Silpheed backgrounds and cutscenes

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:51 pm

Hello all,

I run an informational web page about video game consoles, and I have posted to Usenet groups like rec.games.video.sega (Scott H) about them for about seven years. One of the puzzles I have not been able to solve is whether or not Silpheed is the only console game to display artifact free video, or the only Sega CD game to render 3D backgrounds in real time.

I have a series of videos posted:
( http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/TheNextLevel.htm )

Even in Gens32 I cannot see any artifacts in the opening video, and the aliasing looks just like it should at 320x224. Unfortunately, I cannot get Gens or Gens32 to play the actual game to see if all of the levels are as crisp.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Scott

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:07 pm

That seems to be the mystery.

I think it's a video, after greatly arguing with someone saying it was rendered polygons...

The big test for this, is this: On Sega CD2, while intro is going, open CD door.. does the intro still go for a couple seconds? If so, i say it's rendered, if not, i say it's a video...

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 9:44 pm

evildragon wrote:That seems to be the mystery.

I think it's a video, after greatly arguing with someone saying it was rendered polygons...

The big test for this, is this: On Sega CD2, while intro is going, open CD door.. does the intro still go for a couple seconds? If so, i say it's rendered, if not, i say it's a video...

Hmm, the opening cinematic continues for 2 seconds after I pop the tray open.

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:32 pm

sheath wrote:
evildragon wrote:That seems to be the mystery.

I think it's a video, after greatly arguing with someone saying it was rendered polygons...

The big test for this, is this: On Sega CD2, while intro is going, open CD door.. does the intro still go for a couple seconds? If so, i say it's rendered, if not, i say it's a video...
Hmm, the opening cinematic continues for 2 seconds after I pop the tray open.

Just two seconds? Does the audio go out at the same 2 seconds, or does that go out first?

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:38 pm

evildragon wrote:
sheath wrote: Hmm, the opening cinematic continues for 2 seconds after I pop the tray open.
Just two seconds? Does the audio go out at the same 2 seconds, or does that go out first?

They both go out at the same time, and sometimes it goes out as soon as you pop the tray open. Level 1 goes black instantly upon popping the tray. So that would seem to insinuate video by our current expectations.

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:54 pm

yea, that sounds like a video then..

wow, that totally sucks.. the game was touted as a polygonal game, and it doesn't even have a single polygon...

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:36 am

evildragon wrote:yea, that sounds like a video then..

wow, that totally sucks.. the game was touted as a polygonal game, and it doesn't even have a single polygon...

The ships are still polygonal (the ones involved in the actual gameplay). I still don't understand how this could be video. There isn't a dithered pixel to be seen and the framerate dips down to almost 1FPS on the Earth level. Why would they record a system bogging down on the background graphics?

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:27 am

sheath wrote:
evildragon wrote:yea, that sounds like a video then..

wow, that totally sucks.. the game was touted as a polygonal game, and it doesn't even have a single polygon...
The ships are still polygonal (the ones involved in the actual gameplay). I still don't understand how this could be video. There isn't a dithered pixel to be seen and the framerate dips down to almost 1FPS on the Earth level. Why would they record a system bogging down on the background graphics?

Actually, if not mistaken, the ships are pre-rendered sprites, those are from the Genesis itself...

I don't know why they would do it, but I haven't had a frame rate loss in the game...

TulioAdriano · Post by **TulioAdriano** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:52 pm

I am very inclined to say the background is always streamed video. The reason for that is that I had the same issue with the game freezing, but my disc had a scratch that Sega CD coudn't read... On emulators the game would go through, I believe because the drive could read the scratch that the old 1x Sega CD Drive could not...

I remember magazines saying that Silpheed had 500 000 polygons per second, but I don't remember any mentioning about it being real time. Truth is that the machine wouln't be able to process all that information and output video at a decent framerate.

My theory for the crisp graphics is that they must have used either a special codec or some "high quality" setting. The polygons shown during most of the gameplay display a very limited palette, which I believe it is the reason for no dithering.

For the enemies and the player ship, I believe they polygons generated in real time by rendering the polygon math the tiles on the video memory.

Still.. anyway... it is a nice game!

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:50 pm

The majority of the backgrounds run at 15FPS, while the ships involved in actual gameplay are running at or over 30FPS. Level 10 though, the earth level, runs between 5-7 FPS. I also think that it was level 10 that they were referring to having 500,000 polygons per second in, but at 5FPS on average that's a ton of polygons per frame.

I am inclined to believe that it is video as well, it's just amazing how much effort they put into making it look like something the Genesis/SegaCD might be capable of. I'm also astonished at how small the boss ships are. If they are just pre-rendered sprites they could have faked much more impressive boss fights. This is probably more due to the original game than any design choice on the part of Game Arts though.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 5:49 pm

I have Silpheed too, and I think it is plain FMV as there are lots of HUGE files there, games takes almost 400MB of the CD !!!

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:59 pm

sheath wrote:The majority of the backgrounds run at 15FPS, while the ships involved in actual gameplay are running at or over 30FPS. Level 10 though, the earth level, runs between 5-7 FPS. I also think that it was level 10 that they were referring to having 500,000 polygons per second in, but at 5FPS on average that's a ton of polygons per frame.

I am inclined to believe that it is video as well, it's just amazing how much effort they put into making it look like something the Genesis/SegaCD might be capable of. I'm also astonished at how small the boss ships are. If they are just pre-rendered sprites they could have faked much more impressive boss fights. This is probably more due to the original game than any design choice on the part of Game Arts though.

These are not "real time" rendering. It's movie playback but of course not with a traditionnal "codec". I believe it uses some RLE lossless compression which is well suited for polygonal rendering

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 1:46 am

Very good then. It seems reasonable to say that the backgrounds and cut scenes were video files using this low color - no compression method, especially since there are such large files on the disc. Do we all agree that the player/ enemy ships are being rendered in real time or that they are pre-rendered sprites?

evildragon · Post by **evildragon** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 2:23 am

I feel they are pre-rendered sprites..

If you video capture it, and move the ship around, notice it's ALWAYS the same frames, never a slightly different angle like real-time rendering may do.

sheath · Post by **sheath** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 3:12 am

evildragon wrote:I feel they are pre-rendered sprites..

If you video capture it, and move the ship around, notice it's ALWAYS the same frames, never a slightly different angle like real-time rendering may do.

That makes sense. They all do use the same frames, and don't seem to have any freedom of movement outside of them. That was one of the limitations that I was disappointed by when I originally played the game. While the graphics were technically better than Starfox, nothing gameplay ever really moved close to the screen. All the same, Silpheed is an impressive technical achievement even though it's not "true 3D". Oh yeah, and it's fun to play too.