Paprium's overlapping parallax layers. . . .

[Kirk_Johnston]

There's usually two fully overlapping background layers in most levels, which is the max the Genesis can do via background planes, so, with stuff like the energy bars and Press Start at the top of the screen, can someone confirm if this is all being done with sprites then?

 

It's all very effective, so I'm just wondering how it's achieved.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[ColecoGamer]

While I can’t verify this, I believe the processor inside the Paprium cartridge allows the game to produce additional layers of parallaxing, etc.

[Kirk_Johnston]

On 10/1/2022 at 1:05 AM, ColecoGamer said:

While I can’t verify this, I believe the processor inside the Paprium cartridge allows the game to produce additional layers of parallaxing, etc.

Can anyone else verify if this is the case, along with answering my original question too if that's a different answer?

Edited October 2, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Chilly Willy]

It's not so much additional layers as the Genesis VDP has what it has, and you'd need something like the 32X to add more to the graphics. What it IS is having the horsepower to brute force changing the graphics on the fly so that the layers the Genesis has appear to be more than they are. Like, you take two backgrounds that use the same palette and merge them together with some logic using the ARM processor on the cart, then upload that as a single layer to the Genesis. Or maybe you're merging three layers to one... or whatever you need and have the power to do. The game probably spends almost every available cycle DMAing to VRAM, but the game is running on the ARM processor, so who cares? That's how some Atari 2600 carts work, and the results speak for themselves. 😎

[ColecoGamer]

17 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Can anyone else verify if this is the case, along with answering my original question too if that's a different answer?

I found the answer on Watermelon’s website:

 

What is the DATENMEISTER?
PAPRIUM is the second game, after VIRTUA RACING, to boast its own "acceleration" chip. This chip, DT128M16VA1LT aka "DATENMEISTER", was developed in-house by WM, is used by PAPRIUM primary as a audio chip and adds extra audio channels for both music and SFX. We used a back-door left by SEGA and rest assured: This is not some lame MP3 or WAV player, this is live digital audio in same fashion as the highest-end arcade machines of the 90's

 

Link: https://www.magicalgamefactory.com/en/factory/paprium_2/faq/

[ColecoGamer]

So I guess the chip is more for ‘sound’ data than graphics. Apparently everything seen in Paprium is being done by the Genesis/Megadrive.

 

Quite impressive!

Edited October 3, 2022 by ColecoGamer

[ColecoGamer]

17 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Can anyone else verify if this is the case, along with answering my original question too if that's a different answer?

I believe @Chilly Willy’s answer is the right one.

[Kirk_Johnston]

So, it's basically like say Virtua Racing on Genesis or Star Fox on SNES then, where additonal chips in the cart are adding functionality beyond the core console's specs, which would be impossible on the system otherwise, and doing much of the heavy lifting?

 

A little disappointed personally, as I was under the impression this was all pure Genesis. But, hey, it's a real commercial game for the system, and it's one of the most graphically and technically impressive, so it's legit.

 

I'm kinda curious now though as to just how much it's adding beyond the core system's capabilities, and in what areas specifically.

Edited October 3, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Chilly Willy]

16 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

PAPRIUM is the second game, after VIRTUA RACING, to boast its own "acceleration" chip. This chip, DT128M16VA1LT aka "DATENMEISTER", was developed in-house by WM, is used by PAPRIUM primary as a audio chip and adds extra audio channels for both music and SFX. We used a back-door left by SEGA and rest assured: This is not some lame MP3 or WAV player, this is live digital audio in same fashion as the highest-end arcade machines of the 90's

 

The Genesis has left and right audio input lines on the cart port. They are used for the 32X audio on the 32X, so you could easily use them for music and sound on a game cart. Example - one of the Yamaha FM chips has four FM channels and five ADPCM channels. You could stick that on a cart and feed the DAC outputs to the cart lines to mix with the Genesis audio. Combined with the internal Yamaha chip, this gives you ten channels of FM and five PCM - plenty for kick-ass music and sounds. So the above quote seems to indicate that at least part of what the Paprium cart does is extra sound for the game. That's relatively simple for a custom part on a Genesis cart. Honestly, if all it added was PCM channels for better digital sound, that would leave a lot more horsepower on the Genesis to do more graphically. Trying to do GOOD PCM on the Genesis with the Z80 and one DAC inside the YM2612 is a pain that consumes more effort than almost anything else, and still sounds not that great. It's one reason why the SCD came with a PCM chip with eight channels and 64KB of sound ram in addition to CDDA.

 

That it says "primarily" means that is has some secondary uses as well. Maybe it's used to decompress tiles on the fly for DMA to VRAM for extra animations for characters and backgrounds. That could make things easier for more detailed backgrounds. Instead of storing all frames of animated tiles in VRAM, you store one frame and reload those tiles on the fly from the cart which decompresses them on the fly. SNES had some accelerator chips that did similar tasks.

 

[ColecoGamer]

8 hours ago, Chilly Willy said:

 

The Genesis has left and right audio input lines on the cart port. They are used for the 32X audio on the 32X, so you could easily use them for music and sound on a game cart. Example - one of the Yamaha FM chips has four FM channels and five ADPCM channels. You could stick that on a cart and feed the DAC outputs to the cart lines to mix with the Genesis audio. Combined with the internal Yamaha chip, this gives you ten channels of FM and five PCM - plenty for kick-ass music and sounds. So the above quote seems to indicate that at least part of what the Paprium cart does is extra sound for the game. That's relatively simple for a custom part on a Genesis cart. Honestly, if all it added was PCM channels for better digital sound, that would leave a lot more horsepower on the Genesis to do more graphically. Trying to do GOOD PCM on the Genesis with the Z80 and one DAC inside the YM2612 is a pain that consumes more effort than almost anything else, and still sounds not that great. It's one reason why the SCD came with a PCM chip with eight channels and 64KB of sound ram in addition to CDDA.

 

That it says "primarily" means that is has some secondary uses as well. Maybe it's used to decompress tiles on the fly for DMA to VRAM for extra animations for characters and backgrounds. That could make things easier for more detailed backgrounds. Instead of storing all frames of animated tiles in VRAM, you store one frame and reload those tiles on the fly from the cart which decompresses them on the fly. SNES had some accelerator chips that did similar tasks.

 

I would imagine their DATENMEISTER chip provides some kind of processing power for Paprium beyond sound, but again, I can’t prove it. I remember reading somewhere that it does, but I can’t remember what the source was that I read.

Edited October 4, 2022 by ColecoGamer

[ColecoGamer]

Maybe this conversation over at Sega 16-bit will answer your question?

 

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?35377-Paprium-The-Official-Thread-Mk-2/page437

 

”If the coprocessor wasn't there, taking care of the sound and possibly data decompression, do you think that a beat'em up with so many big sprites and animations could run at 60 fps? No game on the Mega Drive looks that close to Neo Geo quality... And still it's not the same kind of coprocessor as the SVP, but just one freeing a bit more of the 68000's processing power. So still very much a Mega Drive game. I decided to be patient with this release, because it's great to see what my console can do with just a little nudge.”

Edited October 4, 2022 by ColecoGamer
Added content to post.