Virtua Fighter 3(Shenmue) on Sega Saturn

Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix have much higher polycount characters and lighting effects, that is why they are lower resolution. If you look at the Tekken games on the PS1 you see flat backgrounds, flat floors that go on forever and then the characters in 3D, Fighters Megamix and Fighting Vipers are no different except they are using the VDP2 to make up the floors and backgrounds instead of polygons.

Similarly, Sega Touring Car Championship has much higher polygon counts in the car models and longer draw distance than Sega Rally or the Daytona games on Saturn do. Touring Car isn't lower resolution, but it did have a less steady framerate than Sega Rally or Daytona CE. NiGHTs, Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III, Shining the Holy Arc, Virtual On and others all display much more technically impressive 3D engines than the second wave of Saturn software.

 

All polygonal data in Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix is rendered at half the resolution of the background layers, which is why neither of these looks as good as Virtua Fighter 2. Then again, they do benefit from the addition of Gouraud shading and light sourcing - I always felt that VF2 on the Saturn looked technically impressive yet rather clinical as a result of lacking such features, though I only really noticed this after playing AM2's later efforts for the console.

Based on the limited information out there and overall time frame of its development, I'm fairly certain that the first revision of Saturn VF3 at least borrowed heavily from the engine previously used in Vipers and then Megamix. In fact, I suspect the desert stage appeared in VF3 using the exact same method that was used for Megamix, but I've honestly no idea how the rumoured fully 3D terrain of the second revision would have looked, other than having very low resolution textures.

As for the Shenmue prototype video, I've heard this runs at somewhere between 12 and 15 frames per second (ironically the same kind of performance that Panzer Dragoon Saga achieves during the on-foot sections). Also, the only time I really notice any frame drops in Sega Touring Car is when passing under bridges, and I never rated the graphics of Virtual On that much... perhaps I saw CRI mentioned in the credits and might need to give this one a reappraisal?

 

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That's absolutely true, plus we shouldn't forget that it's claimed the video's speed may have been changed in post production, so it's hard to really say what the actual frame rate was...

 

VF2 fighter makes a much better impression then the FV and Megamix's efforts! Goround shading and lighting aren't that impressive in FV and FM. Sometimes good texture work brings better results then such effects.

Last Bronx Fighters seem more "VF2-esque" but not as good. There is this impression that vf2 had much more attention put into it.

By the way shenmue demo shows a nice trick. real time cut scenes have a much higher polygon count on the characters(for exemple the faces). There are only 2 or 3 "playable" in game scenes with "free moving" camera, certainly the 3D character(Ryo alone) uses less polygons for the face and the rest. Yu Suzuki said , that he was very proud of what he achieved on the saturn. The polygon count on those faces in the cut scenes is really incredible, never saw something like that on 32bit consoles!
Probably the same trick like need for speed for 3DO, with camera on rails and a world that doesn't have to turn, theres more power left for the polygons. Real time cut scenes have also an extra boost of power due to the defined camera angles; for example panzer dragoon2 real time cut scenes run with 60 frames.

 

As I said before, it's been claimed that AM2 was experimenting with switching from lower-detailed character models to versions featuring more polygons when just one could be seen on screen in Saturn VF3 as well - this can definitely be seen in the Shenmue prototype footage, and I've heard the facial animations of Digital Dance Mix also proved invaluable when it came to technical research for both of these projects.

 

Guess their experiment was a huge success, maybe i should get Digital Dance Mix...if the results were so convincing!

 

Unless you actually like Namie Amuro, to me Digital Dance Mix comes across as little more than a glorified late Saturn tech demo from AM2 with some additional mini games tacked on... even then, it only features two songs so probably isn't worthwhile to anyone outside the die-hard fanbase! In all honesty, you're better off just tracking down some video footage online (preferably in the highest quality available for maximum effect).

 

I'd have preferred Ayumi Hamazaki but that's me...

Digital Dance mix is on my list it's just one of those quirky things.

 

320x240 or 356x240 is hardly low resolution though compared to similar PS1 and N64 games. Neither of the other systems could touch the Saturn's high res mode, but that mode came with its tradeoffs. I wonder if they ever would have developed a way to employ gouraud shading at 640x480 or 704x480. The highest the PS1 ever got was 640x240 (Dead or Alive, Soul Blade) or 384x480 (Tekken 3) and 512x480 (Bloody Roar 2). I think it is splitting hairs that any of these look better than Fighters Megamix.

As for the potential for 3D objects in the background, I would bank more on VDP2 objects with sides through animation than anything else. The couldn't look more simple than Soul Blade's backgrounds.

 

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I'm pretty sure VDP1 can use 4-Bit textures for gourad shading, but the Hi-Res mode being limited to 8-Bit textures still applies. Theres a mega-thread over on Sega-16 with a few devs knocking around who've had some experience coding on Saturn, detailing quite a few tech nuggets about the Saturn that might be useful (though I can assume Druid II your already pretty clued up).

Savvakki is a title that seems to be using a Hi-Resoloution with shading, though I cant quite gather whether its just a medium hi-res like Fighters Megamix (640x240?) or true saturn Hi-Res at 708x480 due to compression on youtube. Either way textures look noticebaly less smudgy than Megamix.

I do remember there was a weird hack Chris Coffin of SGI fame came up with involving setting up an 8-Bit palleted texture and the gourad shade function that creates a bump effect. Cant seem to find the original source that explains it though...

Also whilst I Anathemia's here, quick question. You've mentioned before about Shenmue and VF3 using some late internal SGL build that apparantly beefs performance up significantly, whats your source on this information?

 

Anarchy in the Nippon is also a very good fighter with very nice graphics and frame rate. D-Xhird from Takara is only 30 frames but looks very nice(stages)....only the animations are quite poor!

By the way Touring Car was a very bad port sacrificing the frame rate to get a faster engine....no way. Tracks also looked very poor compared with Sega Rally/Daytona CEE. Melbourne House Manx TT arcade port was much better!

Dead or Alive came quite late and looked very good but it was wasn't technically far superior then VF2, the stages looked better. And this game was further proof that this was the way to program saturn 3D fighters(VF2, Last Bronx,...). Proper Texture work and high res graphics on sega saturn gave a much more satisfying result(in this genre) than lightning and go-around shading(this may looked good on ps1). Burning rangers lightning effects were quite cool!

 

While I can't remember the original source, Chris Coffin of Sega Technical Institute did indeed discover a hardware exploit that was used to "render" the curves of Sonic's eyes for his 3D model as seen in the Project Condor build only - bear in mind this does not include the sprites of the leaked test version. From my experience of using the model viewer that came as part of the Sega Graphics Library software tools, this glitch only works on an actual Saturn. As for a late version of SGL being used in the development of Shenmue and Saturn VF3, I'd originally been informed this specific revision was known internally as revision 3.02. However, if you consider this very update leaked through a third party then it can't possibly have been the same version AM2 was reported to be using exclusively. Despite not having any concrete details of this particular detail, my best guess is that it was some kind of upgrade based on 2.1, as this powered Fighting Vipers (and therefore I would presume Fighters Megamix as well). To be perfectly honest with you, the information in my posts on the subject of VF3 from much longer back especially is rather old now, though I should point out that it's going to be a while yet before I can once again go into the kinds of detail I'd ideally like to...

 

What ? The only thing going on about that forum is a constant Saturn bashing and extreme nitpicking.
Segaxtreme is the only place that I know of consisting of coders and people who know the saturn inside-out.
Care to name who are the coders or at least a link to said topic please ?

 

I think your looking in the wrong thread, was it the Saturn mega-thread?

Yeah, that one can get a bit heavy. But Sega-16 has a wider user base, touching on casuals, and gamers who where more fans of the Megadrive/Genesis but did'nt get bitten by the Saturn bug. Sometimes discussions can get a bit mud-slinging, but often its refreshing to hear different perspectives about the Saturn, its not all rose-tinted glasses. I think most of the slagging off is over Sega's internal politics during that era, users can get very nit-picky about the political misgivings of the whole Sega story.

Still Sega-16 has Melf who's done a lot of work chasing up ex-sega employees and interviews.

Anyway, massive tangent! The thread I was referring to is this:

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showth...(-quot-32-64-bit-quot-)-game-console-hardware

If you can try and wade through the user Kool_Kitty89's stream of conscious walls of text, the posters Crazyace and Chilly Willy have a good grasp of the hardware in that thread.

Of course Sega-Xtreme have got some good tech posts but I don't have an account there, so apart from the odd browse I'm not privy to a lot of that info.

I've followed your trail round the net for a long while, and your posts are always fascinating and enlightening, its just a few times you've given some rather incredible details, that could beyond the realms of physics regarding the Saturns hardware, I can only assume these are some of the much older more dated posts your referring to as more info has come to light. One such example was the debate thats been banded about regarding how many ploys Shenmue and VF3 are pushing.

It would be physically impossible for the Saturn to render 500,000-750,000 realtime textured polygons at a stable framerate, a number thats been suggested before, it goes beyond the limits of the hardware, VDP1 alone only has a meagre fill-rate of around 24Mpixels under peak conditions (pretty weak compared to the PSX's GPU along with the way VDP1 drew quads wasting filtrate due to overdraw) there's just not enough bandwidth to draw that many polys, even if the twin SH-2's could transform that much geometry.

Sorry if thats a bit long-winded, and don't take it as any disrespect, I think your a fantastic poster, and I do definetly believe VF3 saturn is out there and probably pushes the saturn like no other title before.

 

I didn't know that Manx TT was handled by Melbourne House. That is awesome. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could max out hardware like Melbourne House. My Jpn CD says "Converted by Psygnosis Ltd., Perfect Entertainment Ltd. and Tantalus Entertainment Pty. Ltd. I hadn't connected those companies to Melbourne House before. I still can't find the connection, Melbourne House has been around since the 70s.

On Touring Car Championship, I made a comparison video of the Model 2 Emulator version and Saturn version a couple years back. I think it does justice to the source material, though the framerate in the turns could be better.

I agree, Dead or Alive manages to keep the VDP2 ground synced with the rings too, that was one of the more jarring glitches in Saturn VF2. I didn't think that real time lighting added much to Fighting games in this generation that Dead or Alive, Last Bronx and VF2 didn't achieve with high color textures and high resolution.

 

Well, I find the models in MGS VR quite great looking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekWvKcAEfEA

This thread is great, lots of technical stuff and interesting theories. I particularly admire Anthaemia's passion and love for these games, although some of the things he says are a bit far fetched. I enjoy reading your posts a ton though

 

Wow awesome video!!!!
Thats the point in VF2, the ground sync of both playfields is very bad!
I still admire Last bronx, okay there where no rings and no ground sync was necessary(fighting vipers the same, but still worse then Last Bronx). But the 3D effect is incredible, especially the metro and park garage levels, and the 2D Sprites (cars in garage, or pillars in the metro do the rest).
DA>VF2
LB>FV/FMegamix

To get great 3D results on saturn, the implementation of playfields and 2D objects is a must!(Panzer Dragoon 2, Nights...)

By the way the bad frame rate in Touring Car made the game almost unplayable...reaction time is to slow....like playing Vf1 after a vf2 session ;9

By the way great posts in this forum!

 

I suppose you mean this







Interestingly, the last screen shows an arena of the Pool Bonus Game from the allegedly separate Sonic project by Peter Morawiec's studio. Since these screenshots were all leaked by Chris Coffin, I have the impression that both Project Condor (AKA the latest stages of Sonic X-treme) and Morawiec studio's work were going to be joint into the same final game, had all Sega Technical Institute's efforts not been entirely cancelled by Sega in mid-late 1996.