Emulate A Sega Saturn

[Jumpman]

Well I'm no emulator guru, and I wouldn't know how to program one if my life depended on it, but I believe something functional can be produced at some point in regards to Saturn emulation. From what I know, the DC is mainly off the shelf PC parts, and is very simple in comparison to the Saturn. The Saturn is very complex, but out of all the games produced, very few used all that the system had to offer. So if someone could develope something that handles basic core Saturn operations, I think some of the more generic 2-D games would operate, but something like virtua fighter 2, that pushed all the systems specs seems far fetched at best!


Chris

 

[Phawx]

You're a tease Exophase. Like a hot girl that invites you to a hotel room, tells you about how possible it is for you to nail her, and then just walks away.

 

[Exophase]

SSF uses software rendering. That might be the reason for the high CPU requirements The plus side (or negative side, depending on which way you look at it) is it looks extremely accurate.

That's possibly true in a sense. Hardware rendering can be used for not really accurate but accurate enough VDP1 rendering. Rendering this is probably about as expensive as rendering PS1 output. It's not really that bad since it's all affine texturing + gouraud shading, no expensive perspective correction. The blend modes are also probably used a lot less than in PS1 because of the visual artifacts they cause, and from what I understand Saturn has an overall lower fillrate than PS1. I can't really verify that right now but it makes sense since the VDP1 is clocked lower. Hardware rendering VDP1 can overall save a little over a very efficient software renderer, but a lot over a very inefficient one.

I would expect the bigger expense to be VDP2, which I wouldn't suggest trying to emulate with hardware. The 2D capabilities are actually a lot like GBA with more resolution, more layers, more flexible RGB pixel formats, and wider palettes. Which actually makes it very similar to one of DS's 2D engines.

If you were emulating it on Pandora I think the DSP would be sufficient for emulating VDP2, and possibly VDP1 as well.

 

[Spirit]

Because I am sure people experienced with Sega Saturn emulators will read this: Is there a Linux or Windows emulator that runs Quake well? Framerate is not that important but accuracy should be decent.

 

[Exophase]

segasaturn.org says that it's fully playable on SSF. Why in the world do you want to play the Saturn version of Quake?

 

[x68000]

Well I'm no emulator guru, and I wouldn't know how to program one if my life depended on it, but I believe something functional can be produced at some point in regards to Saturn emulation. From what I know, the DC is mainly off the shelf PC parts, and is very simple in comparison to the Saturn. The Saturn is very complex, but out of all the games produced, very few used all that the system had to offer. So if someone could develope something that handles basic core Saturn operations, I think some of the more generic 2-D games would operate, but something like virtua fighter 2, that pushed all the systems specs seems far fetched at best!

Many games were more hardware intensive than VF2 (although it ran on the Saturn's Hi-Res mode). Take a look at Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Burning Rangers which managed to pull off real transparancies for instance (despite being supposedly beyond the systems limitations)

 

[rohezal]

You can run Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3 nativly on the pandora without emulation and quite fast .

Look at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsclXxxjxVg

 

[x68000]

Saturn had some great conversions of FPS. Usually better than the PSX versions. Quake and Exhumed come to mind.

Not quite a perfect port of the PC version though

 

[Spirit]

Thanks Exophase.
Quake on the Sega Saturn is very different. That's why I need to play it.

 

[Exophase]

Take a look at Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Burning Rangers which managed to pull off real transparancies for instance (despite being supposedly beyond the systems limitations)

The VDP2 has GBA style top-two-layer blending. If you want to blend 3D or sprites against a 2D background then you can do it.

 

[Jumpman]

Well I'm no emulator guru, and I wouldn't know how to program one if my life depended on it, but I believe something functional can be produced at some point in regards to Saturn emulation. From what I know, the DC is mainly off the shelf PC parts, and is very simple in comparison to the Saturn. The Saturn is very complex, but out of all the games produced, very few used all that the system had to offer. So if someone could develope something that handles basic core Saturn operations, I think some of the more generic 2-D games would operate, but something like virtua fighter 2, that pushed all the systems specs seems far fetched at best!

Many games were more hardware intensive than VF2 (although it ran on the Saturn's Hi-Res mode). Take a look at Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Burning Rangers which managed to pull off real transparancies for instance (despite being supposedly beyond the systems limitations)

Yeah, I was aware of more intensive Saturn games thru out it's history. I only mention VF2 as that was first game to come along that showed that the Saturn was as capable as the PS1 when it came to processing power. It set the bar for Saturn developement, and showed what could be done when the system was used to it's potential!

Chris

 

[x68000]

Take a look at Panzer Dragoon Zwei or Burning Rangers which managed to pull off real transparancies for instance (despite being supposedly beyond the systems limitations)

The VDP2 has GBA style top-two-layer blending. If you want to blend 3D or sprites against a 2D background then you can do it.

Most devs tended to be lazy and used the mesh effect instead, especially on cross platform titles. I guess that implementing true transparancies on the saturn required more effort than it did on the psx.

 

[Exophase]

Most devs tended to be lazy and used the mesh effect instead, especially on cross platform titles. I guess that implementing true transparancies on the saturn required more effort than it did on the psx.

I don't think it's really a question of effort, per-se, just that blending on Saturn was really limited and had bugs. I don't think it's "pushing" the system harder at all, like it would be if they were somehow doing it in software like a lot of people think. It's just a design decision. Putting the mesh effect in hardware was practically an admission of failure on Sega's part.

 

[Illuminerdi]

The question of emulating a Saturn on the Pandora (or other Pandora-class device) is not really one of possibility - an 900mhz (OC'd) machine with 256MB of ram could very likely do 100% perfect emulation of a 60mhz (combined) machine with 1MB of RAM - given infinite time and resources.

And therein lies the rub - it's not that the Pandora is physically incapable of doing great Saturn emulation, it's just that due to the obtuse and difficult architecture of the Saturn, poor documentation, lack of time and other resources, it's VERY unlikely to happen. But it could - if a whole bunch of really talented coders (or even just one, I suppose) got together and spent a ton of time figuring out how to make it happen, there very well could be a 100% Saturn emulator. Unlike, say, the PS2, which despite infinite resources could probably never be fully emulated on the Pandora because the Pandora just plain isn't powerful enough to emulate a 300mhz system. How does that rule go? The emulating system need to be approximately 8 times as fast as the emulated one?

So the real answer to the question is probably more along the lines of "yes, it is possible, but if you want it to happen you'll have to do it yourself, because nobody else wants to open that can of worms".

The other big factor is demand. The PSX had a vast library of thousands of games, many of them modern masterpieces, that people (including the people who write emulators) are frothing at the mouth to play on the Pandora (or other systems, for that matter). PC PSX emulation was optimized to a tee years ago (I remember playing good quality PSX emulators on a 450mhz PII PC w/128 megs of RAM, when the PSX was still "current" - Virtual Game Station, anyone?), but modern Saturn emulators are still struggling on modern PCs, mostly due to inefficient emulation rather than hardware limitations. By and large, portable emulators often piggyback off the work of PC emulators via either porting them or taking core system emulation and building what is essentially a wrapper around them. Blame it on the fact that there just isn't enough demand for Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers to coerce people into spending months (years, even) of their free time making a Saturn emu.

The most likely scenario for Saturn emulation will be in the future if/when there is a high speed, efficient (without being architecture-specific ASM) open source Saturn emulator for the PC. At that point, you're much more likely to see a Pandora Saturn emulator happen.

So what we really need is for people to start paying Exophase to make an emulator. I've got 10 USD. That should buy us at least 3-4 lines of code...

 

[x68000]

If someone can get a saturn emu running full speed, even just for the 2D Shooters and Platformers i'd hapilly cough up £100 nevermind $10!

Saturn IS the pinnacle of old school gaming

 

[Nintendo]

How does that rule go? The emulating system need to be approximately 8 times as fast as the emulated one?

Apparently that has proven to be a false statement now.

 

[Illuminerdi]

How does that rule go? The emulating system need to be approximately 8 times as fast as the emulated one?

Apparently that has proven to be a false statement now.

10 years later and Sony's still trying to kill the Saturn

Well, even if that rule is false, I'd still be very surprised if it was impossible for the Pandora to emulate the Saturn due to technical limitations.

 

[mindlord]

I'd cough up some cash to play Shining Force 3... anywhere... No Saturn emulator I've tried can play this game well.

 

[Nintendo]

My father tought me that nothing in life is impossible, so I believe that SEGA SATURN is still a possibility. For example with millions of dollars invested in a perfect SATURN emulator, it's a definite.

 

[Jumpman]

If someone can get a saturn emu running full speed, even just for the 2D Shooters and Platformers i'd hapilly cough up £100 nevermind $10!

Saturn IS the pinnacle of old school gaming

+1


Chris