SEGA Saturn info in Japanese?

[mjohansson]

No idea what the guy is saying, but thought it was interesting to see clues to how the Saturn worked with graphics coding.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IIjo2clyqvU?feature=oembed

 

[Red Ring Rico]

There's a whole bunch of documentation out there for programming the Saturn at a hardware-level.  Which is handy for those implementing a replacement or alternative to the SGL (SEGA Graphics Library) or SBL (SEGA Basic Library).  If you read through the VDP1 and VDP2 manuals, it details how to send commands to the VDPs.  As maligned as the Saturn is for its programmability, I really enjoy it.

 

[ekianjo]

No idea what the guy is saying, but thought it was interesting to see clues to how the Saturn worked with graphics coding.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IIjo2clyqvU?feature=oembed

That's not japanese, that's chinese...

They both sound completely different so it's rather odd to confuse them.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Meh! Chinese! Japanese! Whatever!

 

[Nintendo]

Its actually Chiapanese.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

All Asians look the same so

 

[ekianjo]

All Asians look the same so

Yeah like all white guys look the same then lol

 

[benoitb]

However, not all Sega Saturns look the same.

 

[FBnil]

There is also no "chinese", there is cantonese (most used) and mandarin (sound nicer to the ears).

 

[levi]

The most commonly spoken Chinese dialect is mandarin. Cantonese is only used in southern china (including Hong Kong). Apparently it's the most common chinese dialect spoken outside of china, but in terms of number of people I suspect mandarin wins easily.


I don't personally have a favourite of the two. Mandarin uses four intonations as part of the standard pronunciation of words, which can sound a little artificial to western ears, but doesn't really get in the way of expression that much.

 

[ekianjo]

There is also no "chinese", there is cantonese (most used) and mandarin (sound nicer to the ears).

What are you talking about ! Mandarin is the most widespread one.

Besides, there are hundreds if not thousands of chinese dialects that sound completely different so it's not mandarin / cantonese. There's a loooot more.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I like the sound of cantonese better. For me, songs and movies in cantonese sound much much better than the same ones in mandarin. But mandarin is way way way more popular, if not official/standard language in China, Taiwan, etc., than Cantonese.

 

[fusion_power]

So what DID he actualy talk about in that video?

 

[ekianjo]

So what DID he actualy talk about in that video?

No idea, ask someone who understands...

 

[traylorpark]

So what DID he actualy talk about in that video?

No idea, ask someone who understands...

I dont understand Chinese, but I am guessing based on the content and context that he is refuting claims that the Saturn can't do transparencies and is inferior to the Playstation with regards to 3D performance.

He appears to discuss the strengths of the two video chips, VDP1 and VDP2, and gives a bunch of examples illustrating how the Saturn can pull of transparencies.

He seems to go on to provide examples how the larger VRAM allows for more effects (shadows n things).

Lastly he gives an example of texture distortion and how it does not appear to be present on the Saturn in comparison to the Playstation.

It appears his ultimate point is that, when games are properly designed for the Saturn's "unique" hardware, when comparing to the Playstation, its possible to create a superior visual experience.

Though of course, I don't understand Chinese

 

[levi]

IIRC it was the Playstation that couldn't do transparencies in Tomb Raider. In the original Saturn version they were all there.

 

[Nintendo]

SF vs X-Men was better on the SS as well.

 

[iprice]

it was the Playstation that couldn't do transparencies in Tomb Raider. In the original Saturn version they were all there.

I read an article in RetroGamer (issue 134, judging by its cover, celebrating 20 years of the Saturn) about that - the Saturn could certainly do transparency, but it was apparently 6 to 8 times slower than drawing normal sprites or polys, hence why it wasn't used much.

 

[levi]

I understand they got round that limitation towards the end of the Saturn's life, as Burning Rangers used transparencies quite extensively.

 

[Exophase]

IIRC it was the Playstation that couldn't do transparencies in Tomb Raider. In the original Saturn version they were all there.

Nah, Tomb Raider looks better in pretty much every way on PS1, including having no problems with translucency.

Saturn's VDP1 could perform 50% blending the same as PS1 (although PS1 could also do additive, subtractive, and add 1/4th blending). The problem was that Saturn's quad renderer would cause multiple pixels to be written to the same location for anything more than simple scaled sprites. This would result in ugly artifacts where blending is performed multiple times. The other problem was that the blend mode was really expensive, 6x as much as non-blending primitives. Hence why games usually preferred the ugly mesh mode that rendered every other pixel.

VDP2 could also blend separate layers, similar to how GBA can. Burning Rangers worked by rendering alternating 3D scenes to separate 2D layers and blending them with VDP2. That's great for what it works for but it's very limited compared to full blending on a per-primitive level. For one thing, if you want only some of the blended stuff to appear in front of the 3D (because the rest is supposed to be obscured) you have to render masks on top of the data.

Although PS1 doesn't support anything more than 50% blends natively, it should be possible to do full cross-fades using two or three passes. This is possible because PS1 has multiplicative shading, additive blending, and the same memory space for the framebuffer and textures. Saturn lacked all three of these capabilities. Which is a shame, because if it had this the approach would have also overcome its flaw in blending.