powervr2 limits

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chao2
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Re: powervr2 limits

Post by chao2 »

i'm guessing there are too many programming tricks that have been created since the dreamcast's demise. I was looking at some early iphone games and I was wondering whether if the dreamcast could run them. Here are two games that I think should be inside the dreamcast's range.

Eternal legacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSz4OwTLj3A



Shadow guardian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50pNU2EFN_o


Maybe also Gangstar miami

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONmIz8yk6V4



Do you guys see anything in these games that have not been utilized on the dreamcast?

Sorry about that,I can never embed videos right for some reason
Last edited by chao2 on Tue Dec 22, 2015 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RyoDC
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Re: powervr2 limits

Post by RyoDC »

Please spend some time and edit the links you have provided :)
How do I try to build a Dreamcast toolchain:
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Re: powervr2 limits

Post by bogglez »

chao2 wrote:i'm guessing there are too many programming tricks that have been created since the dreamcast's demise. I was looking at some early iphone games and I was wondering whether if the dreamcast could run them. Here are two games that I think should be inside the dreamcast's range.

Eternal legacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSz4OwTLj3A



Shadow guardian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50pNU2EFN_o


Maybe also Gangstar miami

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONmIz8yk6V4



Do you guys see anything in these games that have not been utilized on the dreamcast?

Sorry about that,I can never embed videos right for some reason
Eternal Legacy - Looks like a DC game. Animation looks a bit better
Shadow Guardian - Possible with better texture resolution, lower screen resolution (DC only has 640x480).
Gangstar Miami - Terrible graphics, easily possible on the DC.

Eternal Legacy and Shadow Guardian seem to use a better skeletal animation for the character models than most DC games, maybe even multiple bone weights. That is, each vertex/point of the 3D model is affected by multiple animated bones, not just a single parent bone. This makes transitions from one body part to the next look better (Final Fantasy 7 is an example of a game where no bone weights are used, shoulders/elbows look terrible when animated).
Shadow Man for DC also uses this technique. Games like Sonic Adventure and Phantasy Star Online didn't (they use a simplistic bone hierarchy, no weights).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zGjljKDmQ
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chao2
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Re: powervr2 limits

Post by chao2 »

So Gangstar miami is even within the dreamcast's range,but what about its sequels. Gangstar Rio and Gangstar vegas.


Gangstar rio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaxx2HgvI_Q


Gangstar vegas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE5q7QAKgc0


Here is another questioning pertaining to the skeletal animation. Was implementing mutiple bone weights during the late 90s and early 2000s pretty hard? Shenmue 1 and 2 definitely use mutiple bone weights right?
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Re: powervr2 limits

Post by bogglez »

Again possible, at lower resolution.

- For Vegas one would need to remove some shader effects.
-They claim to use 2.5 GBs of data, so some cuts would need to be made to content here. Since this is a mobile game they might have textures in many formats instead of one, so that number might be lower actually. Also, homebrew is limited to CDs(700MB) to avoid piracy, instead of GDs(1GB).
- It would be important to stream files from disc efficiently and make good use of visibility testing to get a large draw distance. The level formats in the official SDK didn't seem to account for any of that, so any homebrew game would need to spend effort on that. Ph3nom uses the level format from Quake (BSPs), which is much more efficient than what Sega used, for example.
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