Tomb Raider for the 3DO (OpenLara conversion)

[Wesker]

Instagram links: 1 2 3

GitHub links: Updates Releases

This has been done basically performing amazing wonders with the OpenLara source code. The prospect of having this game fully running and at a playable framerate on the 3DO has to be totally mindblowing.

[Blades]

That's amazing. I've always heard 3DO's CEL engine was actually pretty strong, even compared to PlayStation and Saturn.

The guy's reaction to Lara's face at 6:53 is hilarious.

[saturndual32]

That's amazing. I've always heard 3DO's CEL engine was actually pretty strong, even compared to PlayStation and Saturn.

I have read that it’s actually the CPU the weak link on the 3DO hardware. But I have never found detailed specs on the CEL engine

I never imagined the 3DO could handle Tomb Raider at all... looking really impressive so far

[LinkueiBR]

Thats impressive.
Just imagined here a 32x Tomb Raider...

[Wesker]

The original message YouTube videos have been removed (even though the Instagram links are still active), so here's some others.

[cleeg]

This is very interesting. I always think that this game has aged so well: It plays like a 2D title in many respects, as all the movements can be memorised to a large extent, jumps timed etc. The 3D environment feels compelling and the execution feels perfectly executed.

I's no wonder the effort has been made to port this to an obscure platform, it's such a joy to play and control, especially for such an early 3D affair.

I second the 32X version! Seriously though, how feasible?

[Barone]

The second video comments are annoying as hell. The game is running at single digits with limited draw distance when the guy rambles "I'm sure with more time he can get it to run at 20 fps, maybe 30 fps".
This is why most of these projects never get finished. Too much nonsense.


Anyway, regarding the 32X questions: I'd assume RAM (or lack thereof) would be a problem.
Second issue is: unlike the 3DO, the 32X really has nothing hardware-wise geared towards 3D and textured polygons.

So I'd expect something with even lower res textures and maybe even more limited draw distance (depending on how the source code available would fit parallel processing or not).
Then I'd add that the game uses orchestral soundtrack, spatial sound effects, etc. Not a good fit for the hardware.

I honestly don't see the appeal. Would I play it on the 32X if someone came up with a miraculous good port? Sure.

How good it would be compared to what we already have on other platforms? Likely (far) worse and that's why I don't like the idea that much.
I first experienced it on the PC using a Voodoo card and to me this one of the few old games that I prefer with texture filtering and brighter textures. I can't stand the Saturn version TBH.

A lot of the "wow" factor of Tomb Raider is the scale of some scenes. I honestly don't see the 32X pulling it off in a way which would preserve that and a playable framerate.

[axel]

The second video comments are annoying as hell. The game is running at single digits with limited draw distance when the guy rambles "I'm sure with more time he can get it to run at 20 fps, maybe 30 fps".
This is why most of these projects never get finished. Too much nonsense.


Anyway, regarding the 32X questions: I'd assume RAM (or lack thereof) would be a problem.
Second issue is: unlike the 3DO, the 32X really has nothing hardware-wise geared towards 3D and textured polygons.

So I'd expect something with even lower res textures and maybe even more limited draw distance (depending on how the source code available would fit parallel processing or not).
Then I'd add that the game uses orchestral soundtrack, spatial sound effects, etc. Not a good fit for the hardware.

I honestly don't see the appeal. Would I play it on the 32X if someone came up with a miraculous good port? Sure.

How good it would be compared to what we already have on other platforms? Likely (far) worse and that's why I don't like the idea that much.
I first experienced it on the PC using a Voodoo card and to me this one of the few old games that I prefer with texture filtering and brighter textures. I can't stand the Saturn version TBH.

A lot of the "wow" factor of Tomb Raider is the scale of some scenes. I honestly don't see the 32X pulling it off in a way which would preserve that and a playable framerate.

I agree with you, this is an extremely impressive achievement as it is but it's never going to run like a late 90s PC and a 32X version would have to be severely cut back. To fix the draw distance issues you'd have to divide the areas of Tomb Raider into a series of small rooms and winding corridors, it would feel like a totally different game at that point.

[roce]

Tomb Raider 1, DOS, in software mode, required at least Pentium 60 and 8MB RAM. You can compare how the DOS sw version looked vs the gpu accelerated ones, and then do another similar drop to get to what 32x would be like.

[turboxray]

The second video comments are annoying as hell. The game is running at single digits with limited draw distance when the guy rambles "I'm sure with more time he can get it to run at 20 fps, maybe 30 fps".
This is why most of these projects never get finished. Too much nonsense.


Anyway, regarding the 32X questions: I'd assume RAM (or lack thereof) would be a problem.
Second issue is: unlike the 3DO, the 32X really has nothing hardware-wise geared towards 3D and textured polygons.

So I'd expect something with even lower res textures and maybe even more limited draw distance (depending on how the source code available would fit parallel processing or not).
Then I'd add that the game uses orchestral soundtrack, spatial sound effects, etc. Not a good fit for the hardware.

I honestly don't see the appeal. Would I play it on the 32X if someone came up with a miraculous good port? Sure.

How good it would be compared to what we already have on other platforms? Likely (far) worse and that's why I don't like the idea that much.
I first experienced it on the PC using a Voodoo card and to me this one of the few old games that I prefer with texture filtering and brighter textures. I can't stand the Saturn version TBH.

A lot of the "wow" factor of Tomb Raider is the scale of some scenes. I honestly don't see the 32X pulling it off in a way which would preserve that and a playable framerate.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Barone again."

Same. If someone makes it, I'll play it! But I feel like people really do expect a little too much out of the 32x haha.


So it looks like the first video with him playing it on the real 3DO hardware, the frame rate gets into the single digits. That's nice as a tech demo, but I would never want to play TR like that! Is the 2nd video under emulation? Because it seems to have a higher frame rate.

[matteus]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Barone again."

Same. If someone makes it, I'll play it! But I feel like people really do expect a little too much out of the 32x haha.


So it looks like the first video with him playing it on the real 3DO hardware, the frame rate gets into the single digits. That's nice as a tech demo, but I would never want to play TR like that! Is the 2nd video under emulation? Because it seems to have a higher frame rate.

Chily might have a crack at it one day. He seems to think the 32x could.pull it off better than 3do ha! Only time will tell...

[Barone]

So it looks like the first video with him playing it on the real 3DO hardware, the frame rate gets into the single digits. That's nice as a tech demo, but I would never want to play TR like that! Is the 2nd video under emulation? Because it seems to have a higher frame rate.

Yeah, the second one is emulated, the guy states that in the middle of his endless ramble.
3DO emulators usually boost the CPU (ZSNES, are you there?). But even so, in his emulated footage I counted 6-8 fps in the moments where the character was turning with an open large scale area ahead of her. And that's without sound.

Chily might have a crack at it one day. He seems to think the 32x could.pull it off better than 3do ha! Only time will tell...

Haha!
Man, I love the MD craziness.
In other communities they're like: "well, let's port some Atari ST games", "just developed this SDK so you can now create 8-bit Mario clones", "Just put some FPGA in the cart so we can now have voice clips into the game!", etc.

Here the guys are like:
"Uhm, UMK3 still lacks some characters. Let's make all bosses playable. Let's add Shiva now. Now, let's add all the missing characters of the 2D games. Now let's add all other characters of all other games in the series, regardless of balance. Shit, they don't fit in a regular cart!" "We're making a new cart!"

"Now let's redo that UMK3 hack the right way! The graphics should look better than on the SNES."

"Let me redo the SFII art so it looks good on the console. No, let me re-redo it. Nah, nah, nah; I will re-re-redo it better than him!"

"OK, enough with this SFII crap. Let's just redo MK now. We want everything the SNES version did well and more.
Now let's improve upon the Mega CD version. Now let's add more stuff directly from the arcade."

"I'm porting Mega Man X to the Mega Drive.", "Now I'm porting Sonic to the SNES.", "Now, I'm porting Sunset Riders to the Mega Drive properly."

"Gotta redo that Ghouls 'N Ghosts port when I have some spare time. Nah, you know what we really need? Arcade Shinobi. I want all best games of the series on the Mega Drive.", "Yes, we're adjusting the entire arcade assets to the 9-bit palette. And maybe even improving upon the original stuff.", "Yeah, why not better than the arcade? The original looked kinda drab."

"Leave the Ghouls 'N Ghosts port to me. It will look like the X68000 version.", "Maybe even better."

"Hey, fellas, look at my Star Fox demo running on stock 1988 hardware!", "Yeah, I just feel like porting Wolfenstein 3D with hand-optimized assembly, so it will run faster and at higher res than on the SNES.", "Yeah, I added sound and music too. It's not perfect but mimics the PC very well. By the way, my first time doing it.", "OK, Barone, here's a new mouse driver which can handle both the Sega Mouse and the Mega Mouse. Sega couldn't do it, so I did it.", "Well, my Wolf 3D port kinda sucked so I just increased the framerate by 50% while also expanding the viewport.", "Willing to do some software mode-7 at 30 fps today, don't know if Super Mario Kart or F-Zero clone yet.... Actually, will do both!"

"John Carmack wasn't really that good, let me re-port Doom to the 32X and show you how it's done. By the way, never developed anything for the system before and I don't even play Mega Drive games."
"BAMMMMM!!! Got me some 32X Doom running better than the Jaguar version. Oh, and by the way, the music sounds great now and we used no damn PCM samples."
"Now onto beating the PSX version..."

"Just created an emulator guys.", "Well, we may need our own open source SDK if we like some new games.", "How about fixing that shitty SFII:SCE sound? A bit tired of people bashing the soundchip for what is a poor audio driver's fault.", "So here's some new audio driver with good quality 4 PCM channels support. Sorry for the memory footprint, will do better next time." "People are already developing AAA games using our SDK but it feels like we need some Gran Turismo-esque profiling to go to the next level. So welcome to the next level."

"So I just bough this old Mega CD devkit on ebay... Let me try and develop something like Limbo for the Mega Drive in pure 68000 assembly while I fix this ever-breaking devkit on a weekly basis.", "By the way, just resurrected this long lost Strike Trilogy for ya.", "OK, OK, I'll create a kickstarter project then. BBC interview? Do you want me to blow the dust off of the PCB contacts for the camera? Bloody hell, can do!", "Got a 79 on Metacritic and everybody is asking for a sequel. Oh, well, I regret some of my game design choices..."

"For our first game we intend to do something like an Alien meets Smash TV, with no slowdown. By the way, we just got Henk onboard. And Savaged Regime will do the soundtrack.", "Delivered."

"Created this shitty little platformer demo here. No, no, it sucks. It really does. Don't insist, Project MD is not cool!", "I few like starting a new MD dev discord server. Better yet, let me provide support 24/7 for the other community projects. Still lacking though, let me create a wiki and document the tricks I've learned and developed in a easy-to-read format so anyone can benefit from it.", "Got this little game done, it's a Mode-7 top-down shooter. Yeah, I did the art too. And the audio driver. Nothing special." "Well, uh, time for some voxels!", "My voxel-based first person game isn't running as fast as I would like, so let me add some unheard of Mega CD processing assistance to it; optional though!"

"I want to learn C. SGDK looks nice. Let me try to port some old games to the Mega Drive while I exercise on my treadmill", "I love Darius, so let me port it to the Mega Drive.", "Well, it's done, not arcade perfect but it's done." "Mega Drive-mini, wow! Yeah, M2, you can have it, no problem.", "You know, the instruments were a bit off last time so this time we're fixing it and adding more options from all arcade versions of the game.", "Now I want some Fantasy Zone. Let me challenge myself and port the entire soundtrack without using the PSG and PCM samples. DONE!"

"I worked on the PSP port so I felt like porting it to the 32X as well. It's just the shareware version of Wolf 3D though.", "Well, why not some Spear of Destiny for good measure?", "The other guys are trying to keep this mode 1 thing secret and be elite, so let me just document and share it with everyone. Yeah, yeah, f you too.", "Just felt like showing off what the 32X could do in 3D, have my demo!", "Here's some 512 simultaneous colors on MD; and a Wolf 3D Mega CD demo using it on top. Have it, it's free.", "Hmmm, I actually think the 32X can run Tomb Raider better than the 3DO. I'll show you when I have some spare time."

That would be a bit shocking to me if he could pull it off but the 3DO CPU is really lackluster.
Chilly knows the architectures of the 5th gen consoles quite well so if he thinks the 32X can out do the 3DO here, he probably has something in mind.

The shocking part to me is that the 32X wasn't really designed with textured 3D games in mind. It's a competent machine for pseudo-3D games and a taste of 3D games in the form of flat-shaded polygons.
But if it could pull off a playable Tomb Raider, well, some pre-conceived ideas would have to be revisited.

It wouldn't be the first time I see this community bend the reality though.

[turboxray]

Well shit, if Chilly Willy said it's doable then I'd take his word for it. I mean if he said it, then he probably already did some tests and crunched the numbers. That guys know his stuff.

[zyrobs]

If you think the MD community is so silly that you have to ramble about it for 40 minutes (original post: 11:42, last edit: 12:23), then why are you here?

[roce]

^ I think you misunderstood the post, it was a tribute to the community.

--

I think the N64 would be a far better target for Tomb Raider, or a -like, anyway.