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MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 12:29 pm
by Oerg866
Hi,

we've released a new demo yesterday!

Image

Code: Select all

                               TiTAN  Presents
     
                                M D - N I C C
                             
                   a Mega Drive port of the Atari ST demo
                                 STNICC 2000
                                 by  Oxygene
                               
                               
           ---------------------------------------------------------
           
           
           This demo was born out of a challenge on pouet.net which
           was about porting an old Atari ST demo by Oxygene to
           as many plattforms as possible.
           
           This is a SEGA Mega Drive port - or rather *remix*.
           
           It does not use addon chips to help with the 3D graphics.

           It does not use ripped music.
           
           It beat the original Atari ST version in frame-rate by 
           about four times.
           
           Sorry, "Super" Nintendo fans :-(
           
           Just kidding, we love you :-D
           
           Technical pleasure by Kabuto.
           Visual pleasure by Alien^PDX.
           Auditorial pleasure by Strobe.
           
           Runs on all genuine 50Hz SEGA Mega Drive sytems and 
           modern emulators - like BlastEm (<3 MoD) - and FPGA-
           based clones.
              
           A technical write-up will follow soon.
           
           Enjoy the rest of Revision! :-)
           
           -oerg866
                                    
                                    we greet:
                                    
               poobrain 3ln ate-bit g*p neural inque scenesat dss 
               loonies desire aerosol bs1 oxyron rebels trbl mups
               elix sigflup uprough mercury plutiedev haujobb tpb
               uprough trsi paradox fairlight nah-kolor abc & you

Get it here:

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81027

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 6:39 pm
by Miquel
Download link doesn't work.

That's a serious frame rate speed, I just need to see it for myself! ;)

EDIT: forget it, probably is my ISP blocking FTP

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 7:39 pm
by Oerg866
Maybe this download link will work for you! :)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... MDNICC.zip

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 8:22 pm
by Miquel
No way, those blit’s are gigantic! VERY BIG demo in space.

Great video, thanks! now: when a game?

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:41 pm
by Chilly Willy
Awesome demo! You guys really kick butt when pushing the MD. :D

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 8:43 pm
by danibus
Just impressive.

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:23 am
by bioloid
Massive!

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:31 am
by TmEE co.(TM)
I cannot understand how SNES version that uses SuperFX still runs muuuuuuuch slower....

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 7:47 am
by Stef
Don't forget that here we only have vector graphics, there is no 3D involved at all. It's like a *very fast* vector graphic renderer with an input format probably adapted for faster parsing rendering (i'm not sure it uses polygons as input). Clipping and 3D transformation calculations are a heavy part in a 3D software renderer so don't expect to see realtime 3D on MD at the same speed.

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:09 pm
by Sik
Yeah, but the SNES version was also using precomputed polygons instead of any 3D calculations (the challenge was to recreate the demo using its original data and that data was already in 2D format), so that excuse still doesn't apply. This is also why MD-NICCC was letterboxed, the source material is 256×200.

I have no clue what either demo is doing exactly, but if I were to take a guess, the SNES version probably doesn't attempt to skip rendering solid tiles. That's a very good way to run out of DMA bandwidth (not to mention having to draw a lot more of pixels for starters).

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:40 pm
by Stef
Are you speaking about Starfox on SNES or something else ?
If you speak about Starfox, the polygons are definitely not pre computed, you have real 3D transformation, both for object and the world (even if the world calculations could probably be simplified as we are on rails, not fixed rails though).
Of course the rendering doesn't take optimization of plain tiles, the SFX has a "fast" plot instruction and trying to optimize for plain tile fill wouldn't be that interesting. And to be honest i tried back in time to do a software 3D rendering (or more exactly a polygon renderer) taking advantage of plain tiles, but in the end, the overload caused by edges computation (needed to fill a tile on first entering point then fusing for consecutive draws) was killing the benefit. In the end the code was very complex and the mos polygon you draw, the slower it performs. At the end it was faster for scene with few polygons but as soon the number of polygon increased then an optimized brut software filling algorithm was faster... in this case the plain tile optimization lost all its interest as it can be fast only for "light" scene.

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:59 pm
by bioloid
I want sgdk to have a fast framebuffer allowing to render on a single plane. Anyway current framebuffer is cool thanks.

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:21 pm
by Mask of Destiny
Stef wrote:
Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:40 pm
Are you speaking about Starfox on SNES or something else ?
Pretty sure Sik is talking about the SNES port of the ST-NICC demo which was also released at Revision this year.

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:32 pm
by bioloid

Re: MD-NICCC - a 3D Mega Drive experience by TiTAN

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:30 pm
by Miquel
TmEE co.(TM) wrote:
Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:31 am
I cannot understand how SNES version that uses SuperFX still runs muuuuuuuch slower....
Yes, you do. MD has more VDP bandwidth than the SNES homonym, nearly twice if my memory serves me well. They even go to only 50hz (PAL) to maximize it.
That's what really counts on this demo.
Sik wrote:
Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:09 pm
I have no clue what either demo is doing exactly, but if I were to take a guess, the SNES version probably doesn't attempt to skip rendering solid tiles. That's a very good way to run out of DMA bandwidth (not to mention having to draw a lot more of pixels for starters).
In this demo, after some educated guesses, I believe border tiles are pre-rendered and solid tiles use the background color to avoid transfers. Some times you can see in the distance when the overall color changes.
bioloid wrote:
Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:59 pm
I want sgdk to have a fast framebuffer allowing to render on a single plane. Anyway current framebuffer is cool thanks.
There is no frame buffer on MD, fortunately. Check 3D mode on SGDK if you need an emulation.