What was Sega's plan with the Saturn?

Lots of prayer.

Originally the Saturn was supposed to be the 2D machine to end all 2D machines.

Then the PlayStation came along and Sega shit its pants.

>>3615012
whats up fag what gives i got that fuck back in the day day one that means on the saturn kapishe,my pcfriendo was so jelly u have have seen him go schleichfahrt

>>3615018
And instead of designing new components, they used a second 2D graphics chip. Theoretically it was more powerful than its competition, but it was more difficult to develop on than Nintendo 64.

>>3615038
>Theoretically it was more powerful than its competition

Not for arbitrarily rotated 3D. Not even theoretically.

>>3615012
to make a console for the japanese and no other market

>>3615012
>half-assed screen cap from that awful retro shitshow

Diary, today OP was a faggot.

>>3615152
Awful how?
I know you won't reply back with anything other than ad hominem but would really like to know what makes it awful in your opinion.

>>3615012
Despite being the target platform for the game, the Western Saturn version of Tomb Raider is widely considered to be the weakest of the three ports, primarily due to not being optimized for the way the Saturn hardware handles 3D graphics. There are also minor differences to level layouts (specifically some secret areas) because the Saturn version was rushed to launch three months before the PlayStation copy.

The Saturn Tomb Raider runs faster than its PlayStation counterpart in some situations, but while the PlayStation targets and largely maintains a 30FPS refresh rate, the Saturn struggles to make 20FPS. However, the Western Saturn version's graphics are simpler (particularly when it comes to lighting - it lacks reflections on the save crystals as well as alpha transparency), and the game is unusually dark in comparison. On a technical level, VDP2 is rarely used in the game, with the majority of work being handled by VDP1.

>>3615012
>What was Sega's plan with the Saturn?

To downscale their arcade System 32 into a console, so it can compete with the upcoming SNES-CD. It would've been powerful enough to run scaled down Model 1 ports, and can do near perfect ports of all their hit arcade Super Scaler titles while allowing for porting of Megadrive titles.

Then the SNES-CD never came, and the Playstation screwed up their timetable entirely with its aggressive focus on 3d.

>>3615038
>And instead of designing new components, they used a second 2D graphics chip.

It always had two graphics chips.

What it originally had was a NEC V60 main cpu, with a DSP in there to accelerate 3d transforms. They changed the V60 to two Hitachi SH2s, and bolted on another mbyte of RAM to a spare 16-bit bus.

The design was ridiculously complex but it allowed for ports of every game Sega had at the time, as well as everything that was popular on the SNES at the time. Those were most likely the two major factors in the capabilities of the system.

And performance wise, it's only real issue was the VDP1 being a fourth as powerful as the PSX GPU.

>>3615012
he Japanese Saturn version, released in 1997, was enhanced by Victor Soft, with more detailed environments, higher texture quality, longer draw distance, and improved water effects. This version also has a higher resolution and frame rate than the Western Saturn and PlayStation versions, and the environments were more detailed than the Western Saturn, PlayStation and PC versions. This version was optimized to take advantage of the way the Saturn handles 3D graphics.

>>3615163
>>3615165
The Japanese version of Tomb Raider doesn't look any better, nor has a higher framerate than the Western version. This was proven in the Digital Foundry Retro video.

It's nothing but an old myth, like Japanese Saturn Doom being better than the Western version even though it's virtually identical.

Furthermore, it would virtually be impossible to make substantial use of VDP2 in a complex 3D game like Tomb Raider.

>>3615164
> it's only real issue was the VDP1 being a fourth as powerful as the PSX GPU.

That's a pretty bloody big issue, though.

>>3615170
>it would virtually be impossible to make substantial use of VDP2 in a complex 3D game like Tomb Raider.

They could use backgrounds for fogging like Sonic R. Even if they just fade to blackness, it is at least done in hardware, instead of manipulating the luminosity of each polygon entirely in software or through VDP1 shading (whichever the game uses).

Also, weren't all the water surfaces completely flat? They could've rendered that as a VDP2 plane, similar to how Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Grandia did. It wouldn't be too much faster, but you could make the water surface transparent and have more detailed textures. This could also be done with the occasional huge flat surfaces as well.

None of these would help significantly, but they'd help a little, perhaps enough to get a more stable framerate.

>>3615170
>That's a pretty bloody big issue, though.

Wasn't an issue in 1993 when the system was designed. Sony blindsinded them, but then they did that to the entire console industry.

>>3615192
>Also, weren't all the water surfaces completely flat? They could've rendered that as a VDP2 plane

Yeah, but here's the problem with using VDP2 in an arbitrarily rotated 3D game. There's a very strict background limit. It would be a nightmare having to design the game in such a way that you don't end up in a situation where an excess of VDP2's backgrounds get used up at once. Otherwise you'd have things like disappearing water.

Unless of course there's a scene test applied where VDP1 can "fill in" for VDP2 when the latter exceeds its limits. But that might be a pretty complex system to set up. Nevertheless, as you say, the benefits would be pretty small anyway.

>>3615163
The Saturn version isn't the "target platform". It was always intended to be a PS game until Sega cut a deal with Core to have it out before the PS, leading to that version being rushed to market.

>>3615195
Both chips would have been designed at roughly the same time. VDP1 is still pretty mediocre for sprites - for example, translucency is ridiculously slow.

VDP1 just wasn't an "A-quality engineered" chip. I think that Sega's R&D team, though they had performed very competently up to that point, had simply chewed off more than they could handle.

Even Sony, when developing the PS1's GPU, paid large amounts of money for consultation with SGI to help design the chip. Sega needed to do something like that too, but I think it was just arrogance.

>>3615156
They showcase the weaknesses of his favorite consoles - PS4 and PS4 Pro.

Not in this video of course, but in general they do a lot of testing of new games and showcase how subpar the versions for Sony's consoles are.

All those truths are like kryptonite to Sony fans.

>>3615198
>The Saturn version isn't the "target platform". It was always intended to be a PS game until Sega cut a deal with Core to have it out before the PS, leading to that version being rushed to market.

Wrong, they developed the game with quads in mind. The early dev tools even only handled quads. It wasn't until later on that they added triangle support with one of the sequels.

>>3615205
VDP1 was a sprite pusher that came from an arcade environment, where the lack of efficiency was offset by the significantly higher amount and speed of memory, as cost was not an issue.

It simply did not scale down in size to a low-cost solution, it lost too much of its performance.

>Even Sony, when developing the PS1's GPU, paid large amounts of money for consultation with SGI to help design the chip.

I think that was for designing the triangle rendering, not actual chip design?

>>3615224
>I think that was for designing the triangle rendering, not actual chip design?

Yeah, it would have been for the rasterizer and texturing units. Sony of course had plenty of experience on the fundamentals of chip design.

Sega should consulted with the people that designed Model 2's graphics.

>>3615012
Plan? Wipe away all the cruft they had accumulated with the Genesis and bring arcade hardware they were familiar with to a home console.

Inside industry rumour of the PSX threw a massive spanner in the works.

>>3615210
Wrong, you dumb faggot. There's plenty of interviews out there where Core discuss how it was intended as a PS game first.

>Sega accelerated the popularity of 3D with its arcade games
>decide to focus on making another 2D system

What were they thinking?

>>3615661
The Saturn came out just before 3d technology got cheap enough for consoles in 1994. There 3d tech in virtua fighter cost a ton. yu suzuki told them to go with 3d. SOJ didnt want to be patient and negotiate with any baka gaijins for cheaper 3d options.

>>3615661
>Sega accelerated the popularity of 3D with its arcade games

Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter were both surprise hits. Also, they used hardware so extremely expensive that they would rightfully think that home consoles were not up to snuff for creating anything but very basic crap looking 3d.

That, and literally all of their library consisted of 2d games so far.

I suppose it was also a question of pride, that they wanted to continue using their in-house technology.

the video is intentionally misleading because it doesn't show any of the MANY areas of the PS1 version that gets big framerate drops

the stable 30 FPS is 100% a fucking lie

>>3616569
dont worry pham, it's a show that panders to the neofag crowd the redpilled know it's full of shit,

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21KB, 338x400px

>>3616569

>>3615012

Crazy 2D.

Then they realized that 3D would be a problem.

>>3616569
I haven't seen a single "technical comparison" not being biaised as fuck or not done by someone who actually knew what he was talking about.

File: Crash Bandicoot.png (1MB, 1046x702px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1046x702px

Why is it that the Saturn never got these weird flickering holes in geometry, when the PS1 was plagued with them?

Did the Saturn use higher precision arithmetic?

>>3615038
Theoretically is nonsense.

>>3617712
Playstation had hardware to do T&L and perhaps it fucked up here and there.

Saturn did that in software, which is in theory more flexible and not prone to bugs in the hardware (and of course also slower).

>>3615012
Crashing their brand with no survivors

>>3616569
This.

TR1 on the PS is 30 in corridors but as soon as the terrain opens up and you start turning the camera to look around it gets choppy.

>>3615012
Simple. The Saturn was designed to be great at 2D spritework since Sega predicted that it would be the focus next gen. Then halfway through they realized that people were excited for the 3D of the PSX and tried to force it to run 3D games.