Dreamcast abilities/restrictions

PolyHertz

I was wondering if anyone here worked on any Dreamcast projects back in its prime, and what kind of limitations were normaly put on characters/objects? things like average poly counts, texture resolutions and how many parts were texures broken into? How about filtering, did games normaly use bilinear or trilinear? Also, I've heard that it was capable of displaying 32bit colors, but was that the exception or the rule when it came to bit depth?

I search arround on google but only got info about it's maximum/theoretical abilities (which are more or less useless) :-/

leilei

Well, considering its video chipset is technologically near-equivelant to the TNT (PowerVR Neon250) it's pretty close to around Voodoo2 level of performance and TNT capabilities. The screen is rendered by tile, though, which was the unique thing going for all of PowerVR's chipsets

Keg

Polyhertz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast#Technical_specifications

Couple of details about the dreamcast hardware wise

leilei

you might also find this useful

hawken

roughly 80,000 polygons onscreen at 60fps

Eric Chadwick

No alpha sorting problems on PowerVR! Yay!

Why none of the other manufacturers took this up is beyond me, it had so much promise.

hawken

The DC was true enigma.

leilei

DC would've been worse if 3dfx actually came aboard during development.

Richard Kain

I still think that set-top box manufacturers ought to liscence the Dreamcast's tech, scale it down, and incorporate it into DVD players and the like. It's a dead system, but it always performed well (in my estimation) and would make a great middle-of-the-road platform for a more casual audience. Incorporating it into set-top boxes, or even TV sets, would probably only jack the production costs up by twenty or thirty dollars.

Neo_God

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The DC was true enigma.

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There was indeed a strange allure to it. I think it's because the thing really did feel like an arcade in you living room, all the games looked so crisp and clean on the screen with little to no slowdown.

leilei

[ QUOTE ]
I still think that set-top box manufacturers ought to liscence the Dreamcast's tech, scale it down, and incorporate it into DVD players and the like. It's a dead system, but it always performed well (in my estimation) and would make a great middle-of-the-road platform for a more casual audience. Incorporating it into set-top boxes, or even TV sets, would probably only jack the production costs up by twenty or thirty dollars.

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Superior "dreamcast tech" has already made its way into cell phones. PowerVR is stuck working in the mobile market only now.

Their chips still don't have Hardware T&L.

hawken

[ QUOTE ]
I still think that set-top box manufacturers ought to liscence the Dreamcast's tech, scale it down, and incorporate it into DVD players and the like. It's a dead system, but it always performed well (in my estimation) and would make a great middle-of-the-road platform for a more casual audience. Incorporating it into set-top boxes, or even TV sets, would probably only jack the production costs up by twenty or thirty dollars.

[/ QUOTE ]

funny you should mention this.

...

when sky first released it's set top boxes back in 2003 or so, the was a grand plan to integrate DC into them. It's the stuff of legends now, I'm not sure why it didn't happen, seeing how I was making games for sky boxes for over two years, you can imagine my intrigue and disappointment that it didn't happen. We would have had downloadable games a plenty back if it had, with great 3d graphics.

Richard Kain

It just boggles my mind why hardware manufacturers haven't picked up on something like this. Perhaps the success of the Wii will reinvigorate their interest. You don't need high-end specs in order to make a bundle of money off of casual games. All you really need is a decent GPU, a decent CPU, a bit of dedicated memory, a USB port, and a controller with 4-six buttons and a D-Pad. You could even get away with no 3D, as long as the games are being sold at a cheap enough price. Hell, you could have games as playable bonuses on commercial DVDs.