296 replies to this topic

[82-T/A]

Austin, on Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:54 PM, said:

82-T/A, on Sun Jan 22, 2012 1:23 PM, said:

It was so that you could basically play 3DO games on your computer. It was an official product, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. The dumb thing is that we only used it to play Top Gun (the movie) on our big monitors that we had. We never bothered to actually set it up for product demo. I don't ever remember anyone actually buying it. I think they were selling it close to 350 bucks or so. I'm going to copy this text in case it doesn't take my post.

You are thinking of the 3DO Blaster. Those things are super-rare these days and go for a pretty penny if they are complete.

Yeah, I did some searches after I posted it and found some pictures of it. It's exactly like I remembered it... pretty cool. Apparently NEC also made one for their TurboGraFX-16 too...

[spiffyone]

Just noticed someone had pulled an Altered Beast on this topic about a month or two ago (WISE FROM YO GWAVE...!)

Looking back at some of these posts...wow...kind of embarrassing, actually. I think I made some good points, but should've just taken more of a high road on some things.

And armchair quarterbacking is something I often engage in; it's a fault. I admit it.

That said...I still think Atari shouldn't have skipped Panther, and should've held back on Jag for a bit. It didn't make sense, IMHO, to not have product out in '91. Even if Panther wasn't great hardware from a developer's standpoint (and there can be an argument made with regards to more RAM needed, etc.), and even if Sega and Nintendo would've outsold it by plenty (most likely scenario), it would seem Atari was a tiny bit more financially stable in '91 (the year Panther was to be released) so might've been on more solid ground than they were with Jaguar with regards to launching and supporting a console. Also, even if it was lapped in sales by Genesis and SNES, if it came in at an affordable price point (particularly if lower priced than the competition) it would've garnered some sales.

...another scenario I've thought of lately as I've gotten back into playing TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games: What if Atari had signed a deal with NEC to handle the PC Engine in the US? Or, better yet, the SuperGrafx (which was released in Japan in '89, the same year that NEC launched the vanilla PC Engine as the TurboGrafx-16 in the US)?

Anyway, the reason for my responding and resurrecting this topic:

MN12BIRD, on Wed Jan 4, 2012 1:08 AM, said:

Okay as for Crash and Burn on the 3DO can someone confirm with proof that the background is indeed FMV and not real time?
...I'm so damn certain that Crash and Burn is real time but everyone keeps saying it's FMV.

This has been debated since that game was released. I know I stated earlier in the topic (back when the topic was first alive) that it's FMV...but now I'm not so sure. It is pulling off things that 3DO shouldn't really be doing, however, as the draw distance is very good (better than some early PS1 and Saturn games, actually), and it seems the amount of polys onscreen outweigh 3DO's capabilities.

But...not really. There is something "funny" going on, but not FMV, according to one of the members of the dev team:

Quote

Quote

I probably shouldn't say anything but what the heck. The track is being
pulled off the CD. Originally the entire track was in memory but when the
enemies cars were added the frame rate went all the way down to 5fps. The
solution was to write a tool that would, for each view of the track, remove
all the polygons that are not seen. Since you can move left and right and
up and down (cockpit vs 3rd person) nothing is 'pre-calculated'

...


The entire track is still in memory. The track consists of tons-o-polygons.
Far too many for any machine to display in real-time. On part of displaying
something in 3D is figuring out which parts you can see and which parts you
can't. For example, if you are driving down a race track and you are
looking forward you can't see behind you therefore you don't want to draw
the stuff behind you on the screen. So, you do some math to tell you what
parts of your 3D world you can actually see. This takes alot of time. In
fact it is probably this single biggest problem with anything that works in
3D. All programs deal with this in different ways. Flight Simulator does
it while it's running. It keeps a list of all the things you can see and as
you fly around it adds or removes things. To see it in action, fly in skew
mode and skew really fast and then stop. You will see different 3D parts
pop in one at a time as the program finds new things that are now in your
view.
On CnB we wrote a program that would 'drive' down the track and for each
section of the track it makes a list of all the parts that can actually be
seen. These 'lists of visible parts' are then stored in the CD and as you
drive down the track the 'list' for the part of the track you are currently
on is loaded. This makes it run faster because we don't have to do all the
calculations for which things are visible while you are racing.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/853ane3

Maybe what accounts for that strange "feeling" I get when playing the game that I'm playing FMV isn't that it is FMV, but rather the program they're using in conjunction with the apparently 24fps framerate. It isn't the graphics, per se, but the motion of the whole thing, especially when the track turns and parts of the track I've passed come into view further away. The way they scroll into site seems very...movie like. It just feels very different than how Virtua Racer 32x; Checkered Flag Jaguar; Daytona USA Saturn; Ridge Racer PS1; and Crusin' USA N64 did on their respective consoles.

[Austin]

It's basically constantly loading elements off the CD as you are playing. Scorcher on the Sega Saturn does this as well, constantly, probably a reason why it rivals most PlayStation 3D games despite that system being technically superior to the Saturn in that regard.

[Rex Dart]

Is that what Alone in the Dark 1 & 2 do on 3DO, probably? Mine's got an iffy CD-ROM drive, and those games stutter and skip when you're not doing anything in particular, just walkin' around in a small area.

[volkanik_destruktor]

Comparing games library IMHO 3DO owns Jaguar. I've been always into fighting games and fps so:

- even if 3DO Doom is unplayable there are still equal Wolf 3D port and Space Hulk: VOBA is better than AvP
- both Primal Rage ports are equal but Jag has only nice Ultra Vortek and total crap Kasumi Ninja and Fight For Life. 3DO offers Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (propably best 2D fighting game ever) and Samurai Showdown (eeh, all this cash spent on coin ups) - K.O.

PS. It's a shame that both consoles lacked any Mortal Kombat game :/ I'm sure they're able to handle with arcade-perfect MK ports.

Edited by volkanik_destruktor, Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:57 PM.

[Austin]

volkanik_destruktor, on Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:56 PM, said:

Space Hulk: VOBA is better than AvP

I think this is a poor comparison. Space Hulk is a vastly different game than AvP, focusing on team-based, strategic elements. They are really only similar in graphical style, and that's it.

[Felyx]

For me, technical aspects are less important than the games each system can offer.
There are interesting games on both.

We lack on Jaguar of some good games like Need for Speed.
The 3DO has Out of this world and Demolition Man: if we can expect the first one will be released, there is no chance to see Sly on Jaguar

Corpse killer looks like Operation Wolf but on Jaguar we have no equivalent at all (we could have had Area 51)

I can't say "if I have to chose" because I already did and the Jag had my preference.
The Jag scene seems to be more active and exciting than the 3DO one nowaday.

Despite the poor choice of good games, I won't change my Jag for a Goldstar

[Austin]

There was a recent poll on the 3DO Zero forums asking, "3DO, Jaguar, or both?". The majority picked "both", as both systems libraries complement one-another very well and make up for each's shortcomings in game selection.

[spiffyone]

Hate to resurrect this topic again, but something someone stated earlier about the ARM CPU in 3DO being halted when things were being texture mapped Is that actually true?

From my understanding, 3DO used a dual ported bus, so the graphics processors would be doing their thing somewhat separately from the CPU (well, the CPU and the math co-processor would be handling calculations, obviously). The 3DO specs I've read stated that the VRAM was dual ported, and was "capable of holding/executing code and data".

Wouldn't this lessen any bus contention issues? Why would the CPU need to halt while things were being texture mapped?

[philipj]

If that's the case, then the 3DO is like a big fancy version of the Atari 7800 where the CPU has to halt every time the graphics chip is in use.

[twoquickcapri]

Quotes from Next Generation issue 12 Dec 1995

"in a similar way to the Atari Lynx, organize the graphics into "animation cells." These cells are full color. high-rez images capable if being moved, scaled, rotated, warped, texture-mapped, and light-sourced with the aid of 3DO Cinematic Software Tools. The cell engines draw the image, leaving the CPU free to concentrate on calculating position (with aid of a math coprocessor) resuling in very fast realtime polygon generation - for the time anyway."

"But probably the 3DO's strongest feature is its Direct Memory Access engine, which enables it to shift large chunks of data around within its three megabytes of memory without using the CPU."

[philipj]

 spiffyone, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 2:30 PM, said:

Just noticed someone had pulled an Altered Beast on this topic about a month or two ago (WISE FROM YO GWAVE...!)

Looking back at some of these posts...wow...kind of embarrassing, actually. I think I made some good points, but should've just taken more of a high road on some things.

And armchair quarterbacking is something I often engage in; it's a fault. I admit it.

That said...I still think Atari shouldn't have skipped Panther, and should've held back on Jag for a bit. It didn't make sense, IMHO, to not have product out in '91. Even if Panther wasn't great hardware from a developer's standpoint (and there can be an argument made with regards to more RAM needed, etc.), and even if Sega and Nintendo would've outsold it by plenty (most likely scenario), it would seem Atari was a tiny bit more financially stable in '91 (the year Panther was to be released) so might've been on more solid ground than they were with Jaguar with regards to launching and supporting a console. Also, even if it was lapped in sales by Genesis and SNES, if it came in at an affordable price point (particularly if lower priced than the competition) it would've garnered some sales.

...another scenario I've thought of lately as I've gotten back into playing TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games: What if Atari had signed a deal with NEC to handle the PC Engine in the US? Or, better yet, the SuperGrafx (which was released in Japan in '89, the same year that NEC launched the vanilla PC Engine as the TurboGrafx-16 in the US)?

Anyway, the reason for my responding and resurrecting this topic:

 MN12BIRD, on Wed Jan 4, 2012 1:08 AM, said:

Okay as for Crash and Burn on the 3DO can someone confirm with proof that the background is indeed FMV and not real time?
...I'm so damn certain that Crash and Burn is real time but everyone keeps saying it's FMV.

This has been debated since that game was released. I know I stated earlier in the topic (back when the topic was first alive) that it's FMV...but now I'm not so sure. It is pulling off things that 3DO shouldn't really be doing, however, as the draw distance is very good (better than some early PS1 and Saturn games, actually), and it seems the amount of polys onscreen outweigh 3DO's capabilities.

But...not really. There is something "funny" going on, but not FMV, according to one of the members of the dev team:

Quote

Quote

I probably shouldn't say anything but what the heck. The track is being
pulled off the CD. Originally the entire track was in memory but when the
enemies cars were added the frame rate went all the way down to 5fps. The
solution was to write a tool that would, for each view of the track, remove
all the polygons that are not seen. Since you can move left and right and
up and down (cockpit vs 3rd person) nothing is 'pre-calculated'

...


The entire track is still in memory. The track consists of tons-o-polygons.
Far too many for any machine to display in real-time. On part of displaying
something in 3D is figuring out which parts you can see and which parts you
can't. For example, if you are driving down a race track and you are
looking forward you can't see behind you therefore you don't want to draw
the stuff behind you on the screen. So, you do some math to tell you what
parts of your 3D world you can actually see. This takes alot of time. In
fact it is probably this single biggest problem with anything that works in
3D. All programs deal with this in different ways. Flight Simulator does
it while it's running. It keeps a list of all the things you can see and as
you fly around it adds or removes things. To see it in action, fly in skew
mode and skew really fast and then stop. You will see different 3D parts
pop in one at a time as the program finds new things that are now in your
view.
On CnB we wrote a program that would 'drive' down the track and for each
section of the track it makes a list of all the parts that can actually be
seen. These 'lists of visible parts' are then stored in the CD and as you
drive down the track the 'list' for the part of the track you are currently
on is loaded. This makes it run faster because we don't have to do all the
calculations for which things are visible while you are racing.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/853ane3

Maybe what accounts for that strange "feeling" I get when playing the game that I'm playing FMV isn't that it is FMV, but rather the program they're using in conjunction with the apparently 24fps framerate. It isn't the graphics, per se, but the motion of the whole thing, especially when the track turns and parts of the track I've passed come into view further away. The way they scroll into site seems very...movie like. It just feels very different than how Virtua Racer 32x; Checkered Flag Jaguar; Daytona USA Saturn; Ridge Racer PS1; and Crusin' USA N64 did on their respective consoles.

Great post... Thanks for the link.

 Austin, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 2:58 PM, said:

It's basically constantly loading elements off the CD as you are playing. Scorcher on the Sega Saturn does this as well, constantly, probably a reason why it rivals most PlayStation 3D games despite that system being technically superior to the Saturn in that regard.

Those guys who did "Scorcher" were just phenomenal pulling the kind of graphics that they did for the Sega Genesis and the 32X demo... They come straight out of the Amiga demo-scene and it showed.

 twoquickcapri, on Mon May 7, 2012 1:23 AM, said:

Quotes from Next Generation issue 12 Dec 1995

"in a similar way to the Atari Lynx, organize the graphics into "animation cells." These cells are full color. high-rez images capable if being moved, scaled, rotated, warped, texture-mapped, and light-sourced with the aid of 3DO Cinematic Software Tools. The cell engines draw the image, leaving the CPU free to concentrate on calculating position (with aid of a math coprocessor) resuling in very fast realtime polygon generation - for the time anyway."

"But probably the 3DO's strongest feature is its Direct Memory Access engine, which enables it to shift large chunks of data around within its three megabytes of memory without using the CPU."

I really need to take more time to get to know the 3DO better... That's some good info... Thanks for posting.

[Austin]

 philipj, on Mon May 7, 2012 9:27 AM, said:

Those guys who did "Scorcher" were just phenomenal pulling the kind of graphics that they did for the Sega Genesis and the 32X demo... They come straight out of the Amiga demo-scene and it showed.

Yep! Their games were some of the most technically impressive of the 16 and 32-bit generations. It's a shame that their games weren't more well-regarded, but it's great to see that some of those guys were eventually able to score big with the Hitman series.

[sd32]

I always found interesting that games like Star Fighter and The Need for Speed on 3DO, featured better draw distance than the Playstation and Saturn ports, albeit at a lower frame rate. Would be interesting what 3DO hardware quirks made the developers choose the longar draw distance over a smooter framerate. In some cases like Total Eclipse, 3DO had better texturemapping than the PS1 version. 3DO, if i recall correctly, usually beat Saturn in texture mapping quality on games that appeared on both systems.
On the other hand i found it really disapointing, that the 3DO couldnt deliver the parallax scrolling on Super SF2 Turbo that even the 16 bit ports had, and that SSF2T and Samurai Spirits ran at a lower framerate than the 16 bit ports. Am i the only person in the world that is really annoyed by 3DO Samurai Showdowns frame rate?

[spiffyone]

sd32, on Mon May 7, 2012 9:57 PM, said:

I always found interesting that games like Star Fighter and The Need for Speed on 3DO, featured better draw distance than the Playstation and Saturn ports, albeit at a lower frame rate. Would be interesting what 3DO hardware quirks made the developers choose the longar draw distance over a smooter framerate. In some cases like Total Eclipse, 3DO had better texturemapping than the PS1 version. 3DO, if i recall correctly, usually beat Saturn in texture mapping quality on games that appeared on both systems.

I wonder how much of that was technical issues with regards to porting 3DO code over (even though it was all in C, as all 3DO games had to be, surely the differences in hardware had a negative effect on things), and how much of it had to do with the old switcheroo done to make the company's own hardware look better in comparison (similar to how Coleco and Mattel crippled versions of their games that appeared on the competition's systems).

On Need for Speed, though, I have to point out that some 3DO stalwarts state that the PS1 and Saturn versions, while running smoother/faster and with more features (more cars, more tracks) also have a less accurate driving model as they err more towards an arcade racing game than the racing simulation of the original design. However, I don't think the change was due to technical factors as much as market factors (honestly, back then, arcade racers were more fun and approachable to a wider audience, and even now that holds true). Still, it does make the 3DO version not exactly the same as the later versions.

Quote

On the other hand i found it really disapointing, that the 3DO couldnt deliver the parallax scrolling on Super SF2 Turbo that even the 16 bit ports had, and that SSF2T and Samurai Spirits ran at a lower framerate than the 16 bit ports. Am i the only person in the world that is really annoyed by 3DO Samurai Showdowns frame rate?

Actually, there's no 16-bit port of Super Turbo. Only vanilla Super (without the Turbo option and the Super meters).

As for Samurai Shodown, while it ran somewhat slower than the 16-bit versions, part of that was likely due to streaming info off of the CD. Also, the SNES and Genesis versions, to my recollection, don't have the sprite scaling/zooming feature found in the NEO GEO and 3DO versions, so those versions have the benefit of not having to deal with larger sprite sets. Oh, and the animation is also a bit more cut down in the SNES and Genesis versions (and, iirc, Genesis had slightly more animations per frame than SNES).

I'm guessing that the smaller sprite sizes and probably more cut down animation on SNES and Genesis also helped them in that regard against 3DO with the Street Fighter titles (negating the fact that the former two had vanilla Super while the latter had Super Turbo). Would've liked to have seen a 3DO version of Alpha or Alpha 2 though. Even SNES got a port of the latter.

[philipj]

sd32, on Mon May 7, 2012 9:57 PM, said:

I always found interesting that games like Star Fighter and The Need for Speed on 3DO, featured better draw distance than the Playstation and Saturn ports, albeit at a lower frame rate. Would be interesting what 3DO hardware quirks made the developers choose the longar draw distance over a smooter framerate. In some cases like Total Eclipse, 3DO had better texturemapping than the PS1 version. 3DO, if i recall correctly, usually beat Saturn in texture mapping quality on games that appeared on both systems.
On the other hand i found it really disapointing, that the 3DO couldnt deliver the parallax scrolling on Super SF2 Turbo that even the 16 bit ports had, and that SSF2T and Samurai Spirits ran at a lower framerate than the 16 bit ports. Am i the only person in the world that is really annoyed by 3DO Samurai Showdowns frame rate?

It's my understanding that "Starfighter" was originally made for the "Acorn computer" which featured arms processors similar to what the 3DO was packing... I can only imagine that all they had to do was to just port it over from the Acorn to the 3DO which was more sophisticated than the Acorn with better texturemapping. The Saturn version was just pityful.

Starfighter on the Acorn 7000


Starfighter on the Sega Saturn


Starfighter on the 3DO

Edited by philipj, Mon May 7, 2012 11:43 PM.

[Austin]

sd32, on Mon May 7, 2012 9:57 PM, said:

On the other hand i found it really disapointing, that the 3DO couldnt deliver the parallax scrolling on Super SF2 Turbo that even the 16 bit ports had, and that SSF2T and Samurai Spirits ran at a lower framerate than the 16 bit ports. Am i the only person in the world that is really annoyed by 3DO Samurai Showdowns frame rate?

SSF2T ran at full speed, no frame drops or anything. I hear you on the lack of background layers though. That was the only part that disappointed me about that version. Otherwise, an excellent port.

Samurai Shodown though, you are right. It's got a lot of frameskipping going on that makes it tough on the eyes IMO. It still plays well, but it's not silky smooth like the Neo Geo original.

[sd32]

Was there any technical limitation on 3DO, behind the lack of background layers on SSF2T?. Its not really a big deal, the game is great as it is, but i find it interesting.

[Mark T]

Wasn't the 3DO the first console to use a cooling fan? I also liked how the console reset each time opened and closed the cd tray with a new game...not sure if it did that all the time tho...I think games with multiple disc's were the exception.

[spiffyone]

sd32, on Tue May 8, 2012 10:34 PM, said:

Was there any technical limitation on 3DO, behind the lack of background layers on SSF2T?. Its not really a big deal, the game is great as it is, but i find it interesting.

Probably a RAM limitation in conjunction with possible bus contention related issues. But most likely a simple matter of RAM. A lot of the higher quality 2D fighting ports on Saturn needed an extra RAM cart to be as close to arcade perfect as possible.

[philipj]

spiffyone, on Fri May 18, 2012 11:55 AM, said:

sd32, on Tue May 8, 2012 10:34 PM, said:

Was there any technical limitation on 3DO, behind the lack of background layers on SSF2T?. Its not really a big deal, the game is great as it is, but i find it interesting.

Probably a RAM limitation in conjunction with possible bus contention related issues. But most likely a simple matter of RAM. A lot of the higher quality 2D fighting ports on Saturn needed an extra RAM cart to be as close to arcade perfect as possible.

Possibly... They say Samuri Shodown for the 3DO lacks quality, but the 3DO had more RAM then the Neo Geo plus the 3DO cpu was considered a 68020 equivalent only faster because of it's RISC nature. I think they held back to keep people pumping quarters in the arcade machines.

[twoquickcapri]

The Neo Geo was a ROM monster. It would steam data straight off of the ROM so it didn't need a lot of ram. When SNK made the Neo Geo CD they added 7 megs of ram to make up for the lack of ROM. The Saturn needed a 1 meg ram cart to play Neo Geo games.