A small word on the engine :
I started working on this version of the engine in 2019, but I started working on my BSP compiler in the end of 2018 after SAGE 2018.
It's a BSP based engine using a PVS (potential visibility set) and extra portals for occlusion culling.
Similar to Quake, but quite different at the same time.
The transparency is achieved by rendering offscreen : the Saturn's dual framebuffers are 256 kb each, so there is a lot of wasted memory since 352x224 at 16 bpp =154 kb.
I render the transparent elements using additive blending (and unshaded transparent polygons to hide them with walls and doors) offscreen, transfer that area of the framebuffer to the main ram via SCU DMA, then transfer that again to VDP2 ram via DMA transfers.
It's pretty simple, but the sorting and syncing a real issues with this technique, which requires to draw transparent polygons to prevent seeing the transparent stuff behind walls and doors.
The VDP1 supports half-transparency, but for flares and other light effects you need additive transparency, which isn't supported by the VDP1, but the VDP2 does, which is why I need this fancy technique.
The other way to achieve this would be to do like Scorcher did (at least my understanding of it) and software render the effects directly in the framebuffer, which is probably too slow to be worth it and won't scale well with more lights.
The 3d animations are done with vertex animation, using 32 bits vertices (3 bytes for XYZ and 1 byte for the normal) for each vertex for each keyframe, which allows "free" animations in terms of CPU ressources as I just need to update the vertex's starting pointer.
All the audio had to be placed using old Sega sound tools within an old Mac (68k) emulator...
All the engine's code for 3d, rendering, collision, AI, etc. is original, while the Sega Game Library is still used for controlling some system registers and timers - causing more problems than anything - but I hope someday to flush all of Sega's libraries.
The engine isn't optimized yet (almost everything is in C except a little function for the vertex transformation), so please keep that in mind when the framerate drops in some busy areas.
But it shouldn't really drop below 20 fps in single player mode, unless you are playing in hard or nightmare mode (20+ enemies on screen in some areas...).
Both SH2s are used, while the SCU DSP is used to help the main CPU with 3d models (such as enemies).
Both the 68k and SCSP DSP (sound CPU and sound DSP) are pretty much unused, only telling the SCSP to play PCM files.
Right now, the gameplay is similar to Quake, but I plan to make a campaign similar to Powerslave's campaing, with permanent powerups, hidden secrets (Vasectomy team dolls anyone?) and maybe replayable areas (I'm on the fence here as I am not sure if I truly prefer the Powerslave's progression or a more simple progression system like Quake...so let me know what you think).
I took lots of inspiration from Quake, Duke Nukem 3d, Powerslave and Unreal.
ALL THE ASSETS/SFX ARE TEMPORARY!
Known issues :
-There seems to be a rare bug causing crashes in some specific situations. The cause is unknown and It was only discovered one week before SAGE 2020, so it might take some time to fix it. Please report the issue if you experience it.
-Not PAL optimized : The PAL version (50 hrz) will play slower, I plan to fix that in the future.
-Sound effects sometimes don't play. I need to write my own sound driver or figure out what needs to be done to make the old Saturn sound tools working properly.
-In single player, the framerate can dip to 20 fps in some areas. It's mostly CPU related, with some rarer cases of VDP1 bottleneck.
-Polygons sometimes get the wrong sorting order (z fighting).
-The framerate while in splitscreen 4 players deathmatch can get low, like Goldeneye 64 low (cpu again).
-The game saves, but doesn't load games, so continuing is the same as a new game (but with so few levels, I don't think anyone truly need to save!)
-Some assets/animations look bad, I didn't spend much time on it
-THE GAME ISN'T OPTIMIZED YET!
Controls
Using digital controls, if you ever played one of Lobotomy's Saturn FPS, you will feel right at home!
The analog controls are based on the "Jevon" controls in Saturn Quake, aka Turok style controls, instead of the traditional "joystick to move/rotate".
It will feel weird at first since the face buttons aren't in a traditionnal 4 buttons "+" shape, but once you get used to it you might prefer it : YZBC are for movement, the analog stick for look, L to jump, R to shoot, D-pad to switch weapons.
You can also play using mouse+keyboard or mouse+controler : just plug the mouse in port 2 when you boot the game. If you want to play with mouse and keyboard in a 4 players game, all the mouses should be plugged in the second multitap in the same order as the controllers/keyboards in the first multitap.
Some future things I am working on right now :
There is a ton of under the hood work that I need to do, so the progression in the following months might seem small, but it will benefit the engine in the long run. New things coming out in the following months :
-Bug fixing
-New maps (duh)
-New enemies and pack enemy models per map (allowing more diversity since it doesn't need to stay in ram for each map).
-Better texture tiling, allowing both better visuals and less wasted memory (hopefully)
-Offline bots for deathmatches...if I can make them smart enough to be worth it
-4 players link cable and/or online support (a huge maybe as I don't have the proper testing environement)
-Improving the code overall for more speed
-Add save/load support with a better UI
-Rework a bit more the rendering code and memory usage to allow insanely large open areas with less blocky geometry. That area at the end of Vertex Rider is about half of what I want to achieve in terms of size.
-Re-add depth shading. I had to disable it for better static lighting, but I plan on re-adding it once I make it fast enough.
Cheat codes (all ingame) :
-L+START/R+START : Switch between wireframe and normal mode. Useful to see the overdraw and how the transition from normal to LOD model goes.
-UP+START : Skip level
-DOWN+START : Cycle the max framerate. It will get very very low (for testing collision), then get back up to a target of 60 (target, it will still be around 20-30 most of the time)
-B+START : Cycle debug stats on and off
Final note :
-I do not accept any game making requests or port requests (don't bother asking for Doom or Quake 2, I am not interested in porting them)
-And on a final note, no, Vasectomy Software is not a real thing! It's just meant to be a nod at Lobotomy's software as their work inspired me to make this game.
-EMULATORS AND ODEs ARE NOT SUPPORTED! Many of them can't support some of the advanced effects seen in the game. Mednafen seems accurate, but I can't guarantee the resultats.
-Use a Pseudo Saturn, a modchip or the swap trick to play the game. Burn it using the free app imgBurn.
Наверно и не родился еще. Вот так, через столько лет народ освоил этого железного неукротимого мустанга. Если бы SEGA тогда нормально бы подошла к документации, средствам разработки, то еще непонятно чем закончилась бы битва приставок 5 поколения.