Author here, happy to answer any questions you might have.
I don't write in Rust myself, but I'm sure many here would love to hear more about your experience with it
Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#42Author here, happy to answer any questions you might have.
I don't write in Rust myself, but I'm sure many here would love to hear more about your experience with it
For this project I don't really have to say much about the rust side of it. There were no surprises. The only thing special I can think of is the excellent cross-compiling support. That came in handy as I had to produce windows binaries for the 3D artists.
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They seem to have that non specific problem solving skills.
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#44OK, for those ignorant like me:
Mega Drive == Sega Genesis.
I loved that console, impressive feat indeed!
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Whoa! Awesome.
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Choosing 50 FPS instead of 60 was because needing to dedicate more CPU to each frame, or because another reason? P.S. Impressive demo, kudos :-)
There is a little more CPU time, but the extended vertical blanking interval means there is a huge difference in video memory bandwidth, which is critical for a long DMA transfer from 68000-bus memory to VRAM through the Mega Drive's VDP. 60Hz V-blank DMA: 7524 50Hz V-blank DMA: 17622 That's at 320x224 resolution for both. I don't know how much this affects this one demo in particular, but for other things it can be…
Thank you very much, with the available DMA bandwidth figures during V-blank you gave, I've found some VDP documentation: http://md.squee.co/VDP
Re: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
#47Author 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…
The Gunstar Heroes boss reminds me of an old demo effect called vectorballs or "bobs" https://youtu.be/Itv3f7o7Zac?t=167 combined with a Doom-style pre-rendered set of rotated sprites.