True GameBoy Advance 3D

[iPadCary]

Since the GBA is, practically speaking, a compact SNES, I was wondering if it also shared
that 2nd greatest console of all time's [Intellivision, of course, being #1] property of
being able to generate 3D flatshade polygons, alá the SuperFX chipset.

Are there any 3D flatshade polygonal games out there for GBA that may've escaped my notice?

Thanks, guys!

[Tanooki]

Star-X I believe woulld be what youre looking for.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

It's my understanding that the GBA doesn't actually have any ability to render 3D visuals, and that every 3D effect on the system is pseudo effects using mode 7-ish scaling and bitmap forced perspective techniques. See games like Stuntman and Asterix & Obelix XXL for prime examples.

However, this shouldn't take away from the GBA's accomplishments. In fact I feel its the other way around - some developers were able to push 3D-like visuals out of a system incapable of 3D. It's pretty impressive in my book.

[Tanooki]

Satoshi you're basically right. I think the best way I've ever put it to someone in the past was that the GBA as far as 3D games go is a handheld Sega Saturn. Neither system has actual dedicated 3D video capabilities, both have to have a software engine drive the visuals. As such, both systems also have the same failings in displaying polygons with textures on them. A fantastic comparison really is Sega Rally Saturn vs V-Rally 3 GBA. Both of them fairly well look similar, both display polygons the same way in the same style of game. Both titles also for polygons at the fringe of the screen at their largest(think road) will warp and warble the effect while in the farther background stuff just pops in and out after a range as it is all it can handle. Asterix I suppose would be comparable to something like Croc on the Saturn for the same display qualities of a third person platformer.

[BlastProcessing402]

Satoshi you're basically right. I think the best way I've ever put it to someone in the past was that the GBA as far as 3D games go is a handheld Sega Saturn. Neither system has actual dedicated 3D video capabilities, both have to have a software engine drive the visuals.

I thought Saturn's problem wasn't that it completely lacked dedicated 3D, but rather that it used quads for polygons instead of triangles like most every other 3D system.

Also that the machine had been designed for 2D and had 3D tacked on late in the process surely didn't help, but I don't believe it was completely absent.

[Tanooki]

Maybe but that's how I had it explained to me long ago which is why it was a master of the 2D titles (Capcom arcade and all) but also at the same time when it had stuff cross ported over from PS1 it took much longer having to redo basically a lot of stuff as it wasn't an easy pop'n drop like PS1 to other system ports were compared. As I understood it before the Saturn wasn't able to generate a 3D polygon on the fly like the PS1 did, but it did do them, but it had to do it by brute force muscling it over the larger mass of independent processors the system had and the higher levels of video memory to use. And due to that it was a hell of a lot harder to get equal performance in 3D off a Saturn game versus the PS1, plus it couldn't do much for special effects the PS1 could handle such as transparency (which is why a game like SOTN/NITM) had to dither effects. So while at base the Saturn could do higher resolutions than the PS1, they had to dumb it down to the minimum to via software and multi-processor muscle inch out similar effects. The Saturn had to run 8 processors to pull off kind of what the PS1 could do on the Saturns best day which was sad. Supposedly late in development when they learned how the PS1 was made and Ridge Racer was a flagship they threw a 2nd main CPU on there, same one, causing BUS issues along with more video chips causing bottleneck so some developers didn't even use the 2nd main chip. It really doesn't surprise me why Saturn emulation has been historically really slow, a hot mess, and few will touch it versus how the PS1 emulation just flowed out there due to the much more simple design, same with N64 more or less.

I really loved the Saturn, had one around 2000-2004 when I had to part with a lot of stuff in a depressing time of money woes, but I wouldn't get one again, same can be said of PS1 to be fair and I enjoyed the Saturn more. :P

[wiggyx]

I recall it being extremely difficult to program 3D games for the Saturn because of its chipset and how those chips communicated with each other. I could be wrong though.

[davidbrit2]

Super Monkey Ball Jr. was an extremely impressive arcade port. Give that one a try.

[Jorpho]

How about Iridion 2?
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/iridion2/iridion2.htm

Perhaps Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon? Or Crazy Taxi GBA? (Neither is very good, but they're both sort of 3D.)

[Satoshi_Matrix]

^ pseudo 3D.

Every single time. There are no 3D games on GBA, only games that simulate it to varying degrees of success. Other examples are any of the FPS games like Duke Nukem Advance or as mentioned, the third person platformer Asterix & Obelix XXL.

[AbnormalMapping]

There are true 3d games on the GBA, handled through software, and fully textured to boot. Wing Commander IV and Smashing Drive are two of the better ones, because space and a straight ahead road don't really tax the processor. Mostly though, you'll want to stick to hybrids. Max Payne, for example, features a 3d character in a 2d space - honestly, I prefer the GBA version for the overhead view and old school gameplay.

The textures will distort in many 3d games, for the same reason you can see it happen in many early PSone titles. As for the Saturn, it did run on quads instead of 3 sided polygons, and properly programmed, the system could even run Virtua Fighter 2 in high definition while the PSOne and the N64 struggled to run games in standard CRT resolution at the time.

[Jorpho]

^ pseudo 3D.

How, exactly, can you tell?

Compare Simpsons Road Rage GBA with Crazy Taxi GBA. Are those really both using the same kind of 3D?

[Satoshi_Matrix]

How, exactly, can you tell?

Compare Simpsons Road Rage GBA with Crazy Taxi GBA. Are those really both using the same kind of 3D?

It's simple: The GameBoy Advance does not have hardware capabilities to render true 3D visuals. Any 3D-ish games that was done on the GBA are the result of 2D forced perspective trickery and bitmap scaling.

Crazy Taxi for GBA consists of sprites populating a bitmap space with flat textured walls. What looks like 3D visuals are in fact flat vertical textured planes that are at all times perpendicular to the horizontal plane where the sprites move. This effect was used extensively on the GameBoy Advance for FPS games, as it works very similar to the Doom Engine that powered Doom on Jaguar, and subsequently, also on GameBoy Advance.

As I mentioned before, the crowning achievement of psudo-3D on the GBA is Asterix & Obelix XXL. It really shows how programming wizards could get around the limitations, and given how similar the hardware is in many respects, what could possibly be done on the SNES through homebrew.

[Jorpho]

It's simple: The GameBoy Advance does not have hardware capabilities to render true 3D visuals.

Yes, but why can't it be done in software?

Crazy Taxi for GBA consists of sprites populating a bitmap space with flat textured walls. What looks like 3D visuals are in fact flat vertical textured planes that are at all times perpendicular to the horizontal plane where the sprites move.

What about when the sprites aren't moving in a horizontal plane, like at 1:40 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNr...etailpage#t=98 ?

[Satoshi_Matrix]

3D visuals can be done in software I suppose, if a proper engine was written that relied on incredibly basic polygons that required very little animation. But that never was the case on the GBA. The development time, costs and cartridge size limitations all kept that from happening.

As for the Crazy Taxi GBA game, I own it so I know all about the things that it does. Are you talking about when you collect the coins, how they fly up? Well surely that isn't surprising, all its doing is moving a 2D sprite upwards in the same plane as the car sprite. Not sure what you're getting at.

[Leo_A]

This isn't true 3D? Things like trackside trees are sprites, but the environment itself sure looks composed of polygons to me.

Since the GBA is, practically speaking, a compact SNES, I was wondering if it also shared
that 2nd greatest console of all time's [Intellivision, of course, being #1] property of
being able to generate 3D flatshade polygons, alá the SuperFX chipset.

The GBA was able to do all the special effects in the Yoshi's Island port that Nintendo had originally used the Super FX chip for back on the Super Nintendo.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

V-Rally 3 is a Velez & Dubail game, and no, it's not true 3D.

See their other GBA games:

Driv3r
Stuntman
Asterix & Obelix XXL


Their GBA engine was among the best on the GBA, bar none, but play any of their games and see what happens when sprites interact with the environment in ways not anticipated through normal gameplay, like rotating the fixed camera to any perspective other than dead on.

and its' not just on the GBA. If you go back a few years, the same team pumped out some crazy impressive racers on the GameBoy Color, like Test Drive Le Mans, V-Rally '99 and Wacky Racers. The only difference with their GBA efforts is that they hardware is more advanced. It's still not actual 3D proper visuals.

And that's the whole point - it doesn't have to be. The very fact that people think that they accomplished 3D visuals is what is so amazing, given that the GBA had no capability for that!

[Leo_A]

Looks like it fooled a lot of reviewers in the mainstream press as well. Take this excerpt from IGN's review of Stuntman.

"Stuntman is definitely another one of those showpiece Game Boy Advance titles thanks to an incredible 3D engine that mixes texture-mapped polys and sprite-based objects."

Or this from GameStop's review of V-Rally 3.

"V-Rally 3 looks amazing. All the tracks are rendered in fully textured 3D. The polygons are prelit, and while the textures aren't of the highest resolution and have a tendency to swim when viewed up close, the effect is still really beautiful to behold. The use of sprite-based elements for the cars, backgrounds, and scenery fits in well with the 3D presentation, making for some great-looking tracks. "

How does it work?

[davidbrit2]

It's simple: The GameBoy Advance does not have hardware capabilities to render true 3D visuals. Any 3D-ish games that was done on the GBA are the result of 2D forced perspective trickery and bitmap scaling.

Whether or not the rendering is hardware-accelerated doesn't have anything to do with it. I wouldn't consider the original Quake for PC to be pseudo-3D. If you're simulating proper 3D geometries and spatial relations, then that's good enough. In contrast, I would label games that use raster-based tricks to draw a road surface without attempting to model realistic spatial relationships to be pseudo-3D. See: Outrun, Pole Position, etc.

[SuperEliteGamer]

What about tat Top Gear Rally game?(or w/e it was called)