Payback port ... worth a blast heh

[matteus]

I've been talking to Fonzie recently about 3D on the Sega CD. He seems to think the system was capable of some pretty decent speeds. For one Bloodshot was coded badly and could of gone at least double its current speed....

I was wondering however if anyone fancied trying to get James at apex-designs to have a go at doing a Payback port for a bit of fun...

An Amiga and GP2X version exists....

I'm not expecting miracles from it and it'll be pretty cut back texture wise I'd imagine but hey it would be nice to see something all the same!

Take a look at payback at: http://www.apex-designs.net/payback.html

I've emailed him with interest to see if he'll give it a go! More emails + more interest = possible very cut down port :-)

Additional edit: I'm aware of the game specs....I'm talking about a seriously cut back version of the game

[playgen]

The MegaCD is not capable of running the game as it is, have you looked at the specs for the Amiga original version:

# Requirements: 020, 16 MB RAM, CD-ROM, hard disk, AGA or GFX card.
# Recommended: PPC, 32 MB RAM, 6x CD-ROM, hard disk, AGA or GFX card.

It doesn't run well at all on the minimum requirements either.

[matteus]

I'm not talking about a direct port here... The game has had many enhancements over its development.......alot earlier versions :) I'm not dopey enough not to have read the prior specs :D

[playgen]

Have you played the game though? The GBA version which was highly optimized runs at sluggish rate.

[matteus]

I've seen videos of the GBA version, I never thought it was that bad.....I was thinking along the lines of the game minus textures and fancy effects with simple colour .....

[playgen]

I own the GBA version, and have played the Amiga original. The GBA version really does slow down badly, its not that enjoyable to play because of that, the videos don't really show that. To get it working on MegaCD I think most of the game would have to be stripped away.

[matteus]

Fonzie says the Mega CD + Genesis is capable of anything the GBA can do but obviously minus a few colours hehe

The Mega CD also has a RAM over the GBA

DVP lets it down as per usual though as no one has tested its true potential....

Edited misquote :)

[MN12BIRD]

I dunno GBA did DooM II pretty well. I doubt a SCD could touch that.

[matteus]

GBA doesn't have a floating point so is restricted in the same way as the Genesis.......I wouldn't like to try and calculate anything! I'm a fond follower of Fonzie though and he knows what he's talking about :)

[tomaitheous]

GBA doesn't have a floating point so is restricted in the same way as the Genesis.......I wouldn't like to try and calculate anything! I'm a fond follower of Fonzie though and he knows what he's talking about :)

Even if it did have floating point support, fixed point math is much faster.

You can't directly compare the GBA's 16mhz ARM processor with a stock 68k @ 12.5mhz. Not only is the GBA faster in mhz, but is has better cycle per instruction ratio than the 68k, not to mention the ARM's instruction set. When you start coding in assembly, you start to see the differences between processors outside of just mhz.

Fonzie doesn't code in 68k ASM last I knew (TmEE does though). Learning ASM is the easy part, gaining the experience for learning how to optimized code is the tougher/drawn out part. There is no master list of tricks you pick from to speed up your code, it's a case by case(routine by routine) basis and an experience ASM coder will see what alternative methods or redundant steps can be removed, etc. But I'm getting off topic. No C compiler can tough a seasoned ASM coder.

[matteus]

Certainly thrown down the gauntlet to him there! Did you read his theory relating to 3D on SpritesMind?

[matteus]

You can't directly compare the GBA's 16mhz ARM processor with a stock 68k @ 12.5mhz. Not only is the GBA faster in mhz, but is has better cycle per instruction ratio than the 68k, not to mention the ARM's instruction set. When you start coding in assembly, you start to see the differences between processors outside of just mhz.

I think what is meant by do anything is more that its capable of the processing but a lower frame rate....obviously that in itself would make games like doom 2 unplayable....

I'm interested to see what turns up over the next year

[tomaitheous]

Did you read his theory relating to 3D on SpritesMind?

Did you read the whole thread? You didn't see my post? What he proposes is pretty much how you would go about it. What would be interesting, is to find out the fill rate of the ASIC chip. If it's fairly fast, you could use it to do textured mapped polygons similar to the saturn method.

[matteus]

Sorry tomaitheous didn't even notice the comments were from you! Generally I just read the thread from start to finish without looking at who's made comment :D The question is will anyone be arsed to give the ASIC fill rate a try?

[Genesis Knight]

I'd like to see a double-speed Bloodshot.