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Does Jag Doom run in highcolor mode?


kool kitty89

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No idea what PC it's running on ... but it came out in 1992, which was why I linked it for you, as you seem to think voxels weren't used till recently :roll:

 

NO, you read into that but I never said it. Also in 1992, PC's were 266 MHZ pentiums as the norm.

A far cry from a consle one tenth the clock. The point is the Jaguar is by far more powerful at

doing them, even at one tenth the clock. Pay attention next time.

 

I think the only sad thing here is your grasp of framerates :) but it is a youtube video, so maybe you should check it out on a real playstation before making asinine comparisions with A8 games :roll:

 

Yeah but I can tell by looking at all three you tube vides that the Jagur voxel engine is world superior, since it is running

a game with many on screen objects as well at high CRY color and voxel clouds as well. None of which you see in either sad

demo you showed.

 

Owl's game and Phase Zero are both cool ( and it's a real shame PZ didn't make it out, as it's the kind of game the jaguar really needed ) - I think the enemies are just sprites though.

 

Look again. The rotation of the enemies are way to smooth. That would require a serious amount of sprites

to do that. I can tell they are voxel ememies as well. You showed a PC game with almost no enemies and

a not suprisingly lame PSX demo with the camera point DOWN onto the landscape, further relaxing the need

for the voxels to be projected and therfore computed more heavily.

 

Get over it...you are just wrong on this one my friend.

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Yeah, I think Gorf was talking more in terms of hardware acceleration standards (polygon optimized), with all software rendering it's just a trade-off for what kind of set-up you want to use, any case will require a lot of CPU resourse to back it up -that would go for polygon engines as well of course. (but again, it's all software/CPU driven, basicly controlling a simple bitmapped display -usually 256 colors for the DOS ones)

 

 

A Game 7 years after the JAg is obviously going to be running much more robustly. 7 years is a millenia in techonological advancement terms.

 

How much better does BattleSphere get when it's networked? ( I'm assuming you're saying that the networking is the advantage here - because you don't really make much sense otherwise )

My point about the networking is that there's no real difference between the hardware used for link cables on the PSX, and the Jaguar - only the wiring is different. So exactly the same networked AI could be implemented if it had to be.

And the Saturn and PSX are computationally more capable than the Jaguar as well as graphically more capable - ( The Saturn is generally even more capable than the PSX )

How do the actual networking interfacing capabilities/mechanisms compare, BS uses the Jag's buggy DSP UART connector, right (with soem masterful workarounds to address the problems)? The PSX has serial and parallel ports on it (parallel only on early models, I think serial was kept though), and Saturn has the cartridge port (which would more or less be acting as a parallel port for a network adaptor plug-in), otherwise there's only the controller ports, and as I recall some networked PSX games used those. (I know that's what Technopop did for Zero Tolerance on the Genesis/MD, that limited to 2-player networking though -controller port 2 linked to controller port 2)

 

 

As usual, CA does not read my posts through and looks silly. The multi processing capability of the two Jaguar J-RISCs

alone are enough to put a serious hurt on a single processor system, that was never designed to do such things.

 

The networking is just an added plus.

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Also in 1992, PC's were 266 MHZ pentiums as the norm.

In 1992, I was looking into buying a PC. I finally bought a Falcon in 1993, but there was no Pentium in 92, only 386 and 486.

The Pentium has been introduced in march, 93 IIRC, and was only 60mhz.

even in 94, Pentium were rally expensive, and mass market was mostly 486DX or 486DX2...

266mhz Pentium MMX, it was something like 1997, 5 years after what you stated, a really big gap in technology.

 

Edit : release dates of Pentium series : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_microprocessors

Edited by Fadest
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OK, it is like YCbCr colorspace then. (so kind of like GTIA's 256 color palette, but with 16x the colors and shades ;)) But doing so using values indexed from 24-bit RGB. Hmm, wouldn't any indexed 16-bit palette mode on other platforms (slecting from 24-bit RGB) be ablt to acheive similar? (doesn't the PSX allow 16-bit indexing, or is it stuch with 16-bit RGB to work from? -probably 5-6-5 R-G-B -if not selectable between that and 6-5-5 and 5-5-6) Wait... 65.536 entries for selecting 24-bit values would take 192 kB of color RAM... so not for PSX at least...

Yes , if you look in the jaguar manual it shows how the colours were picked. The PSX was 5.5.5 RGB , ( it also supports 24 bit for movies and displays, but the 3D hardware only draws triangles in 5.5.5RGB )

 

Yeah, I think Gorf was talking more in terms of hardware acceleration standards (polygon optimized), with all software rendering it's just a trade-off for what kind of set-up you want to use, any case will require a lot of CPU resourse to back it up -that would go for polygon engines as well of course. (but again, it's all software/CPU driven, basicly controlling a simple bitmapped display -usually 256 colors for the DOS ones)

Voxel's were a good alternative until 3D graphics cards took off - then polygons took over the PC world :) - It's a real pity though that SVGA cards never standardised earlier - as it was possible to get 16 bit colour, just not in a standard way that could be used by games ( as VESA didn't really come in till 94ish )

 

How do the actual networking interfacing capabilities/mechanisms compare, BS uses the Jag's buggy DSP UART connector, right (with soem masterful workarounds to address the problems)? The PSX has serial and parallel ports on it (parallel only on early models, I think serial was kept though), and Saturn has the cartridge port (which would more or less be acting as a parallel port for a network adaptor plug-in), otherwise there's only the controller ports, and as I recall some networked PSX games used those. (I know that's what Technopop did for Zero Tolerance on the Genesis/MD, that limited to 2-player networking though -controller port 2 linked to controller port 2)

It's just a UART - the PSX cable links 2 machines directly, ( and the Jaguar links multiple machines in a ring )

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Look again. The rotation of the enemies are way to smooth. That would require a serious amount of sprites

to do that. I can tell they are voxel ememies as well. You showed a PC game with almost no enemies and

a not suprisingly lame PSX demo with the camera point DOWN onto the landscape, further relaxing the need

for the voxels to be projected and therfore computed more heavily.

 

Get over it...you are just wrong on this one my friend.

 

I dont know - I looked at the game , and the tree's are all forward facing ( billboard sprites ) - and the enemies seem to only have 16 or 32 frames of rotation - seems workable with sprites. It's still the heart of a really good game for the Jaguar though, and the biggest shame is that it ( and Doom, and BattleSphere ) didn't come out early in the life of the machine and generate console sales. ( I remember reading somewhere that 3D0 sold a million units in japan based on the Streetfighter game - That number of sales may have been enough to keep Atari in the market )

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A friend of mine had the Comanche game (I was never a big fan of these games). He had an old Packard Bell 486 he played this on. I think he had a 33MHz 486.

 

It was pretty nice for it time graphics wise. If I remember it was Christmas of 1992 when he got it.

 

Even still you have a built in math co-processor with that PC. You have low color(256) and a low frame rate.

For a 27 MHZ machine, the Jaguar in voxel ability kicks the shit out of the PC and the PSX.

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Look again. The rotation of the enemies are way to smooth. That would require a serious amount of sprites

to do that. I can tell they are voxel ememies as well. You showed a PC game with almost no enemies and

a not suprisingly lame PSX demo with the camera point DOWN onto the landscape, further relaxing the need

for the voxels to be projected and therfore computed more heavily.

 

Get over it...you are just wrong on this one my friend.

 

I dont know - I looked at the game , and the tree's are all forward facing ( billboard sprites ) - and the enemies seem to only have 16 or 32 frames of rotation - seems workable with sprites. It's still the heart of a really good game for the Jaguar though, and the biggest shame is that it ( and Doom, and BattleSphere ) didn't come out early in the life of the machine and generate console sales. ( I remember reading somewhere that 3D0 sold a million units in japan based on the Streetfighter game - That number of sales may have been enough to keep Atari in the market )

 

And neither the PC or the PSX could do this game in the same rez or color mode at a decent frame rate.

Polygons, the PSX wins, but that is what it was designed for and quite frankly a voxel engine looks world

more realistic and much more accurate and you will also notice no artifacting and falsely culled polygon

erros that the PSX is awful for.

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Also in 1992, PC's were 266 MHZ pentiums as the norm.

In 1992, I was looking into buying a PC. I finally bought a Falcon in 1993, but there was no Pentium in 92, only 386 and 486.

The Pentium has been introduced in march, 93 IIRC, and was only 60mhz.

even in 94, Pentium were rally expensive, and mass market was mostly 486DX or 486DX2...

266mhz Pentium MMX, it was something like 1997, 5 years after what you stated, a really big gap in technology.

 

Edit : release dates of Pentium series : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_microprocessors

Yeah, in fact that 1999 game I posted (Outcast) had a mimimum requirement of only a 200 MHz pentium class CPU (300 Mhz recomended, and a 500 Mhz PIII necessary to run at maximum detail at full framerate), that game being all software driven of course. (in spite of popularity of hardware acceleration -which did not cater to the type of rendering used in Outcast -other than the textured polygons)

 

Top of the line for 1992 would have been a 50 MHz 486DX or 66/33 MHz 486DX2, and you're right about the 60 and 66 MHz P1 not being released until 1993. (the 266 MHz Pentium II wasn't released until spring of 1997)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors

 

Gorf must have gotten his wires crossed, it hapens to the best of us. ;)

Not like the 266 MHz was really integral to his overall argument though. (Comanche's Voxel rendering is rather limited compared to PZ or Atari Owl's game) But that's part of the comparison, PC games were all software driven and standard VGA was limited to 256 colors (or only mode 13h on really low end cards with only 64 kB of RAM -single buffered 320x200 8-bit chunky pixel display -and indeed, many games stuck to this mode alone -and I think all offered it) A 66 MHz 486DX is going to be more limited than the Jaguar in any case except extremely inefficent programming and playing to the PC's strengths. (say 256 color flat shaded polygons) And unti the pentium, you're stuck with a 32-bit data bus as well.

 

OK, it is like YCbCr colorspace then. (so kind of like GTIA's 256 color palette, but with 16x the colors and shades ;)) But doing so using values indexed from 24-bit RGB. Hmm, wouldn't any indexed 16-bit palette mode on other platforms (slecting from 24-bit RGB) be ablt to acheive similar? (doesn't the PSX allow 16-bit indexing, or is it stuch with 16-bit RGB to work from? -probably 5-6-5 R-G-B -if not selectable between that and 6-5-5 and 5-5-6) Wait... 65.536 entries for selecting 24-bit values would take 192 kB of color RAM... so not for PSX at least...

Yes , if you look in the jaguar manual it shows how the colours were picked. The PSX was 5.5.5 RGB , ( it also supports 24 bit for movies and displays, but the 3D hardware only draws triangles in 5.5.5RGB )

Huh, I thought the PSX actually supported a full 16-bit color mode, not just 15-bit RGB (at least 5-6-5 RGB should have been supported), maybe that was the saturn, I know the N64 was limited to using 15-bit RGB highcolor. That makes the 32x's and SNES's palettes seem a lot less limited. Could the PSX index directly from teh 24-bit palette when using a 256 color display?

 

Yeah, I think Gorf was talking more in terms of hardware acceleration standards (polygon optimized), with all software rendering it's just a trade-off for what kind of set-up you want to use, any case will require a lot of CPU resourse to back it up -that would go for polygon engines as well of course. (but again, it's all software/CPU driven, basicly controlling a simple bitmapped display -usually 256 colors for the DOS ones)

Voxel's were a good alternative until 3D graphics cards took off - then polygons took over the PC world :) - It's a real pity though that SVGA cards never standardised earlier - as it was possible to get 16 bit colour, just not in a standard way that could be used by games ( as VESA didn't really come in till 94ish )

There were a handful of highcolor dos games, but I'd immagine it was a CPU resourse consideration and not just catering to the lowest common denominator. (I think Tomb Raider supported highcolor, I don't think the demo did though)

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There were a handful of highcolor dos games, but I'd immagine it was a CPU resourse consideration and not just catering to the lowest common denominator. (I think Tomb Raider supported highcolor, I don't think the demo did though)

 

 

If any of you guys TRULY had eyes to see, you'd notice the ugly low rez of the voxels on any of these games

on the Pc or demos on the PSX. you will notice on the Jaguar's PZ and AORPG that the very thin voxel heights

would abosolutely choke the PSX or the PC, even at 266 MHZ. Now, I say to you go look at the very fine detail

of PZ or AORPG and then compare it to the out right low rez blocky colorless nonsense you are trying to compare

it too. They are not even in the same ball park.

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Huh, I thought the PSX actually supported a full 16-bit color mode, not just 15-bit RGB (at least 5-6-5 RGB should have been supported), maybe that was the saturn, I know the N64 was limited to using 15-bit RGB highcolor. That makes the 32x's and SNES's palettes seem a lot less limited. Could the PSX index directly from teh 24-bit palette when using a 256 color display?

It didn't work that way - the PSX didn't have a palette in the same way as VGA ( or even the jaguar ) - it's display was either 16 bit ( 5.5.5 plus stencil bit ) or 24 bit. When drawing textured sprites or polygons to the 16 bit screen the PSX would use another area of video memory as a CLUT to expand 4 or 8 bit textures, but there wasn't any limit to the number of CLUTs - they were just pointers to memory.

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If any of you guys TRULY had eyes to see, you'd notice the ugly low rez of the voxels on any of these games

on the Pc or demos on the PSX. you will notice on the Jaguar's PZ and AORPG that the very thin voxel heights

would abosolutely choke the PSX or the PC, even at 266 MHZ. Now, I say to you go look at the very fine detail

of PZ or AORPG and then compare it to the out right low rez blocky colorless nonsense you are trying to compare

it too. They are not even in the same ball park.

 

PZ doesn't actually seem any higher res than comanche? - The near voxels look blocky in some of the videos, but the mid to far seems to be 320x200 on the PC ( only 256 colours as normal for VGA , but as far as I can tell PZ could be 256 colours as well )

 

Magic carpet was another PC game using voxels, it came out on the PSX as well, but I didn't play it that much.

 

I think once you get to a 266MHz PC you're well into Pentium 2/3 territory, and your PC is likely to have local bus VESA graphics with true colour support. Voxels wont choke at that speed.

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Magic Carpet was suppose to come out for the Jag. Its too bad. Looks like fun.

 

Man there are a lot of tutorials on how to build a voxel engine.

 

http://www.codermind.com/articles/Voxel-terrain-engine-building-the-terrain.html

 

http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm

 

Funny I could never find one anywhere on how to make a regular 3d renderer. Its like its a secret or something.

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There were a handful of highcolor dos games, but I'd immagine it was a CPU resourse consideration and not just catering to the lowest common denominator. (I think Tomb Raider supported highcolor, I don't think the demo did though)

 

 

If any of you guys TRULY had eyes to see, you'd notice the ugly low rez of the voxels on any of these games

on the Pc or demos on the PSX. you will notice on the Jaguar's PZ and AORPG that the very thin voxel heights

would abosolutely choke the PSX or the PC, even at 266 MHZ. Now, I say to you go look at the very fine detail

of PZ or AORPG and then compare it to the out right low rez blocky colorless nonsense you are trying to compare

it too. They are not even in the same ball park.

 

Agh - i was just contemplating going to a blockier voxel width in order to improve speed and colour smoothness.

There's always compromises :(

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I think once you get to a 266MHz PC you're well into Pentium 2/3 territory, and your PC is likely to have local bus VESA graphics with true colour support. Voxels wont choke at that speed.

Right and to my point...sad that it takes a processor with all the latest tech to beat a console one tenth it's clock speed and a few years later to boot.

Edited by Gorf
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Think of CRY mode in the same way as component video - or SVHS , one byte represents the colour (like chroma on SVHS) and one byte represents the brightness ( luma on SVHS )

SVHS is a kind of VCR. You're thinking of S-Video.

 

 

Hi Gorf - i change the CLUT all the time - as far as i can see, CRY colours are always CRY colours, 00 is always blue, FF is always yellow - thats why its CRY=CyanRedintensitY, where one specifiec levels of C,R and Y.

No. The "CR" represents chrominance, and the "Y" represents luminance.* This is why early monitor cables were sometimes referred to as Y/C cables

 

 

Magic carpet was another PC game using voxels

No, it wasn't. Magic Carpet used texture-mapped polygons. Look at the screenshot here. That's clearly not a voxel engine.

 

 

And for the love of god, people--

 

itsits.gif

Edited by ZylonBane
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Nope. From the Jaguar Technical Reference Manual :

Two colour resolutions are supported, 24-bit RGB and our own standard 16-bit CRY (Cyan, Red, Intensity).

I'm not normally one to argue with official manuals, but in this case I'm inclined to believe that whoever wrote that was mistaken. They got the Y = Intensity part correct, but CR standing for Cyan and Red makes no sense in light of how CrY mode actually works.

Edited by ZylonBane
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Nope. From the Jaguar Technical Reference Manual :

Two colour resolutions are supported, 24-bit RGB and our own standard 16-bit CRY (Cyan, Red, Intensity).

I'm not normally one to argue with official manuals, but in this case I'm inclined to believe that whoever wrote that was mistaken. They got the Y = Intensity part correct, but CR standing for Cyan and Red makes no sense in light of how CrY mode actually works.

 

ZB! Im proud of you....you actually posted something of useful substance! Kudos! However,

remember, this is Atari we are talking about. They,ve never really been a bastian of 'normal'

standards. If it makes you feel any better, I don't get it much either. ;)

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The page you linked to contains a mistake : "magenta" should be "cyan".

 

The C and R parts are named that way because if you maximize one color component and minimize the other, you get cyan and red, respectively.

 

Explanation from the development manual :

post-8748-126402281397_thumb.png

Edited by Zerosquare
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The C and R parts are named that way because if you maximize one color component and minimize the other, you get cyan and red, respectively.

Ummm, no. You're only going to get a single color out of any given Cr value.

 

The chroma component of CrY is not like RGB or even the linear colorspace of GTIA. It's a coordinate system into a 2D projection of a color cube, thus each "axis" doesn't represent any particular color.

 

The page you posted also says "the human eye is least able to distinguish shades of green", when in fact the human eye is MOST sensitive to green. So clearly that manual wasn't edited very well.

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Huh, I thought the PSX actually supported a full 16-bit color mode, not just 15-bit RGB (at least 5-6-5 RGB should have been supported), maybe that was the saturn, I know the N64 was limited to using 15-bit RGB highcolor. That makes the 32x's and SNES's palettes seem a lot less limited. Could the PSX index directly from teh 24-bit palette when using a 256 color display?

It didn't work that way - the PSX didn't have a palette in the same way as VGA ( or even the jaguar ) - it's display was either 16 bit ( 5.5.5 plus stencil bit ) or 24 bit. When drawing textured sprites or polygons to the 16 bit screen the PSX would use another area of video memory as a CLUT to expand 4 or 8 bit textures, but there wasn't any limit to the number of CLUTs - they were just pointers to memory.

Oh, so the PSX doesn't even support a 256-color indexed mode? I know the 32x even does that (indexed from 15-bit RGB -enough to make a fiarly smooth transition of VGA games), as does the SNES. (depending on the mode -modes 3, 4, and 7 all use 256 color palettes) The saturn has a 256 color rendering mode as well. (in fact I think that's all VDP1 can do in the high resolution modes)

Or could you just set-up a CLUT for 256 indexed colors for a game rendered using 8-bit pixels? (couldn't it do an 8-bit bitmapped display?) It would only take 768 bytes for 256 24-bit indexed color values.

 

And does the Jag's CRY mode use normal 3-3-2 RGB for the base 256 color values? (or 3-2-3 maybe, you did mention they made the odd choice of underemphesizing green, right? -when it's otherwise considered the most sensitive color to the human eye)

 

I think once you get to a 266MHz PC you're well into Pentium 2/3 territory, and your PC is likely to have local bus VESA graphics with true colour support. Voxels wont choke at that speed.

Right and to my point...sad that it takes a processor with all the latest tech to beat a console one tenth it's clock speed and a few years later to boot.

Yeah, but that's all software rendering and a simple SVGA card. Hardware acceleration didn't even take off for consumer PCs until 1996, and it's been pretty much always optimized for polygon+texture+shading, hence why Outcast had to rely on software rendering alone for the flexibility necessary.

Edited by kool kitty89
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