Not sure if anyone has seen this before. Yesterday I was browsing around for some new Saturn Development stuff (as things tend to pop up randomly) and I found this page:
http://cowboyprogramming.com/2010/06...e-sega-saturn/
It contains notes from Mick West of then Neversoft about programming Skeleton Warriors for the Sega Saturn using the PSY-Q Development system. I found it to be an interesting read as it even has some code snippets.
Wow, thanks for that, a really nice insight into the life of a developer living with a Saturn dev kit.Originally Posted by Edge-`
Thanks. This type of thing is really cool to me. For the Saturn specifically, a majority of the SDKs and documentation can be found floating around. The developer's experience, history and how they actually used it is what I find to be very intriguing. Though unlikely, I'd love to see more source from some of the commercially developed games for the Saturn. Most certainly more developer accounts would be insightful!
"Currently we only use the Master SH2, the slave SH2 will be used when we get around to figuring out how."
I wonder at the percentage of the Saturn's catalogue for which this is true.
I remember a topic about this at SegaXtreme. You could find out yourself by using SSF:
Source: http://segaxtreme.net/community/topi...mercial-games/... if you enable the cpu register tables in SSF (showregister=1 in ssf.ini, I think), you can see a bit more info. Also, you can determine which cpu is active by the five 0-1 numbers in the title bar. They represent the cpus in the saturn, in this order: Main SH2, Slave SH2, 68k, SCU DSP, SCSP DSP. 0 is inactive, 1 is active.
Oh, that's so cool!
I still have to play this game, though. =/
Jesus... the code is terrible
Yaul: An awesome open source SEGA Saturn software development kit
It's true for most of them that didn't use some SEGA library that automatically did that for them. Even the games that used both SH2, they used the slave sh2 for some ridiculously minimal task.
Bug, X-men COTA and Alien Trilogy are confirmed to use only one SH2.
And most games didn't even touch the SCU DSP. I should make a list, I've only seen around a dozen or so titles that did.
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How about Zero Divide? they seem to make a big deal of of using the Saturn by actually writing SH-2 on the games cover.
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Seems to use both SH2s and the SCU DSP.
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A lot of Probe's conversions were single-processor efforts, or at least two are for definite. Alien Trilogy is often mentioned as an example of a game using just one of the Saturn's VDPs, plus I seem to recall a former programmer with the same team confirming that Die Hard Trilogy was similarly a one-chip game. I've often suspected that Mortal Kombat II was ported directly from the 32X code, but I'm not sure if it's another guilty title. One thing I do know about this one is that it only uses roughly 20MB, which is terrible when you consider all that leftover space could have been allocated to CD quality music tracks.
On the other hand, later in-house Sega productions including Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force III (or was Camelot a third party by 1998?) made full use of the SCU DSP. Actually, I once read the latter employs the audio processor to help stream data faster between map and fight sections, which at least would explain a lot of the problems with sound dropout that regularly happens. There's also a rumour that AM2 was experimenting with the DSP to render basic polygonal data for the backgrounds in its unreleased Saturn version of Virtua Fighter 3... but that's a proverbial can of worms you certainly don't want me of all people to open in a hurry!
One SH2, not one VDP. Using one VDP only would require a complexity of, say, Virtua Fighter CG Collection. I'm sure we all agree that Alien Trilogy was a tiny bit more advanced than that.Alien Trilogy is often mentioned as an example of a game using just one of the Saturn's VDPs
Actually, if the midi conversions weren't half assed, the game could've pulled off 1:1 copies of the arcade tunes, which were also pcm synth based. Of course CD Audio would've been better than that, and that way maybe they could've fit more Shao Kahn voices in there. 20MB is just about right for MK2, if they didn't have to dummy some data, it could've been less (the arcade game used around that much too).I've often suspected that Mortal Kombat II was ported directly from the 32X code, but I'm not sure if it's another guilty title. One thing I do know about this one is that it only uses roughly 20MB, which is terrible when you consider all that leftover space could have been allocated to CD quality music tracks.
It being a copy of the 32x code is possible, but it's just as possible that they used the codebase of the Playstation version.
Out of those, only Shining Force uses the SCU DSP, and only at the 3d battle scenes. Don't get your hopes up for any game that uses it though, the scu dsp being active doesn't mean anything, they could be using it for something extremely stupid. Pandemonium, for example, uses it as a timer (!!!), Grandia uses it to stretch low-res videos to high-resolution (why would anyone do that??), etc.On the other hand, later in-house Sega productions including Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force III (or was Camelot a third party by 1998?) made full use of the SCU DSP.
The same is true for using the slave SH2 as well.
I've yet to see any proof that any game uses the 68k for anything but sound. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I've yet to see any proof that wasn't just "I read something somewhere". 99.9% of the Saturn games use a Sega provided library to play back music (VF2 and VF Kids being the only exceptions I've encountered), and uploading custom code to the 68k in a way so it runs parallel to the Sega library, that seems like a waste of resources to me. Utilizing the slave SH2 sounds so much simpler in comparison.Actually, I once read the latter employs the audio processor to help stream data faster between map and fight sections, which at least would explain a lot of the problems with sound dropout that regularly happens.
The sound dropouts in SF3 could be something as simple as battle voices being loaded from the disc...
Rumors are rumors, but what we know for sure is that VF1/Remix used the SCU DSP, and then VF2, Kids, Vipers, and Megamix (and even Digital Dance Mix), did not. There's a trend there.There's also a rumour that AM2 was experimenting with the DSP to render basic polygonal data for the backgrounds in its unreleased Saturn version of Virtua Fighter 3... but that's a proverbial can of worms you certainly don't want me of all people to open in a hurry!
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Druid II, thanks as always for your insightful responses (not to mention clearly superior technical knowledge)... and yes, I did mean that Alien Trilogy uses just one of the SH-2s as opposed to the VDPs - that's what you get for not proof reading your own rants in advance of posting them! On the subject of Shining Force III employing the sound chip to help with streaming data between sections, this was briefly covered in an interview with a former programmer at Camelot Software Planning. I forget the exact source of this information, but it was definitely confirmed as being the cause of the many audio problems the game is known to have.
As for the rumours about Virtua Fighter 3, I do agree that it seems odd AM2 would change from its planned course of then-recent titles not using the SCU DSP. Then again, apart from Digital Dance Mix and the backgrounds of its fighting games, AM2 was also turning its back on displaying its software in the Saturn's high resolution mode so that more features such as real time lighting and Gouraud shading could be enabled instead. There's a possibility VF3 may have seen a combination of these directions, though of course any further discussion of this would be purely conjecture on my part so I'll refrain from heading down that route for now. On the other hand, would anyone who has seen the various late-era Saturn tech demos care to provide their more educated observations and opinions?
Resolution reduction is fairly normal. Decathlete run in higher resolution than its sequel Winter Heat, which had more details instead. Vipers had more calculations to do cause of the walls, dynamic light sources, and much more complex character models (armors breakable armors), so it was forced to reduce the resolution so either the cpu or the vdp1 fillrate could keep up.
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