Saturn HELLSLAVE : Project Z-Treme

[XL2]

Edit : latest video of my homebrew Sega Saturn game, Hellslave : Project Z-treme :

 

[speedyink]

Very cool! Looks really good!

 

[Anthony817]

Damn that looks amazing with dynamic lighting! Still hard to believe this is homebrew on the Saturn.

 

[dark]

Very impressive for the hardware!

 

[XL2]

SAGE 2019 demo here :

PROJECT Z-TREME (Sega Saturn) - SAGE 2019 tech demo

Frag like it's 1997! Full 3D WIP first person shooter game/engine for the Sega Saturn. Single player, splitscreen coop and splitscreen deathmatch!

sonicfangameshq.com

 

[XL2]

Here is a gameplay video I made of the whole SAGE 2019 demo. I also recently added lens flares and gibs (I didn't have time to do it in time for SAGE, so better late than never).



Also here are the lens flares/halos in the game :

 

[Anthony817]

Wow! Does this support loading of Quake levels or did you have to do a lot to export the .bsp? That Quake level looks quite stunning with this lighting engine.

Also, is this fully open sourced so people can port this to other systems? I would quite like to see this on Dreamcast with texture filtering, AA and 480p. Would be interesting to see how far the framerate could go. Because if this supports Quake maps and models, this would be a seriously nice engine to make games for. If it supports Quake maps, could it theoretically also support HL1 maps and models?

 

[XL2]

Wow! Does this support loading of Quake levels or did you have to do a lot to export the .bsp? That Quake level looks quite stunning with this lighting engine.

Also, is this fully open sourced so people can port this to other systems? I would quite like to see this on Dreamcast with texture filtering, AA and 480p. Would be interesting to see how far the framerate could go. Because if this supports Quake maps and models, this would be a seriously nice engine to make games for. If it supports Quake maps, could it theoretically also support HL1 maps and models?

It doesn't support Quake maps, I converted these maps from Saturn Quake to Noesis, then to an .obj format that I modified in Blender, then I compiled these with my own bsp compiler. It doesn't load/use anything from other formats. As for the open source part, I don't plan to share it in the near future, but one day I will just like I did with Sonic Z-Treme once I gave up on it.

 

[Anthony817]

Ah ok! Still impressive seeing it running the Quake map! I guess we really didn't get to see the Saturn's 3D pushed to the limits like with PSX, so you being able to do some nice effects like that and still getting playable framerates is really great to see. Sure PSX quality stuff wasn't always possible, but I felt there was still room to show off unique ways to push 3D on the system.

 

[XL2]

Ah ok! Still impressive seeing it running the Quake map! I guess we really didn't get to see the Saturn's 3D pushed to the limits like with PSX, so you being able to do some nice effects like that and still getting playable framerates is really great to see. Sure PSX quality stuff wasn't always possible, but I felt there was still room to show off unique ways to push 3D on the system.

In fact since that video I added realtime lighting support for the entities (3d models, like enemies and gibs). The Saturn can do more, it's just a matter of finding the time to do everything I want to do, but I'm slowly getting there.

 

[XL2]

Now with 3D weapons (work in progress) :

 

[XL2]

Another update, showing the Burning Rangers' style of transparency :

 

[speedyink]

Holy shit, that looks awesome! Your engine is becoming quite advanced!

 

[Yakumo]

Another update, showing the Burning Rangers' style of transparency :

Man you are a wizard when it comes to Saturn coding.

 

[XL2]

Here is my latest video, showing the new dynamic lighting system in action, now supporting up to 8 dynamic light sources (+1 static) per vertex!
It is a bit overkill, but it looks nice and performs well enough.
Not seen here, but I improved the performances a bit more since I made that video, and I will improve it more in the future weeks.

 

[Ioncannon]

Awesome videos and an inspiration to keep on cracking with my project (though it's targeting the Dreamcast).

How's the lighting preformed? I assume the static lights are with lightmaps?

Nevermind saw this:

I also only use C for the transformation, so I could get a big boost by using assembly. For the shading/lighting, I have static light precalculated using my BSP tree, depth shading calculated in realtime and I have “dynamic” light effects (red and green, which is just a color table getting updated to change the intensity). So in terms of graphics (if we forget the artistic choices), it’s more or less on par with the Slavedriver : Both engines use 64×64 textures with gouraud shading lighting on each quad. I have a higher resolution (352×224 vs 320×240), but still no “real” realtime lighting effects.

 

[XL2]

Awesome videos and an inspiration to keep on cracking with my project (though it's targeting the Dreamcast).

How's the lighting preformed? I assume the static lights are with lightmaps?

Nevermind saw this:

That quote is quite old, but yeah everything is done with gouraud shading, which works well since you need to keep a high polygon count to tile the textures.
The Saturn can't officially support lightmaps, but I had a technique which allowed something very similar via the VDP2, but at the cost of rendering 2 times each polygon (one with the texture, one with the lightmap).
I didn't keep it since I need to use gouraud shading for dynamic lights anyway.

 

[Ioncannon]

When you mean Gouraud shading, you mean using the built in lighting hardware? (Equivalent of the GL_LIGHT functions of OGL). Haven't done any Saturn programming but a quick look in the documentation does show functions for setting lights.

The Saturn can't officially support lightmaps, but I had a technique which allowed something very similar via the VDP2, but at the cost of rendering 2 times each polygon (one with the texture, one with the lightmap).

No multitexturing huh? Not surprising since it's early console hardware. Still, amazing work! Love the retro-fps style you have gone with, maybe in the end you'll end up with a game that sits with the likes of DUSK and Ion Maiden! Can't wait for the finished product.

 

[Anthony817]

Awesome videos and an inspiration to keep on cracking with my project (though it's targeting the Dreamcast).

Not to hijack this thread, but what project are you developing for the DC?

 

[Ioncannon]

I've been writing a 3D engine for a game I want to build in the future. I have ported it to Xbox (OG) and Shinobi/Kamui. Inspiration is Daggerfall and the Might and Magic 6,7,8 games.

Nothing to impressive has been created yet but will start working on the terrain side of things soon. Will be interesting to see if the DC can render a LODed and culled terrain well.