with this after nearly 3 years.

 

Can this thread get back on track now?

I already explained before that I disabled a certain feature which had more dependencies that I noticed originally.

 

Hence it's drawing polygons from a pointer in memory where there aren't any.

 

But, you aren't interested in actual answer, you are just trolling

[VladR]

Agradaneu: you can't even answer a question without going on a BS rant.

 

Again: show me engine on Jag that runs 640*240 at 65536 colors at 60 fps including full game.

 

You clearly have zero idea on basic technical aspects, as there obviously HAS to be an AI logic, otherwise the enemies would have no movement, wouldn't spawn at required distance or wouldn't know how much damage to take or give.

 

But, it's very entertaining, so please continue to humiliate yourself

 

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, VladR said:

But, it's very entertaining, so please continue to humiliate yourself

This is the absolute best way to describe everything you have ever posted.  Did you have a moment of clarity or are you still delusional and thinking you can make awesome fast 3D games on Jaguar?  Now that we've seen what you can produce on 2 platforms (Lynx and Jag) your words carry less weight than before.  Now they float since you're way in the negative.

[swapd0]

IMO, with the limited bandwidth of the Jaguar it's a waste of time coding a game at 640x240x16bits resolution.

[VladR]

17 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Serioulsy your engine is not even on par with Club Drive - "AI"? "Gameplay"? Are you cynical or foolish?  I've seen more impressive polygon engines on Atari ST, in the 80s. 

Damn. This is truly Saturday Night Live material

 

Atari ST, 640x240, 65,536 colors, 3D scene  and full redraw at 60 fps

 

Pretty please, can I see at least 2-3 such Atari ST games ?

 

 

And dude, Club Drive is a completely different genre compared to Stunrunner.

 

 Looks like you're spinning a completely random BS, as it's becoming less and less coherent. But, boy, is it entertaining .

 

please, more 

 

[VladR]

6 hours ago, Stephen said:

Did you have a moment of clarity or are you still delusional ?

 

 your words carry less weight than before.  Now they float since you're way in the negative.

Dang, where's that IronyMeter.gif when you need it !

 

Clearly, you are the one who's delusional here as for some truly unfathomable reason you appear to be under an utterly misguided notion that I give a full-blown flying f*** about your entitled opinion

 

Moar. Plz.

[VladR]

6 hours ago, swapd0 said:

IMO, with the limited bandwidth of the Jaguar it's a waste of time coding a game at 640x240x16bits resolution.

Depends what you do with the bandwidth.

 

It clearly has enough bandwidth for the flatshading, though it's close to going below 60.

 

On PAL, however, scene complexity should go up at least 30%, since all the fixed frame cost had been amortized within NTSC 60fps time range and the additional time on PAL can be used entirely for drawing scanlines.

[Lost Dragon]

Getting the thread back on topic then..

 

 

If you or anyone else does another interview with Bill Rehbock,  could it be asked if he can remember much about the following subjects:

 

1.His presentation of the Jaguar hardware to Interplay and if so,which titles he was hoping to sign up as Jaguar games (and would Descent be among? them and if it was,  was it rejected on the grounds it would have to scaled back to the point it would not be the Descent we knew from the PC?).

 

2.Can he remember anything about Rise Of The Robots and Battle Chess?.

 

Were they quietly cancelled?

 

3.Could he go into any detail regarding his trips to Japan?

 

Which publishers did he meet and how did they view the Jaguar hardware and Atari itself.

 

4.Did he honestly believe Checkered Flag was better than Virtua Racing or was that just a case of towing the company line?

[Lostdragon]

On 4/28/2018 at 11:01 AM, Adriano Arcade said:

Dear all

 

After I had the ultimate pleasure of talking with James Purple Hampton, I had the great honour of chatting with another Atari Jaguar legend - Bill Rehbock!

 

Bill is probably best known for being the producer on some of the Jags best titles - these include Doom, Super Burnout, Atari Karts and Wolfenstein 3D. He also talks about his work on the Nuon console, Tempest 3000 and much more!

 

He shares some great stories about working at Atari, his honest views on the true power of the Jag and the people he worked with! Please see all the links below to listen to this true legend:

 

http://arcadeattackpodcast.podbean.com/e/no-61-bill-rehbock-interview/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/arcade-attack-podcast/id1174983594

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/arcade-attack-retro-gaming-podcast

 

 

Please let me know what you thought of the interview and if you enjoyed the podcast feel free to subscribe for future episodes.

 

Kind regards

 

Adrian

 

Can I tempt you, via a thread bump, to do a follow up interview with Bill? 

 

 

Added to the additional Q's already stated, I would love to know where he got the idea there were over 35 'Falcon Capable' as he described them, games in development, when Atari announced the Falcon. 

 

Steel Talons

Llamazap 

Space Junk

Raiden 

Dino Dudes

 

Rome AD92  (rumoured) 

 

I'd also seen claims Interplay were to convert Alone In The Dark, but never had that substantiated. 

 

 

These games according to Bill would make full use of the CPU, DSP sound etc. 

 

 

Just what were the others he was thinking of???