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> Using the 65c816 keeps the 8-bit vibe Given that a 65c816 is what’s in the SNES, I’d say it has a distinctly 16-but vibe. Don’t get me wrong; 16-bit is my f

by derefr 5y ago

> Using the 65c816 keeps the 8-bit vibe Given that a 65c816 is what’s in the SNES, I’d say it has a distinctly 16-but vibe. Don’t get me wrong; 16-bit is my favorite! Far too few retro projects targeting early-90s era tech, or its portable early-2000s mirror. (Imagine if you will: a plug-and-play with extended GBA-clone hardware, with a tile-and-sprite PPU that could push 1080p@60 with tons of layered graphics colour-math + windowing + DMA effects, but which explicitly didn’t offer a bitmap mode, let alone 3D acceleration; and tack on both Flash storage and Ethernet APIs, exposed through simple MMIO hardware registers to the games, with all the complexity shunted to a Wii-like IO coprocessor running its own RTOS. It’d be the perfect modern platform for retro-modern 2D JRPGs to be released on. A WonderSwan+++, per se. A PlayStation Zero.)

TeaDude 5y ago
Don't forget the hardware divider and the DS's sound capabilities! I don't think retro 3D is a bad idea though. Just do what the DS does (keeping it separate from 2D in the process) and I think it would probably be the greatest console ever made.
- derefr 5y ago
  It’s not that 3D is un-retro; it’s just a tempting crutch. Give people “free” 3D, even a little, and they’ll use it to the exclusion of interesting 2D effects. You’ll get FF7 instead of Terranigma / Symphony of the Night — still retro, but 1. the wrong era, and 2. not taking any advantage of the distinctive cool stuff the hardware can do, instead looking like every other low-poly 3D game. Same with bitmap modes: people will use them as a crutch by combining them with software rendering. (Maybe this could be fixed by putting a hard cap on the 3D frame rate. Maybe even make it so low that all 3D must be precomputed, baked down into a tile map and used through sprites! Under that restriction, it could look arbitrarily good, but the results would still look more SMRPG than Goldeneye.) And same for sufficiently-good PCM sound. The ideal early-90s sound chip would be something like 128-voice polyphonic MIDI with a huge wavetable (but banked — no playing PCM by walking wavetable samples), passed through an arbitrary FM synth module, with the whole thing being bytecode that can do loops and branching.

by derefr 5y ago

TeaDude 5y ago

Don't forget the hardware divider and the DS's sound capabilities! I don't think retro 3D is a bad idea though. Just do what the DS does (keeping it separate from 2D in the process) and I think it would probably be the greatest console ever made.

derefr 5y ago
It’s not that 3D is un-retro; it’s just a tempting crutch. Give people “free” 3D, even a little, and they’ll use it to the exclusion of interesting 2D effects. You’ll get FF7 instead of Terranigma / Symphony of the Night — still retro, but 1. the wrong era, and 2. not taking any advantage of the distinctive cool stuff the hardware can do, instead looking like every other low-poly 3D game. Same with bitmap modes: people will use them as a crutch by combining them with software rendering. (Maybe this could be fixed by putting a hard cap on the 3D frame rate. Maybe even make it so low that all 3D must be precomputed, baked down into a tile map and used through sprites! Under that restriction, it could look arbitrarily good, but the results would still look more SMRPG than Goldeneye.) And same for sufficiently-good PCM sound. The ideal early-90s sound chip would be something like 128-voice polyphonic MIDI with a huge wavetable (but banked — no playing PCM by walking wavetable samples), passed through an arbitrary FM synth module, with the whole thing being bytecode that can do loops and branching.