[HN Gopher] The Polygons of Another World: Super Nintendo
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The Polygons of Another World: Super Nintendo
Author : ingve
Score : 235 points
Date : 2020-01-19 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fabiensanglard.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (fabiensanglard.net)
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| > The SNES's CPU name sounds esoteric but the Ricoh 5A22 is in
| fact a 6502 on steroids.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it more a 65C816 than a 6502?
| Granted, the 65C816 was a better 6502, but IIRC, it's closer to
| the former than the 6502.
| wk_end wrote:
| The 5A22 is a custom 65C816 core, yes - I think the author just
| meant that the 65C816 itself is kind of like the familiar 6502
| on steroids.
| grawprog wrote:
| The 65C816 had full backwards compatibility with the 6502 and
| starts in emulation mode after a reset making it essentially
| identical to the 6502 until switched to native mode. Even in
| native.mode it retains a lot of backwards compatibility with
| the 6502.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65C816
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That is a nice chip.
|
| It has the same 24-bit address space as the early IBM 360
| mainframes, the 80286 and a handful of other systems. It's
| much less cramped than the 16-bit environment of the 6502,
| the PDP-11, etc.
|
| It's easy to underestimate the 6052 because other chips (the
| 68k) series are better on paper. However, interrupt handling
| is fast and DMA efficient so it is a good match to the family
| computer role.
|
| Apple thought that the Apple ][ would be rapidly out of date
| so it rushed ahead with the failed Apple ///, the Lisa,
| Macintosh, etc. They did not realize the ][ was going to last
| as long as it did, otherwise they would have prioritized the
| Apple 2gs -- rather than the Mac which had two near-death
| experiences before the company became the leader in mobile.
| otikik wrote:
| Wow I am impressed by this person. Thanks for sharing!
| pp19dd wrote:
| For the nostalgic, SEGA version emulation:
| https://archive.org/details/sg_Another_World_1992_Delphine_V...
| nealabq wrote:
| This is a popular subject. Previous discussions:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=polygons+another+world
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Note that "The Polygons of Another World" is an ongoing series,
| so some submissions are to the index of the series, while
| others (like this one) are to the latest installment at the
| time, which tends to change the focus of each discussion.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You might want to read about the Genesis/MegaDrive version for
| additional context
| http://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_Genesis/ind...
| The two systems are broadly similar, especially wrt. their
| graphics support so the author seems to skip some things when
| discussing the SNES.
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| Fabien, do you plan to write about the 3do version of the game?
| It was a completely different port as far as I remember.
|
| EDIT. I suspect Burger also did the 3do port, by the way.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Yes she did.
|
| Unsure about the 3DO port, probably not. I am juggling pet
| projects right now. If I ever look at an other version I would
| go first for the GBA since the author sent me the source code
| and it will be easier to look at.
|
| Maybe someone else will do the 3DO analysis? With an emulator
| it is not hard to look at how it works.
| plerpin wrote:
| A wonderful tale of clever engineering under hard constraints.
| s_Hogg wrote:
| This is a great read, thanks for posting. Anyone know/care to
| comment on what this kind of chicanery looks like in games being
| made now?
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Back in the days games and ports were solo to tiny teams dev.
| Now we have what dozens to hundreds of developers, the
| chicanery is in management cohorts of people, politics and all.
| Boring times in comparison.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Only AAA games have dozens to hundreds of people involved,
| independent dev (gaming or otherwise) is still quite similar
| to what it was back in the day.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I did not realize there was such a gap in resolution between the
| Amiga version and the SNES one. When you compare at the end of
| the article it is almost light and day!
| RetroSpark wrote:
| "The DMA registers [...] run the full CPU 3.6Mhz speed. [...] I
| put a 32 byte function that would draw a scanline of polygon data
| in there."
|
| The SNES supports SlowROM and FastROM but, interestingly, its
| internal memory is "SlowRAM". This seems like it would
| significantly bottleneck the system's performance. I guess
| "FastRAM" was just too expensive.
|
| _Another World_ uses SlowROM, so almost everything in the system
| is slow. It 's a clever trick to use the DMA registers as a tiny
| amount of "FastRAM" and run code from there.
|
| Something similar has been done on the Game Boy Advance - it's
| faster to run code out of Video RAM than directly from ROM or
| (the majority of) normal RAM.
| Scuds wrote:
| There's a FastROM conversion for the Super Ghouls and Ghosts.
| The original was plagued with slowdown while the conversion
| runs very well. This leads me to think that the game was
| originally designed with fastROM in mind, but then they took
| manufacturing cost into account.
|
| how much this actually was, I don't know. Burger Becky
| mentioned begging her boss to use Fast ROM when interplay made
| RPM Racing but was also denied.
|
| The trade offs of 1991!
|
| Edit: of course Nintendo wasn't as cost constrained. It was
| never an even playing field for 3rd parties
| bitexploder wrote:
| Interesting to note it was one 32 byte function in those
| registers netting a 10% speed increase. Reminds me of demo
| scene tricks. That function was for sure hand written
| assembly/machine code. It is something of a lost (and not
| needed by most people) art these days.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Source for the GBA version? I was considering looking into that
| one too.
| speps wrote:
| Re-reading the parent, I think he meant that in general not
| OotW specifically.
| byuu wrote:
| What's annoying about that memory space is it's fragmented:
| $4300-437f is the 128-byte region for DMA registers, but
| $43xc-f aren't usable (well, $43xf mirrors $43xb for whatever
| reason. $43xc-$43xe are open bus.)
|
| So basically every 12 bytes, you get 4 bytes that are no longer
| usable before the next 12 bytes.
|
| I haven't actually looked at this game's code, but it's
| certainly clever if the author found a way to avoid having to
| perform unconditional jumps in there that would sacrifice most
| of the gains in performance.
| FatalLogic wrote:
| An unconditional branch should be one of the fastest
| instructions. Why would that sacrifice most of the gains in
| performance?
|
| It should cost about the performance gain from two of the
| effective instructions.
| kragen wrote:
| Holy shit, she had to copy code into the DMA control registers to
| get it to blit fast enough. Which meant she had to fit the blit
| routine into 32 bytes. That's fucking hard core.
| xtracto wrote:
| Loved this... I laughed at the section when the developer goes
| all the way to scavenge an FX chip from starfox, solders it to
| their game, and writes the appropriate code for it... just gor
| the boss dismiss it in 5 seconds because of the cost. It is 2020
| and I have experienced the same time and time again. I a am sure
| the developer got a thrill of the tech challenge at the time at
| least.
| robdachshund wrote:
| Also funny when you realize the boss is Brian Fargo, the guy
| who oversaw Wasteland and Fallout.
| [deleted]
| __rvnykk wrote:
| I'd recommend anyone watch Becky's video1 on the development,
| she had to basically redo it three times! Boss kept demanding
| more with less hardware. She's active on twitter too, I'm sure
| you'll see her discussing this article there too2
|
| She also did the 3DO and Apple IIgs ports
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiq0OL8rzso
|
| 2. https://twitter.com/burgerbecky
| ginko wrote:
| I'd love to see the Super FX version of that game.
| growlist wrote:
| I always loved this game on Amiga. Flashback too.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| > Hunga Hunga Ohana mascot, do you speak Japanese? I do!
|
| That's... not English she's speaking there. I think it was
| something containing [Ri Ben Yu wowakarimasuka] but would have
| to check the video again.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Yea, I used youtube transcript because I don't speak japanese.
| Or english much either. If you find out what she meant plese
| tell me and i will fix the article.
| an_ko wrote:
| I checked the video (https://youtu.be/tiq0OL8rzso?t=925 at
| 15:25): She says "Ri Ben Yu woHua shimasuka?", pronounced
| "Nihongo wo hanashimasuka?" meaning "Do you speak Japanese?",
| which she also translates for the audience in English
| immediately afterward.
|
| Edit: Typo.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation, I have updated the article and
| credited you at the bottom as an_ko@news.ycombinator.com
| kragen wrote:
| That's hilarious!
| beloch wrote:
| I'd really appreciate a comparison of how the sound was done.
| Although the SNES could not match the resolution of the Amiga,
| for my money OoTW sounds a _lot_ better on the SNES.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| From a hardware overview perspective, the Amiga's sound chip
| was essentially 4 "dumb" 8 bit PCM channels, so audio effects
| and synth stuff was fundamentally CPU driven, and I'm guessing
| most of the CPU horsepower was going into the 3d rendering,
| without much left over for sound.
|
| The SNES has a completely separate audio subsystem, with 8
| 16bit PCM channels, with its own CPU and RAM purely dedicated
| to sound generation.
| robdachshund wrote:
| The SNES SPU is a sample based synth. You load samples in
| externally and use a tracker to sequence the notes.
| redwoolf wrote:
| I wonder if this game will ever stop captivating those of us who
| played it when it first came out.
| marketingfool wrote:
| Crazy how Nintendo was cutting edge innovation but has completely
| fallen behind.
|
| I have a hard time considering themselves a video game company
| over a marketing company since GameCube.
| jstewartmobile wrote:
| Atari 400/800, Amiga, SNES--the conductor/orchestra model of
| system design is the best.
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(page generated 2020-01-19 23:00 UTC)