Tomb Raider on 3DO - an alpha preview

[awbacon]

 

Never thought I'd see the day something like this happened...but then again it's really been a year of firsts in gaming so!

 

2 weeks of active development and its running really solidly too!

[Rick Dangerous]

This is sweet!  Hope he finishes it but probably will lose interest before then, but if he does, i'd snap it up in a hot second.

 

Cool just to see it run though, and makes you wonder what else it could run on (CDi, Jaguar) 

[Wesker]

There was already this topic. Maybe this could be merged with that one?

 

Even though the original YouTube videos I posted seem to have been deleted as of now, but the Instagram links which also have some footage are still active.

[Punisher5.0]

Impressive stuff! 

 

What could have been...

[sd32]

On 10/29/2021 at 6:46 AM, Rick Dangerous said:

This is sweet!  Hope he finishes it but probably will lose interest before then, but if he does, i'd snap it up in a hot second.

 

Cool just to see it run though, and makes you wonder what else it could run on (CDi, Jaguar) 

CDi is a no... I guess you haven’t seen it’s specs or it’s games... or maybe you confused it with other console?

[Rick Dangerous]

With the RAM pack i bet it would be possible.

 

Have you played Burn Cycle or Chaos Control?  They are certainly on par graphically with a lot of early PS1 offerings just like the better 3DO titles. 

 

Philips CD-I - Chaos Control (1995) - YouTube

 

[Longplay] Burn:Cycle (CDi) - YouTube

[prog99]

1 hour ago, Rick Dangerous said:

With the RAM pack i bet it would be possible.

 

Have you played Burn Cycle or Chaos Control?  They are certainly on par graphically with a lot of early PS1 offerings just like the better 3DO titles. 

 

Philips CD-I - Chaos Control (1995) - YouTube

 

[Longplay] Burn:Cycle (CDi) - YouTube

Those look like its streaming pre-rendered levels, videos etc

[sd32]

1 hour ago, Rick Dangerous said:

With the RAM pack i bet it would be possible.

 

Have you played Burn Cycle or Chaos Control?  They are certainly on par graphically with a lot of early PS1 offerings just like the better 3DO titles. 

 

Philips CD-I - Chaos Control (1995) - YouTube

 

[Longplay] Burn:Cycle (CDi) - YouTube

Yep, played most of its games. Those are just FMV titles. The system works mostly with CPU grunt... no hardware support for sprites, background layers, polygons, nothing. It has a hard time keeping up with the Genesis... only thing going for it is it’s huge color pallet and the FMV card that you mention

[Silanda]

10 hours ago, prog99 said:

Those look like its streaming pre-rendered levels, videos etc

Yes, and at least one of those required the MPEG video card.

[Djmicklovin]

I played this game on the Saturn, framerate and textures were not as smooth as the Playstation version. The game actually had to be remade specifically for the Saturn because it used quadrilaterals instead of triangles for 3D rendering. The 3DO version looks closer to the PS1 version.

[sd32]

1 hour ago, Djmicklovin said:

I played this game on the Saturn, framerate and textures were not as smooth as the Playstation version. The game actually had to be remade specifically for the Saturn because it used quadrilaterals instead of triangles for 3D rendering. The 3DO version looks closer to the PS1 version.

3DO works with quads like the Saturn

[sd32]

 

[Bill Loguidice]

On 10/29/2021 at 9:46 AM, Rick Dangerous said:

This is sweet!  Hope he finishes it but probably will lose interest before then, but if he does, i'd snap it up in a hot second.

 

Cool just to see it run though, and makes you wonder what else it could run on (CDi, Jaguar) 

I don't think the CD-i even with the DV cart could remotely handle it as it has no applicable 3D hardware capabilities and the processor wouldn't be sufficient for a software renderer. I feel like the Jaguar would also fail because of all of the textures. The 3DO is probably the earliest such system that could handle an actually playable version because it can handle more polygons and more textured mapped polygons than a system like the Jaguar, as well as has fewer memory bottlenecks. With that said, this is finally the definitive throwing down of the gauntlet for Jaguar "untapped potential" proponents to finally show us if it can be done. There's clearly a path to at least put together a technical demo for those with the talent.

 

All of that aside, I'm extremely impressed with how the 3DO version is looking, especially this early on. I really didn't expect it to look that competitive with the PS1 and Saturn versions. Even if it's a bit sluggish framerate-wise, it still seems like with some additional optimizations it would be pretty playable.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Bill Loguidice

[Wing_Commander]

On 10/31/2021 at 9:15 AM, Punisher5.0 said:

Impressive stuff! 

 

What could have been...

What now shall become!  

[Wing_Commander]

On 11/14/2021 at 9:00 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

I don't think the CD-i even with the DV cart could remotely handle it as it has no applicable 3D hardware capabilities and the processor wouldn't be sufficient for a software renderer. I feel like the Jaguar would also fail because of all of the textures. The 3DO is probably the earliest such system that could handle an actually playable version because it can handle more polygons and more textured mapped polygons than a system like the Jaguar, as well as has fewer memory bottlenecks. With that said, this is finally the definitive throwing down of the gauntlet for Jaguar "untapped potential" proponents to finally show us if it can be done. There's clearly a path to at least put together a technical demo for those with the talent.

 

All of that aside, I'm extremely impressed with how the 3DO version is looking, especially this early on. I really didn't expect it to look that competitive with the PS1 and Saturn versions. Even if it's a bit sluggish framerate-wise, it still seems like with some additional optimizations it would be pretty playable.

I am pretty excited about this myself.. From what I gather they are doing this via quads , and I think if they reduce the draw distance just a tad, they could give themselves a little more performance headroom .. This is right up there with getting a decent copy of DOOM... Both projects should, IMO, start a crowed funding campaign. 

[Sir Guntz]

Yeah I'd love to see a new port of Doom to the 3DO as well.

[JagChris]

This uses polygons and runs better than even Optidoom. In only a couple months time.