Dronez-orginal one from zetha games.

Any one here remembers that cancelled game dronez.Well apparently the original company zetha games released a benchmark version of dronez called dronezmark.If this is the version they planned to port to dreamcast(the program says 2001) i think it may too heavy on the lighting for the dc to handle.heres a screenshot of it running on my pc.Anyone else ever tried it?

 

I reckon the DC could have handled that no problem. There are a number of DC games that are light intensive just like the one above.

Yakumo

 

They look like nude Nights lol.

 

Like which ones?Evil twin i recall was one of them but i dont recall.In any case if anyone wants to to try the dronezmark demo i got it from here http://www.majorgeeks.com/DroneZmarK_d136.html

 

You've probably never seen them but as a collector of Dreamcast games I've seen pretty much every game released in Japan. Undercover Kei used some heavy lighting. There are more however my memory is not so good these days I'll have a look to see what there was.

Yakumo

 

Well,I wouldnt know of undercover kei.But ive seen some games that have amazing lighting, but the lighting is proportional with the polycount on screen.For example that toy racing game for the dc has real time shadows,reflection and intensive lighting but a bit lacking on the poly count.But a game like shenmue is the reverse, and for once i owuld liked to see the bumpmapping used ever since i read this page.http://yam.20to4.net/dreamcast/index_old.html

 

Games that use bump mapping on the Dreamcast from what I remember are Soul Calibur and Phantasy Star online. I'm sure the floor before you enter the dragon's lair in the first area is bumb mapped.

Yakumo

 

From what I remember; SA2 uses bump mapping.

 

Ive played soul calibur countless times and i dont see it.I guess it would hard to see it without a moving light source.And ill give you the dragonslair i always thought it did.But sonic adventure 2? i ve played that millions of times no bumpmapping...

 

None of those games have bump/normal mapping. The only time I've seen it used in a commercial game is Shenmue II. The coins Ryo can get are bump/normal mapped... but for some stupid reason, they have prebaked lighting in the base texture.

Base texture:

Normal Map:


I've also found homebrew code for getting the normal mapping to work. It has a lot of limitations (it can't be used well on smooth objects, like people) but it would work great on sprites or sharp edged objects (think Starfox polygon models). It's pretty fast, too. It takes some extra processing to get at lighting information into the correct format, but it's drawn at the same speed as a regular texture.

 

I see what your saying,I remember something in the katana dev kit about this type of cheap bumpmapping.But they never said it couldnt be used on characters, they said it just doesnt look as good as the none cheap way.Btw do you if the dreamcast can use specular maps?(I dont recal any dreamcast games that use it)

 

Well, as far as I know, it's not possible to do phong interpolation with the Dreamcast on the normal maps. If you try to use normal mapping on something smooth, like a person or sphere, the bumps will be lit correctly on each polygon, but the light direction for each polygon would look like it's flat shaded. (If you had perfectly smooth bump maps, the resulting lighting would be identical to flat shading.) With that limitation, it looks best on sharp edged models.

(Would it be possible for anyone here to post videos of any of the devkit's bump map demos? I'd be really, really interested. It'd be nice to be proven wrong about there being no phong shading.)

As for specular maps, I know Dead or Alive 2 uses a specular map on one of Lei Fang's last costumes. The black leather thing is basicly a specular map with no additional textures (think of it as a specular map on solid black polygons). To do a specular map on the DC (or any fixed fuction graphics hardware), just add another texture layer on top of the base with the specular map set to an additive blend mode, and set the vertex lighting to the specular light levels.

 

Ha! Interesting, I know Dronez programmer and I remember the very first demo they created, it was for a DEC Alpha workstation, now that would be a nice find

 

I've played the Japanese Xbox version (the only release of the game, as far as I've found). I recall some sort of preview from, jeez, 1999 or 2000 that made the game sound terribly interesting, and I definitely noted it's disappearance (along with Metro3D's other games, Armada 2 and Dinosaur Hunting). I was rather surprised to learn that it had actually seen the light of day in Japan. Fairly disappointing game, considering that I spent quite some time waiting and looking for the game. Amusingly bizarre, at least.

 

The developer was interviewed in the UK Official Saturn Magazine in 1998..when it was coming to Dreamcast. It ( a PC version) was also given away with 3D accelerator cards.

 

The US Xbox version was completed. It just never shipped.

-hl718

 

So this came out on xbox in japan? Wonder why i've never seen/heard about this.. h:

Looks pretty neat very strange to say the least :icon_bigg

 

It was a definitely a pretty low-key release, even as far as Japanese Xbox releases go.

It's worth a play as an oddity, at least. I'm going to try to hunt down that PC version, now, to see if it's an different. I'm curious as to why it's PC release was limited to a video-card pack-in. That was back in 2001, and it would have been a damn good-looking game at the time. Certainly enough for a regular retail release.

 

Didn't Millenium Soldier (or Expendable as it was also called) from Rage Software feature heavy use of colored lighting and also bump mapping?
I know for sure that there was a pc version especially for Matrox cards featuring loads of bump-mapping which other cards at the time couldn't process (same goes for Dungeon Keeper 2 which also had a Matrox version, I think they were made for the G400-chipset series).

Can't remember if Expendable was so graphics heavy on the DC though.
Phantasy star definitely had some bump mapping on the lava sections, though iirc using a static light source, i.e. the players weapons didn't light it so it was hard to notice. A wasted effect, maybe even faked (like most environtment mapping effects)