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[nded]

Uh, no. We probably need a webm made of something like Super Mario World for people to contrast with a video on Youtube of the game.

SMB3, but close enough.

http://a.pomf.se/zcaznc.webm

Got it from here.

 

[Gattsu25]

SMB3, but close enough.

http//a.pomf.se/zcaznc.webm

Got it from here.

You see the right side of that .webm? That's what people used to defend.

C'mon folks. Let's return to the framerate of NES games.

 

[rjc571]

You see the right side of that .webm? That's what people used to defend.

C'mon folks. Let's return to the framerate of NES games.

The right hand side is so much more cinematic, though. The left side looks more like a soap opera than a video game.

 

[deriks]

Vectorman on Mega Drive was so smooth... This game probably is over 9000 fps

 

[Eusis]

The right hand side is so much more cinematic, though. The left side looks more like a soap opera than a video game.

Given how often Peach goes with Bowser and the revelation that those Koopa Kids turned out to not be HIS kids maybe that's appropriate. Nevermind the complete appearance changes they underwent during this period.

 

[Kageshinzo]

You see the right side of that .webm? That's what people used to defend.

C'mon folks. Let's return to the framerate of NES games.

But cinemat--

The right hand side is so much more cinematic, though. The left side looks more like a soap opera than a video game.

Damn you rjc571. I hope you step on a dog's doodoo.

 

[danielcw]

smoother 2D scrolling in MS-DOS mostly

for MS-DOS 1-2 MB were enough for most games.

For Windows games, 4 MB and up was necessary, especially for 3D.

You did not answer my question:
how does more ram help with smoother scrolling on old dos games?

SMB3, but close enough.

http://a.pomf.se/zcaznc.webm

Got it from here.

I don't see a major difference

 

[nded]

I don't see a major difference

How about this one?

 

[moniker]

How about this one?

This is probably the best online test I've seen since it seems to warn you if the browser can't keep it vsynced at 60 fps.

 

[danielcw]

How about this one?

That was jarring

But imho SMB3 looks OK at 30fps.
It does not move that fast.

It took me a long time to notice a difference in the SMB3 video.

Maybe Nintendo manages to let the Allstars version run at 30fps on the 3DS. Would be enough for me

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

But imho SMB3 looks OK at 30fps.
It does not move that fast.

I imagine the later stages would be very painful at half frame-rate.
No thanks.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

The Last of Us Remastered, unfortunately.

I dont get it either man.

It's fluid, silky smooth and generally feels better gameplay-wise.

 

[danielcw]

I ask again: were they running at 60fps or 59,94fps?

I imagine the later stages would be very painful at half frame-rate.
No thanks.

was anything in the final levels faster than Mario or the flower's fireball that travels against the scroll direction?

If you are referring to the auto scrolling tank levels full of bullets, I believe even they could look smooth at 30fps.

see this video as an example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fnsjEGNyoI
(should be at 30fps with the other 30 frames dropped, right?)
as a whole the video looks OK to me, but if I focus on the bullets some of them look jumpy

 

[TyrantGuardian]

I would just like to clear up a minor detail: slowdown is NOT the same as framerate drops. 2D games generally are locked at 60 no matter what and when there is too much stuff on screen, they simply slow down the rendering while still constantly displaying at 60fps. What framerate drops would look like if they were in these games would be more akin to frame skipping in emulators. Try it out! Set frameskip to 1 in an emulator and try playing the game. Tell me how ok you are with 30fps in this context.

 

[Kageshinzo]

That was jarring

But imho SMB3 looks OK at 30fps.
It does not move that fast.

It took me a long time to notice a difference in the SMB3 video.

Maybe Nintendo manages to let the Allstars version run at 30fps on the 3DS. Would be enough for me

Wow, really? You're okay with 30 fps when you've seen how smooth the alternative is? You're okay with the subtle jittery movements of the sprites as opposed to the buttery way the game plays, especially between the 10 ~ 15 second mark?

Man, if you can, try playing Vectorman. You'll really appreciate the way the game plays at 60 fps.

 

[nasanu]

Yes they were. There are some exceptions but the standard was 60fps.

If 60fps was normal then why was there such a fuss when games like Vectorman were released in 60fps? 60fps was one of the main marketing points. I remember being wow'd by the smoothness of the game over all the other games in my collection as a kid. 30fps seemed like the standard in those days.

 

[cantona222]

I still don't know the difference. Does anyone have a video were it compares 30 & 60 fps and explains the difference.

 

[lensoftruth]

There's 30 more frames per second...

 

[nasanu]

Wow, really? You're okay with 30 fps when you've seen how smooth the alternative is?

Ah... That old false argument. There is no simple take or leave the extra 30fps choice. Its take the extra 30fps with massively reduced graphical effects or leave it. Remember that.

 

[Kageshinzo]

If 60fps was normal then why was there such a fuss when games like Vectorman were released in 60fps? 60fps was one of the main marketing points. I remember being wow'd by the smoothness of the game over all the other games in my collection as a kid. 30fps seemed like the standard in those days.

Vectorman created such a fuss because no one believed such graphics can be achieved in the Genesis at that time. Some have even said it was Sega's answer to Nintendo's DKC. Such graphics + the 60 fps framerate that was the standard at that time made for some great first impressions on the game.

It didn't hurt either that Vectorman and the his enemies got extra animations giving them added character.

 

[petran79]

You did not answer my question:
how does more ram help with smoother scrolling on old dos games?

A poster answered your question on previous page.

But still:
Play a demanding ms-dos game, lets say mortal kombat 2, with the same cpu, say a 486dx2/66 mhz.
But switch vga cards

First put a cirrus logic with 512 kb
Then put an s3 trio64 with 1 mb.

Difference is obvious in heavy stages like the Armory. Second card drops less frames and game rans faster.
Chipset is better too, but ram also matters.
During the mid-90s, most vga cards had 1 mb at least.

 

[danielcw]

Wow, really? You're okay with 30 fps when you've seen how smooth the alternative is? You're okay with the subtle jittery movements of the sprites as opposed to the buttery way the game plays, especially between the 10 ~ 15 second mark?

Man, if you can, try playing Vectorman. You'll really appreciate the way the game plays at 60 fps.

Yeah,
for me it is not a choice between a good and a bad option
and more like the choice btween a good and a slightly worse option.

For me 30 fps looks OK for SMB3,
does it look OK for you?
I don't want to generalize it for all games.

For example I recently tested Diablo 3 at 30fps and did not like it.


I never liked Vectorman as a game (played it on Sonic Mega Collection (GCN))
I especially did not like the controls, so I can not judge the 60fps on it.

 

[nasanu]

Vectorman created such a fuss because no one believed such graphics can be achieved in the Genesis at that time. Some have even said it was Sega's answer to Nintendo's DKC. Such graphics + the 60 fps framerate that was the standard at that time made for some great first impressions on the game.

But why was it so much smoother that almost all other games? My memory is going back a long way and might be compromised but I recall that this game was far smoother than average. Perhaps it might have been the case that games did run at 60fps in those days (though no proof has yet been offered in this thread), but maybe much of the screen was not updated each frame in most games so the 60fps blanket statement is misleading?

 

[danielcw]

A poster answered your question on previous page.

But still:
Play a demanding ms-dos game, lets say mortal kombat 2, with the same cpu, say a 486dx2/66 mhz.
But switch vga cards

First put a cirrus logic with 512 kb
Then put an s3 trio64 with 1 mb.

Difference is obvious in heavy stages like the Armory. Second card drops less frames and game rans faster.
Chipset is better too, but ram also matters.
During the mid-90s, most vga cards had 1 mb at least.

Sorry I can not find the answer.
Could you link me there or give me the post's number please?


Could it be, that the other card has a higher memory clock or a wider bus?

 

[Kageshinzo]

But why was it so much smoother that almost all other games? My memory is going back a long way and might be compromised but I recall that this game was far smoother than average. Perhaps it might have been the case that games did run at 60fps in those days (though no proof has yet been offered in this thread), but maybe much of the screen was not updated each frame in most games so the 60fps blanket statement is misleading?

Extra animations for the character gave the impression that it was much smoother. It's like X-Men: Children of the Atom and Street Fighter III. Both games run at 60 fps, but SFIII looked much 'smoother' because of the extra frames of animation given to each character.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

SMB3, but close enough.

http://a.pomf.se/zcaznc.webm

Got it from here.

I don't see a major difference

...Get your eyes checked.

 

[danielcw]

...Get your eyes checked.

Why should I get my eyes checked?

 

[polyh3dron]

Why should I get my eyes checked?

because you don't see a major difference between 30 and 60 FPS.

 

[Wonko_C]

That was jarring

But imho SMB3 looks OK at 30fps.
It does not move that fast.

It took me a long time to notice a difference in the SMB3 video.

Maybe Nintendo manages to let the Allstars version run at 30fps on the 3DS. Would be enough for me

Wait, what? Why would you want Nintendo to deliberately cut the framerate in half for a game which has always run at 60fps in the original and every subsequent re-release?

http://a.pomf.se/zcaznc.webm

Guys, guys! Try this out! Make the video a bit smaller, then cross your eyes as if you were trying to watch a 3D video. You'll get both 30 and 60 fps in the same screen, and a free headache.

 

[petran79]

Sorry I can not find the answer.
Could you link me there or give me the post's number please?


Could it be, that the other card has a higher memory clock or a wider bus?

wrong on my part.
here it is:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=108257832&postcount=271

yes, it mattered also if the card used ISA or PCI. I had a 512 KB ISA card and a 486sx25, vs my friends 1 MB PCI card and 486dx2/66 mhz.

double the frame performance in most cases due to CPU difference, but had I a PCI card, things would be a little better

 

[ScottSullivan]

we were blind, now we see...

Where we're going, we won't need FPS to see...

 

[nded]

If 60fps was normal then why was there such a fuss when games like Vectorman were released in 60fps? 60fps was one of the main marketing points. I remember being wow'd by the smoothness of the game over all the other games in my collection as a kid. 30fps seemed like the standard in those days.

I believe people were talking about 60fps character animations for Vectorman, which were done by arranging small sprites into a character and then just sliding them around the screen rather than traditional animation frames.

This is what Vectorman looks like unassembled:

Character animation is different from the game's overall frame rate. Plenty of games before Vectorman ran at 60fps, even if the character animations were a significantly lower frame rate.

 

[GhostTrick]

No, not in France. Our games were 50hz, maybe some other European countries had this problem. So they were slower.

 

[Toxi]

Everyone was expecting it when we made the jump to PS4/XO.

60fps in 3D games is hardly new.

I played console games for 10+yrs and never once did I think about 'framerates' then in 2006 (aged 34) when I got internet joined a forum then I heard about frame rates didn't care then don't really care now

Did you ever play games on the N64?

 

[Fularu]

Why are people so obsessed with 60FPS as of lately?

We've always been.

Any old school gamer expected it, especially among the ST/Amiga scenes.

You'd be laughed out of a democomp if your code was sub 50fps (the standard for those back in the day)

 

[Sixfortyfive]

60fps in 3D games is hardly new.

It's hardly ever been a standard on 3D console games, though, except for a few key genres (fighters, racers, etc).

The early 3D consoles were the worst (like you implied). Going back and forth between Sega Model 2 games and Sega Saturn ports was a night and day difference in this particular aspect.

 

[Koren]

Play a demanding ms-dos game, lets say mortal kombat 2, with the same cpu, say a 486dx2/66 mhz.
But switch vga cards

First put a cirrus logic with 512 kb
Then put an s3 trio64 with 1 mb.

Difference is obvious in heavy stages like the Armory. Second card drops less frames and game rans faster.
Chipset is better too, but ram also matters.

I think most old game performances depends on blitting issues. Displaying a sprite on PC require copying some bytes from one place to another (blitting).

The problem is REALLY complex (loved the VESA days*...) Sometimes it's faster to blit in RAM, sometimes in VRAM... Even librairies like SDL allows different strategies for this.

If VRAM to VRAM is both faster than RAM to VRAM and RAM to RAM, and if the game uses more than 512Mb for framebuffer and sprites, you'll see better performances with 1Mb cards, indeed. But I'm wondering whether it's so common in practice, considering how many bottleneck there is.


(*) An e-cookie for anyone here that remember the 4F05h Int 10h times ^_^

I would just like to clear up a minor detail: slowdown is NOT the same as framerate drops. 2D games generally are locked at 60 no matter what and when there is too much stuff on screen

It's quite close, though.

Actually, on 3D games, when you have framedrops, you still get 60 images per second in the video cable. Even if the TV receives several time a copy of the same framebuffer, since it couldn't be updated in time. The framebuffer is still converted into a video signal 60 times per second.

On 2D games, if the game can't keep with 60Hz, the video registers (sprites positions, scale, sprite ROM pointers, etc.) are not updated in time. So the game actually send the same image. There's no framebuffer, so you can argue that it's still rendered at 60fps, and thus it's a slowdown, but for me, the equivalent of the framebuffer in old consoles is the video registers.

I'd say you can count this as a framedrop as much as a slowdown. I think that a failure to update the registers in time on olde consoles is similar to a failure to update the framebuffer in time on new ones. There's no actual rendering on old consoles...

 

[TyrantGuardian]

Yes but the perceived visual phenomenon is completely different, is what I was getting at. Frames being skipped looks choppy while slowdown just looks like slow-motion, two completely different things for the end user.

 

[KojiKnight]

That was jarring

But imho SMB3 looks OK at 30fps.
It does not move that fast.

It took me a long time to notice a difference in the SMB3 video.

Maybe Nintendo manages to let the Allstars version run at 30fps on the 3DS. Would be enough for me

There is also a HUGE difference between playing mario at 30fps and 60fps... In games that require precise jumping, the lower frame rate hurts.

 

[mackattk]

I don't remember what FPS things were, but I do remember getting some massive slowdown depending on what was going on in the screen. Gunstar Heroes was bad about this when things got a bit too hectic.

 

[ioriyagami]

Sorry to break it to you, but every part of this is wrong. The refresh rate for VGA Mode X or 13h* (which is what 320x200, 256-colour DOS games like Doom and Jazz Jackrabbit used) was 70Hz, not 60Hz like NTSC. The Doom engine was capped at half that, meaning it maxed out at 35 FPS regardless of your monitor's capabilities. Koren already explained how console games could run at 60 FPS on ordinary TVs.

*Edit: I originally wrote "Mode X" alone here. Doom used a modified 13h with similarities to Mode X. Hey, at least I didn't call it Mode 7!

Actually, Mode X (or the most widely used Mode X: 320x240x256) IS, since conception, a modification of standard VGA mode 13h

 

[DonMigs85]

As a kid I did notice that arcade games like Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter were sharp and buttery smooth compared to the hideous, choppy mess that was most PS1 and N64 games.

 

[test_account]

If you enjoyed a game but you have low standards your enjoyment doesn't count.

Spoiler

j/k

Hehe, well, it almost seems like that is what it means indeed

EDIT: I fixed a typo.

 

[baphomet]

If 60fps was normal then why was there such a fuss when games like Vectorman were released in 60fps? 60fps was one of the main marketing points. I remember being wow'd by the smoothness of the game over all the other games in my collection as a kid. 30fps seemed like the standard in those days.

60fps was never a marketing point on vectorman.

 

[danielcw]

because you don't see a major difference between 30 and 60 FPS.

What does that have to do with my eyes?
(serious question)

Wait, what? Why would you want Nintendo to deliberately cut the framerate in half for a game which has always run at 60fps in the original and every subsequent re-release?

If it would allow Nintendo to release some SNES on the 3DS, I would gladly take the hit, on some games, let me stress that, on some games.

There is also a HUGE difference between playing mario at 30fps and 60fps... In games that require precise jumping, the lower frame rate hurts.

True, but I guess the only way to know is to try it.

Would playing SMB3 on an emulator with forced frameskip be a way to test it?

 

[Wonko_C]

If it would allow Nintendo to release some SNES on the 3DS, I would gladly take the hit, on some games, let me stress that, on some games.

But the 3DS is powerful enough to emulate SNES games, I see no reason they should take a hit. Did they state otherwise? I really don't follow 3DS news that much.

Would playing SMB3 on an emulator with forced frameskip be a way to test it?

Probably, but from personal experience emulation already introduces input lag even when running without frameskip. Playing something like Sonic The Hedgehog on a Genesis emulator with frameskip made the game a lot hard to me regardless, because it was harder to see what was coming with the stuttery scrolling.

 

[nasanu]

I believe people were talking about 60fps character animations for Vectorman, which were done by arranging small sprites into a character and then just sliding them around the screen rather than traditional animation frames.



Character animation is different from the game's overall frame rate. Plenty of games before Vectorman ran at 60fps, even if the character animations were a significantly lower frame rate.

Which does mean that is it quite misleading to say these games were 60fps in the way we understand it today.

 

[Alo81]

How about this one?

I really wish I could show people how this looks lightboosted on my 120hz monitor because it's insane how much better the 120fps one looks.

When tracking it from left to right it looks perfect. No LCD blurring at all. It looks exactly the same as the still image, except moving from left to right. So good.

 

[nasanu]

60fps was never a marketing point on vectorman.

It absolutely was. It was a headline in all the pre launch hype and mentioned in every review. If you go back and read the magazines at the time (of which I have many) the focal point is always the 60fps graphics and little else.

 

[baphomet]

It absolutely was. It was a headline in all the pre launch hype and mentioned in every review. If you go back and read the magazines at the time (of which I have many) the focal point is always the 60fps graphics and little else.

I am and 60fps isn't mentioned in any of these previews, ads, or reviews. The animation is mentioned, but 60fps was a given back then and not worth mentioning. Let alone as a selling point.