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Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

jix.one

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Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#31

Post by krige »

JohnBooty wrote: post #25
mambodog wrote: post #23

The use of vector graphics instead of 3d rendering or bitmap video seems reminiscent of the techniques which allowed Another World to achieve the fidelity it did on the consoles of that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7GVubkh4TE Tech overview: http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/

Hahaha. I came here to post this. The intro to Flashback (same team) uses a similar strategy and I think is maybe even a little more impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClBaKXB2KqE

Actually not the same team, just the same publisher that capitalized on AW's success. Eric Chahi himself, the one-man-army responsible for Another World, only did Heart of Darkness afterwards.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#32

Post by z303 »

derefr wrote: post #21
zeta0134 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickly drawing tiles is one of those sections that's really only going to make sense if you've ever done development work on a tile-mapped videogame console, as the mode is quite rare in other applications. A "tile" is nothing more than an index into a collection of 8x8 graphics squares. If you've played any retro-styled games you've seen the effects of this. They were a great way to deal with memory constraints bac…

Hey now, your average IBM PC has a tile-mapped display mode, too: we just usually call it "text", and the tiles "characters". :) But the text-mode 'font' (i.e. the tileset) was often able to be written to, to achieve fast arbitrary-tile drawing results exactly like those of your average game console. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mode#User-defined_charact...

Have a look at the annual text mode demo contest http://tmdc.scene.org/

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#33

Post by int_19h »

derefr wrote: post #21
zeta0134 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickly drawing tiles is one of those sections that's really only going to make sense if you've ever done development work on a tile-mapped videogame console, as the mode is quite rare in other applications. A "tile" is nothing more than an index into a collection of 8x8 graphics squares. If you've played any retro-styled games you've seen the effects of this. They were a great way to deal with memory constraints bac…

Hey now, your average IBM PC has a tile-mapped display mode, too: we just usually call it "text", and the tiles "characters". :) But the text-mode 'font' (i.e. the tileset) was often able to be written to, to achieve fast arbitrary-tile drawing results exactly like those of your average game console. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mode#User-defined_charact...

You could also play tricks with the palette, swapping it out at the end of each scanline to get e.g. 64 colors at the same time on EGA.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#34

Post by agumonkey »

krige wrote: post #31
JohnBooty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha. I came here to post this. The intro to Flashback (same team) uses a similar strategy and I think is maybe even a little more impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClBaKXB2KqE

Actually not the same team, just the same publisher that capitalized on AW's success. Eric Chahi himself, the one-man-army responsible for Another World, only did Heart of Darkness afterwards.

When you think Chahi basically developped its own little flash framework 15 year prior on a crippled system, all for its own game. Madness.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#35

Post by glaberficken »

JohnBooty wrote: post #30
zeta0134 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickly drawing tiles is one of those sections that's really only going to make sense if you've ever done development work on a tile-mapped videogame console, as the mode is quite rare in other applications. A "tile" is nothing more than an index into a collection of 8x8 graphics squares. If you've played any retro-styled games you've seen the effects of this. They were a great way to deal with memory constraints bac…

This is extremely well-written. Kudos! Basically all 8/16-bit console graphics tricks take advantage of one (or both) of the following two facts: 1. 8-bit and (particularly) 16-bit consoles are built to draw and move 2D tiles crazy fast. If the effect you want can be achieved (or faked) by a series of animated tiles, you can do it. The most obvious example is "segmented" characters (usually bosses, but also the prota…

Pointless side fact: It's the first time i ever "read" a word in a Youtube video ID!

> https://youtu.be/hIiMz_NUDEw?t=97

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#36

Post by jix »

zeta0134 wrote: post #19
niftich wrote: post #9

The imprecise overruns because you'll draw over it is a clever optimization. It's interesting to compare and contrast these techniques from other excellent sources, like Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition [1]. Thought my technical knowledge topped out somewhere in the middle of the 'Quickly Drawing Tiles' section, the prose and algorithmic detail is lovely, the rationales and code is we…

Quickly drawing tiles is one of those sections that's really only going to make sense if you've ever done development work on a tile-mapped videogame console, as the mode is quite rare in other applications. A "tile" is nothing more than an index into a collection of 8x8 graphics squares. If you've played any retro-styled games you've seen the effects of this. They were a great way to deal with memory constraints bac…

Thanks for writing this. I didn't really expect that much attention, so I kind of assumed most people reading it are at least somewhat familiar with the graphics hardware of that area. I shouldn't have assumed that :)

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#37

Post by jix »

Nition wrote: post #20
jix wrote: post #2

Author here, happy to answer any questions you might have.

I had a couple of games on Mega Drive that did basic 3D, or seemed to. One was F1, where a few objects seemed to be true 3D. See the overbridge at 59s and then the long tunnel at 1:01 here for instance: https://youtu.be/qofonsN3Nwc?t=57 The long tunnel is made of several short tunnels. The other was Gunstar Heroes, where the first boss is made of 3D cubes. See here at 4:00: https://youtu.be/9v3B1hzMwnQ?t=240 I'm just…

I've never had a Mega Drive before working on this, so I wasn't really familiar with a lot of its games.

I took a quick look at F1 just now though. The way it makes use of the nametable and patterns is very similar to what I do. There are precomputed fully solid patterns at a fixed location and the non-solid patterns seem to be bump allocated.

It makes use of both layers though, drawing the street on one and everything else on the other. I think it uses per scanline scrolling to apply correct perspective to the street.

I can't say anything about how it actually renders into the tile map for now. That would require a lot more than looking at the VDP (graphics chip) debugger in an emulator.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#38

Post by Nition »

jix wrote: post #37
Nition wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a couple of games on Mega Drive that did basic 3D, or seemed to. One was F1, where a few objects seemed to be true 3D. See the overbridge at 59s and then the long tunnel at 1:01 here for instance: https://youtu.be/qofonsN3Nwc?t=57 The long tunnel is made of several short tunnels. The other was Gunstar Heroes, where the first boss is made of 3D cubes. See here at 4:00: https://youtu.be/9v3B1hzMwnQ?t=240 I'm just…

I've never had a Mega Drive before working on this, so I wasn't really familiar with a lot of its games. I took a quick look at F1 just now though. The way it makes use of the nametable and patterns is very similar to what I do. There are precomputed fully solid patterns at a fixed location and the non-solid patterns seem to be bump allocated. It makes use of both layers though, drawing the street on one and everythi…

Thanks so much for taking the time to check it out. I've had that game for >20 years now so it's nice to learn a little bit more about it. Cool that they were doing something similar 24 years ago.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#39

Post by vanderZwan »

agumonkey wrote: post #34
krige wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually not the same team, just the same publisher that capitalized on AW's success. Eric Chahi himself, the one-man-army responsible for Another World, only did Heart of Darkness afterwards.

When you think Chahi basically developped its own little flash framework 15 year prior on a crippled system, all for its own game. Madness.

Not uncommon at the time though - Jordan Mechner did something similar. His journals are absolute treasures, by the way:

http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/

EDIT: Well, maybe I speak too soon. Chahi and Mechner don't exactly represent the average developer - they both are polymaths and were capable of combining their broad interests in amazing and creative ways.

Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive

#40

Post by vanderZwan »

krige wrote: post #31
JohnBooty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha. I came here to post this. The intro to Flashback (same team) uses a similar strategy and I think is maybe even a little more impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClBaKXB2KqE

Actually not the same team, just the same publisher that capitalized on AW's success. Eric Chahi himself, the one-man-army responsible for Another World, only did Heart of Darkness afterwards.

Don't forget about "From Dust"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Dust

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