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Sega Saturn....20 years after
#356434 - 07/12/16 08:18 PM
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| B2K24 |
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Re: Sega Saturn....20 years after
[Re: Roman]
#356439 - 07/13/16 12:08 AM
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Kinda tempted to pickup a Saturn now.
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| Foxhack |
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Re: Sega Saturn....20 years after
[Re: B2K24]
#356442 - 07/13/16 02:46 AM
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> Kinda tempted to pickup a Saturn now.
I was planning to sell my own Saturn.
Now... I'm not so sure I should. I love the system, but getting games for it is a pain, and getting it modded was even worse.
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Re: Sega Saturn....20 years after
[Re: Foxhack]
#356444 - 07/13/16 04:59 AM
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I just wish there were reputable people online that repaired/upgraded old consoles.
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Re: Sega Saturn....20 years after
[Re: B2K24]
#356447 - 07/13/16 09:23 AM
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> Kinda tempted to pickup a Saturn now.
http://www.retrocollect.com/Reviews/hard...eplacement.html -- these are available since 2014, they don't occupy the MPEG card slot, so you can play everything, including games that need the MPEG card inserted, so I don't understand all the hype around this "new" adapter.
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| Tomu Breidah |
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My hero!...
[Re: Roman]
#356452 - 07/13/16 04:37 PM
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& Jops brother? 
I reluctantly post this, but... I wonder if this will help reveal what format some of the games music are in (duh, the ones without the redbook audio you can listen to in any CD player). For the sake of making them available/playable in something like M1.
Edited by Tomu Breidah (07/13/16 05:16 PM)
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Sega Saturn....20 years after
[Re: F1ReB4LL]
#356454 - 07/13/16 04:52 PM
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> > Kinda tempted to pickup a Saturn now.
>
> http://www.retrocollect.com/Reviews/hard...eplacement.html
> -- these are available since 2014, they don't occupy the MPEG card slot, so you can
> play everything, including games that need the MPEG card inserted, so I don't
> understand all the hype around this "new" adapter.
The major hype is that the new adaptor is far more homebrew-friendly; games running on the Saturn can do standard file I/O to the USB drive, which makes it possible to write trojans that output their results to a file on USB rather than on the screen.
Also, it allows music players and simple emulators since you don't have to pack the program with the roms/mods/whatever anymore.
And finally, it can use cue/bin rips that everyone already has, where Deunan requires DiscJuggler or CloneCD images.
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"...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Roman]
#356457 - 07/13/16 05:19 PM
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For fuck's sake, if those games are blocky, no wonder kids these days have cartoon heads.....
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Traso]
#356458 - 07/13/16 05:55 PM
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I think it's a fair comment.
Most Saturn games are *really* ugly, those oldschool 2d scaling tricks and terrible textures have not aged well at all. Many of the textures do indeed look very blocky, many games have scaling artefacts all over the shop. Anything that attempts to do FMV is awful too, not SegaCD awful, but only a few steps above*.
Also keep in mind that with Saturn most transparency effects are checkerboard, not real (there's a nice video explaining exactly why) and that again looks terrible on a modern screen. Rather than the illusion of transparency you get a horribly blocky grid.
The 16-bit stuff has aged much better than the 32-bit generation.
* It actually amazes me how badly video is encoded even on some games in the PS3 generation, even one or two PS4 games I've seen have absolutely horrible video encoding where you can see artefacts.
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| Tomu Breidah |
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Haze]
#356460 - 07/13/16 07:25 PM
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> Also keep in mind that with Saturn most transparency effects are checkerboard, not
> real (there's a nice video explaining exactly why) and that again looks terrible on a
> modern screen. Rather than the illusion of transparency you get a horribly blocky
> grid.
>
I recall reading somewhere where they were developing the Core/Eidos game; Ninja - Shadow of Darkness, for the SS, and achieved a transparency effect. Unfortunately, the game was never released.
Seems like they said it was using Mode 7 to do this... But, I thought that was for perspective/scaling(?), not transparencies. So, I could be wrong on that.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#356461 - 07/13/16 07:33 PM
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> > Also keep in mind that with Saturn most transparency effects are checkerboard, not
> > real (there's a nice video explaining exactly why) and that again looks terrible on
> a
> > modern screen. Rather than the illusion of transparency you get a horribly blocky
> > grid.
> >
>
> I recall reading somewhere where they were developing the Core/Eidos game; Ninja -
> Shadow of Darkness, for the SS, and achieved a transparency effect. Unfortunately,
> the game was never released.
>
> Seems like they said it was using Mode 7 to do this... But, I thought that was for
> perspective/scaling(?), not transparencies. So, I could be wrong on that.
The things you can pull off in terms of transparency on the Saturn are very well documented
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_OchOV_WDg
That video basically explains it all, there are no ways around those limitations, every method has drawbacks.
You could also software render everything to a framebuffer and not use any of the video hardware at all, doing all your own transparencies, but the SH2s are too slow to really do an entire game that way.
Edited by Haze (07/13/16 07:36 PM)
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Haze]
#356472 - 07/14/16 01:06 AM
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> * It actually amazes me how badly video is encoded even on some games in the PS3
> generation, even one or two PS4 games I've seen have absolutely horrible video
> encoding where you can see artefacts.
It's a thing even up to the PS4 generation. Know why? Bink Video.
I have modern PC games with videos rendered at low quality 720p -or less-, upscaled to 1080p. Bink Video isn't a bad tool, but a lot of devs don't bother fine tuning the quality and leave things at the default, which adds a lot of artifacting.
An example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20RywQIWWN8
The game renders fine at 1080p. But the video is 720p, low quality, and upscaled so it looks really blurry. Even on the PS3 and 4, which use Bluray discs, devs keep using low quality videos. It's not like they're going to run out of space, they have up to 50 GB to work with!
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Haze]
#356474 - 07/14/16 04:41 AM
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Doesn't matter too me. I had more fun with my Saturn/PSX then I ever did with Genesis/SNES. So many great games for the Saturn if you imported from Japan. Saturn was the only console in town for Capcom fighters and Thunderforce V even blocky just kicked all kinds of ass! Same deal with Panzer Dragoon games. 1997 was an awesome year for the PSX. Ace Combat 2, MGS, FF7, SOTN, etc.
I really wish they'd re-release these along with other great games from the 32-bit era as PC HD remakes on Steam or GOG. Better than 90% of the horseshit being peddled these days.
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| Tomu Breidah |
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: DiodeDude]
#356476 - 07/14/16 08:09 AM
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> Doesn't matter too me. I had more fun with my Saturn/PSX then I ever did with
> Genesis/SNES. So many great games for the Saturn if you imported from Japan. Saturn
> was the only console in town for Capcom fighters and Thunderforce V even blocky just
> kicked all kinds of ass! Same deal with Panzer Dragoon games. 1997 was an awesome
> year for the PSX. Ace Combat 2, MGS, FF7, SOTN, etc.
>
> I really wish they'd re-release these along with other great games from the 32-bit
> era as PC HD remakes on Steam or GOG. Better than 90% of the horseshit being peddled
> these days.
They (SEGA) even had Galaxy Force II (import)... OutRun too, iirc. I had always wondered if the Saturn could've pulled off Super Hang-On. I played that to death on the Genesis. Playing the arcade version next to it just blows it away!
Edited by Tomu Breidah (07/14/16 08:18 AM)
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Foxhack]
#356477 - 07/14/16 08:40 AM
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> > * It actually amazes me how badly video is encoded even on some games in the PS3
> > generation, even one or two PS4 games I've seen have absolutely horrible video
> > encoding where you can see artefacts.
>
> It's a thing even up to the PS4 generation. Know why? Bink Video.
>
> I have modern PC games with videos rendered at low quality 720p -or less-, upscaled
> to 1080p. Bink Video isn't a bad tool, but a lot of devs don't bother fine tuning the
> quality and leave things at the default, which adds a lot of artifacting.
Exactly. Its somehow like the old HLSL presets for MAME  . Moviecompanies have a own job for this task, to ensure maximum quality and ugly artefacts shouldnt be a issue nowadays. To be fair, the MPEG1 codec is some lousy codec compared to todays popular codecs like h264/h265, but still superior to Cinepak, which sadly was often used for Atari Jaguar CD, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and 3DO. If you take the possibilities from the past into account, there is not much room to blame the companies for ugly artefacts, because there wasnt much choices.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#356479 - 07/14/16 09:19 AM
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> I recall reading somewhere where they were developing the Core/Eidos game; Ninja -
> Shadow of Darkness, for the SS, and achieved a transparency effect. Unfortunately,
> the game was never released.
Burning Rangers is known for its transparency effects on explosions. Also, Black Down has transparent clouds, Emerald level in Sonic R uses some transparency effects and, of course, many 2D games use the proper transparencies (Darius Gaiden, Layer Section, Astal and others).
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#356484 - 07/14/16 06:37 PM
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> They (SEGA) even had Galaxy Force II (import)... OutRun too, iirc. I had always
> wondered if the Saturn could've pulled off Super Hang-On. I played that to death on
> the Genesis. Playing the arcade version next to it just blows it away!
Any of the sprite scaler games would've been right at home on the Saturn, that's something it was *very* good at.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Foxhack]
#356485 - 07/14/16 06:42 PM
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> It's a thing even up to the PS4 generation. Know why? Bink Video.
>
> I have modern PC games with videos rendered at low quality 720p -or less-, upscaled
> to 1080p. Bink Video isn't a bad tool, but a lot of devs don't bother fine tuning the
> quality and leave things at the default, which adds a lot of artifacting.
Which is dreadfully stupid, because the PS3/PS4/X360/XB1 all can play Blu-ray quality MPEG-4 video that you don't have to pay anyone to make or use. But there's a lot of inertia, backed up by the fact that Microsoft refuses to make it easy to play video back on Windows (in an API sense; obviously as an end-user WMP is adequate).
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#356486 - 07/14/16 06:47 PM
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I forgot about GFII. I still own a Saturn along with most of the games I mentioned. Plan on buying an xrgb mini at some point.
Saturn would have no trouble handling Super Hangon 
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: R. Belmont]
#356488 - 07/14/16 07:32 PM
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> Microsoft refuses to make it easy to play video
> back on Windows
On a very vaguely related note, this has got to be literally the Platonic ideal Slashdot article. Microsoft is apparently using Netflix DRM as a lever to reopen the browser wars.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: R. Belmont]
#356489 - 07/14/16 08:35 PM
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> > They (SEGA) even had Galaxy Force II (import)... OutRun too, iirc. I had always
> > wondered if the Saturn could've pulled off Super Hang-On. I played that to death on
> > the Genesis. Playing the arcade version next to it just blows it away!
>
> Any of the sprite scaler games would've been right at home on the Saturn, that's
> something it was *very* good at.
GF2 only had half the framerate of the original tho didn't it? Super Hang-On would have been easy tho, yes, surprised nobody has done it, could probably even just do a static recompile of the original code and rework the gfx calls.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: R. Belmont]
#356492 - 07/14/16 09:46 PM
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> > It's a thing even up to the PS4 generation. Know why? Bink Video.
> >
> > I have modern PC games with videos rendered at low quality 720p -or less-, upscaled
> > to 1080p. Bink Video isn't a bad tool, but a lot of devs don't bother fine tuning
> the
> > quality and leave things at the default, which adds a lot of artifacting.
>
> Which is dreadfully stupid, because the PS3/PS4/X360/XB1 all can play Blu-ray quality
> MPEG-4 video that you don't have to pay anyone to make or use. But there's a lot of
> inertia, backed up by the fact that Microsoft refuses to make it easy to play video
> back on Windows (in an API sense; obviously as an end-user WMP is adequate).
Don't you have to pay a license to be able to use MPEG-4? I mean yes, it's standard on consoles... but operating systems don't have native support built in (or at least they didn't back when 7 was released.) DVD playback was removed in Windows 10 when they removed Windows Media Center, and you have to pay them 15 bucks for their app - or do the sane thing and download free software like Videolan or MPC Home Cinema.
I figure it's easy for them to use MP4 on consoles since the playback license is part of the whole shebang they have to sign when becoming a developer. But PC games are a whole other story.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Foxhack]
#356493 - 07/14/16 10:17 PM
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> I figure it's easy for them to use MP4 on consoles since the playback license is part
> of the whole shebang they have to sign when becoming a developer. But PC games are a
> whole other story.
On consoles developers don't pay the MPEG-LA license, that's covered for them by the hardware maker. That at least used to be true on Windows as well.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Foxhack]
#356511 - 07/15/16 10:26 AM
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VLC is free. It plays DVDs just fine. Blu Ray... not so much. It works, but it's choppy on my i7 920(I think) with an r9 290x. Have to tweak settings, I guess.
But tons of deals are around with hardware that include powerdvd and such for free. That plays both back perfectly.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: URherenow]
#356564 - 07/16/16 02:56 AM
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> VLC is free. It plays DVDs just fine. Blu Ray... not so much. It works, but it's
> choppy on my i7 920(I think) with an r9 290x. Have to tweak settings, I guess.
>
> But tons of deals are around with hardware that include powerdvd and such for free.
> That plays both back perfectly.
You can't use those programs to play back video inside a game, which was my point - it's easy for a game to have MP4 playback on a console, but I think they'd have to pay for the playback license on PCs since Windows 10 doesn't include a license anymore.
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Foxhack]
#356586 - 07/17/16 02:16 AM
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> You can't use those programs to play back video inside a game, which was my point -
Ahh, Ok. But you did go off on a tangent
" DVD playback was removed in Windows 10 when they removed Windows Media Center, and you have to pay them 15 bucks for their app -"
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My apologies! *nt*
[Re: URherenow]
#356587 - 07/17/16 02:18 AM
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> > You can't use those programs to play back video inside a game, which was my point -
> Ahh, Ok. But you did go off on a tangent
>
> " DVD playback was removed in Windows 10 when they removed Windows Media Center, and
> you have to pay them 15 bucks for their app -"
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Re: "...allowing anyone who still has a Saturn to enjoy all those very blocky games..."
[Re: Haze]
#356875 - 07/24/16 10:23 PM
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> You could also software render everything to a framebuffer and not use any of the
> video hardware at all, doing all your own transparencies, but the SH2s are too slow
> to really do an entire game that way.
AMOK used a voxel engine that ran in software for all the terrain, it looked kick ass. Shame about the draw distance tho. It used hardware sprites and polys for small enemies and the player ship.
Saturn Doom also ran entirely in software, but it's best not to bring up that game.
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Index 
Threaded 
Sega Saturn....20 years after
Reply
[Re: 
. Moviecompanies have a own job for this task, to ensure maximum quality and ugly artefacts shouldnt be a issue nowadays. To be fair, the MPEG1 codec is some lousy codec compared to todays popular codecs like h264/h265, but still superior to Cinepak, which sadly was often used for Atari Jaguar CD, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and 3DO. If you take the possibilities from the past into account, there is not much room to blame the companies for ugly artefacts, because there wasnt much choices.
