pros & cons... 16 bit cd games.

[Black Tiger]

That sounds like it would be difficult to program, i haven't seen any thing like it in any other pce game...yet.

I've actually seen it quite a few times, even though I don't play emulators very much. The only one I can name for sure from memory is Popful Mail.

[ccovell]

Don't forget all the trees, doors, etc in Neutopia 1 & 2.  It's a pretty common trick.

[awack]

I thought the trees in Nuetopia were just part of the BG that sprites could walk behind, the Rondo example seems to be different from a programing stand point, at least to me, I'm probably reading into it More than i should though.

[shubibiman]

NEC Avenue...unlike backgrounds which they where really good at, they didn't seem to be the best at sprite handling,animation/effects....sounds like this game could have been even better.

Ok, now I understand why I always felt like NEC Avenue games always had flickers.

[awack]

Ok, now I understand why I always felt like NEC Avenue games always had flickers.

I should mention that two of the reasons for that, one, was using high resolution and as Tom mention about Tenchi O Karau, sprite overlaying.

Strider on the other hand used standard resolution and no sprite overlay that I'm aware of, of course there is a lot going on in-game but Ive seen more in other games with less flicker.

Their best over all effort in my oppinion was Forgotten Worlds, it used high res with a ton of stuff on-screen and good animation, infact all of their Capcom games were impressive with the exception of Strider.

[awack]

All right, lets do some WOT, this is just from the first level not including the boss.


The green dragon in the pce game will kick up dust as he moves along the sand, the second set of pics show the pce game with four frames instead of three frames for the collapsing hole that the scarab will pop out of.

PCE                                               Genesis



The water in the pce WOT is animated, the sega cd is not, you can also destroy the protruding rock which will explode and fall back down to earth, pushing Landis down if underneath. The Egyptian column is more detailed in the pce.

PCE                                               Genesis



Missing third scarab.

PCE                                                Genesis



The pce WOT tends to have more detail in the BGs and slightly better animation on a couple of smaller enemies(1st level only so far)



I looked for anything that was better in the sega cd and i just could not find any thing, not even parallax scrolling(1st level only).

[awack]

Pre rendered sprites, DKC and Sapphire, boss vs boss.

This was the best i could find for a boss in DKC, the death animation of the last boss.
I think most of the effort was put into Donkey Kong himself.


Spinning attack, 32 frames.







Death animation.





Mr Honkey dong has a large set of moves, each one with a large number of frames, his walk as shown below has 19 or 20 frames, but i cant find anything in DKC thats as impressive as what ive found in Sapphire.






Sprite specs.          PCE                    GENESIS                     SNES
 
sprites on screen:    64                      80                             128

sprites on line:        16                       20                             34

max texels online:    256                     320                            272               

texture width:         16, 32                 8,16,24,32                   8,16,32,64

texture height:        16,32,64              8,16,24,32                   8,16,32,64

colors:                    15                     15                              15

[Tom]

Added some specs. Genesis high and low res modes have different sprite figures. Also added sprite cells. SNES has 34 8x8 cells or 32 sprites or 272 pixels per scanline. PCE and GENs can use any sprite size configuration in a single frame. SNES can only use two different sizes in a frame(onscreen). It's why some early SNES shooters/games had more flicker than later titles. Unoptimized use of two sprite sizes.

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Sprite specs.           PCE                    GENESIS                     SNES
 
sprites on screen:      64                     64/80                       128

sprites per line:       16                     16/20                       32

max texels per line:    256                    256/320                     272               

min sprite cell:        16x16                  8x8                         8x8               

max cells per line:     16                     32/40                       34

texture width:          16, 32                 8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

texture height:         16,32,64               8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

colors:                 15                     15                          15


[awack]

Thanks Tom, the PCE doesn't look so strong compared to its rivals in this regard.



Bonk III hu card and CD.


Walk animation.

Hu card                                           CD




Transformation and jump.

Hu card                                         CD




Landing on head.

Hu card                                          CD

[Tatsujin]

why? 

[awack]

Good question.

Hu card game is 8Mb, Bonk CD is a super CD game=2Mb (+ half an Mb, ADPCM)

Another thing about CD games is that the music is being streamed from the Cd so none of the 2Mb has to be used for that, i don't think the music in this game takes up a lot of memory though.

Compare Rondo vs Drac XX, a 16 Mb game.... thats just the stuff i showed and doesn't include all the missing enemy sprites/animation per level.

If you look at Bonk Cd, it loads game info a lot, i don't want to guess how many times the Cd is read(not music) through out this game and each section doesn't have a large amount of detail and very little enemy character animation.

So, my only guess is memory allocation, a large portion of the 8Mb was used for the super sized Bonk and his animations....its still hard to believe and could also be that Bonk CD wasn't optimized and just thrown together fast for an American release.

[Tatsujin]

may be just a big potion of Amercian Fail

[Tom]

Wow. I never realized the US Bonk 3 CD was missing frames. No doubt a direct result of American coders 

Thanks Tom, the PCE doesn't look so strong compared to its rivals in this regard.

 For sprite optimization, it's the weakest of the three - cell wise. For sprites that are small like 8x8 pixels (like bullets) or sprites inbetween 16 and 32 pixels wide (24 pixels). The SNES looks the best on paper, but there are limitations that bring it back down. Such as, sprites are limited between two 16k banks in vram. Not a super big deal, but it means in some situations it's not as flexible as PCE and Genesis in this respect (which can have sprites any in vram). But the real big problem on SNES is that you can only have two sprite sizes onscreen at a time. You could pic 32x16 & 8x8 or 32x32 & 16x16, etc but only two at a time. So while you can have more sprites per scanline and a bigger sprite table (128 sprites), you need that extra flexibility to make up for the two size only limit(which also translates into more sprite table entries out that 128 total). The Genesis strength comes in its high res mode. You can really optimize for flicker. Other wise its low res mode is mostly the same as PCEs. The PCE would scale its sprite per scanline limit for higher res modes too, like the Genesis, but for the single fact that the PCE's video chip only has 64 WORD buffer (256 4bit pixels). It's fast enough for the higher res modes to fetch more sprites, just no place to put them. 

 The port of LOT to SegaCD doesn't really gain any optimization of sprites cells because the game is practically optimized for 16x16 cells. So the Genesis is forced to use the same cell size, resulting in the same flicker conditions.

[Tatsujin]

it's soo hilarious that it should degrade that BONKEY 3 CD down to a 50cent game immediately!!

[Tatsujin]

Bonk III hu card and CD.


Walk animation.

Hu card                                           CD