Prototype footage of Sonic Adventure (DC) originally running at 60fps

Seeing the Dreamcast version this fluid is so magical for some reason. Especially the Radical Highway sections.

 

Oh my god, these alternate plushes are the fucking cutest.

 

If all of those clips are from the same build, and not throughout development, I'm guessing the game struggled to stay 60 FPS most of the time, like it does on the eventual Gamecube port years later. It'd make sense if they locked the frame rate to 30 instead of 60.

I'm blown away that the Dreamcast version could run at 60 FPS at all. The game would have felt a lot more solid than it did; it'd be interesting if it's possible to unlock it by hacking of the final retail copies.

 

I knew it! IIII knew it!
I feel like they needed more time, and if they had it, it'd be fine. They fixed it up for SA2 at least! Runs pretty much perfectly on the Dreamcast.

 

While I'm here. Anybody know what the level thing was about in the top left HUD for Sonic's Speed Highway (appears throughout) and Knuckles' Red Mountain (1:15)?

 

The game looks a little slower at 60fps. I've always wondered if that was just obvious performance problems or not.

There's also points in this video where either my PC is hitching up or the game does actually drop down to 30fps. I don't think it was a locked 60fps at all.

 

The Dreamcast version only ran at 30FPS? Considering how much better SA2 looks compared to SA1, the overall graphics must have seemed like an enormous improvement over SA1's graphics. o_O I've only played the GCN version SA1, so I wasn't aware the original version had a meh framerate. Man, the series has had a really inconsistent track record with framerates.

 

I've been wondering this as well, it's in the AutoDemo too if I recall correctly. I assumed it was meant to say what level you were in, but it never does.

 

They may have used some post production trickery to make it look smoother for the advert.
How can one tell from that game in the video if its running at 60FPS? VHS cant even record at 60FPS can it?

 

VHS should be either 60i or 50i depending on the region. Notice how when you pause the tape it's not 1 single image but it constantly changes between the 2 half fields.
You have a point though, it could be fake interpolation.

 

If you're talking in terms of progressive scan, then yes, VHS is technically only 29.97fps. But VHS tapes aren't progressive scan, they're interlaced. With the alternating interlacing fields, it is possible to record 60fps footage in 30fps of space, if that makes sense. It's like

VHS Frame 1
Field A: Actual Frame 1
Field B: Actual Frame 2

VHS Frame 2
Field A: Actual Frame 2
Field B: Actual Frame 3

VHS Frame 3
Field A: Actual Frame 3
Field B: Actual Frame 4

Using the correct deinterlacing techniques, it is possible to "extract" progressive 60fps from interlaced 30fps.

This is how it is for anything interlaced, I think. This is the same technique 480i consoles use to output 60fps.

 

Aren't the dev kits more powerful than the retail dreamcasts?

 

Could be, though isn't it also possible that the version shown is running on a PC?

 

I think that's only really become standard practise fairly recently, as console and PC hardware have converged. I'm pretty sure Sega always used real consoles for demonstrating, even if the console was barely more than a prototype PCB at that point.

And yes Dreamcast Sonic Adventure's framerate jumps all over the place, but I don't remember it being much of a concern at the time as very few 3D console games could hold 60FPS. In a way it could even be considered "cinematic", as it usually slows when there's something pretty to look at.

 

Just a warning: you can get slaughtered on the internet for non-ironically describing low framerate in games like that.

 

Well the internet smells.

Although it's still an interesting thought - you used to get slowdown in some games when a boss would explode - these days they might actually slow down time to show all the gruesome detail. Not much difference, really.

 

He's not wrong in this case though, as the game's time would slow down smoothly and speed back up if the game didn't include a frameskip.

 

This looks pretty slick. I haven't played the game for years now, but I remember being blown away by how smoothly it ran. I own the PAL version and I remember the stark contrast when using 60Hz instead of 50Hz, especially in the first level (the one with the beach).

So, was it locked to 30fps peak or was Sonic Adventure framerate unlocked, but rarely hit the 60fps mark? How much did 50Hz affect the overall experience?

 

Nice video. Adventure would have definitely turned more heads back in the day if the game ran at 60fps on the retail release. The game eventually did get cleaned up for 60fps later on with DX chugging along as it did, but then we had SA2 that was 60fps on Dreamcast, so

Basically what he said.

As always, it's awesome to see new development stuff for Sonic Adventure~