Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

[MottZilla]

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.

[Black Tiger]

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.

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.

[sheath]

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.

[Black Tiger]

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.

[sheath]

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.

[Black Tiger]

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.

[sheath]

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.

[soop]

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.

[Black Tiger]

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.