Sega Virtua Processor Research

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Ralakimus
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Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by Ralakimus » Sat Feb 04, 2017 1:25 am

For the past few months, I've been digging through Virtua Racing to see how the Sega Virtua Processor works and how I could implement it into other ROMs. Reading this document: http://notaz.gp2x.de/docs/svpdoc.txt helped me understand how the DSP that the SVP runs on works. Reading that should help you understand some of the terms I'm about the use.

I have gathered the following info:

* You can set an address in DRAM that the generated tile data will be written to. You do this by taking the low word of the address in DRAM (let's say for example, $306000, we then get $6000), and then dividing by 2, because of how the DSP handles data and what not. (Going back to our example, $6000 then becomes $3000). This allows you to have multiple buffers that tile data can be dumped to.

* The way that the SVP runs is that it take commands sent from the 68000. So far, I've gotten to know commands 2, 5, and 6's functionality. Commands 5 and 6 are both commands that generate and dump tile data, but they have major differences.

* Command 5 seems to be made specifically for the SEGA screen in Virtua Racing. You can load models, but they can only really be rotated on 1 axis and you write to a variable that basically makes the models do the rest of the movement found in the SEGA screen. You basically have very limited movement of the models, and there is no camera object, either.

* Command 6 allows for models to be loaded and have more free movement. You can set its position and angle, and you also have a camera and have a world model be loaded, too. It also seems you can input sprites and allow them to be rotated and moved in a 3D space, but I haven't gotten to making that work yet.

* There are these 2 variables, in which I believe that their purpose is for timing. I do know that it's used by commands 2, 5, and 6. One of those variables is to be set to a nonzero value by the 68000 before issuing a command. Once the command has run, this value is checked to be nonzero and if it is, then it sets another variable to be a nonzero value, in which the 68000 can check and reset. So basically, you can set the 1st variable and then issue a command to generate and dump tile data. The 68000 can then constantly wait for the 2nd variable to be set, and once it has been set to indicate the command is finished, then the 68000 can then transfer the dumped data to VRAM, without timing issues.

EDIT: Pretty much every command uses these variables and is required for the commands to run.

* Command 2 only seems to do the timing thing. It only checks for the first variable mentioned earlier to be set and then sets the second variable. Nothing else.

* The model format is very simple. The first value in a model is the triangle/polygon count. Then, for each polygon, there's 2 values that set up how that polygon will be shown. If you have noticed in Virtua Racing, some models have this checkerboard pattern with 2 colors on them. This is the value that defines how the checkerboard pattern will be rendered. It defines the 2 colors (the colors being palette entry IDs) and the width and the height of each rectangle in the pattern. After that, the X, Y, and Z positions of the 3 points in the polygon are defined. The checkerboard rendering info and point positions are used for each polygon.

* Each model has $40 bytes of variables in DRAM, which each variable being a word or longword in size. When using command 6 to draw the tiles, the first model is the camera object, which also can draw the world model.
So far, I have found that the first value seems to be a visibility flag. If it's set to 0, then the model is invisible, and if it's 1, it's visible. The only exception is that the camera object for command 6 drawing doesn't seem to utilize this variable.
The next variables are the X, Y, and Z positions, which are only used by command 6 drawing.
Then, the X, Y, and Z angles are next. X and Y angles are not used by command 5 drawing, only the Z angle can be used in command 5 drawing. All 3 can be used in command 6 drawing.
The only other variable I know of now is the model address, but it's in a specific format made for the DSP. Basically, it's the address of the model in 68k space, but divided by 2 so that the DSP can use it, but it also has "auto increment by 1" set, which is used for accessing data and whatnot in the DSP. The only exception I know of for this is that in command 6 drawing, the camera object, which holds the address of the world model, doesn't use auto increment. I am still looking into that.

With the info I've gathered, I have done the following:

I've a couple of my own basic models.

Image Image

And I've implemented the SVP in a Sonic 1 ROM and did a basic rotation test for a model I stole from Virtua Racing.

https://youtu.be/Hr-QmrLipEM

I hope that this has contained some valuable info on the SVP. I will be continuing to research more to fully understand how it all works! Any help is appreciated as well.
Last edited by Ralakimus on Sat Feb 04, 2017 4:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

djcouchycouch
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Re: Sega Virtua Processing Research

Post by djcouchycouch » Sat Feb 04, 2017 3:14 am

That's really great! You're breaking new ground here!

Ralakimus
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Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by Ralakimus » Mon Feb 06, 2017 5:40 pm

I have more info on how command 6 works with its camera and stuff for rendering art.

The first model slot is the camera. In this slot, you can load the world map model. The second model slot is a normal model, but with 1 difference. The camera follows that model, so when you move that model, the camera will move with it.

With the camera, you can define the distance between the camera and the model it follows. You can also the set the angle of the camera on all 3 axes.

The world map has a SLIGHTLY different format than a normal model. A world map model is made up of different model chunks that make up the complete map. In Virtua Racing, only 8 of these chunks are loaded at a time. To load these chunks, all you have to do is set up the list of IDs to load in the camera model variable space. The Virtua Processor will not determine which chunks to load at a certain position, so it's up to the programmer to determine which chunks are loaded at what position. All model chunks all have their position in the map already set in their data, so you don't need to determine where in the 3D space to load these chunks.

For the format of the world map itself, it starts off with a list of addresses pointing to the location of the model chunks in the ROM. They aren't divided by 2 or anything. They are just regular 68000 addresses. Each model chunk has the same format as a normal model. Loading the world map is slightly different. As I mentioned, you load it into the camera model slot. However, auto-increment is NOT set, so it's just the address of the model in 68000 memory divided by 2.

Miquel
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Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by Miquel » Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:45 pm

Nice! Great work, but there is something that I don't follow: is there a reason to mix Sonic and SVP? As far as I can understand you can't merge both renders.
HELP. Spanish TVs are brain washing people to be hostile to me.

Ralakimus
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Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by Ralakimus » Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:32 pm

I was just using a Sonic 1 disassembly for a base to do it on (mainly because I was too lazy to make a basic homebrew base at the time XP), but I guess another reason is to show that I can implement this into a ROM that's not Virtua Racing.

danibus
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Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by danibus » Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:37 pm

Hi there

Could you pls fix youtube link? not working

Ralakimus
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Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by Ralakimus » Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:58 am

Necrobump!

A while ago, I made a Python plugin for Blender that enabled SVP model support + a rendering engine. It's not fully complete, as I never figured out how it handled Z-sorting (there's some kind of flag for each polygon in the model data that messes with it), and the rendering engine is not very well optimized at all (I was an OpenGL noob at the time). I don't really have any interest in going back on it, but if there's anyone who's interested in the SVP that wants to take a crack at it, by all means, go for it.

Here's the plugin's source code
Here's also my old Sonic Retro thread that has more information on the SVP and Virtua Racing that I found that I never bothered to relay here. Some of the info is weirdly worded on my part, admittedly. Nonetheless, it's worth reading.
This repository is also worth looking into.

danibus wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:37 pm
Hi there

Could you pls fix youtube link? not working
I know I'm very late with responding to this, but I lost the video years ago. Sorry.

danibus
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Posts: 135
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2018 12:41 pm

Re: Sega Virtua Processor Research

Post by danibus » Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:26 am

Ralakimus wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:58 am
Necrobump!

A while ago, I made a Python plugin for Blender that enabled SVP model support + a rendering engine. It's not fully complete, as I never figured out how it handled Z-sorting (there's some kind of flag for each polygon in the model data that messes with it), and the rendering engine is not very well optimized at all (I was an OpenGL noob at the time). I don't really have any interest in going back on it, but if there's anyone who's interested in the SVP that wants to take a crack at it, by all means, go for it.

Here's the plugin's source code
Here's also my old Sonic Retro thread that has more information on the SVP and Virtua Racing that I found that I never bothered to relay here. Some of the info is weirdly worded on my part, admittedly. Nonetheless, it's worth reading.
This repository is also worth looking into.

danibus wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:37 pm
Hi there

Could you pls fix youtube link? not working
I know I'm very late with responding to this, but I lost the video years ago. Sorry.
Thanks in any case

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