Thread 11964378

>Initially Saturn was envisioned as a 2D console, because Sega "had no people who could develop 3D games" (no idea how that ties to AM2)
>Hastily added second CPU core to get better 3D after they learned Playstation is gonna be 3D
I'm trying to understand, how retarded was this decision exactly? On the one hand, people were still figuring out 3D in 1994, let alone prior to that. Sony wasn't also convinced on 3D until they saw Virtua Fighter, Sega's own game from 1993. I forget when Saturn design was finalized, but obviously most work on it was done way before 1994. I guess maybe they just thought they'd release it early, as sort of 4.5 gen console.
On the other hand, didn't people understand 3D was the future? Saying "lol we have no devs for 3D" was stupid, no one did because few made 3D games yet. Imagine Nintendo, Capcom, Namco etc. said "b-but we never made a 3D game before, so we'll stick to 2D, purizu undastando".

>>11964378 (OP)
whats your fav saturn games?

>>11964378 (OP)
It wasn’t concieved as a “4.5 gen console” that’s ridiculous. It’s almost worse though. Due to internal stupidity Sega decided to have a “budget” console (32X) and a cutting edge console (Saturn). But the way the video game market works, especially back then, was that most everyone only buys one console and expects that to last for years. So they were competing with themselves.

3D being seen as the future happened fast. It went from a gimmick in 92 and 93 to the cutting edge in 94 to the obvious future of gaming in 95. By 96 the N64 was released with next to 0 non-polygonal games games. The saturn was designed when it was a gimmick, released when it was the cutting edge and by the time things were clear it was already out and looked underpowered. In 1994 the Saturn 3d looked good. Panzer Dragoon and Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter all looked good. It’s 1996 and later that was the problem. The PS1 had more support.

>>11964378 (OP)
Stop spreading this horse shit. The Saturn might have originally been envisioned as 2d whilst in the concept stage. But it was absolutely intended to be a 3d machine as designed. The PSX was not the threshold for 3d, the PSX was incredibly powerful. The second SH2 did not make the Saturn 3d, its perfectly capable of 3d without the second SH2, and had the PSX never existed to compare against, the Saturn would have been considered an ok 3d machine.

>>11964420
The guy who designed Saturn literally said everything I said in an interview. https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/
>The Saturn actually had just one CPU at the beginning. Then Sony appeared with its polygon-based PlayStation. When I was first designing the Saturn architecture, I was focused on sprite graphics, which had been the primary graphics up to that point.

“So I decided to go with polygons (due to the PlayStation). However, there weren’t any people at Sega who knew how to develop such software. Of course, we had Yu Suzuki in the arcade department, but I couldn’t just drag him off to the console department. He was developing titles like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing. The expertise of all of the developers we had was in sprite graphics, so there seemed no choice but to go with sprites. Nevertheless, I knew we needed polygons. Using various tricks, adding a geometry engine and so on, I changed everything. In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons built on a sprite base. I felt no choice but to design a sprite-based architecture. Having said that, after some significant progress, pseudo-polygons did represent a “jump” in graphics in a certain way. There was a distinction of sorts. The processor was very powerful and could support 4,000, even 5,000 sprites, and I thought we could make the graphics work using a sprite engine after adding the Yamaha and such.

“It seemed like we were finally nearing completion. Then, the final PlayStation was revealed. It supported 300,000 polygons. Well, that was ultimately a bunch of lies, but… When you compared the Saturn with the PlayStation, we were completely missing something. The response that I chose was to add another SH processor, so we ended up with two SH-2s. By chance, the SH supported two-way cascaded data transfer. You could add a second processor and connect them in a cascade and get multi-CPU performance..."

>>11964419
>>11964473
>>11964420
Favorite saturn games?

>>11964473
I mean, with it being one of the final sprite engine systems there ever was, why the fuck didn't it support proper transparency?
Maybe they didn't have enough silicon space for it, but if they actually were to be the ultimate sprite usage system, they might have wanted to solve that issue.

>>11964389
>>11964496
Phantasy Star V

>>11964496

Consile Exclusives or unique versions only

>Panzer Dragoon 1,2,3
>Dragonforce 1,2
>Daytona
>Sega Rally
>Scorcher
>Night Striker
>All Sega Ages games
>Cyber Speedway
>Sonic R
>Nights
>PowerSlave (Lobotomy Trilogy)
>Galactic Attack
>Radiant Silvergun
>Shining Force 3
>Die Hard Arcade
>Dungeons & Dragons TOD & LOM
>Virtua Cop 1,2
>Burning Rangers
>Willy Wombat
>Ninpen Manmaru
>Batsugun
>Guardian Force
>Elevator Action Returns
>ThunderForces
>Hyper Duel
>Blast Wind
>Battle Garegga
>Virtua Fighter 2
>Last Bronx
>3 Dirty Dwarves
>Deep Fear
>Fighting Vipers
>Fighters Megamix
>All the capcom fighters are best on Saturn
>Astal
> Clockwork Knight
>Tryrush Deppy
> Super Tempo
>Baku Baku Animal
>Virtua On
>Bulk Slash
>Stellar Assault
>Amok
>Steamgear Mash
>Decathelete
>Steep Slope Sliders
>Assault Suit Leynos 2
>Gungriffon 1,2
>Gundam Side Story 1,2,3
>Dark Savior
>Legend if Oasis 2 or whatever its called
>Blazing Heros

>>11964473
>>11964378 (OP)
That's a lot of words to say that the Saturn is the best console

>>11964559
why you do this to me

>>11964378 (OP)
I'm sick and tired of these retarded threads. OP is a mentally ill asshole and needs to find a new hobby to shit up with his presence.

>>11964695
Literally first thread I've made about Saturn, which you automatically thought was bait
Learn to read

>>11964698
Bull shit. You're the same asswipe who made the thread about the Megadrive's backwards compatibility with the SMS ruining the whole platform. I'm fucking sick of your what if's and I know it all bullshit. What are you going to do next. Post a polygon article for your fucking source? Piss off.

>>11964695
>>11964710
chill nig

>>11964710
I literally don't know what you're talking about. You need to spend less time on /vr/. I linked you an interview with the creator of Saturn. You didn't even bother to understand the point of this thread

>>11964420
Shart turd was absolutely engineered for 2D or 2.5D at best, with 3D untextured polygons. It has no UV wrapper.

>>11964378 (OP)
It's a bit of an odd question. Sega obviously misjudged, so it's at least a little retarded.
But on the flip side, it's possible that Sega didn't have much of an alternative. Stories like Nintendo poaching Argonauts employees for SM64 makes me think competition for 3D developers was fierce. Sega might not have had the money to become focused on 3D so quickly, so catering the Saturn towards what they were already good at (2D) was making the best of a shit situation. This of course was exacerbated by SoA vs SoJ bickering and shit like the 32X.

>>11965049
You don't need UV to do 3d. The way you are conceptualizing this is floored. PSX is not the minimum threshold for 3d. PSX is a very advanced level of 3d, its close to skipping a generation level good.

>>11965351
I only partially agree, you had games on PC doing complex 3d before the PS1, but in comparison to the last gen of consoles, it was leaps and bounds ahead. A good dev can make it work. Frontier elite is a great example of complex 3d before next gen consoles. It has an on the fly 3d bezier curve renderer that reads opcodes to create a full scale galaxy that's traversable from plant to space, seamlessly. There are rudimentary textures, but the planet surfaces are not such a great example due to how the scale and coordinate system worked. I'm convinced it's a time/skill * creativity, equation.

>>11964389
>>11964496
Sonic 4

>>11964646
>>Legend if Oasis 2 or whatever its called

It's just Legend, sequel to Beyond

What's with retards and missing the obvious fact that VDP1 is literally a 3D accelerator? The idea that Saturn wasn't designed for 3D is demonstrably false as VDP1 is absolutely a GPU in the modern sense.

>>11965567
As the quote from >>11964473 implied, the console was always supposed to have 3D, but it was going to be more limited in capability, and 2D would vs the primary focus, but news of the PlayStation’s 3D capabilities compelled them to make it more 3D focused.

>>11965601
What do these people think the slave SH-2 was meant for software rendering?

>>11964646
>Amok

Never heard of this but it looks like something I'd love, I love vehicle exploration shooters and the way they made them in 1996 is unmatched

>>11965351
>You don't need UV to do 3d.
As I said, if you want something much more advanced than flat shaded polygons, then UV mapper will be necessary.
>The way you are conceptualizing this is floored.
Then why does the Saturn have that expensive sprite transformer chip with one VDPs dedicated entirely to 2-plane flat background graphics?
>PSX is not the minimum threshold for 3d.
No, but PSX was designed from the ground up to be a 3D console. It didn't waste silicon budget on sprite transformations, it invested everything into 3D graphics generation and FMV decompression.
>its close to skipping a generation level good
Because nobody else gave their system a matrix calculator and UV wrapper. Sega and Nintendo had the resources to do it before Sony, but they were too mired in company politics and pride (sega) and screwing over their consumers and devs (nintendo). Others like Atari were too poor to make a proper 3D console.

>>11965370
Frontier Elite 2 is flat shaded polygons.

>>11965601
>>11965603
The second SH2 is useful for rendering 3D polygons and generating 3D draw calls, but the system is still ultimately held back by the inefficiencies of the VDP at wrapping textures around polygons. Its built to transform individual tiles and sprites, not wrap textures around polygons. It's literally a superscaler on steroids. Saturn is a 2D console and the second SH2 barely changed it.

>>11964378 (OP)
The saturn was cool anon, it's nintendo I don't like

>>11964389
>>11964496
Vectorman 3

>>11964378 (OP)
>I forget when Saturn design was finalized

It was started in 1991 and finalized in 1993, including the extras they did to make it faster after the Sony reveal.

Making it full 3D at that point would have amounted to a full project reset. And it could still run VF1-2 which is all that mattered.

By 1995 they were already looking to build a new console to run VF3 which was meant to come out the end of that year (but got late and released in 1996). They were going to Nvidia and 3DFX for hardware. Had to give Nvidia a huge payment which was the only reason they did not go bankrupt and were able to make the Riva128 chipset.

>>11964378 (OP)
>because Sega "had no people who could develop 3D games" (no idea how that ties to AM2)
In their console department, you doofus. AM2 worked on expensive arcade cabinets.

>>11964538
>I mean, with it being one of the final sprite engine systems there ever was, why the fuck didn't it support proper transparency?

It did, but the half 2d half 3d design meant you could only do it one way for either. Like:
- sprite transparency: works only on sprites/polygons. Shows up opaque on backgrounds. There's also the multiple pixel rendering glitch, and the fact that the VDP1 is extremely slow, so this mode was useless.
- background transparency: sprites are written as opaque, and you set a bit telling them to blend into a background. Problem is that anything between the sprite and background disappears (as they have been overwritten when writing opaque sprites on top). This is the same mode that the SNES supported, like how anything behind a Big Boo disappeared when it turned transparent. Up side is the VDP2 does this at no cost, so it is super fast.
- mesh transparency: looks the exact same on both sprites and backgrounds, and can be done at no cost.

What I don't get is why they didn't use the background transparency for the 3d fog effect from the beginning. It's basically tailor made for that use case, especially when you have backgrounds that blend into the polygons, like half the levels in Panzer Dragoon Saga.

>>11965756
> one VDPs dedicated entirely to 2-plane flat background graphics
You would need a massive fill rate to on the polygon rendering vdp to fully supplant the 2d background vdp. If they went full 3d they would be crippling their support for 2d.

>>11966170
Yeah I get it, but still it just sounds fucking stupid
"What do you mean we have 3D devs? Yu Suzuki is in the arcade department!! Are you SERIOUSLY implying we drag him to the console department??? Enough of this nonsense, brb making a new Arcade At Home™ machine to run AM2 games"
So we had SoA vs SoJ, now we also have AM2 as a "separate department within Sega that just does its own thing". Also, didn't Yu Suzuki wind up working on console games in the end?
Meanwhile Nintendo went to Argonaut to get 3D devs, Sony decided to make PS1 3D because of Sega's arcade games, and Namco made a fortune from basically copying Sega's arcade games and porting them to PS1.

>>11965769
Declaring the Saturn 2d because it cannot map textures is arbitrary. I could just as easily arbitrarily decide that only the dreamcast qualifies as a 3d console, since its the only console whose gpu actually understands depth. Other consoles just render 2d triangles in the exact order they are submitted, the z-buffer being fundamentally a 2d pixel effect which can fake 3d in a very limited way.

>>11965813
>>11965559
>>11964559
Post real games for Saturn that are your favorites

>>11966190
And then you have the PSX which has enough fillrate to do all the 2d effects, it only lacks the memory.

>>11966208
Let me lay it out to you in a simple enough manner that you would have enough mental capacity to follow.

Sega makes consoles to release their own games on. So their highest priority is, what will their own developers need. In 1991 when the Mega CD was finished, they asked 100 developers inside the company, what will they want from a new console. 99 devs asked for more beautiful 2D. Yu Suzuki said more powerful 3D.

So they made a 2D console because 99% their devs were making 2D games.

Then in late 1992, Virtua Racing becomes a surprise hit. They think about how they could make this work on a console, and they come up with a way to collapse quads into triangles, and they put a DSP chip inside the remaining space they have to calculate 3D. Everything is good. Virtua Fighter is made, and they figure they can do that game as well on the Saturn no problem. And since they are collapsing sprites, they can do textures that way too!

That's the context of how the Saturn was made. Then the Playstation came out in a complete surprise, drawing 3D the same way SGI render farms did, with UV mapped triangles and 1 million polygon per second transformations. Nobody expected that to happen.

>>11966213
>I could just as easily arbitrarily decide that only the dreamcast qualifies as a 3d console, since its the only console whose gpu actually understands depth.

It doesn't understand depth it just has specialized hardware to pre-sort triangles in advance and discard the unrendered pixels for a nice speed boost. But give it transparent triangles, where this trick completely fails, and it falls back to its default dumb rendering path which is 8 times slower.

>>11964378 (OP)
>I'm trying to understand, how retarded was this decision exactly?
Just watch to youtube again and listen more carefully this time.

>>11966403
A surprisingly good explanation

>>11966403
>they asked 100 developers inside the company, what will they want from new console. 99 deaths ask for more beautiful 2D. Yu Suzuki said more powerful 3D.
Did you just make this up for your "explanation for dummies"?
They could as well have started designing Saturn in 1988. It's their job as a company to think ahead. They should have known they're gonna be on the market for at least 5 years. You're seriously gonna be pushing 2D until 1999? Even when your own fucking company pushes 3D?
Even then, ok, I get it: everyone was shocked PS1 was going to have 3D—or so you're saying (one of those statements no one can prove, like "no one in America knew what anime was in the 90s", "DC lost because it had no DVD player" and so on). I get it that for 94, PS indeed produced"mind-boggling effects ".
But then scrap Saturn and start anew. You just made your expensive shit heap of a console to be a "2D powerhouse". You realize you're gonna be competing vs Japan's biggest electronics company, and their console bet everything on 3D. Even before they revealed it was going to cost $299, they should have thought twice if releasing Saturn in this state, with hastily added second CPU core, was worth it. Even the interview mentions constantly: they wanted the system to represent a "jump" in technology. What's a bigger jump, good sprite engine or 3D?
And almost immediately after the release they struggled vs PS in the West. I get it they couldn't think ahead 5 years, but 1-2 years? Should have pulled the plug on Saturn in 93 so that Bernie wouldn't have to do it in 97.

>>11966530
Anon you don't understand Sega, Sega doesn't think, acts

>>11966553
I'm trying to understand Sega while accounting for SoA vs SoJ retardation. Especially when SoA brought all the money, but SoJ decided to make their own console regardless because selling overpriced 2D powerhouses in Japan was more important

>>11966405
It absolutely understands depth. What do you think depth sorting is. This is what allows it to render transparent geometry correctly, since it takes depth into account. Of course transparency is slower, there is no way to make a gpu where transparency would not be slower.

>>11966568
32X

>>11966553
It's the only way.