CompuServe Messages

There are 2 types of games on 3DO/SegaCD type CDROM based machines: 1) the ones that stream video off the CDROM (Dragon's Lair [cool], Mad Dog McCree, etc) 2) the ones that load all bitmaps, geometry data, and programs from CDROM into DRAM/VRAM for each "level" or "world". (Crash and Burn, Total Eclipse, NHL Hockey, my game etc) Then you play the game out of VRAM and the only thing coming off the CD is music, or the movies in between the "worlds". in type 1 you could have very nice graphics in 16 or 24 bit, especially on a double or triple speed CD-rom with Cinepak, or better still, MPEG. This is because it is pre-rendered. In type 2, you are limited to maybe 2mb VRAM and so bitmaps must be very small and efficient if you want lots of them (often 64×64 with 16 colours or 256 colours). They are also small so they can be rendered in real-time (20 – 30 fps). Polygons per frame at 30fps is possibly the most significant measure of type 2 games. I never new most of this stuff until I started this project, but now I'm getting a whole new education 😉