SNES Super-FX Game Star Fox Ported To Mega Drive!

Started by TL, March 08, 2013, 23:40:19 PM

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TL

[align=center:2oqawlc3][font=comic sans ms:2oqawlc3][size=360]Star Fox[/size][/font:2oqawlc3]
[size=240][font=impact:2oqawlc3]Sega Mega Drive[/font:2oqawlc3][/size][/align:2oqawlc3]

[align=center:2oqawlc3][/align:2oqawlc3]

[align=center:2oqawlc3][size=140]How many times do you hear Nintendo fanboys crow about the mighty Star Fox and the Super FX chip? How times have these same people tried to tell you that the SNES is vastly superior? Well it's time for Mega Drive fans to rub their faces in it as one super talented homebrew coder has ported Star Fox to the Mega Drive and Genesis!

This is still very much a work in progress and right now the demo version of the game is only running at around 10 FPS but the coder is confident he can improve this greatly. Developer Stef, from the ROMHacking.net forums, is behind the project and he is keen to see the project through to it's finish. You can find out more about this project and read the in-depth discussions over it HERE.

There is still a lot more to add to this port and there is currently no audio in the game but the programmer has made a ROM available for use with the Everdrive or an emulator. He has also made a short video to showcase the project too:[/size][/align:2oqawlc3]

[align=center:2oqawlc3][size=180]DOWNLOAD HERE![/size][/align:2oqawlc3]

[align=center:2oqawlc3]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PNGWykZ0ju0[/align:2oqawlc3]

Rogue Trooper

Not clicked on any of the links, but is he doing this on a 'Vanilla' Mega Drive?, IF so, he'll have to be  1 hellva coder as despite the MD having a faster CPU than the SNES, as i mentioned earlier in the thread about your recent MD games purchases, the maths required for Polygon 3D on MD in games like F-22 needed some really creative coding.

IF he can pull off a decent version with no extras like a DSP, then it'll be an outstanding result.

Be very intrested to see how this develops.

TL

As said this is running on native hardware and the ROM can be played on a stock machine with a flashcart!

I obviously helps that Star Fox is on rails.

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"As said this is running on native hardware and the ROM can be played on a stock machine with a flashcart!

I obviously helps that Star Fox is on rails.

True, but the SFX chip ran at what? 10.74 Mhz, faster than stock MD, plus game might be on-rails, but there's a lot going oninc in places some basic texture mapping, light sourcing etc.

The maths required to animate, scale, rotate and place in correct camera perspective whilst maintaining a decent frame rate, might be too much for MD CPU alone to pull off.

What did game run at on SNES? 10-15 FPS?.

TL

Yeah about that so this MD demo version is already pretty close to that.

nakamura

It says the MD version is about 9fps which is very impressive work. I love seeing things like this and would love to see more. The Starfox art looks really good on the MD case too.

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"Yeah about that so this MD demo version is already pretty close to that.

Ahh, but only on the over clocked versions shown in the video.

He starts off using stock MD, which is what? a 7.6 Mhz CPU? and you can see as screen gets busy, frame rate drops as low as 5 frames per second and this without audio, other ships attacking etc, let alone any of the more graphically demanding levels featured later in the game.

The 2 overclocked versions fare better, running at 10 Mhz (near as damnit to SNES SFX clock speed) and better still at 12 Mhz.

What he's managed so far really is astounding, but as a non-techy person, i'm just not seeing how he's going to manage to replicate as much as he wants and keep the frame rate on normal Mega Drive hardware.

CPU is faster, but not fast enough i fear.

nakamura

I would imagine the game would need some incredible coding to pull it off with the stock CPU. That said if he can get even close then it will be incredible to see.

TL

Maybe he should do it on the Mega CD instead where you have a faster CPU and the scaling chip to help you?

Rogue Trooper

From my limited knowledge here, Starfox on SNES used the FX chip, which was a RISC based chip, it basically was the maths workhorse, geared up towards rendering the Polygons needed for ships, buildings etc, at frame rate of around 15 FPS at best, things like asteriods, lasers etc were done by the SNES hardware itself, via scaled bitmaps etc.Would that be right?.

Sega's own SVP chip was a DSP based chip, running at 23 Mhz, could on paper render 300-500 polys in 16 colours at around 15 FPS, despite being a faster chip it was hampered by the MD hardware in terms of number of colours that could be displayed at 1 time, so assuming this homebrew version will suffer similar in this regard.

Rogue Trooper

Quote from: "The Laird"Maybe he should do it on the Mega CD instead where you have a faster CPU and the scaling chip to help you?

That would be my best bet as you've the parallel processing of MD CPU (7.6 Mhz) and MCD CPU (12.5 Mhz) running in synch, plus the sprite handling abilities, won't over come the limited colours avaiable, but would give him a lot more 'tools' as it were to pull it off.

onthinice

Never played the Super Nes Star Fox. Nice to see it being tried on the MD.