#32517 - Eclipse - Thu Dec 23, 2004 3:49 pm
Sorry if this was already posted, but I must have missed it. Anyway, I read somewhere that the DS can only display 3d gfx on one screen at a time, and the other has to use 2d. Is there any truth to this?
#32518 - Lupin - Thu Dec 23, 2004 3:55 pm
Of course it can have 3D on both screens, but i am not sure if it can have hardware 3D on both screens. Even if it can have 3D on both screens i guess the DS would be too weak for rendering full 3D on both screens in an acceptable quality because the DS 3D hardware is quite weak already, even with only 1 screen with 3D.
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#32519 - Eclipse - Thu Dec 23, 2004 4:01 pm
| Lupin wrote: |
| Of course it can have 3D on both screens, but i am not sure if it can have hardware 3D on both screens. Even if it can have 3D on both screens i guess the DS would be too weak for rendering full 3D on both screens in an acceptable quality because the DS 3D hardware is quite weak already, even with only 1 screen with 3D. |
I'm sorry, but i got a bit confused, it sounded like a yes, then a no, then a maybe, but it wouldn't be good....But basiclly what i am looking for is to use the power of the DS to make a game that is in ful 3d and stretches across both screens. Now I obviously do not plan on any high power gfx, just about asphalt urban gt quality, jsut instead of being shown on one screent he action is spred across the two. Is this possible? An example would be a 3d top down shooter that spreds the action across both screens. THanks for your help guys!
#32527 - Zhila - Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:09 pm
From my assumations, 3D on both screens are possible (I've noticed this on various Super Mario 64 DS minigames, and on Spiderman 2 screenshots), however, one of three methods are being used. First, it could be that all of the "sprites" are prerendered, then used in 2d mode (much like in Donkey Kong Country). This would work for the minigames, but not for Spiderman. Second method would be to use software render 3D. This would be a bit slower however, and possibly more power consuming. The third method (if possible) would be to swap the 3D screen between the two every other frame, thus having two 3D screens running 30 FPS.
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#32535 - manicdvln - Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:24 pm
Yes it can use 3D on both screens, as you see in nintnedodogs demos, where the puppies are being interacted with on the bottom screen.
#32539 - Eclipse - Thu Dec 23, 2004 6:26 pm
| manicdvln wrote: |
| Yes it can use 3D on both screens, as you see in nintnedodogs demos, where the puppies are being interacted with on the bottom screen. |
While this is true, I have not seen any pictures with 3d on both screens at the same time. And for my game I wanted to display 3d images on both screens at the same time =\.
#32548 - ravuya - Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:18 pm
From what I've heard, the hardware acceleration only works on one screen at a time. So, if you wanted to have 3D on both screens:
- You could get it to oscillate between the two screens every second frame and cap your framerate;
- Or you could write a software renderer (since you aren't going for high quality, and the ARM9 is a fixed-point system, this will work fairly well).
Once again, this is based on what I've heard.
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#32549 - manicdvln - Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:25 pm
#32551 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:57 pm
| manicdvln wrote: |
| 3D on both screens. |
The bottom picture could very well be a 2d image (and it probably is).
#32552 - ravuya - Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:58 pm
| manicdvln wrote: |
http://www.nintelligent.net/screendisp.php?src=gamemedia/2536/924893_20041007_screen001.jpg&title=Rayman%20DS
3D on both screens. |
The bottom screen seems a little too high-poly to be a real time rendering. It has to be a pre-rendered bitmap...
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#32553 - manicdvln - Thu Dec 23, 2004 9:02 pm
What about the little stars in mario 64 DS that wizzz around the screen while mario or yoshi face is in the bottom screen during the intro.
#32555 - Dib - Thu Dec 23, 2004 9:27 pm
| manicdvln wrote: |
| What about the little stars in mario 64 DS that wizzz around the screen while mario or yoshi face is in the bottom screen during the intro. |
That was a joke, right?
Eclipse, you should really consider if this is even something you would want to do. Watching two screen simultaneously is not a good idea. In my experience with the DS so far, it's certainly not user friendly. Consider the Metroid bonus video for example.
#32577 - Darkain - Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:45 am
just as a note:
YES! it is possible to have 3d on both screen at the same time.
play Feel the Magic, it does this quite often.
also, if you take a look at the robot boss at the end of the game, the rendering looks like the exact same quality on both screens, so i'm doubting its software on one and hardware on the other.
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#32582 - PhoenixSoft - Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:12 am
Don't forget guys, software 3D rendering on one screen wouldn't look too bad. Some GBA 3D engines look quite good, and the ARM7 in the DS is running at twice the speed of the ARM7 in the GBA, so it would look even better.
#32606 - ravuya - Fri Dec 24, 2004 8:51 am
Software rendering wouldn't look bad running on both screens. It's not like you can tell all that much detail on the screens; I'd rather have a nice high framerate than pretty graphics any day.
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#32612 - telamon - Fri Dec 24, 2004 11:10 am
| manicdvln wrote: |
| What about the little stars in mario 64 DS that wizzz around the screen while mario or yoshi face is in the bottom screen during the intro. |
I'm not quite sure but it seems diffrent to me , when the star is in the top screen from when it's flying around in the bottom screen. I'd say the star in the topscreen is a prerendered sprite. But that dosen't really make any sense. why have a sprite star and as 3d star?
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#32686 - ras - Sat Dec 25, 2004 12:42 am
Yes, the DS supports 3D on both screens, no doubt(just check out that Dungeon Hack n Slash game from Japan, can't remeber the name now :/, it has a dragon for example on both screens), the question is if it can do it directly in the hardware(ie no hacks) but I don't think so.
#32697 - Eclipse - Sat Dec 25, 2004 4:14 am
| ras wrote: |
| Yes, the DS supports 3D on both screens, no doubt(just check out that Dungeon Hack n Slash game from Japan, can't remeber the name now :/, it has a dragon for example on both screens), the question is if it can do it directly in the hardware(ie no hacks) but I don't think so. |
OOOOOOO yeah, deep labyrinth. Anyway thanks a BUNCH for your help guys!
#33073 - Zlodo - Thu Dec 30, 2004 5:52 pm
Hardware 3d on one screen and software 3d on the other seems unlikely: it would be too much overhead to have to write a software renderer while there possible be some much easier tricks to make the hard render 3d on both screens.
As far as I know, people think it can render 3d on only one screen only based on what has been deduced from the leaked register map, and because is is believed that 3d is rendered on the fly, and not in a framebuffer.
While I believe there may be some truth in this, there also could be features allowing to render 3d on both screen that we just don't know about.
Even if it allowed only to run at 30 fps, it wouldn't matter too much. 30 fps is usually good enough for 3d. A scrolling is noticeably smoother at 60 fps than at 30, but with 3d, it's much harder to tell the difference.
#33075 - manicdvln - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:01 pm
Well if you play the jumping mario mini game in mario 64 DS
you can see 3 3d marios jumping and falling on both screens simutaneously as well as 3d shy guys flying everywhere in harder stages.
So I think DS can do 3d on both screens at same time, or this would be impossible or at least we should have seen slowdowns.
#33080 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:12 pm
| manicdvln wrote: |
Well if you play the jumping mario mini game in mario 64 DS
you can see 3 3d marios jumping and falling on both screens simutaneously as well as 3d shy guys flying everywhere in harder stages. |
It's been stated before that this is probably 3D in the same way that Donkey Kong Country was 3D. In other words, they're probably prerendered sprites.
I'm in the camp that thinks that 3D is only possible on one screen at a time OR it's something so difficult to do that it'll take programmers awhile to get a handle on it. I just haven't seen any of the present games exhibit 3D on more than one screen at a time.
#33081 - Zlodo - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:14 pm
Well, as darkain said, feel the magic does it in several mini games.
#33087 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:24 pm
I've got FTM and I don't see anything on it that couldn't be faked with 2D vectors on one screen. One example, the level with the scorpions on the back of the character. You can clearly tell that the bottom screen is made to look like the top screen to give the illusion of 3D continuing down. The level where the candles are coming at you on both screens is also just a 2D image.
Very clever 2D is not 3D but if it makes for a good effect anyway, why not use it? It sure looked good in Donkey Kong Country and didn't take away from the gameplay at all.
Again, I'm just saying that I haven't seen anything that couldn't be done by faking the 3D. I'm not claiming to be right and not saying that it CAN'T be done, I just haven't seen it yet.
#33090 - Zlodo - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:41 pm
Why not use it ? Because it requires much more work. You have both to model, rig and anim a 3d character, and then in addition to that, do a frame-by-frame animation for the other screen.
Anyway, what about last battle and yacht ?
I know, you'll say that they could use pre-rendered background animations and such.
Play yacht. Advance to the point where there is a shark circling on the top screen.
You'll agree that the yacht (on bottom screen) is real-time 3d. What about the shark ? Do you think that it would be really reasonable to have a pre-rendered animation of a circling shark ? Or even several ones (as later one, the shark is making a smaller circle ?)
And what about the cut scene when you save the girl ? The shark is still there, circling. It can't really be a sprite at that point.
#33094 - dagamer34 - Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:52 pm
The number of games that use 3D on the DS are few, no new one according to my knowledge are going to be released for some time. So it is a possiblilty that all these "artifacts" and such are just because of a rushed development cycle. Besides, developers have had dev kits for less than a year.
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#33101 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 30, 2004 8:10 pm
| Zlodo wrote: |
| Why not use it ? Because it requires much more work. You have both to model, rig and anim a 3d character, and then in addition to that, do a frame-by-frame animation for the other screen. |
What I'm saying is why rig and anim a 3D character at all when a 2D animation looks just as good? If the model is only going to be seen from a finite number of angles, it makes sense to have a team to take care of that so that you can use the system's horsepower more wisely (SNES Mario Kart, the cars were sprites instead of realtime 3D objects. They COULD have been done in 3D, but the game wouldn't have been as fast or fun)
| Quote: |
| I know, you'll say that they could use pre-rendered background animations and such. |
Yeah, I will. :) The reason being that no matter how complex the 3D effect, if it's only being seen from one angle, then it can be done just as well in 2D. I haven't seen anything on the second screen (while one screen is doing 3D) that couldn't be done convincingly in 2D.
#33102 - Zlodo - Thu Dec 30, 2004 8:28 pm
Even if it's seen only from a particular angle, it's much more work.
When you animate sprites, you have to draw each frame of each animation, for each sprite.
Making a new animation for a 3d character that is already modeled and rigged is much less work than making an animated sprite.
Since both the hero and the girl have obviously been modeled and rigged (for the menus, the cut scenes, and such), I don't possibly see why they would have wasted time to make sprites, for instance for the scorpion mini-game.
On SNES, rendering 3d objects in real-time was probably not an option. If the system does have enough horsepower to do it, it would be foolish to waste time (and/or money) to animate 2d sprites if it's easier to do with 3d.
Especially the mario kart example: animating a sprite is already some work, but animating it from x different angles is x times more work.
In 3d, you can animate things once. You can reuse animations with different models (as long as they have the same skeleton), so you have to do some generic animations (like walking and running) only once.
Conversely, if you do a new model, it can directly use the animations that already have been done for the other characters.
#33107 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 30, 2004 9:39 pm
More work for the animator, less work for the system (doing anything in 2D is less computationally intensive than 3D which is why special hardware is sometimes required for 3D). And when I know that the object in question is only going to need 12 discrete frames of animation to be convincing, even better!
When I say "2D" I'm not talking about sprites only. Flash animation is 2D and, as long as you limit the color depth of your models (like in FTM), you could very easily make it LOOK as if you're rendering 3D objects.
I don't know if the DS can do vectors in hardware or software, and again, I'm not saying that a full 3D environment CAN'T be done on both screens simultaneously. I just think that if it could be done EASILY, there'd be more to show for it than a few instances in a 2 or three games. A 3D steering wheel in Ridge Racer for example or a 3D top down view in Madden.
#33108 - manicdvln - Thu Dec 30, 2004 9:50 pm
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
More work for the animator, less work for the system (doing anything in 2D is less computationally intensive than 3D which is why special hardware is sometimes required for 3D). And when I know that the object in question is only going to need 12 discrete frames of animation to be convincing, even better!
When I say "2D" I'm not talking about sprites only. Flash animation is 2D and, as long as you limit the color depth of your models (like in FTM), you could very easily make it LOOK as if you're rendering 3D objects.
I don't know if the DS can do vectors in hardware or software, and again, I'm not saying that a full 3D environment CAN'T be done on both screens simultaneously. I just think that if it could be done EASILY, there'd be more to show for it than a few instances in a 2 or three games. A 3D steering wheel in Ridge Racer for example or a 3D top down view in Madden. |
Listen you, I just had enough of your nonesense, DS having almost the same arthitecture as the N64, can pull off 3D on either screen and both at same time. Jumping marios ARE NOT sprites, and they are real 3D models and no frame animation can make such marios so smooth, and not mention, the models themselves are pixelated and have rought edges which means they are indeed polygons. The shy guys move left from right, up and down, as well as the marios in several of the same mini games which uses the same 3d model.
If they were real sprites, why would they still have bad quality on edges? Mr driller does not use 3D, yet its animations and sprites are obviously 2d animation and do not suffer the same pixelated effects as mario mini games.
Not to mention, even in N64 GAMES, all developers did everything they could to AVOID frame animation because of losing valuable catridge space.
It is easier for developers to make 3d models instead of high quality frames because they take too much space.
You want example? N64 killer instinct gold was entirely converted from the arcade version KI2 2d animation game into 3d enviroments and models, because doing it with 2D frames would take so much space to have a smooth animation as the arcade version.
It would have needed a bigger cartridge which would mean, cost more for production as well as consumer. So saying that making 2d animations is more beneficial for software developers especially on cartridge based 3d consoles is asinine.
Last edited by manicdvln on Thu Dec 30, 2004 10:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
#33110 - Zlodo - Thu Dec 30, 2004 9:57 pm
| Quote: |
| More work for the animator, less work for the system (doing anything in 2D is less computationally intensive than 3D which is why special hardware is sometimes required for 3D). |
If you have dedicated 3d hardware and it doesn't take much of a performance hit to display on two screens instead of one, you don't gain anything by using it on only one screen, since you can't really use it for something else.
Flash animation is vector graphics, so unless you use the 3d hardware to render it, you're going to have a real big performance hit by rasterizing polygons in software.
And equations like "more work for the animator, less work for the system" don't work well in the video game development business. More work for the animator cost more money, more work for the system doesn't.
I agree that there's good chance that displaying 3d on both screen has some kind of penalty that makes it not so desirable in a lot of cases, but I do believe it can be done, and in some of the mini games in ftm, it's a better solution, even with it's particular (and unknown) downsides.
However, the steering wheel example is one where you have a static, although rotating, sprite. In that case, drawing a single, non-animated sprite is indeed less work than modelling it in 3d :)
#33115 - EaDS Milliways - Thu Dec 30, 2004 10:35 pm
| Zlodo wrote: |
| Quote: | | More work for the animator, less work for the system (doing anything in 2D is less computationally intensive than 3D which is why special hardware is sometimes required for 3D). |
If you have dedicated 3d hardware and it doesn't take much of a performance hit to display on two screens instead of one, you don't gain anything by using it on only one screen, since you can't really use it for something else. |
I agree that if you have dedicated 3d hardware that it's a GOOD thing. I was just stating that NEEDING dedicated 3d hardware lets me know that the calculations required are more than the CPU can handle (on top of handling all the other system functions).
| Zlodo wrote: |
| Flash animation is vector graphics, so unless you use the 3d hardware to render it, you're going to have a real big performance hit by rasterizing polygons in software. |
PC's have been performing Flash animations without 3D hardware for a LONG time on much slower processors.
| Zlodo wrote: |
| And equations like "more work for the animator, less work for the system" don't work well in the video game development business. More work for the animator cost more money, more work for the system doesn't. |
There are tradeoffs made all the time depending on the genre. Look at it this way, I can either fully 3D model your car plus all the cars you're racing against, OR I can fully model YOUR car, bump down the models of the other cars and pay an artist to redo the textures so that you won't notice it as much. I probably could have saved money one way, but the game wouldn't run nearly as fast or as smooth.
| Zlodo wrote: |
| I agree that there's good chance that displaying 3d on both screen has some kind of penalty that makes it not so desirable in a lot of cases, but I do believe it can be done, and in some of the mini games in ftm, it's a better solution, even with it's particular (and unknown) downsides. |
I agree 100% :)
#33116 - ScottLininger - Thu Dec 30, 2004 10:43 pm
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| PC's have been performing Flash animations without 3D hardware for a LONG time on much slower processors. |
True, but PCs have hardware for floating point calculations. My understanding is that the DS does not. And vector graphics without an FPU is troublesome.
Still, I'm hopeful that Flash will run on the DS... I've seen it running on cellphones, for goodness sake. :)
-Scott
#33131 - tepples - Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:04 am
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| Zlodo wrote: | | Flash animation is vector graphics, so unless you use the 3d hardware to render it, you're going to have a real big performance hit by rasterizing polygons in software. |
PC's have been performing Flash animations without 3D hardware for a LONG time on much slower processors. |
Much slower than an i486SX at 67 MHz, which would be roughly equivalent to an ARM9 at 67 MHz? Flash's ancestor, FutureSplash, didn't even hit the market until late 1996.
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#33137 - EaDS Milliways - Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:27 am
| tepples wrote: |
| EaDS Milliways wrote: | | Zlodo wrote: | | Flash animation is vector graphics, so unless you use the 3d hardware to render it, you're going to have a real big performance hit by rasterizing polygons in software. |
PC's have been performing Flash animations without 3D hardware for a LONG time on much slower processors. |
Much slower than an i486SX at 67 MHz, which would be roughly equivalent to an ARM9 at 67 MHz? Flash's ancestor, FutureSplash, didn't even hit the market until late 1996. |
I was just making the point that 3D acceleration isn't needed for 2D graphics. I think it's more important as Scott said that you have a good FPU. I wonder if it can still be accomplished with integer though. I haven't seen Flash on a cel phone but I'd guess they don't have any particularly powerful chips or 3D hardware in there either.
#33147 - Zlodo - Fri Dec 31, 2004 5:14 am
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| PC's have been performing Flash animations without 3D hardware for a LONG time on much slower processors. |
Your point was that using 2d would demand less on the system, and that it could well be 2d vector graphics. My point was 2d vector graphics without using the hard essentially needs as much power as rendering 3d in software, because you have to touch individual pixels with the CPU, so you'd be better off using the 3d hardware. And so, if you're going to simulate 3d using 2d vector rendered with the hard, you can aswell just render 3d.
Basically, my point is that it wouldn't make any sense for them to have bothered to do fake 3d on one screen with some 2d techniques, instead of only rendering 3d on both screen, even with supposedly penalties to do so. It seems we strayed quite a bit from that discussion :)
| Quote: |
| There are tradeoffs made all the time depending on the genre. Look at it this way, I can either fully 3D model your car plus all the cars you're racing against, OR I can fully model YOUR car, bump down the models of the other cars and pay an artist to redo the textures so that you won't notice it as much. I probably could have saved money one way, but the game wouldn't run nearly as fast or as smooth. |
Making lod for cars isn't quite as much work as drawing animated sprites that can be seen from a lot of directions. And yes, if it's necessary to make the game work (ie run at a decent speed), of course it will be done.
However, if it's going to be much more work to gain only a little performance, then it's not worth it. You, somewhere in that discussion, said that feel the magic could very well have used 2d to fake 3d on the second display, and that it would look just as good. I said that it was unlikely since it would require much more work and that the 3d chip of the DS was probably able to handle it.
Thus, by occam's razor, it's much more likely that they simply render 3d on both screens where it's needed (ex, the yacht minigame), rather than using 2d tricks that would take much more cartridge space and be much more work to come up with.
#33148 - Zlodo - Fri Dec 31, 2004 5:21 am
| ScottLininger wrote: |
And vector graphics without an FPU is troublesome.
-Scott |
3d is vector graphics, only with one more dimension. If you can do 3d, you can do 2d vector graphics.
#33153 - tepples - Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:12 am
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| 3D acceleration isn't needed for 2D graphics. I think it's more important as Scott said that you have a good FPU. I wonder if it can still be accomplished with integer though. |
The DS video hardware has an FPU -- a fixed point unit. So did the PS1.
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#33156 - EaDS Milliways - Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:25 am
I would disagree that 2D is as demanding as 3D. Given an object, delete all the Z values and there's that many fewer calculations that have to be done. However, not being a programmer, there's no way I could convince anyone of that. :) Which is why I say that I haven't seen anything that would REQUIRE 3D on both screens. The only reason to fake it would be because it couldn't be done otherwise, which, again, I'm not entirely sure of. The only thing I can point to as an example would be that none of the current games offer a convincing 3D on both screens with the POSSIBLE exception of FTM.
If FTM IS doing 3D on both screens then the limitation may be that you must decrease your color palette and simplify your models greatly. This would be quite a quality decrease for the sake of dual3D and may be why we only see it on one title.
#33158 - EaDS Milliways - Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:35 am
| tepples wrote: |
| EaDS Milliways wrote: | | 3D acceleration isn't needed for 2D graphics. I think it's more important as Scott said that you have a good FPU. I wonder if it can still be accomplished with integer though. |
The DS video hardware has an FPU -- a fixed point unit. So did the PS1. |
That's right, I just remembered an explanation was posted and it's at number 13 here.
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=4494&start=0
So it IS more than integer, but only barely enough to handle the precision needed for this particular display.
#33185 - ector - Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:23 pm
FPU by convention means floating point unit. Using it as an abbreviation for "Fixed point unit" will only bring confusion... so don't.
#33188 - Zlodo - Fri Dec 31, 2004 2:24 pm
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| tepples wrote: | | EaDS Milliways wrote: | | 3D acceleration isn't needed for 2D graphics. I think it's more important as Scott said that you have a good FPU. I wonder if it can still be accomplished with integer though. |
The DS video hardware has an FPU -- a fixed point unit. So did the PS1. |
That's right, I just remembered an explanation was posted and it's at number 13 here.
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=4494&start=0
So it IS more than integer, but only barely enough to handle the precision needed for this particular display. |
It all depends on how many bit you choose to use as fractional part, and integer part. By the way, I'm pretty sure that most software engines (if not all of them) used fixed point calculation, because it's usually much faster than fp calculation.
| Quote: |
| I would disagree that 2D is as demanding as 3D. Given an object, delete all the Z values and there's that many fewer calculations that have to be done. However, not being a programmer, there's no way I could convince anyone of that. |
Yes, many fewer transformation calculation. However, the bulk of the work for a software 3d renderer, or a 2d one, is to draw polygons. And you need to touch individual pixels. Even if you're filling polygons with a single color and nothing fancy like texturing or shading, you have to store a lot of data in memory.
You don't have to transform an huge amount of vertices, especially since we're not talking about thousnads of polygons models here.
The transformation of a vertex is is only a bunch of multiplications and additions (both usually have the same execution cost on modern cpus), like (on top of my head) around 15 for the multiplication of a 3*3 matrix by a 3 element vector to do homogenous 2d transformations, and around 20-25 to multiply a 4*4 matrix by a 4 element vector (for homogenous 3d transformations).
Add three divisions for the homogenous space to screen projection: 3d vector is not that much more total work over 2d vectors, especially as we're not talking about models with thousands of polygons here.
So, transformation of the vertices is an order of magnitude less work than actually drawing the polygons.
#33197 - EaDS Milliways - Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:18 pm
| Zlodo wrote: |
| 3d vector is not that much more total work over 2d vectors |
The only point I was making is that it WAS more total work. Given the limited resources of the system, if the difference is real, then there may be a benefit to a developer to take advantage of it.
#33435 - kaeru23frog - Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:12 am
Could it be that the instances of 3D on both screens that we have seen is not pre-rendered sprites but real-time rendered sprites that are then handled as though they were 2D? I haven't seen Feel the Magic, but in the mario bouncing mini-game there is clearly a 2D background and the characters never move in 3D, just up-down and left-right.
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#33920 - Cthulhu32 - Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:03 am
I don't know if this was said a million times, sorry if it was, but the DS uses two processors for the screens, the ARM7 which is similar to the gba and contains all of the libraries for the DS programs, and the ARM9 which is used for the 3D processing. From what my bro tells me *he just got a job as a gba programmer, and gets to poke his head into the DS development teams desks* and from what I understand, the reason why you can't do 3D on both screens is because each screen gets a processor. However I've read some people on here that were right in that they have made some somewhat 3D software engines for the gba and could do it on the DS, so you could have 3D on both, but for now the DS games are using sprites on the screen that's using 2D unless Feel the Magic used a 3D software engine for the Arm7 processor.
#33953 - Spaceface - Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:20 pm
I was wondering. I'm not too much into graphical development and have started an early stage of openGL development. Will the DS have an IDE which'll make it easy such as Direct3D or openGL? (not exactly Direct3D or openGL of cource, but you catch my drift ;))
#33954 - NoMis - Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:35 pm
| Spaceface wrote: |
| I was wondering. I'm not too much into graphical development and have started an early stage of openGL development. Will the DS have an IDE which'll make it easy such as Direct3D or openGL? (not exactly Direct3D or openGL of cource, but you catch my drift ;)) |
The offical SDK from Nintendo does surly have such thing as an API but no one of us can get hands on it since it's only for licensed developers.
NoMis
#33964 - DiscoStew - Tue Jan 11, 2005 6:55 pm
| Cthulhu32 wrote: |
| the reason why you can't do 3D on both screens is because each screen gets a processor. However I've read some people on here that were right in that they have made some somewhat 3D software engines for the gba and could do it on the DS, so you could have 3D on both, |
If that's true, then I think I understand why Nintendo decided not to add bilinear filtering to the features of the DS. Because if only 1 screen can use the 3D hardware at a time, then the other (in order to have 3D on it too) would have to be software-based. Could you imagine trying to implement a software-based 3D engine with bilinear filtering on a 67Mhz CPU, let alone a 33Mhz CPU? There's got to be processing time for the actual game itself also, so no sense in trying to stress the CPUs in that way
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#33971 - mtg101 - Tue Jan 11, 2005 7:59 pm
| Cthulhu32 wrote: |
| I don't know if this was said a million times, sorry if it was, but the DS uses two processors for the screens, the ARM7 which is similar to the gba and contains all of the libraries for the DS programs, and the ARM9 which is used for the 3D processing. |
That sorta matches up with what I've gathered from the DS wiki and other places, but I understood it as follows:
The DS basically has a GBA inside; ARM7 and a couple of GFX chips. When running in GBA mode this is what gets used.
Also the DS has an ARM9 and 3D GFX chip. When running in DS mode user code runs on the ARM9; the ARM7 deals with the touch-screen, WiFi, etc etc.
So in DS mode the user code running on the ARM9 would be in control of both the 3D GFX chip and the old GBA GFX chips. ie your write some tiles, maps, sprites, etc, to the GBA GFX chips' mapped memory; write some models, textures, viewpoints, etc, to the 3D GFX chip's mapped memory: and magically the GFX processors turn that stuff into cool GFX on the screens.
However none of this helps us work out if either of the GFX chips can access both screeens at the same time. There's no reason why either chip couldn't work at a resolution of 256x384 spanning both screens - especially given it looks like the GBA GFX chips can work at both 256x192 (DS resolution) and 240x160 (GBA screen resolution).
However my guess is each GFX chip gets its own screen. Seems simpler that way. Looking at Feel the Magic there are a number of times it looks like 3D on both screens (the shopping cart rolling down the hill, cleaning muck of the girl's arms), but in each case it seems that the "less 3D" of the screens could easily be faked using some scaled sprites or something.
Anyway... enough uninformed rambling from me!
offtopic: Aren't chips given dull names these days? I'd much prefer to be programming Paula, Agnus and Denise, rather than a ARM946E-S :)
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---
Speaker for the Dead
#33981 - iainprice - Tue Jan 11, 2005 10:50 pm
So is what you are saying that we write code basically for the GBA but have two screens to play with and can call some snazzy effects from the 3d chips every now and again....
#33987 - Zlodo - Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:59 am
| mtg101 wrote: |
That sorta matches up with what I've gathered from the DS wiki and other places, but I understood it as follows:
The DS basically has a GBA inside; ARM7 and a couple of GFX chips. When running in GBA mode this is what gets used.
Also the DS has an ARM9 and 3D GFX chip. When running in DS mode user code runs on the ARM9; the ARM7 deals with the touch-screen, WiFi, etc etc. |
That's also what my own "informed sources" says.
| Quote: |
| However my guess is each GFX chip gets its own screen. Seems simpler that way. Looking at Feel the Magic there are a number of times it looks like 3D on both screens (the shopping cart rolling down the hill, cleaning muck of the girl's arms), but in each case it seems that the "less 3D" of the screens could easily be faked using some scaled sprites or something. |
I understood that it's indeed this way, but that there's an indirect way, with various downsides, to render 3d on both screens.
| Quote: |
| offtopic: Aren't chips given dull names these days? I'd much prefer to be programming Paula, Agnus and Denise, rather than a ARM946E-S :) |
Ah, memories :)
#33988 - Gatchers - Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:59 am
[quote="mtg101"] | Cthulhu32 wrote: |
offtopic: Aren't chips given dull names these days? I'd much prefer to be programming Paula, Agnus and Denise, rather than a ARM946E-S :) |
The original ARM chipset was named ARM, Anna, Albion and Arrabella.
#34287 - manicdvln - Mon Jan 17, 2005 4:57 am
3D on both screens simutaenously in first URL.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/gamesdb/media.php?id=326
http://www.dengekionline.com/data/news/2004/07/14/5a644590708eb44519959635282cdc72.html
Are you guys still going to say those are pre rendered sprites? ;)l
Last edited by manicdvln on Mon Jan 17, 2005 3:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
#34289 - netdroid9 - Mon Jan 17, 2005 5:14 am
They both have exactly the same quality.
I'm not sure, but if the 3d is rendered for double the height of one screen, and loaded into a buffer, that would allow both screens to display the 3D image.
#34290 - tepples - Mon Jan 17, 2005 5:30 am
I can't believe I didn't think of this before now, but even with the framebufferless video rendering that the Nintendo DS is suspected of having, it's possible that the video has a frame-buffer-capture mode that DMAs the pixels to memory as they're drawn to the LCD. This would allow for 3D on both screens at 30fps, alternating between the two screens.
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#34294 - dagamer34 - Mon Jan 17, 2005 7:42 am
| tepples wrote: |
| I can't believe I didn't think of this before now, but even with the framebufferless video rendering that the Nintendo DS is suspected of having, it's possible that the video has a frame-buffer-capture mode that DMAs the pixels to memory as they're drawn to the LCD. This would allow for 3D on both screens at 30fps, alternating between the two screens. |
If you can write to a screen directly, what is stopping you from reading from it after everything is done?
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Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#34295 - EaDS Milliways - Mon Jan 17, 2005 8:02 am
I am! :) Of course, show me the same thing moving and ya may have something there! If it's some kind of card game, then a big static 2D image might be completely acceptable.
#34299 - ras - Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:42 am
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
I am! :) Of course, show me the same thing moving and ya may have something there! If it's some kind of card game, then a big static 2D image might be completely acceptable. |
The first image(got a nice 404 on the other) shows an action dungeon RPG.
#34301 - FluBBa - Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:49 am
| tepples wrote: |
| I can't believe I didn't think of this before now, but even with the framebufferless video rendering that the Nintendo DS is suspected of having, it's possible that the video has a frame-buffer-capture mode that DMAs the pixels to memory as they're drawn to the LCD. This would allow for 3D on both screens at 30fps, alternating between the two screens. |
| Miked0801 wrote: |
| 3D on 2 screens == GBC could render 4000+ colors on one screen with same technique. |
This might make sense, using HDMA to save every rendered scanline and then alternate which screen that is updated every other frame. I can see why it isn't used in many games yet though.
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#34303 - sandymac - Mon Jan 17, 2005 11:26 am
<uninformed speculative misinformation>
I believe:
- The DS can do 3D on both screens at once.
- Rendering to two screens at once effectively halves the quality of image that can be rendered per screen.
- In an effort to make the DS's 3D abilities look better, Nintendo made 3D performance claims for only rendering to one screen.
- Somewhere, someone misinterpreted this to mean the DS can only do 3D on one screen at a time.
- Someone else will misinterpret my speculations to be more authoritative than they are.
</uninformed speculative misinformation>
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#34315 - EaDS Milliways - Mon Jan 17, 2005 8:05 pm
| ras wrote: |
| The first image(got a nice 404 on the other) shows an action dungeon RPG. |
I got 404'd as well.
If this is an initial view where the camera has just finished whirling around the object, that's one thing. However, if you're walking along (the 3D wall only being on the bottom screen) and this thing just slides out at you from one of the sides (the lightning strike reminds me vaguely of YuGiOh) then it'd just be a well done picture.
That's why I'd say in most cases, I'd probably have to see the picture moving.
#34326 - manicdvln - Mon Jan 17, 2005 11:57 pm
Check my original post now, URL should be fixed.
#34426 - EaDS Milliways - Wed Jan 19, 2005 7:47 am
Is this derived from a celphone game? It looks like that aspect ratio.
#34428 - TJ - Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:43 am
No, it's an original DS game.
#34436 - EaDS Milliways - Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:18 pm
| TJ wrote: |
| No, it's an original DS game. |
Don't you think these screens look too narrow to be DS screens?
http://www.ibrains.co.jp/v/dl/system/index.html
And the .gif at the top that shows the battle system looks suspiciously like a phone keypad.
Not to get too far off topic, Asphalt GT was on cellular phones first as well and it turned out to be pretty good, but wasn't dual screen 3D.
#34437 - TJ - Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:34 pm
Odd, I could find no record of it existing previously.
#34444 - ras - Wed Jan 19, 2005 7:17 pm
| EaDS Milliways wrote: |
| Is this derived from a celphone game? It looks like that aspect ratio. |
Yeah, I think I've heard Deep Labyrinth is a series of games in Japan, with most(if not all) has been on cellphones before.
#34478 - Abscissa - Thu Jan 20, 2005 3:59 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| If you can write to a screen directly, what is stopping you from reading from it after everything is done? |
The data you read wouldn't contain any of the hardware-drawn 3D graphics. Assuming it's a framebufferless renderer like tepples said, it's just like reading pixels on the GBA where ever a sprite is. You'll just end up reading the background and not the sprite.
#39736 - tepples - Mon Apr 11, 2005 10:24 pm
| Abscissa wrote: |
| Assuming it's a framebufferless renderer like tepples said, it's just like reading pixels on the GBA where ever a sprite is. You'll just end up reading the background and not the sprite. |
That is, unless the output of the framebufferless renderer can be observed. Then just use some sort of DMA to redirect this output back into VRAM for use on the 2D screen. In fact, dovoto has confirmed that this is the case. Locked.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.