super nintendo , seing as sega cd needed a genesis to power onÂ
Which had better hardware: Sega CD or SNES
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[QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"]
[QUOTE="StaticOnTV"]
well it obviously depends on wheter youre talking art or technical.artstyle is opinion based, one person could think DKC has great art, some people won't
personally Im not a huge fan of the pre renderd look , not just in DKC but in general , I thought it looked cool at the time (I remember thinking "its like 3D.....but its not), but now I prefer either just "proper" 2D sprites or 3D polygons .nameless12345
I've always liked prerendered both back then and up to now. What about it do you dislike?
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the pre renderd looks to me like the worst of both sprites and polygons, pre renderd characters tend to have this poorly animated , almost artificial way of moving (yeah I know it sounds weird, but I just find their animation in most games to be very odd) it also gives characters this....plasticy look , for a lack of a better term , almost like youre seeing toys move around on the screen.
it works for some games, but alot of others just look odd to me.which is why I prefer a traditional 2D sprite or just polygons.
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oh and as for N64's micro codes, I don't think they were locked, its just that it was too much hard work , and when youre under a tight budget and don't have much time, you don't want to mess around with things like microcodes unless its as easy as possible
Is there any game you can refer to that shows the problem with prerendered graphics? I prefer prerendered when it's done right. I think DKC was better than sprites could be and Resident/FF were great. I think prerendered is a problem when they try to build a 3d game around it.I doubt they could lower the prices of cartridges. They certainly would have if they could have given that N64 games were often $10-30 more expensive than PS1 games. What would a higher clock on the N64 CPU allow for and how high would it need to be? It was already 93 mhz. AFAIK it blows PS1 CPU out of the water when based on speed and 32 bit vs 64 bit. Micro-codes?[QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"]
[QUOTE="StaticOnTV"]
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Neo-Geo?
Not a mainstream console, sorry...
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p.s.: PS was not more powerful than N64. Look up the specs - there's a generational difference between the two. (it was poorly designed console tho; if I was designing it, I would clock it's CPU higher, give it 8 MB RAM by default, give the devs more control over the micro-codes and perhaps an extra geometry chip similar to Super FX; everything else could stay the same but I would drop the prices on the cartridges so that devs could afford higher capacity ones)
nameless12345
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Yeah, they were probably limited in that department from the cartridge tech providers.
Maybe the disk drive wouldn't be a bad decision after all but it would have to happen earlier than it did (i.e. late 1997 at the latest) and they would have needed to support it thoroughtly.
The CPU could easily be clocked in the 130 Mhz range and it would speed-up performance in some games. (altho the real performance killer on the 64 was the Z-buffering or so I read)
The texture cache could also be upped so not all textures would need to be squeezed into the small 4kb texture cache. (PS1 had the same amount but could store the texture in the V-RAM and load them directly from the CD; 64 could use the extra memory expansion to compensate for better textures tho)
Yeah, it used special micro-codes which were apparently locked to developers.
Read about it here.
The 64DD is really odd because Nintendo already saw Sega fail with add-ons but went ahead with the plan anyway. They apparently spent too much time designing around the write abilities of it. Given the plan of having it as an add on they should have went ahead and utilized the space advantage right away and released it in holiday 1998 imo. 1997 would be too early due to N64 installed base size. Ideally though it should have been the medium for N64 to begin with. Not sure I agree about the CPU speed. Doesn't seem like there would be enough benefit. The biggest problem was the textures so that goes back again to cartridges being a disastrous choice.
[QUOTE="nameless12345"][QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"]
I've always liked prerendered both back then and up to now. What about it do you dislike?Meta-Gnostic
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the pre renderd looks to me like the worst of both sprites and polygons, pre renderd characters tend to have this poorly animated , almost artificial way of moving (yeah I know it sounds weird, but I just find their animation in most games to be very odd) it also gives characters this....plasticy look , for a lack of a better term , almost like youre seeing toys move around on the screen.
it works for some games, but alot of others just look odd to me.which is why I prefer a traditional 2D sprite or just polygons.
Â
oh and as for N64's micro codes, I don't think they were locked, its just that it was too much hard work , and when youre under a tight budget and don't have much time, you don't want to mess around with things like microcodes unless its as easy as possible
Is there any game you can refer to that shows the problem with prerendered graphics? I prefer prerendered when it's done right. I think DKC was better than sprites could be and Resident/FF were great. I think prerendered is a problem when they try to build a 3d game around it. a bad example? well one I can think of is Rise of the Robots, also Im not a fan of the look of the 32X version of blackthorne, which has pre renderd characters, as opposed to the PC/SNES versions which have normal 2D sprites.[QUOTE="nameless12345"][QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"] I doubt they could lower the prices of cartridges. They certainly would have if they could have given that N64 games were often $10-30 more expensive than PS1 games. What would a higher clock on the N64 CPU allow for and how high would it need to be? It was already 93 mhz. AFAIK it blows PS1 CPU out of the water when based on speed and 32 bit vs 64 bit. Micro-codes?
Meta-Gnostic
Â
Yeah, they were probably limited in that department from the cartridge tech providers.
Maybe the disk drive wouldn't be a bad decision after all but it would have to happen earlier than it did (i.e. late 1997 at the latest) and they would have needed to support it thoroughtly.
The CPU could easily be clocked in the 130 Mhz range and it would speed-up performance in some games. (altho the real performance killer on the 64 was the Z-buffering or so I read)
The texture cache could also be upped so not all textures would need to be squeezed into the small 4kb texture cache. (PS1 had the same amount but could store the texture in the V-RAM and load them directly from the CD; 64 could use the extra memory expansion to compensate for better textures tho)
Yeah, it used special micro-codes which were apparently locked to developers.
Read about it here.
The 64DD is really odd because Nintendo already saw Sega fail with add-ons but went ahead with the plan anyway. They apparently spent too much time designing around the write abilities of it. Given the plan of having it as an add on they should have went ahead and utilized the space advantage right away and released it in holiday 1998 imo. 1997 would be too early due to N64 installed base size. Ideally though it should have been the medium for N64 to begin with. Not sure I agree about the CPU speed. Doesn't seem like there would be enough benefit. The biggest problem was the textures so that goes back again to cartridges being a disastrous choice. the N64's CPU is around 90mhz, not 130. and yes its the fastest out of the main consoles at the time, though I have to imagine at least some of that is going towords things like music (remember the N64 has no sound chip) or decompressing files on the cartridge. thats the problem with the N64 , some really great things about it that are bottlenecked by some others, making them rather pointless on some level.[QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"][QUOTE="nameless12345"]The 64DD is really odd because Nintendo already saw Sega fail with add-ons but went ahead with the plan anyway. They apparently spent too much time designing around the write abilities of it. Given the plan of having it as an add on they should have went ahead and utilized the space advantage right away and released it in holiday 1998 imo. 1997 would be too early due to N64 installed base size. Ideally though it should have been the medium for N64 to begin with. Not sure I agree about the CPU speed. Doesn't seem like there would be enough benefit. The biggest problem was the textures so that goes back again to cartridges being a disastrous choice. the N64's CPU is around 90mhz, not 130. and yes its the fastest out of the main consoles at the time, though I have to imagine at least some of that is going towords things like music (remember the N64 has no sound chip) or decompressing files on the cartridge. thats the problem with the N64 , some really great things about it that are bottlenecked by some others, making them rather pointless on some level. He was saying N64 should have been 130 mhz, not that it is. Wow never heard N64 did not have a sound chip. It blows my mind that nobody ever talked about stuff like that back when people were comparing PS1, N64, Saturn. It is strange how Sega and Nintendo really messed up their 3rd consoles and Sony was able to get it right the very first time.Â
Yeah, they were probably limited in that department from the cartridge tech providers.
Maybe the disk drive wouldn't be a bad decision after all but it would have to happen earlier than it did (i.e. late 1997 at the latest) and they would have needed to support it thoroughtly.
The CPU could easily be clocked in the 130 Mhz range and it would speed-up performance in some games. (altho the real performance killer on the 64 was the Z-buffering or so I read)
The texture cache could also be upped so not all textures would need to be squeezed into the small 4kb texture cache. (PS1 had the same amount but could store the texture in the V-RAM and load them directly from the CD; 64 could use the extra memory expansion to compensate for better textures tho)
Yeah, it used special micro-codes which were apparently locked to developers.
Read about it here.
Darkman2007
[QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"][QUOTE="nameless12345"]Is there any game you can refer to that shows the problem with prerendered graphics? I prefer prerendered when it's done right. I think DKC was better than sprites could be and Resident/FF were great. I think prerendered is a problem when they try to build a 3d game around it. a bad example? well one I can think of is Rise of the Robots, also Im not a fan of the look of the 32X version of blackthorne, which has pre renderd characters, as opposed to the PC/SNES versions which have normal 2D sprites. I already replied to this post but Gamestop likes to delete half my posts when I quote 2 people. You've refreshed my memory of bad pre-rendered games from the early 90s. The thing is that was then and I can't think of any bad pre-rendered games that are modern.Â
the pre renderd looks to me like the worst of both sprites and polygons, pre renderd characters tend to have this poorly animated , almost artificial way of moving (yeah I know it sounds weird, but I just find their animation in most games to be very odd) it also gives characters this....plasticy look , for a lack of a better term , almost like youre seeing toys move around on the screen.
it works for some games, but alot of others just look odd to me.which is why I prefer a traditional 2D sprite or just polygons.
Â
oh and as for N64's micro codes, I don't think they were locked, its just that it was too much hard work , and when youre under a tight budget and don't have much time, you don't want to mess around with things like microcodes unless its as easy as possible
Darkman2007
[QUOTE="Darkman2007"][QUOTE="Meta-Gnostic"] The 64DD is really odd because Nintendo already saw Sega fail with add-ons but went ahead with the plan anyway. They apparently spent too much time designing around the write abilities of it. Given the plan of having it as an add on they should have went ahead and utilized the space advantage right away and released it in holiday 1998 imo. 1997 would be too early due to N64 installed base size. Ideally though it should have been the medium for N64 to begin with. Not sure I agree about the CPU speed. Doesn't seem like there would be enough benefit. The biggest problem was the textures so that goes back again to cartridges being a disastrous choice.Meta-Gnosticthe N64's CPU is around 90mhz, not 130. and yes its the fastest out of the main consoles at the time, though I have to imagine at least some of that is going towords things like music (remember the N64 has no sound chip) or decompressing files on the cartridge. thats the problem with the N64 , some really great things about it that are bottlenecked by some others, making them rather pointless on some level. He was saying N64 should have been 130 mhz, not that it is. Wow never heard N64 did not have a sound chip. It blows my mind that nobody ever talked about stuff like that back when people were comparing PS1, N64, Saturn. It is strange how Sega and Nintendo really messed up their 3rd consoles and Sony was able to get it right the very first time.
Â
To be honest, I don't think there was much Nintendo could do on the hardware side of things.
The hardware was designed by SGI engineers who, at the time, were industry leaders in graphics technology, but corners had to be cut to make the system affordable.
They obviously couldn't make it as powerful as a workstation which costed several thousand dollars and a CD drive would only increase costs.
I don't think anyone here is knowledgable enough to determine whether the system was poorly designed or not but we can read what the developers had to say about it.
And there seems to be a somewhat unified opinion from them that it was hard to develop for.
Some of the developers also expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of available texture memory, high memory latency and the limitations of the micro-codes. (some devs said that Z-buffering crippled 3D performance on the 64, which was not possible to disable by default)
Some devs were also displeased with the small storage space on the cartridges. (for example Konami and Square who made their Final Fantasy VII and MGS on the PS instead of the 64)
So basically the only thing Nintendo could do would be share their tools and provide better documentation to the other developers. (some wrote their own codes, i.e. Rare, Factor 5 & Boss)
That "disk drive" took far too long to develop and would split the userbase.
And they had comparable size cartridges by the end of the console's cycle anyway. (i.e. 64MB or "512Mbit" - used for Resi 2 and Conker)
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