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The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#21

Post by jonhohle »

toast0 wrote: post #6
pram wrote: post #3

Cool article, but Silpheed is a genuinely awful game. Just warning if you are tempted to play it after this lol

I mean, the gameplay isn't amazing. But I wouldn't call it awful. I've played games that are a lot worse... many of which are less fun while also being much less visually appealing. IIRC the sound design for silpheed is good too?

The sound design is amazing! Having the squadron announcing incoming threats on comms in full CD quality was also a unique and fresh experience. I’m sure Wing Commander and others did it earlier on PC, but for a console game it was very immersive. Seeing gigantic lasers take out huge ships and hearing the panic from the other pilots is fun, even if it plays out the same way every time.

7 of the audio tracks are CDDA audio as well. I seem to recall playing those in my discman at the time.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#22

Post by glimshe »

jonhohle wrote: post #4

The Sega CD is my favorite console and I was fortunate enough to have one growing up. Silpheed was unlike anything else. Unlike most FMV games, Silpheed actually felt like controlling a movie. During the first level when laser blasts are tearing through the fleet gigantic ships filling the screen with debris, I could barely believe what I was seeing. As the article points out, while it is an FMV game, it tries to foo…

I just saw a video of it. Impressive. Were the enemy ships hand drawn 3D plastered on sprites? Or was there some actual realtime 3D rendered by the CPU? The boss ship I saw looked like realtime 3D.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#23

Post by fredoralive »

I think the article is sorta wrong about the sound setup, the Mega Drive I does have a sound input on the expansion port, and mixes it into its sound output. Otherwise stuff like RF cables wouldn't get Mega CD based audio (and you can do silly stuff like a Mega Drive II, which doesn't have a headphone port, with a Mega CD I).

I was going to say the patch cable setup was just a passive aid to take the Mega Drive I's minijack stereo output (the big DIN AV connector on the rear only does mono) to a more serious two RCA jack setup. But looking at a schematic to check, it does do more stuff, and apparently connecting the patch cable will reroute stuff so the sound mixing is done on the Mega CD side, not the Mega Drive side (early Mega Drive revisions are somewhat infamous for showing that Sega hadn’t quite mastered the dark arts of analogue sound circuitry).

(I would double check some of this, but my Mega Drive / Mega CD setup isn't to hand, and the CD drive is broken anyway, although I understand the JP/PAL piano tune on the logo screen is all from the Mega CD side?).

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#24

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

ndiddy wrote: post #11
cisophrene wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, besides the obvious shilling, you’re being downvoted because Fabien Sanglard has been writing this kind of deep software RE analysis for the last 15 years, is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on classic game-engine internals, and certainly did not involve AI in doing any of this.

From the article: > I spent the past two weeks reverse engineering the FMV format in my spare time. That was a departure from how I normally work since I did not write a single line of code. I will likely write something about my A.I framework (and opensource it) next month. But I can already tell this is an overall pleasant way to work.

It's tremendously disappointing to see Fabien stoop to using slop for his research; completely antithetical to the love for software craftsmanship I had inferred from his previous work.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#25

Post by ndiddy »

fredoralive wrote: post #23

I think the article is sorta wrong about the sound setup, the Mega Drive I does have a sound input on the expansion port, and mixes it into its sound output. Otherwise stuff like RF cables wouldn't get Mega CD based audio (and you can do silly stuff like a Mega Drive II, which doesn't have a headphone port, with a Mega CD I). I was going to say the patch cable setup was just a passive aid to take the Mega Drive I's m…

The Sega CD manual says that the RCA jacks are for connecting the Sega CD to a stereo system or stereo TV. I guess they found that doing the sound mixing on the Sega CD made the output cleaner which would have been useful for people wanting to use it as a CD player instead of just for games. The mixing cable is necessary to use the RCA jacks on the Genesis 1 because the system does not have a sound OUTPUT on the expansion connector, only a sound INPUT. The Genesis 2 repurposed a couple of previously unused expansion pins as sound outputs, which let the model 2 Sega CD do the audio mixing without needing a patch cable.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#26

Post by Eric_WVGG »

jonhohle wrote: post #4

The Sega CD is my favorite console and I was fortunate enough to have one growing up. Silpheed was unlike anything else. Unlike most FMV games, Silpheed actually felt like controlling a movie. During the first level when laser blasts are tearing through the fleet gigantic ships filling the screen with debris, I could barely believe what I was seeing. As the article points out, while it is an FMV game, it tries to foo…

The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. I pull it up on Youtube once a year or so just for kicks.

Silpheed by Sierra On-Line for the PC — ported from the Japanese PC-8801 — was similarly good, possibly the first game I played with a proper sound card. The MT-32 version blew my twelve-year-old mind.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#27

Post by Eric_WVGG »

toast0 wrote: post #6
pram wrote: post #3

Cool article, but Silpheed is a genuinely awful game. Just warning if you are tempted to play it after this lol

I mean, the gameplay isn't amazing. But I wouldn't call it awful. I've played games that are a lot worse... many of which are less fun while also being much less visually appealing. IIRC the sound design for silpheed is good too?

It’s a shmup, they can’t all be Ikaruga.

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#28

Post by toast0 »

ihgfhkihh wrote: post #19
toast0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the gameplay isn't amazing. But I wouldn't call it awful. I've played games that are a lot worse... many of which are less fun while also being much less visually appealing. IIRC the sound design for silpheed is good too?

> I’ve played games that are a lot worse… These things aren’t mutually exclusive. This can be an awful game (which it is) and not be the worst game ever made. And as with anything, it has its strong points too, just that as a complete package, it can’t be called a good game.

If your scale has only good and awful, you miss nuance.

I don't think the same adjective should be used to describe both both Trolls on Treasure Island and Silpheed. :P

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#29

Post by sillywalk »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #26
jonhohle wrote: post #4

The Sega CD is my favorite console and I was fortunate enough to have one growing up. Silpheed was unlike anything else. Unlike most FMV games, Silpheed actually felt like controlling a movie. During the first level when laser blasts are tearing through the fleet gigantic ships filling the screen with debris, I could barely believe what I was seeing. As the article points out, while it is an FMV game, it tries to foo…

The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. I pull it up on Youtube once a year or so just for kicks. Silpheed by Sierra On-Line for the PC — ported from the Japanese PC-8801 — was similarly good, possibly the first game I played with a proper sound card. The MT-32 version blew my twelve-year-old mind.

> Silpheed by Sierra On-Line for the PC — ported from the Japanese PC-8801 — was similarly good, possibly the first game I played with a proper sound card.

I had a similar experience, as it came bundled[0] with the soundcard for my IBM PS/1 286, and it even had speech(!) during the introduction.

[0] https://pixelatedarcade.com/tech_attributes/overview/ibm-ps-...

Re: The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed

#30

Post by toast0 »

glimshe wrote: post #22
jonhohle wrote: post #4

The Sega CD is my favorite console and I was fortunate enough to have one growing up. Silpheed was unlike anything else. Unlike most FMV games, Silpheed actually felt like controlling a movie. During the first level when laser blasts are tearing through the fleet gigantic ships filling the screen with debris, I could barely believe what I was seeing. As the article points out, while it is an FMV game, it tries to foo…

I just saw a video of it. Impressive. Were the enemy ships hand drawn 3D plastered on sprites? Or was there some actual realtime 3D rendered by the CPU? The boss ship I saw looked like realtime 3D.

There's no realtime 3D. This boss fight [1] looks super impressive, but the boss structure is FMV, your ship and bullets and stuff is all sprites overlaid on the FMV. (and the FMV is decoded to sprites too)

(Stated confidently to ensure a correction if I'm wrong)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMO_tdlUvnc

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