I need some ideas and comments

[segasaturndude]

I think i will make at least 15 different Visualizers for the system to give people more selection when using the Cd player

[Warp2063]

Well, figure out what they look like, how they change over time, whether they respond to the music, how they respond to the music... and you're one step closer. You need a design and a plan before you can program anything.

[segasaturndude]

I have a few ideas of what the visualizations will look like. one will have the good ole fashion bar equilizer that has water underneath it with reflection of the equilizer itself, jamming to the beat, and a few others will make playstation 1's soundscope look like a shaam

[Warp2063]

Cool. I'm sure that the reflection could be done. The water effect could be done in a number of different ways- it just requires some creativity and working with the system's technical strengths and around its weaknesses.

For something so art-central, I'd recommend drawing some pictures somewhere. Then describe the action in detail as well as you can. For example: does the water stay fairly calm, or does it pulsate with the music? If so, how much? How does this affect the reflection? What color are the bars? Is our viewpoint static or does it change? How many bars are there? Are there different ones for the right and left audio? What frequency range do each of the bars correspond with?

There's a lot to think about. Defining each of these will make it easier to write a program that actually does what you want. With the technical limitations of any system, you might have to sacrifice parts of your vision for the realities of the system... But that's when you have to stay creative. If you can't find a way around the limits, redefine your plan to work within them.

[segasaturndude]

pulsating water would be an interesting feature thanks for the idea, one thing is i'm not so good with making a 3d sketch but i will try to make a decent sketch. I also remember hearing in the past water is the most difficult thing to make for graphics.

[segasaturndude]

now one major drawback for all of this is i need to get a computer, which i probably will be doing this friday, i will probably be getting a cheap 150mhz-300mhz laptop running windows 95, maybey windows 98 if im lucky. the computer specs should sufice for making stuff for the saturn

[segasaturndude]

I'm also curious what in all is required to program games for the saturn? is it possible to create a program on the computer and have some kind of transfer cable going to the saturn? and run the program from the computer to the saturn? or do i need to put it on a disc, and then put it on the saturn?

[Warp2063]

The speed of the computer that you're writing the code on doesn't need to be fast - only fast enough to run whatever IDE you may be using. You are going to need to find an SH-2 assembler, maybe a C compiler for the SH-2, and some guides on writing programs for the Saturn. There are going to be some differences in writing a program for the Saturn than for a Windows computer that you'll need to take into consideration.

As for transferring things to the Saturn... Yes, there was a development cable that used a special communications card for certain types of older computer. You can't get those cards anymore... and they never made one that would work on a laptop anyway. There is a USB interface and software that someone built and sold more recently for around $50 if I recall correctly. With some research, I could probably find the site again. You would also need one of the 4-in-1 Action Replays that actually has a working communications port on top. I no longer remember the price of these, but I remember hearing that they were getting rarer - the Chinese companies that were making them started leaving the communications port off to save on costs. Only a very small fraction of the very few people who buy the Saturn Action Replays have a link cable for one anyway. It's a nice way of testing your software on an actual console, but there's not much in the way of debugging utilities (at least with the USB cable)... and the Action Replay can only hold 4MB worth of data... so if your program is bigger than that, it won't run via this method.

Another option is to burn CD-Rs. I've never been able to make a CD-RW work in the Saturn, so be prepared to use a lot of CD-R's for testing. You'll need a burner and burning software for your computer... make sure your computer is compatible with it. There's a specific way you have to burn the discs for the Saturn. On top of that, you'll need a way to run burned discs on your console. This means a modchip or the swap trick. If your discs aren't written in the correct format or they're burned too quickly, the Saturn won't read them. You're going to go through at least one CD for every test, so you're going to have a nice pile of coasters unless you get everything perfect the first time... and I can speak from experience that that rarely happens with any complex program, even on systems you're really familiar with programming for.

A third method... which I'd actually recommend as the best one... is to get a computer powerful enough to run a Saturn emulator. It may not be a perfect simulation of the Saturn, but at least it'll give you a much better idea as to how well your software is working, as well as probably providing some useful debugging tools you won't get through the other two methods. You'll waste far fewer CDs as you won't have to burn any discs to test on the emulator. Once you've polished it up and it works well on the emulator, then try burning discs with your program on them. Then you can run these discs with either a modchip or the swap trick on your actual console.


Edit: Actually, it took a lot less time for me to find the links for the link cable than I thought it would.
http://www.gamingenterprisesinc.com/DataLink/ About $55 for a prebuilt one + $7 shipping.
http://www.ncsxshop.com/cgi-bin/shop/EMS-ARP.html About $40 for the correct Action Replay Plus. I don't know the shipping cost.

As for Saturn programming guides and software, I don't have the time to look right this minute, but if I have time later, I can look into it.

[segasaturndude]

I'd be better off using the usb data link cable as the 4mb replay isn't enough for what i want to do probably

[Warp2063]

I'd be better off using the usb data link cable as the 4mb replay isn't enough for what i want to do probably

You misunderstand. The 4MB Action Replay Plus is how that USB cable links to the Saturn. You can't transfer any data without having both of them. The USB data cable transmits up to 4MB worth of program to the Action Replay Plus, which is all the AR+ can hold. Then you run the program from the AR+. Overall, it's over $100 for the necessary parts to transfer 4MB to the Saturn for testing. If you keep your program small, it can work. Ideally, you'll want your program pretty small anyway... if you're writing it to a CD, the Saturn will have to read then hold the entire visualizer program in its memory when you swap in an audio CD, otherwise you'll have to keep swapping the audio CD back and forth with the program disc so that it can load the next part of the visualizer program. If I'm correct, it looks like there's a meg or two of RAM that you could use for this purpose, although you might have to get creative to use it well.

So what I'm saying is this - the AR+ and USB cable are great if you're testing small homebrew programs with minimal data, or if you're testing small portions of your program. But there isn't a method to load a bigger program than 4MB via that method currently. Depending on the size of this project, it may not be worth it to spend $100 on this equipment alone unless you plan to use it quite a bit or you want to back or restore up your Saturn's save RAM.

[segasaturndude]

I'm curious but in your opinion, which would be easier to develop for? the playstation? or sega Saturn?

[Warp2063]

I'm curious but in your opinion, which would be easier to develop for? the playstation? or sega Saturn?

The Playstation, hands down. As it didn't have a plethora of different processors to program for, it was much less complicated to program for. This combined with the popularity of the Playstation meant that that's the way many developers went. (Look at the PS1 library... there are over 1000 titles.) Consequently, there are also more development tools available than for the Saturn.

I haven't done much research on programming for the PS1, so I don't know exactly what tools are out there... but there are far more emulators for the PS1 that emulate far more accurately and quickly than any Saturn emulator... and therefore after testing your program on an emulator, you can be more confident that it will work on an actual system than following the same procedure for the Saturn.

I don't know if there are any programmer's link cables for the PS1, but my guess is probably not. A standard Saturn has the advantage of 4MB of storage when you're using the AR+ cartridge, but I'm not aware of a similar storage method for the PS1. It doesn't mean one doesn't exist; just that I haven't researched to find one. I also haven't really researched methods of running your own discs on a PS1. I know that modchips have existed for years for the PS1... I don't know how swap tricks for the system work.