Super Grafx Arcade Card attempt?

[BigusSchmuck]

Has anyone here even attempted to build a super grafx arcade card demo just to see what it can do?

[SignOfZeta]

Well, "Arcade Card" just means more assets so one would have to create such a huge pile of SGX assets that they wouldn't fit into a SCD...which is a LOT of shit for a home brew guy to make.

Chris Covell's SGX demos are pretty impressive, but they are really small and not anywhere near maxing out a SCD or HuCard.

I would love to see it, but it would mean a home brew team going above and beyond what Hudson or NEC ever did, which is asking an awful lot.

I suppose you could make something deliberately designed to waste memory, perhaps a slightly upgraded HuVideo spec?

[Black Tiger]

This has come up in the past and it's actually not nearly as much work as Zeta makesit out to be. Arcade Card games that could not fit within Super CD space are not using 18 megs of space per load, just as SCD games aren't all pushing the 2 meg limit. ACD games are anyting using over 2 megs per load. Just the same, a demo making use of a Super Grafx ability that the PC Engine doesn't have, would be as simple as using two tile layers or surpassing the PCE's sprites per line limit.

The point of tech demos isn't to surpass the biggest most impressive fully polished games made at the time. That's why 16-bit console tech demo roms aren't all 100+ megs each.

But if someone were to attempt the kind of demo Zeta has in mind, although it would still be a lot of work, it could just be a recreation of a highly animated and detailed street fighting game stage with player sprites running through animations without having gameplay programmed in.

[touko]

A good SGX tech demo, will be the first level (not entirely) of final fight ..

[SignOfZeta]

A good SGX tech demo, will be the first level (not entirely) of final fight ..

What's in Final Fight that can't be done as a regular ACD?

[touko]

i think nothing .

I think also, that you don't need ACD for that too .
A scd-rom² would be enough .

[ProfessorProfessorson]

If you wanted to surpass the amount of sprites/characters on screen at one time that were presented on the Sega CD and Snes versions, then the Supergrafx would come in handy for Final Fight.

[SignOfZeta]

i think nothing .

I think also, that you don't need ACD for that too .
A scd-rom² would be enough .

...then why did you suggest it?

[Arkhan]

This has come up in the past and it's actually not nearly as much work as Zeta makesit out to be.

Says a person who doesn't program games.


To make a demo that is actually worthy of the hardware being used, and is something that isn't exactly doable otherwise, is effort from both the programmers involved, and the artists.


It sounds easy on paper.    Everything does.   That doesn't mean it is.

[SignOfZeta]

Well, strictly speaking, if you write code on a CD that will put "Hello World" into the Arcade Card somewhere, retrieve it from the AC and put it on the screen using the secondary graphics chip to do it...there you go, a demo that requires a SGX and an AC...even though its completely indistinguishable from a HuCARD demo.

Since the AC does nothing but store stuff, in order to really say "this game is an Arcade Card game" you'd need to make something TOO BIG for a SCD. That's not...too hard, as long as its a huge pile of sound or FMV. Its basically not possible to fill the AC with code unless you are running SETI@Home on it or some shit so what kind of graphics and sound fill the AC? The easiest thing, it seems to me, is video.

So is it possible to hack the HuVIDEO spec to the point where it won't run on a standard PCE but will run on a SGX? Like, maybe just adding 10 lines of resolution (ie: ten fewer lines of black box) and use the two GPUs in tandem to make it happen?

That would satisfy the SGX requirement, but streaming HuVIDEO doesn't use very much RAM so maybe cache a shitload of it and come up with something else for the CDROM2 to load.

Or...maybe overlays are possible? Could Road Prosecutor or Time Gal be make for SGX if one GPU did the HuVIDEO and the other did the overlays? If entire levels were loaded into the ACD to avoid (maybe) the lag that normal comes from seeking lasers in LD based games.

Just thinking out loud here...

[Black Tiger]

This has come up in the past and it's actually not nearly as much work as Zeta makesit out to be.

Says a person who doesn't program games.


To make a demo that is actually worthy of the hardware being used, and is something that isn't exactly doable otherwise, is effort from both the programmers involved, and the artists.


It sounds easy on paper.    Everything does.   That doesn't mean it is.

All tech demos (even ones for PCE CD2) are a lot of work that could be spent towards making full games. What I meant is that you don't have to max out the SuperGrafx and Arcade Card space to pull off something that does what a PC Engine Super CD can't. And even if you did put all that work into maxing it out, without the average person fully appreciating exactly what is going on under the hood, a SuperGrafx/ACD maxing demo won't necessarily look more impressive to many people than a similar demo using different graphics that barely pushes into SGX/ACD territory. Many people can't tell what makes Sapphire special and think that it just looks like a SCD game. Many of those same people are still blown away by simple effects in relatively small cart games, like sprite jumbles, pixelization, wavy stuff, etc.

If you took the most packed ACD games like Fatal Fury Special, World Heroes 2 and Sapphire, and added an extra tile layer and used the extra sprites for things like the ref in WH2 and misc people moving around in the Neo Geo fighter bgs, would the average person really appreciate it enough? Even with all the PCE hate, it's surprising how much respect those games get, even when compared to SFC WH2 and FFS, which have the kind of background layering that the SuperGrafx could provide. All it took was a handful of SuperGrafx games to convince everyone to stop supporting it, because they didn't think that consumers would appreciate the difference.

[touko]

...then why did you suggest it?

Oups,sorry i have probably not understood your question ...
You suggested a SGX demo with AC no ??
Or maybe you want absolutely sgx+AC ??

This why i  suggested a final fight demo on sgx , but with a simple scd-rom² ...

I think a final fight demo (close to coin-op) on sgx is more rewarding, than a video,and why use a sgx for a video
A single pce with AC can do that too, and i think also that a sgx with scd is not very common, and if you add also an AC  

[BigusSchmuck]

...then why did you suggest it?

Oups,sorry i have probably not understood your question ...
You suggested a SGX demo with AC no ??
Or maybe you want absolutely sgx+AC ??

This why i  suggested a final fight demo on sgx , but with a simple scd-rom² ...

I think a final fight demo (close to coin-op) on sgx is more rewarding, than a video,and why use a sgx for a video
A single pce with AC can do that too, and i think also that a sgx with scd is not very common, and if you add also an AC   

Its more or less if it could be done etc and if the rewards are worth it. It would be pretty neat to see Dragon's Lair or Timegal take advantage of the arcade card, but as others have mentioned the super grafx part may not be necessary. Now if someone could create a homemade Arcadecard or a Supergrafx clone that would make all this that much better.

[touko]

Ok, but if you don't have the need of a second layer, and the add of 64 sprites, all can be done with a classic PCE+AC ..
Else, CPU power is the same on both, then you can not do a lot better on SGX side ..

[SignOfZeta]

Do you not think its possible to devise an enhanced HuVIDEO spec that requires the SGX?