Interesting video on Dreamcast 3D water rendering.

[MoeFoh]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/comm ... _of_water/

[beanboy]

Water effects in old games, is a thing that always interests me. Some of the games shown in the vid, like Soulcalibur and VF3tb, are games that I still find myself looking at the water. Thanks for the link bro, it was really informative and interesting to watch. I'll watch it over again in the morning.

[cloofoofoo]

Iam surprised someone even made a video of this for dc. Water effects on the dc actually regressed even compared to ps1 and n64. The only exception was the intro for sports jam and the behind the aquarium glass segments for resident evil code veronica. Heres a ps1 game ( and its not the only one) who has more advanced water effects than the entire dreamcast library even attempted. The dc is definitely capable of this as you saw from spoets jam, they just didnt bother.

https://youtu.be/heIGEq0goys

[krovellium]

Dreamcast, for the time, had extremely good graphics. The best for the time, actually. It sports the modern equivalent of integrated graphics, and has a beastly 16mb RAM (which might not sound like much.) Despite that, on top of being almost 100 dollars less, the dreamcast essentially tanked SEGA Corp.
Interesting how the market works, isn’t it?

[Tarnish]

Despite that, on top of being almost 100 dollars less, the dreamcast essentially tanked SEGA Corp.
Interesting how the market works, isn’t it?

The Dreamcast was only the final nail in the coffin for SEGA. The SEGA CD, 32X, the mishandling of the entire Saturn generation and the constant infighting between SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan was what set SEGA on a spiraling decline. Pretty much no matter what they did at that point, there was not enough money in the bank to prove to everyone they finally got their shit together with the Dreamcast after so much bad blood.

Not to get too off topic, but I think the more interesting thing is how the fall of SEGA proved that back in the day, if you pissed off enough people one too many time, you paid dearly later down the line, even if you made a valid effort to win people back.

Whereas nowadays, you can basically piss off people all the time, and there's no real price to pay. You can shove as many anti-consumer practices (launch games unfinished, need to be always online to play even in single player mode), nickel-and-diming tactics into your game (have 12 different versions and none of them is a complete version, pre-order bonuses, season passes, microtransactions, lootboxes, NFTs), and the most in the form of consequences you have to deal with is a little PR backlash and bitching on Twitter and Youtube. But by the next game, everyone is back to pre-ordering again. Companies are constantly reporting record profits. Even if they claim a game "underperformed", it sold like 5+ million copies and in their mind it "underperformed" because they expect the line of growth to be a constant upward line.

Same with consoles. You can sell way more expensive hardware (PS3), show your true colors by pushing 'always on' and DRM designs (Xbox One), yet no real consequences. And if you ask me, those things are way worse than what SEGA did back in its hardware days.

[dark]

I too am surprised someone made a video about this, I don't think the DC's water rendering was anything special, just look at Sonic Adventure 1, you can very easily see the small square repeating texture they used. The PS2/gamecube/xbox all killed the dreamcast on this by having much nicer looking water in games. My personal favorite for water on the DC is Zero Gunner 2, they had the advantage of the mostly fixed overhead camera angle, but the water they did in some stages (which I think is just some layered textures) looked really good in motion.

[cloofoofoo]

I too am surprised someone made a video about this, I don't think the DC's water rendering was anything special, just look at Sonic Adventure 1, you can very easily see the small square repeating texture they used. The PS2/gamecube/xbox all killed the dreamcast on this by having much nicer looking water in games. My personal favorite for water on the DC is Zero Gunner 2, they had the advantage of the mostly fixed overhead camera angle, but the water they did in some stages (which I think is just some layered textures) looked really good in motion.

Exactly, just tiled textures or basic translucent planes. That ps1 game i put up does it the same way a ps2/ gamecube would do reflection. Youre talking about a machine from 1994 doing that and they didnt even bother to try for dc. The exception was sports jam and resident evil code veronica

[dark]

Not to get too off topic, but I think the more interesting thing is how the fall of SEGA proved that back in the day, if you pissed off enough people one too many time, you paid dearly later down the line, even if you made a valid effort to win people back.

They ruined their brand/reputation with their mid 90s exploits. Even outside the videogame or corporation sphere, its really difficult to rehabilitate a damaged reputation. In that respect, Sega is like Will Smith

[krovellium]

They ruined their brand/reputation with their mid 90s exploits.

That reminds me, and i’m not sure if this is true, but i heard that one of the slogans for the Dreamcast in magazines was “If you’re gonna go out, go out with a f**king bang!”

[Ian Micheal]

my fav was