Japanese Saturn doom vs USA Saturn doom

[Demonicus666]

Is it true that the Japanese Saturn doom plays faster fps on a Japanese sega saturn system ? As opposed to a USA doom Saturn game ? Also are there any other non USA doom games that are good ?

[Shadow Hog]

One of these days I should buy the US copy of Doom on the Saturn and try to find out definitively. I already have the Japanese copy.

That said, not feeling especially compelled to do so.

[Waffenak]

I heard they tweaked it a little bit to make it run smoother. The change is not as dramatic as some people say

[Quasar]

It's been repeated enough times by enough people to think it should be true. Of course, a lot of things which meet those criteria turn out not to be true at all :P

[Shadow Hog]

Waffenak said:

I heard they tweaked it a little bit to make it run smoother. The change is not as dramatic as some people say

Yeah, if you're expecting the game to suddenly run as well as the PC version did, temper your expectations. It's still a very low-framerate affair.

Speaking of Saturn games, I know this is largely off-topic, but it seems like as good a place as any to bring it up: I've been trying the Saturn port of Quake out. It's okay, and it's certainly fascinating to see what changes have been made to the stages and game design. For instance, health packs give you 5 more HP than the PC versions did. There's no "Hard" mode; the initial selection in the START map only has "Normal" dead ahead and "Easy" off to the right of it, despite "Nightmare" being hidden in the usual place by Episode 4's entrance. "Easy" gives you a green armor at the start of every level, which is helpful in some situations but annoying if it overrides a yellow or red armor that wasn't quite worn out. I think it's much easier to stunlock Ogres with the Nailgun. On the flipside, I swear the double-barreled shotgun is weaker than it normally is; Knights take 3 shots instead of 2, for instance.

There's just one big problem I have: it controls kinda awkwardly. The default, Doom-like control scheme requires you to stand still to look up/down, which is kind of awkward in a game demanding quick reaction times like Quake does. The secret control scheme that uses the analog pad to aim is totally unconfigurable, doesn't let you look all the way up/down (an issue if you're standing directly on top of an enemy - the normal control scheme doesn't have this limitation, oddly enough), has inverted vertical aiming that springs back in place if you're not holding the analog pad in that direction, and puts shooting on the left trigger when every console since Halo has trained my brain to expect it on the right. Swimming controls are rather awkward, as well; gonna take a lot of getting used to. No save-anywhere to allow me to mess up, either, but that's kind of expected for a 32-bit FPS.

Still rather impressive that they got it on there, though, and that the resulting port runs better than Doom did. I suppose that's the power of designing the port from the ground up for the console instead of making it a port of a PS1 port of a Jaguar port of the DOS original.

[Fuzzball]

Not as bad as Sonic Adventure DX Dreamcast edition on PC...

Dreamcast > Gamecube > PC > Xbox 360/PS3 then back to PC on Steam again :I

[Jayextee]

In retrospect, I think Saturn Quake was a stunning achievement. I mean, the console had many issues with its approach to 3D (which is, as far as I gather, dragging square sprites around like quads -- which lacks polygonal-rendering tools such as clipping) but Lobotomy had already coded a Quake-lite-alike engine with Exhumed (which I've played through recently, fucking stunning game).

However, this this in mind I was wondering about Saturn Doom -- now, it was based on the PlayStation's version very closely wasn't it? I understand this being the reason for it running so slowly. What I was wondering is, there any feasible reason an engine closer the PC version's wouldn't run better? After all, (a) it is also faked-3D using distorted 2D surface and (b) Saturn Hexen ran at a playable enough frame-rate and was better in this respect than the PlayStation port.

I only have a limited understanding of all things involved, just curious is all. What I do know is that tiling surfaces are a no-no using the Saturn's 'sprites as quads' rendering -- any repetition of a texture (either horizontally or vertically) has to be essentially a new quad. I would expect similar reductions in height to those made on the PS1 version, but also 'breaking' up some of the larger walls, for example, the outer part of The Factory.

[DaniJ]

The Saturn hardware draws with quadrilaterals. Texture tiling is indeed supported, in hardware. Its the lack of triangles which made Saturn ports so difficult because pretty much every other significant 3D hardware of the day used triangles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn#Quadrilaterals

[obake]

Demonicus666 said:

Is it true that the jap Saturn doom plays faster fps on a jap sega saturn system ? As opposed to a USA doom Saturn game ? Also are there any other non USA doom games that are good ?

Make sure to spell out the word Japanese fully. The way you have it written is a racial slur in certain countries.

As far as your question, I have only played US ports of Doom.

[Maes]

Jayextee said:

What I was wondering is, there any feasible reason an engine closer the PC version's wouldn't run better?

Plain old lack of computrons: a single SH-2 CPU has about 25 MIPS -as much as a 486DX @ 25MHz. Furthermore, a little-realized fact is that the Saturn uses exactly the same CPU configuration as -gasp- the Sega 32X: 2x SH-2 CPUs @25MHz (23MHz on the 32X).

So, if you made a plain software-rendered port of Doom based on the 32X one (assuming that the latter was indeed as optimized as possible), without using ANY possible acceleration shortcuts like hardware sprites or quadrilaterals, it probably wouldn't run any better.

Also, barely enough RAM, even if significantly better than the 32X (which however also had ROM storage): 1 MB fast SDRAM and 1 MB slow DRAM. However, some more RAM storage could be snatched from the dedicated Video and Audio RAM, so perhaps it would get reasonably close to the "magic" 4 MB number. The Z_Malloc subsystem would need to be super-intelligent to handle 4-5 different types of RAM, though ;-)

On PC, the game kinda chugs along with 40+ MIPS CPUs (496DX@40MHz and 4 MB of RAM (the bare minimum), so again, it would need severe downsizing and compromises to work smoothly on lesser hardware like the Saturn's, if treated as a pure CPU + RAM affair.

[ShaneAmp]

i have tried both, they badically sped up weapons speed. it still gives me a headache to play, so the fram rate cant be much better.. i think they figured giving you the faster weapons would make up for the gameplay!