PCEngineFans.com - The PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 Community Forum
Tech and Homebrew => Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development => Topic started by: KnightWarrior on July 13, 2012, 05:03:19 PM
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Can it be done on the Turbo CD??
With all the Music, Sprites, Animation in the Game
Of cource it will use the Arcade Card
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Can it be done on the Turbo CD??
With all the Music, Sprites, Animation in the Game
Of cource it will use the Arcade Card
Add the super grafx to the mix and maybe yes. Honestly, I don't see why it can't be done seeing how we have Fatal Fury Special and the Art of Fighting with the Arcade card....
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If you wanted the original arcade resolution I'm not so sure, maybe with the SGX. Doesn't matter though, won't ever happen unless you find someone very talented and crazy enough to try to do such a thing. For one it's not like Capcom is going to hand out the source code to the game.
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Certainly. Most of what happens in SSFII' is the same shit that happened in SFII. Ryu is %95 identical, so is Ken, Guile, etc. Some have different voice samples, a few new moves, a lot of recolored shit. You need to add five new characters, but that's no problem at all on CD. The music can run off the CD.
Resolution wouldn't be the same, but does any port of a CPS2 game have correct resolution? I'm not sure.
You'd need the Arcade Card for sure, but you wouldn't need no stupid Supergrafx.
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It has been argued that the Arcade Card doesn't actually have enough RAM to store all the animation frames of two combatants and their backgrounds, and that the special HuCard was the only way to truly do SF2 right on the PCE. This means that SF2 Turbo would need an even larger HuCard and would also not be practicable on the Arcade Card.
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Something that looks like the 3DO version certainly would be no problem.
Most people don't perceive much of the animation and details in games like this, so if some is missing it would still pass as "perfect".
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It has been argued that the Arcade Card doesn't actually have enough RAM to store all the animation frames of two combatants and their backgrounds, and that the special HuCard was the only way to truly do SF2 right on the PCE. This means that SF2 Turbo would need an even larger HuCard and would also not be practicable on the Arcade Card.
what's the calculation there? the ACD could store about the same size of data for one level than the 20mbit Hucard could for the whole SFII' game.
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It has been argued that the Arcade Card doesn't actually have enough RAM to store all the animation frames of two combatants and their backgrounds, and that the special HuCard was the only way to truly do SF2 right on the PCE. This means that SF2 Turbo would need an even larger HuCard and would also not be practicable on the Arcade Card.
That makes zero sense to me for two main reasons:
1) The Neo games have WAY more assets than SFII does. SFII was mind blowing in 1991, but things moved on quickly and after a few years of Capcom using the exact same sprites/animation/resolution/color depth/hardware, etc they were quickly surpassed in the art department by SNK. Across five different SFII releases Ryu has the following changes: different Hadouken animation, lunging punch thing (forward->fierce), air tastumaki kick (no new animation), getting up animation, Shinku Hadouken (recolored frames of existing animation). I think that's it. Any system that can handle SFII can handle SSFIIX. The main reason to go from CPS1 to CPS2, really, was copyright protection.
2) The Arcade Card wasn't even out yet when SFII came out. I think the AC was almost two years after SFII'.
The main reason, as it seemed to me at the time, for SFII' to be made on a HuCard instead of a Super CD was that the Super CD card was too memory poor. Supposedly Capcom was toying with a hybrid CD/Hu release like KOF '95, but I think the main reason they scrapped that is they wanted as many PCE people to be able to play it as possible. CDROM2 people were only part of PCE ownership. The same logic applies to Bomberman releases (which could have easily been done on SuperCD). Its also possible they didn't want load times. They were trying (and in the end succeeded) to make a version comparable with the SFC version of SFII and the upcoming SFC and MD ports of SFII'Turbo. A CD version on PCE would have been the only version that loaded.
Of course, none of that applies to an Arcade Card version except for HuCards having a larger audience, which I'm pretty sure is the reason they made it a HuCard instead of a SuperCD or hybrid HuCard/SuperCD. By the time the AC came out, Capcom (and pretty much everyone else) was long gone from PCE forever.
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I don't know who would ever have suggested that it wouldn't have been possible to achieve a SNES/MD style SSF2 port on the Arcade CD because of memory. The Arcade CD has plenty of memory to handle that. When I said arcade resolution before, know that I really mean that the graphics are not redrawn/squished/scaled down. The SNES, Genesis, and PCE ports of SF2 all had the graphics reduced in size fitting with the 256 pixel wide resolution. This requires less memory too. However the later ports such as PS1 and Saturn do not use reduced size graphics at all. They use the full resolution graphics. I do think that Saturn and probably PS1 cropped the view a bit as Saturn I believe was restricted to either 352 or 320 pixel wide resolutions and the CPS1 and CPS2 had 384 pixel width.
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You all are, of course, correct. I misremembered an old post. I searched back through the forums to double-check and I did indeed remember it incorrectly. My mistake.
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Thanks for the input guys
I'm guessing Capcom or NEC Maxed out the Memory on the PCE, Hyper Fighting would have relly pushed the PCE to the Max
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Thanks for the input guys
I'm guessing Capcom or NEC Maxed out the Memory on the PCE, Hyper Fighting would have relly pushed the PCE to the Max
It was the same for Sega/Mega-CD, there just isn't enough room within 2 - 6 megs for all the player animation to access at the speed it needs. SFII' requires uncompressed sprites to animate fast enough. There is no memory limit for the PCE any more than there is for Mega Drive and Super Famicom. All three used bank switching/misc techniques once their cart size limits were reached. You could do Street Fighter Zero 3 on a PCE HuCard.
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Tom said something about the characters taking up a lot of memory space... like, Dhalsim was like 127KB or so... something like that. It'd be impossible to do that with the regular System 3.0 spec, as there's simply not enough memory. SFII was going to be a hucard from the start, though it's said that Capcom had planned to do a hybrid design, where the music was on CD but the game was on the cart. To do that, apparently the card has to be configured as a system card, and you will either need to copy over portions of the system card's BIOS, or would have to write your own CDROM driver code... neither would really be hard for a company like Capcom, but I guess they just didn't want to limit its exposure so they just stuck with the straight hucard design.
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Pushing the PCE "to the max" is more like pushing the bounds of what it can process with the cpu, transfer via DMA, and draw on the screen (like sprites). Memory is just memory. You could have a HuCard with as much memory as a late Nintendo 64 game if you really wanted. But back in the time frame we are talking about, the 20 megabits of memory in SF2'CE Hucard was alot. If that character graphics figure is right, about 128K for just one character's graphics you would never be able to pull that off on the Super CD-ROM. But the Arcade CD no problem, I think it has 2 megabytes or so to deal with. Not bad when the SNES SSF2 cartridge was 4 megabytes. I'm sure character graphics take up the majority of space as across all the 16bit ports of SF2 you had to have the character graphics uncompressed for DMA transfers into VRAM. They may have compressed all the other graphics they could though like stage backgrounds. Ofcourse that doesn't help except for storage.
It's actually rather interesting that the Super CD only has about 256kb of Memory if I remember right. Yet even with that tiny amount of memory it has some really wonderful games. I think the Sega CD had a whole lot more memory, though the Arcade Card turns that around.
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It's actually rather interesting that the Super CD only has about 256kb of Memory if I remember right. Yet even with that tiny amount of memory it has some really wonderful games. I think the Sega CD had a whole lot more memory, though the Arcade Card turns that around.
The way that tech experts describe it, the Sega-CD actually has three separate 2meg banks, instead of the general strtaight-6meg figure normally tossed around. Apparently a developer had to be pretty skilled to utilize all that memory at once, just as the Sega-CD has other bottlenecks. Judging by the content in the average Sega-CD game, I'm guessing that many/most only used 2megs of storage or ran most things from a single 2meg bank and maybe had other minor things stored in other places.
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Rover, remember that Capcom had about as much to do with the PCE SF2 as they did most other PCE Capcom games, meaning probably not much besides providing code and art assets. NEC Avenue did the SF2 port on PCE.
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Black Tiger, I looked it up since you mentioned it. You're right, a measly 512Kbyte of RAM, I think that is mapped to the 12mhz 68000 cpu. Then another 256Kbyte of RAM shared between both 68000 CPUs. Atleast that is what the information I read suggested.
In that case it really isn't all that much. It is still significantly more than the Super CD-ROM card provides, but not all that much and the Arcade card certainly puts it to shame. I think Sega should have followed the PCE with the idea of expanding memory by using the cartridge slot. Ofcourse I think the Sega CD was doomed as it was anyway.
I'm not sure you are right about only using part of RAM, thats 6 Megabits of memory available to the faster (12mhz) 68000 cpu. I would imagine the easiest thing to do or best thing to do if you aren't actually using both CPUs would be to ditch the base cpu (7.5mhhz 68000) and just use the Sega CD 12mhz 68000 and the 6 megs of memory as needed. But 6 megs only goes so far. Look at Mortal Kombat, the cartridge used 16 megs. And it used less animation than the CD version. So it's no wonder about load times and the slow Shang Tsung morphing and such.
I would think SF2 would have been possible on Sega CD if the early detail of around 127K for one of the characters is accurate. I think you'd have enough memory for both characters and all the other assets for a battle. Ofcourse anything is possible if you adjust it enough. I would think SF2 SCE as it appeared on cartridge probably could have been done on Sega CD.
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Rover, remember that Capcom had about as much to do with the PCE SF2 as they did most other PCE Capcom games, meaning probably not much besides providing code and art assets. NEC Avenue did the SF2 port on PCE.
No, I thought that too, but it was the same team as the Megadrive and Snes versions. Someone actually linked to the credits as they appeared at the end of the game, and they're Capcom staff.
I think that was on Sega 16.
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With the Arcade Card, you can use the system RAM for only program code and PSG effects. That helps a LOT. The program code for a fighting game doesn't tend to be too complex either... they tend to have very basic AI.
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You could always cut out frames of animation! YEAH
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I still remember being irritated by the SNES port of Samurai Shodown... the number of missing frames was ridiculous.
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Rover, remember that Capcom had about as much to do with the PCE SF2 as they did most other PCE Capcom games, meaning probably not much besides providing code and art assets. NEC Avenue did the SF2 port on PCE.
No, I thought that too, but it was the same team as the Megadrive and Snes versions. Someone actually linked to the credits as they appeared at the end of the game, and they're Capcom staff.
I think that was on Sega 16.
I don't think that the credits are accurate. Just as secret teams made many games during the 16-bit generation, I think that the credits being too similar or identical to other versions is a sign that they don't reflect the PCE version.
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Rover, remember that Capcom had about as much to do with the PCE SF2 as they did most other PCE Capcom games, meaning probably not much besides providing code and art assets. NEC Avenue did the SF2 port on PCE.
No, I thought that too, but it was the same team as the Megadrive and Snes versions. Someone actually linked to the credits as they appeared at the end of the game, and they're Capcom staff.
I think that was on Sega 16.
I don't think that the credits are accurate. Just as secret teams made many games during the 16-bit generation, I think that the credits being too similar or identical to other versions is a sign that they don't reflect the PCE version.
Yeah, I think they just copied the staff roll from the arcade version.
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No, they are different to the point that nicknames are used in place of names in some cases, and it's not 100% the same people iirc. I'll try and find it, but it'll be difficult.
woot! Original thread (worth a read, particularly about the Amiga conversion) http://www.sega-16.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6469.html
PC Engine credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/turbo-grafx/street-fighter-ii-special-champion-edition/credits
Megadrive credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/street-fighter-ii-special-champion-edition/credits
The SNES also has a few people that worked on other conversions, but if you click on each name, you can see that at least most of them were working for Capcom (or on capcom games).
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No, they are different to the point that nicknames are used in place of names in some cases, and it's not 100% the same people iirc. I'll try and find it, but it'll be difficult.
woot! Original thread (worth a read, particularly about the Amiga conversion) http://www.sega-16.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6469.html
PC Engine credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/turbo-grafx/street-fighter-ii-special-champion-edition/credits
Megadrive credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/street-fighter-ii-special-champion-edition/credits
The SNES also has a few people that worked on other conversions, but if you click on each name, you can see that at least most of them were working for Capcom (or on capcom games).
It is possible, but whoever did work directly on the PCE version would be essentially translating over the work of the SFC versions team, so many of those credits may be for their still major contributions. What we do know for sure is how vague or misleading that game credits were back then, so it's anybody's guess really. There is a site with otherwise secret info on who really developed various games, which says that the team who did Gate of Thunder also worked on the Genesis Thunder Force games. But I'm guessing that the credits probably don't make that clear. Madden Duo CD Football was done by Hudson, but may very well be loaded with EA credits.
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Well, the art assets and game design credits and all that will still belong to Capcom. NEC Avenue would only have some coding and management credits, really, and they still have to pay tribute to the original code that their version is based upon. I'm sure NEC Avenue consulted with Capcom in detail as well. But yeah, the credits that are different should be the NEC Avenue staff, there the mirrored credits will be the original artists, coders, and consultants.
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Well the only people who are definitely NEC rather than Capcom are:
Technical Design
Nobuhiro Takagaki (Nob),
Yasunobu Kasuya
Market Design
Masao Takeuchi
Nobuyuki Kondō
Hirotada Hashimoto
(though there are people with only the one game to their name).
That's only 5 NEC staff to make an AAA title, which I think is a little far fetched, even if you could cancel out sprite design and game mechanics. In fact "market design" sounds like they worked on marketing, which leaves 2 guys to create the game.
I'd be very surprised if Capcom didn't send a few guys off with their packed lunches, or more likely, NEC sent a couple of guys to Capcom HQ, where the people who have already done (at least) 2 home ports used some NEC knowledge to port again to the PC Engine.
I think it's putting the horse before the cart to send out an AAA title to be developed by 2 guys at NEC with no previous working knowledge of the game. It's far more likely the other way around, plus the fact that Capcom can keep their precious source code close to their chest.
Even the front cover says "licensed to NEC", which is hardly proof that they coded it.
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I think it's putting the horse before the cart to send out an AAA title to be developed by 2 guys at NEC with no previous working knowledge of the game. It's far more likely the other way around, plus the fact that Capcom can keep their precious source code close to their chest.
Have you seen how many platforms have Street Fighter II ports, and how much money many of those home ports made? That source code wasn't precious at all. That source code was the town whore ; )
As you yourself said, there are several names with no other credits, and they could well have been NEC employees, especially if they're not listed for the ports to other platforms.
As for 2 guys porting the code for an AAA title, I don't see how that would be impossible at all. 2 qualified, experienced coders working salaried, long-hours work weeks with all the assets and program structure already created, with design documents already prepared for dealing with ports, porting it to the PCE and then optimizing the code. And one of those un-named folks probably did the music conversion. No, that's no problem at all. Keep in mind that at that time in game development, AAA titles could be crafted by one or two people, even if they usually weren't. I don't have a problem buying into 2 programmers handling all the code-porting duties.
Again, they probably had some guidance and consulted with Capcom, but I doubt Capcom actually had to touch any of the code on the port. The PCE was simply not a platform of expertise or interest for them. It would be much easier for Capcom to leave the port to NEC Avenue since NEC had the programmers who know the hardware. Look how many other Capcom ports they did. They probably had a good working relationship with the NEC Avenue team and trusted them to do the coding.
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I dunno, capcom did a lot of PC Engine games - even 2 of the Super Grafx games. But your point about the amount of ports available on other platforms doesn't discount the fact that, while it might have been ported frequently, they still would not have wanted the source for the most popular fighting game at the time falling into the hands of SNK, or any of the other companies who might have challenged them.
You might say that it would be obvious just by playing it enough, all the little things that make Street Fighter II great, but the little things would be carefully weighted, and without the numbers.. well, you've seen all the would-be Street Fighter II beaters during the 16 bit years and on. That shit's their special sauce.
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I dunno, capcom did a lot of PC Engine games - even 2 of the Super Grafx games. But your point about the amount of ports available on other platforms doesn't discount the fact that, while it might have been ported frequently, they still would not have wanted the source for the most popular fighting game at the time falling into the hands of SNK, or any of the other companies who might have challenged them.
You might say that it would be obvious just by playing it enough, all the little things that make Street Fighter II great, but the little things would be carefully weighted, and without the numbers.. well, you've seen all the would-be Street Fighter II beaters during the 16 bit years and on. That shit's their special sauce.
Everything I've ever heard and judging from the games themselves, says that the only PCE game Capcom might have had a hand in was Son Son II. Ports aren't always made by the company or team responsible for the original. Before the Genesis got big enough, Sega developed all the Capcom ports which they published as well.
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The Sega Capcom ports were actually reprogrammed by Sega as they clearly state it. So it isn't that crazy to think that they would give another company access to source code or other important assets. Afterall there are legal agreements and they deal with respectable companies. No one is running off with their life blood.
I don't think it is far fetched for the PC-Engine port of SF2CE to have been done by just a couple of people if enough assets were available to them from Capcom. The graphics design is pretty much taken from the SNES/MD redrawings. Sound would have to be original programming but they aren't creating new sounds or melodys. Just as a whole I think definitely it wouldn't take that many people as again it is a port and not an original game.
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Ports that are published by a company other than the developer of the original game are almost always developed by a different team who is working for the publisher of the port. Sega certainly didn't program or publish all those Sega games on PC Engine. :P
If a company is big enough to develop and distribute the original version and is capable of and follows through with porting to another platform, then they would just publish it themselves. Capcom didn't publish any PCE games. The special exceptions are teams like Westone who weren't under exclusive contracts who made original games for Sega who only owned parts of them. But a team like Westone isn't anything like a company such as Capcom or Sega.
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Black Tiger, I looked it up since you mentioned it. You're right, a measly 512Kbyte of RAM, I think that is mapped to the 12mhz 68000 cpu. Then another 256Kbyte of RAM shared between both 68000 CPUs. Atleast that is what the information I read suggested.
From what I have seen, the 256KB is for code and any other tile data that both the Sega CD and Genesis can manipulate as one every 1/60th of a second. The 512KB of RAM for the Sub CPU and Graphics Co-Processor to work on is not insignificant by any means. Basically, as I understand it, the Genesis sees the Sega CD as just another cartridge and can access 256KB per 1/60th of a second of its memory. It is up to the programmer how that memory is utilized. After the Sega CD has pulled the data off the CD, pre-processed the graphics and sound, using the Ricoh's separate 64KB of RAM, that 256KB of RAM can send the Genesis anything the Sega CD is able to process every frame.
Keep in mind that the 32X does everything it does with just two 256KB frame buffers that are very similar to the two 256KB banks in the Sega CD's RAM.
In that case it really isn't all that much. It is still significantly more than the Super CD-ROM card provides, but not all that much and the Arcade card certainly puts it to shame. I think Sega should have followed the PCE with the idea of expanding memory by using the cartridge slot. Ofcourse I think the Sega CD was doomed as it was anyway.
I'm not sure you are right about only using part of RAM, thats 6 Megabits of memory available to the faster (12mhz) 68000 cpu. I would imagine the easiest thing to do or best thing to do if you aren't actually using both CPUs would be to ditch the base cpu (7.5mhhz 68000) and just use the Sega CD 12mhz 68000 and the 6 megs of memory as needed. But 6 megs only goes so far. Look at Mortal Kombat, the cartridge used 16 megs. And it used less animation than the CD version. So it's no wonder about load times and the slow Shang Tsung morphing and such.
It depends on what is being displayed. Polygonal displays could use both CPUs to process the graphics more effectively with that 256KB. As for Shant Tsung, as I recall his transformations caused loading times on the Saturn and PS1 as well. This seems like a (CD-ROM) bus speed issue to me more than a RAM issue. The Mortal Kombat games were designed for ROM Chips not Optical media. The Arcade Card trumps the Sega CD handily in the matter of character animations though, more RAM is always better in any case.
I would think SF2 would have been possible on Sega CD if the early detail of around 127K for one of the characters is accurate. I think you'd have enough memory for both characters and all the other assets for a battle. Ofcourse anything is possible if you adjust it enough. I would think SF2 SCE as it appeared on cartridge probably could have been done on Sega CD.
Capcom's early announcements for their first non-Nintendo SF2 port was for a Mega CD and PCE version. Since the Sega CD handled Samurai Shodown and Eternal Champions CtfDS, a much more accurate port of Street Fighter 2 than we saw in Special Champion Edition was definitely possible.
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I don't doubt that something comparable to the cart versions could be done for Mega-CD by a team that was skilled with the hardware, but I don't think much more would have been done realistically. Non-SNES fans often dump on the Genesis and PCE ports as being bottlenecked by the original SNES WW port, but that port was revolutionary for how close it was to the source material and still weighed in with hefty cart sizes. If a Genesis or PCE version of SFII was done at a higher resolution without letterboxing, it would dramatically increase the size of memory required.
Special Champion Edition was something like 24 megs and Super was 40? Turbo would have used even more memory. SCE averages out to 2 megs per battle and Super equals 2.5 megs per battle. Streaming music and compressed samples would help, but you'd still wind up not far off of the cart versions if someone was good enough at utilizing the Mega-CD hardware. Anything not maximizing the memory space if the Mega-CD would wind up a little short of the cart versions.
As for Mortal Kombat, a developer would have based a port around 99% of battles, not tge Shang Tsung battle. Therefore they would use up all the space available for just two unique fighters and an average stage. Using that engine and adding all the other characters in the game is going to be impossible without stopping to load each new character. Even just one alternate character fir Shang Tsung would require loading, unless his based sprite has very little animation.
I'm not sure tgat there ever was a Mega-CD or HuCard/CD combo port planned by Capcom or NEC. It looks like typical EGM b.s. in hindsight.
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Let me break down the memory available on the Sega CD and compare it to the Arcade ROM for Super Street Fighter 2. The Sega CD has 512KB Program RAM plus 256KB Word RAM that can affect the Genesis CPU/VDP every 1/60th of a second. 1X CD-ROM speed is 150KB per second, so it would take at least two seconds to fill the Word RAM for a level and an additional four seconds to fill the Program RAM. I'm not sure it matters here, but DMA from the VDP to the Cart port or CPU or Sub CPU Word RAM is 7.2KB per 1/60th a second. I've also seen some discussion about tiles being better compressed in the Genesis' format than in either the SNES or TG16 but I haven't seen any mathematical discussion on how much compression this would allow from a cartridge or the Sega CDs Word RAM directly to the VDP without adding load times.
SSF2T is 5.6 MBytes zipped and 11.7MBytes unpacked. There are 15 files, and I have no idea what each file is for. The first two are 128KB, the next seven are 512KB, files eleven and twelve are 2048KB, and the final four files are numbered differently but each weigh in at 1024KB all unpacked. Compressed none of those files go over 350KB except for the two 2 MByte files.
Obviously since the Genesis and SNES cartridge games were only 5 Mbyte and 4 Mbyte respectively there was a rather huge amount of downsizing in the conversion process. I'm not sure if compressed tiles in the Sega CD's program RAM would help or hurt the attempt of trying to get as much of the Arcade's sprite size and background detail on screen at once. 320 wide resolution and cropping would already help in regard to reducing the file sizes if compressing the tiles up until the are DMAd to the VDP would not.
I'm not seeing a problem with memory management here that would be any different than any other Arcade to home conversion at the time. The Arcade Card CD would make porting the animation and original sprites much easier but forget about more than one background layer. The Sega CD would make the background layers possible, even if some animation would need to be cut in the process. Obviously only the Arcade Card CD would have any hopes of keeping nearest neighbor colors to the Arcade original.
Both systems could easily handle and enhance the Genesis or SNES games' graphics.
Also, Chilly Willy just told me that the Genesis CPU can halt the Sub CPU and use the Program RAM in 128KB banks.
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Many of SFII's backgrounds could have at least an extra layer of scrolling on PCE, no problem. Especially with the Arcade Card. You'd still get more and more closer to the arcade and easier with the MD/MCD, but just because NEC's rushed time-sensitive port didn't use any doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.
The 320 pixel wide resolution adds 8 extra tiles of width for one screen alone. I can't measure the cart ports screens right now, but even with the letterboxing, the screen scrolls up enough that there's about 28 tiles high of background graphics. So by switching to the 320 pixel resolution, you're instantly adding 224 extra tiles per screen size to each (2-screen size?) stage, but are gaining zero added content so far. Add in the extra sprites to fill out larger characters and again, you have a large jump in size before you add a single extra frame of animation.
I don't know how efficient tiles are for memory on Genesis, but even without relying samples for the entire soundtrack, the SNES ports were still smaller. Maybe SNES sound compression is super amazing, but most SNES games have large sizes compared to content. Maybe Capcom just never tried vety hard with Genesis development, but that would mean that Sega would have had to convince them to let them pirt their cash cow for them, which was never going to happen.
It sounds like you're talking about streaming content in a Mega-CD port. If so, I don't think it would be practical for SFII. I do think that a Mega-CD port of a Genesis port could have added some extra content if a good developer did the conversion, but I don't think that a Mega-CD port would crush the cart versions. Even the Arcade Card ports of Neo Geo fighters, programmed by PCE experts, had content cut. And that was with a solid three times the memory of the Mega-CD.
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Many of SFII's backgrounds could have at least an extra layer of scrolling on PCE, no problem. Especially with the Arcade Card. You'd still get more and more closer to the arcade and easier with the MD/MCD, but just because NEC's rushed time-sensitive port didn't use any doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.
They only had one layer in Art of Fighting ACD. Fatal Fury 2 and Special have only a single background layer with raster effects aside from the floors. The PCE has the option to use sprites, animated tiles (which take memory), and line/cell scrolling (which take up CPU time) to bring in additional layers. While this could certainly be used to produce the line scroll floors of SF2 along with one separate scroll layer, I don't see it producing the background layers of the Arcade or SNES games.
I have also seen it said that Fighting games are the most memory intensive of this generation of hardware. I don't think it is reasonable to hope that we could see all or even most of the Arcade version's animations along with additional sprites simulating more than two background layers in a PCE fighting game. It would certainly be adequate, I was only making the point that the Genesis VDP with two backgrounds and ready made scroll settings on the VDP would easily do better at no expense.
The 320 pixel wide resolution adds 8 extra tiles of width for one screen alone. I can't measure the cart ports screens right now, but even with the letterboxing, the screen scrolls up enough that there's about 28 tiles high of background graphics. So by switching to the 320 pixel resolution, you're instantly adding 224 extra tiles per screen size to each (2-screen size?) stage, but are gaining zero added content so far. Add in the extra sprites to fill out larger characters and again, you have a large jump in size before you add a single extra frame of animation.
All of these systems had hardware for scrolling and the memory was designed to hold tiles for double or triple what was on screen at one time. If I understand correctly, DMA was used in platformers to continually update the level well ahead of what was actually being displayed on screen. I would assume that the ROM data I was using above included the entire level, even that which is off screen.
I was comparing the 40 cell wide mode to the Arcade game's resolution, not the 32 Cell wide Genesis games. Considering the inherent size shrinkage of the lower resolution along with other selective cuts I don't see any problem with getting at least the same character sizes and more accurate background detail than what the Genesis games saw.
I don't know how efficient tiles are for memory on Genesis, but even without relying samples for the entire soundtrack, the SNES ports were still smaller. Maybe SNES sound compression is super amazing, but most SNES games have large sizes compared to content. Maybe Capcom just never tried vety hard with Genesis development, but that would mean that Sega would have had to convince them to let them pirt their cash cow for them, which was never going to happen.
All Capcom did was sloppily port the SNES game to the Genesis and nothing more. They couldn't even be bothered to attempt to time the digital audio samples correctly much less bother with compressing them on the ROM. It's pretty sad, and cut what the Genesis or PCE versions of SF2 could have been significantly.
It sounds like you're talking about streaming content in a Mega-CD port. If so, I don't think it would be practical for SFII. I do think that a Mega-CD port of a Genesis port could have added some extra content if a good developer did the conversion, but I don't think that a Mega-CD port would crush the cart versions. Even the Arcade Card ports of Neo Geo fighters, programmed by PCE experts, had content cut. And that was with a solid three times the memory of the Mega-CD.
That is pretty much all I am saying as well, I think the game build around 320 wide graphics would have been a lot closer to the Arcade, and either the Sega CD or Arcade Card CD could have had more animation and better audio than the SNES game had.
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I got a response from an aquaintance at Capcom. It doesn't really back anything up but:
I'm having an argument over who actually developed Street Fighter II' for the PC Engine. Capcom or NEC Avenue. The box states "Licensed to NEC Avenue", but really, I can't see Capcom giving away the source and charts for Street Fighter II at a time when it was a huge seller.
I think it's more likely that NEC sent a few guys over to Capcom for expertise on the console, and the same core of people handled all the home conversions.
These pages list the credits for the PC Engine and Megadrive conversions:
PC Engine credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/turbo-...dition/credits
Megadrive credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesi...dition/credits
Which list mostly Capcom staff, but it's been suggested that the original artists and developers etc, have been credited, rather than people who rescaled the images and converted the music.
I don't think this leaves enough people to do the conversion (though I could be wrong) So I'd like to hear from the horses mouth! How involved was Capcom in the conversion?
Capcom is the developer. However, it's not unusual for companies to outsource some SKUs to 3rd parties.
I guess you could say that this is the same as when Sourcenext ported Resident Evil 4, and Ubisoft published it. Although it's converted and published by different parties, it's still a Capcom developed game.
The order of the credits vary - but typically you list the team porting the game first, followed by the original team. That's not to say that it's a different team altogether or that someone is more "important" than others.
I don't know whether that sheds much light on it.
*edit* and I've just realised how leading my question is.
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I got a response from an aquaintance at Capcom. It doesn't really back anything up but:
I'm having an argument over who actually developed Street Fighter II' for the PC Engine. Capcom or NEC Avenue. The box states "Licensed to NEC Avenue", but really, I can't see Capcom giving away the source and charts for Street Fighter II at a time when it was a huge seller.
I think it's more likely that NEC sent a few guys over to Capcom for expertise on the console, and the same core of people handled all the home conversions.
These pages list the credits for the PC Engine and Megadrive conversions:
PC Engine credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/turbo-...dition/credits
Megadrive credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesi...dition/credits
Which list mostly Capcom staff, but it's been suggested that the original artists and developers etc, have been credited, rather than people who rescaled the images and converted the music.
I don't think this leaves enough people to do the conversion (though I could be wrong) So I'd like to hear from the horses mouth! How involved was Capcom in the conversion?
Capcom is the developer. However, it's not unusual for companies to outsource some SKUs to 3rd parties.
I guess you could say that this is the same as when Sourcenext ported Resident Evil 4, and Ubisoft published it. Although it's converted and published by different parties, it's still a Capcom developed game.
The order of the credits vary - but typically you list the team porting the game first, followed by the original team. That's not to say that it's a different team altogether or that someone is more "important" than others.
I don't know whether that sheds much light on it.
*edit* and I've just realised how leading my question is.
I think it was sega-16 who had an ibterview with a guy from Capcom USA bitd. Even though he was there at the time, he was totally pulling answers out of his ass and forming responses based on tge questions. I think he wound up pretty much saying that Capcom did Sega's early Capcom ports and Sega only published them because Capcom wasn't allowed to by Nintendo.