Sega Genesis - Blast Processing was just a fancy word for being able to directly write to the DMA while the image was being drawn on screen to technically bypass some limits like max colors on screen, this would require such a high level of precision and timing that nothing used itNintendo 64 - Technically had a 64 bit processor and could do 64 bit operations, but all the other limitations of the system made this not worth it and pretty much all of it's software ran in 32 bit modeAtari Jaguar - Kept insisting it was 64 bits... if you added up it's two 32 bit processors together, which is kind of like trying to argue that if you put two 286 CPUs in a computer that makes it a 572 CPU systemWhat other "technically true" marketing bullshit do you recall? Most of the others I recall were either just slogans, obvious jokes/exaggeration, or even just flat out lies.
Quake is the first true 3D video game!!
>>12339151>write to the DMAdude...
>>12339151>Blast Processing was just a fancy word for being able to directly write to the DMA while the image was being drawn on screen to technically bypass some limits like max colors on screen, this would require such a high level of precision and timing that nothing used itwhere does this come from? isn't it just the CPU being faster than the SNES?
>>12339151Cyrix's 486 CPUs were actually much weaker 386 with just additional 486 instructions added in
>>12339151>Atari Jaguar - Kept insisting it was 64 bits... if you added up it's two 32 bit processors together, which is kind of like trying to argue that if you put two 286 CPUs in a computer that makes it a 572 CPU systemThis isn't the argument. The blitter and object processor each have full 64 bit datapaths.
>>12339157>>12339164He's worded it wrong, but it's referring to using DMA to write data directly to the VDP/VRAM without having to go through main work RAM first. A developer referred to it as "blasting" the VDP with data to an exec/marketer and that's supposedly where the name came from.It was used for a bunch of things but he's technically right in that using it to show more colours on screen was only really useful for static screens/regions.
>>12339164Sega used the term in commercials to describe Genesis as fast and the SNES as slow.
>>12339295i know. i meant why is that obscure programming trick considered to be the definition when the relative CPU speeds would make far more sense for "blast processing" to refer to
>>12339156The first *playable true 3D game
>>12339151>write to the DMAchatgpt-kun, I...
>>12339336Because allegedly that's how the term came to be: >>12339282>A developer referred to it as "blasting" the VDP with data to an exec/marketer and that's supposedly where the name came from.
>>12339151WOULD
>>12339878No her but the "Which is more advanced?" teacher from the commercial definitely needed a good leaning against the chalkboard.
>>12339164>>12339282>>12339841>Misconceptions about what "blast processing" were rife until 2009, where in an interview Scot Bayless took responsibility for the phrase:>Sadly I have to take responsibility for that ghastly phrase. Marty Franz [Sega technical director] discovered that you could do this nifty trick with the display system by hooking the scan line interrupt and firing off a DMA at just the right time. The result was that you could effectively jam data onto the graphics chip while the scan line was being drawn – which meant you could drive the DAC's with 8 bits per pixel. Assuming you could get the timing just right you could draw 256 color static images. There were all kinds of subtleties to the timing and the trick didn't work reliably on all iterations of the hardware but you could do it and it was cool as heck.>So during the runup to the western launch of Sega-CD the PR guys interviewed me about what made the platform interesting from a technical standpoint and somewhere in there I mentioned the fact that you could just "blast data into the DAC's" Well they loved the word 'blast' and the next thing I knew Blast Processing was born. Oy.https://segaretro.org/Blast_processingThough for most people who used the term, I'm sure it was interpreted just as a reference to a vague technique for better processing, a general way of describing the better processing on the Genesis, or a meaningless marketing term. But behind the scenes, that's apparently how it got started.
>>12340148Yeah the sensible interpretation of it would be "it has a much faster CPU" but it's really just marketing silliness
>>12339156Technically correct. Mario used a lot of JPEG's and billboards that were 2D. Everything in Quake was 3D, even the muzzle flash.
>>12339157>>12339382I'll have you know I sent the DMA a very strongly worded letter
>>12340440Did you blast-fax it?
>>12340308explosions were billboards
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland's story mode has an open-ish world, where all the levels are separated by tunnels to mask loading times. The marketing got a bit overzealous and advertised the game with the phrase "NO LOADING", even though there's still plenty of loading screens elsewhere in the game. Plus moving through the tunnels takes a little longer than loading a level with a loading screen in the other modes.
>>12339878based granny grouper
>>12339151https://www.sega-16forums.com/forum/console-talk/genesis-does/301-blast-processing?p=44679#post44679Ishido: The Way of the Stones and Zany Golf used blast processing. or some kind of fast DMA techique.
>>12342928Proofwriting is what sold games, such is the way of the producer.
>>12340836They ended up making GTA2
>>12339151everyone is having a giggle about writing directly to DMA but for me the best part is >which is kind of like trying to argue that if you put two 286 CPUs in a computer that makes it a 572 CPU system
>>12345478It's decently worded and executed, but the premise of the joke is wrong: >>12339241
>>12339151the ps2 being "128bit"
>>12339241I mean, it is kinda impressive how that 68000 was really more like a bottle neck for the TOM chip. The games that really showed what the TOM chip was capable of, are the Iron Soldier games: https://youtu.be/9XrBD0BmNYgThese games found a way to bypass the 6800 and just use TOM and JERRY. The game was written in assembly too. They are impressive. Especially Iron Soldier 2 with its textured mapped environments. Too bad you had to be a rocket scientist to figure out how the hardware worked.
>>12339151Do The Meth
>>12347792It wasn't the 68000 so much as the lack of cache memory between the different components
>>12347810Not Even Once.
>>12345456Boo. Do better.
>>12339151>much all of it's software ran in 32 bit modeIt's not a "mode" it's 32bit and 64bit instructions. If you needed a long int, you used a long int with no penalty, but most of the time you just needed an int. Same for today, you have a 64bit CPU but 99% of the time it's processing 32bit integers because that's just how software is written. Having access to 64bit registers is just a good thing, there's no virtue in not having them on a MIPS just for some idea that 99% of the time nobody needed them. Until you do, then it's god.>>12347729>the ps2 being "128bit"Having 128bit vector operations was a big fucking deal. The PS2's enduring success comes from the fact that people got really good at using its vector units. Thinking in terms of 32bit int/float is a PC centric thing which really held the industry back. It took 10 years longer for Intel to finally get onto the vectorisation bandwagon than anyone else and it was terrible. Even mac users had AltiVec when Intel was still trying to convince people their shitty stack based 8087 floating point was good enough. SSE was so fucking bad, AVX was the first time it got useful and that was 2011 according to the wiki.
>>12347792>Too bad you had to be a rocket scientist to figure out how the hardware worked.Or an extreme autist. The chief problem was that the chip was actually a buggy mess. On any decent CPU no matter how hard you thrash the register->memory->register operations over and over it will just work. You might hit wait states and write penalties and pipeline stalls and whatnot but it'll always return the correct values. Not so much with the jaguar. Failure to pad many (MANY) operations with NOPs and careful interleaving meant the thing would just start returning garbage. It meant that the theoretical performance of the chip couldn't even remotely be reached because you had to code super defensive or risk disaster.The MegaCD had a problem with intercpu communication due to the lack of interrupt passing over the expansion bus so you couldn't properly multi-thread operations without lots of spinlocking and "are you ready yet?" polling. Now imagine that AND risking total bus lockups if you're a single cycle early on a write and that's the jaguar.
>>12347729bits make the world turn
>>12353206I'll bit your world dink
>>12339196Some of their "486" CPUs were upgrades for the 386SX, which used the same 16-bit bus as a 286. Crazy to think about.
>>12355191whatever jeremy
