Mind-boggling mysterious 32X techdemo

Umm, firstly that seems to be running on a presentation screen, probably projected, with a video camera set up in front of it. That's gonna soften the picture, probably making it look smoother than it actually is. Still, saying Dreamcast quality really is pushing it... Saturn or N64, perhaps.

(secondly, who is the skilled video editor who left us watching nearly 2 mins of black screen and their video cam's blue screen??!?! That's 14mb of crap!!! A divx might have been welcomed!)

OK, why no games like this? Well, can you all say you've played the games to say none looked like that? OK, assuming they didn't (and I've never played EVERY 32X game so I can't comment... and I doubt many of you have played darxide!!).....

1. Few people could (or had time to learn to) program well for the platform.
2. The cost involved (investing in this risky platform near the end of the machine's life)
3. SATURN !!!

 

darxide isn't so beautiful. compared to this movie , its nothing!

 

Sorry, my mind isn't boggled I suppooose it is impressive for 32X, but 'eh, I already thought it could do that.

 

That is pretty cool for a 32X but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is better than Saturn or Playstation....

 

Well demo coders are able to do lots of stuff you wouldn't haved believed in like the krieger demo I posted a while ago (a few kb big and looks like quake 3).

 

Come on you have to be impressed with that video... for its time its damn well amazing!

Is anyone known to have a 32x dev kit? If so maybe some home made games on that could poss push it to do better things?

 

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This demo is certainly not as impressive as everybody claims it to be.

Draw Distance is very very short,on screen polygons are really few,and when switching to textured stuff the framerate drops a lot.

 

An interview with one of the danish zyrinx guys can be found here: http://videogameheaven.tripod.com/scorcher/interview.htm

went on to make scorcher for saturn/pc which uses a similar engine and, later on, hitman.

scavenger (the publisher credited at the beginning of the demo) had a lot of highly talented scandinavian coders attached to them at the time, including people who later formed starbreeze (swedish team, recently released Chronicles of riddick on xbox)

 

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Zyrinx members also come from the Crionics Amiga Demogroup,who circa 1992 did "Hardwired",a kick ass demo for the time....

 

When I saw that movie my jaw dropped to the floor and I said amazing. I would really like to play a leak of that game, but we never will.

 

In response to above questions

I recall someone from this board having a CD-R with the 32X SDK on it but he said he lost it and hasnt got back to me yet :Hangman:

And Darxide wasnt released in the US (the US got Spiderman)

 

There was an old issue of Gamefan magazine (1994 or 1995 I beleive) that showed pics of two 32X games that never saw the light of day:

*Alone in the Dark (looked similar to the 3DO version)

*and a WAVERACE type of jetski game....THAT looked impressive with Gouraud shaded jetski models and some interesting water. Keep in mind that this was pre-N64 too.

It did appear that more impressive titles were in the works...sadly, the 32X was essentially already dead when it launched.

 

scavenger

Zyrinx was part of the Scavenger group of teams
when this demo came out Sega tried to buy the tech from Scavenger
but it was too late the 32x was already dead and the saturn was just around the corner
so Scavenger moved on to the saturn to produce Scorcher ( also by Zyrinx ) and Amok

Scavenger was basically a bunch of ex-scene guys ,
the staff has spread to the 4 winds now
Starbreeze ( enclave and chronicles of riddick ) , the team that did "Into the shadows"
Zyrinx is basically split into Shiny ( enter the matrix ) and god know where else
as for the rest of us , we'll we are all over the place

Deadsoul ( ex Scavenger employee )

 

Didn't Amok start out as a 32X title?

 

I was just about to point about the draw distance, but someone beat me. I believe the only way reason they were able to have such graphics was becuase of the extremely short draw distance. If it wasn't for the short draw distance, it would be rendering considerably slower. Having a real game at that short draw distance woule be nearly impossible to play.

 

Ah, the wonders of demo effects that seemingly surpass what the hardware seems capable of. Started on the C64 and (with the exception of the PC) translated well to other systems.

Just be known, 90% of demo effects are useless for games.

 

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LocalH,there is no such thing as "Demo Effects" anymore.Most good demos run on respectable 3D engines,and most of the techniques are applicable to games programming as it's just visual techniques usually and not mechanics and stuff......

 

Why do you say that? I agree todays draw-lots-of-shiny-blobs-in-OpenGL demos are boring as hell (never ever watched the new-school side of Mindcandy ) but it used to be done to amazing heights, check any TBL demo for instance or Dope/Complex :smt023

 

Paulo, its a good demo for its time, sure... but everyone is overreacting. We all knew what the 32X could do. We all knew it would never take off, and never be used properly. It is nowhere near DC quality IMHO.

As for dev kits, there was a Psy-Q Dev Kit. And Anti, I believe that Eidolon had a CD full of 32X dev stuff