Review: W-Ring: The Double Rings - A Very Good but Obscure Shmup

[esteban]

I can't believe we haven't moved beyond this. Damn.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

I said 'it doesn't have parallax, except for the thing it kind of does have.'  That is, I equivocated, something I do a lot; I rarely will make an absolute statement when equivocation can be used instead... and that's exactly what I did there.

Saying there's "no parallax" is unequivocal, and you continue to say the water isn't parallax anyway.

Make up your mind: does it or does it not have parallax?  It's a yes or no question.

Which clouds, in what level?

The white ones that look like, um, clouds.  There's literally dozens of them in level three.

You have actually played the game, right? 

[CrackTiger]

If you don't want to define the water as parallax, that's fine, but what about the clouds?

Which clouds, in what level?

[A Black Falcon]

I can't believe we haven't moved beyond this. Damn.

I definitely wish we would...

Saying there's "no parallax" is unequivocal, and you continue to say the water isn't parallax anyway.

Make up your mind: does it or does it not have parallax?  It's a yes or no question.

But 'sort of' is the best answer in my opinion, not yes or no. Sorry.   Six of the seven levels have no parallax, but the other one (lv. 3) has some parallax-style effects that look cool, but the main background and main obstacles (the rocky walls) are actually one layer and scroll together, so the effect isn't complete; this is probably why I said it looks more like waves than parallax, to me.  But sure, I can see why you're calling it parallax.  It looks awesome as it is though, they did a great job finding a way to make it look like there is depth to the layers of waves.  As I said in the review level 3 is the best-looking level in this visually very impressive game.

The white ones that look like, um, clouds.  There's literally dozens of them in level three.

You have actually played the game, right? 

Oh, I forgot about those, obviously.  Sure, that's a parallax-style effect too.  They're obviously sprites, of course.

[NightWolve]

Thanks for the review, I didn't know about this shooter.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

I definitely wish we would...

Liar.  Trolls like you just love arguing bullshit.

To numbnuts Black Falcon, everything is just 'parallax style' and not really parallax because it's not made by two+ independent background layers.  The stupid fuck doesn't understand the dictionary definition of the word parallax and never will.

[CrackTiger]

I definitely wish we would...

Liar.  Trolls like you just love arguing bullshit.

To numbnuts Black Falcon, everything is just 'parallax style' and not really parallax because it's not made by two+ independent background layers.  The stupid fuck doesn't understand the dictionary definition of the word parallax and never will.

Nevermind that parallax had regularly appeared in games long before any hardware supported 2+ tile layers and that tile layers in general were a tiny blip in the timeline of game hardware.

Do all the games since hardware ceased using tile layers not feature "real" parallax?

[geise]

There's no wrong way to do parallax. Not hard for most to figure out lol.

[esteban]

I can't wait for Black Falcon's next review.

What are the chances he will review Ninja Gaiden or Ys III?

[geise]

I can't wait for Black Falcon's next review.

What are the chances he will review Ninja Gaiden or Ys III?

It will be Popful Mail and be compared to the Sega CD.

[esteban]

I can't wait for Black Falcon's next review.

What are the chances he will review Ninja Gaiden or Ys III?

It will be Popful Mail and be compared to the Sega CD.

I was thinking it might be Monster Lair TG-CD vs. MegaDrive.

[geise]

Hehe.  Probably right.

[A Black Falcon]

I can't wait for Black Falcon's next review.

What are the chances he will review Ninja Gaiden or Ys III?

I imagine you're making some joke here, but apart from arcade ports, I haven't really done many reviews of multiplatform console games, you know... other than Zero Wing for TCD and the GBC version of Donkey Kong Country, where I focus mostly on that version, or the one paragraph or so about the PS2 version of Heavenly Guardian in that review of the Wii game, the closest thing to a full comparison article I've done is probably be my Gauntlet Legends / Dark Legacy version comparison list.

Anyway, when I do a full review, it's of a game I have completed.  I don't like it when people review games they haven't finished yet, so I don't do that in full reviews.  So if I was going to do another TG16/CD game review soon, what would I do... my top thoughts would be Shubibinman 3 and Splash Lake.  I finished those games not that long ago, and they do have some interesting things about them worth talking about.  For a HuCard game I'm not sure... Space Invaders Plus (Fukkatsu no Hi), if I could figure out if there's any predictability to which stages you get sent to?  Or something I beat several years ago like Blazing Lazers, Cyber-Core, or something?  I don't know.

Oh, of the games you just mentioned, Monster Lair for TCD and Popful Mail for SCD are fantastic games, but I've barely ever touched the other versions of either game so no, I wouldn't do much of a comparison if I ever did review one of those two.

I definitely wish we would...

Liar.  Trolls like you just love arguing bullshit.

I like debate and discussion about games, that's great.  But when it turns into people throwing insults around, being really rude, etc, that I don't like one bit.  I said that because that's happened in this thread.  I would never write a post as insulting as yours is here, that's not how to act in a debate.  There is no good reason for that tone, why can't we just have a debate about our opinions on this?  Debates or discussions about games are good, I certainly love discussing games and debating opinions about them.  Threads full of posts pointlessly insulting others with untrue insults aren't.

Do all the games since hardware ceased using tile layers not feature "real" parallax?

I covered my thoughts on this way back near the beginning of this thread, when I said that TG16/CD games that pull off full parallax backgrounds should be considered to be the equal of games on other platforms that look like that, regardless of how they made the effect.  Games like Bravoman, Valis IV, Gradius II: Gofer's Ambition, Super Darius, Super Darius II, Rondo of Blood, etc., those have a foreground and a separate background layer, just like any two-layer SNES or Genesis game. Or for another example mentioned earlier in the thread, the Neo-Geo can do more layers of "parallax" than most consoles even though thanks to its weird graphical style (everything is sprites) it has no actual background layers at all.

My point is, how games achieve the effect only matters on a technical level and not for gameplay so long as the results look pretty much the same, and in those games they do.  I care about how it's achieved too, but the most important thing is how the resulting graphics look.

[esteban]

^ I was teasing you in that comment I made.

On PCE: Monster Lair has no parallax, Ninja Gaiden has poorly executed parallax.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

I like debate and discussion about games, that's great.  But when it turns into people throwing insults around, being really rude, etc, that I don't like one bit.  I said that because that's happened in this thread.

And I don't like people that make up bullshit facts and definitions, which is what you do repeatedly.

I would never write a post as insulting as yours is here....

Your very existence is insulting.

..... that's not how to act in a debate.  There is no good reason for that tone, why can't we just have a debate about our opinions on this?  Debates or discussions about games are good, I certainly love discussing games and debating opinions about them.  Threads full of posts pointlessly insulting others with untrue insults aren't.

You aren't remotely interested in (or even capable of) an honest debate, where veracity, logic, and consistency are required.  You're a liar, a cheat, a simpleton, and a troll.

There's no parallax in W-Ring!  Black Falcon hath spoken!!!

[Bardoly]

Black Falcon: I like longer-form writing when it is informed and/or well-written.

I always enjoy reading your stuff.

Folks who want a short, brief summary can find them in abundance (it's what 99% of the interwebz is filled with).

Please continue writing the longer-form articles...it is a dying breed. Sure, it is more niche, but there are at least a handful of folks who appreciate it. Like...maybe seven. I am confident that at least seven shoot-em-up fans would be willing to read a long article. The rest have attention deficit issues.

Nice review!  I enjoy reading the longer-form articles like this as well.

[A Black Falcon]

Nice review!  I enjoy reading the longer-form articles like this as well.

Thanks.

^ I was teasing you in that comment I made.

On PCE: Monster Lair has no parallax, Ninja Gaiden has poorly executed parallax.

Monster Lair for Turbo CD is a great game, and they more than made up for the removal of parallax other ways.  The graphics look really good for a 1989 regular-CD release, most obviously.  I don't mind that they removed the parallax, it looks great as it is and for the time it's really good looking for the platform.  It also kept the two player co-op, which was far from a given back then!  The gameplay is great as well, and the CD soundtrack is quite good.  I only have the TCD version, but I imagine the MD version has worse audio, it's only on a cart.  It might have been nice to see some kind of CD intro or something, a bunch of those early CD titles really are just cart-style-game-plus-CD-audio, but it's a very good game as it is.  It's kind of weird; I've never enjoyed the first Wonder Boy or any of the Adventure Island games very much, but Monster Lair and Monster World are fantastic.

As for Ninja Gaiden, I have the first two games for the NES (and I did beat the second one, because its last level isn't as insanely hard as the last level in the first game), but I really wish I had gotten the SNES collection back when it wasn't insanely expensive.  That version adds password save to all three games and I, of course, always like it a lot when games let you save.

[Gentlegamer]

/x0xmrm.jpg

[Gentlegamer]

My point is, how games achieve the effect only matters on a technical level and not for gameplay so long as the results look pretty much the same, and in those games they do.  I care about how it's achieved too, but the most important thing is how the resulting graphics look.

I don't know how anyone can disagree with this.

[Psycho Punch]

Sorry but tricks to achieve parallax DOES affect gameplay whether you want to recognize it or not.

Dynamic tiles = a lot of cycles dedicated to update PPU every frame, limited BG/Sprite updates, bg has to be designed carefully to not have too many 'black spots' (areas which would be composite BG1/BG2 but aren't can't be displayed in the same place at once).
Possible results: slowdown, scroll speed limitations, limited on-the-fly animation frame overwrite.

Line scroll = BG has to be designed as individual horizontal stripes, 'black spots' in the 'independent' backgrounds (same reason as before).
Results: cheap but cheap looking, too (see Samurai Ghost). Sometimes unconvincing, can be solved with sprites but can cause flicker due to too many sprites on the same scanline.

Sprite BG = BG has to have as little detail as possible, low number of enemies to avoid flicker
Results: it WILL flicker, this ain't no neo geo son. Plus a very small number of sprites to actually act as sprites. I guess bravoman does that?

edit: Ninja Spirit has the background darker to hide the 'black spot' problem, not really noticeable:

/hpNCQa4.png

This is the best technique but not always viable in some games, the forest in shape shifter always looked odd to me because of how squareish the trees looked.

[CrackTiger]

The PCE happens to be good at animation like dynamic tiles. It can also throw around enough sprites to replicate one of the layers found in many SNES games, yet still include the few player/enemy sprites those games have. It also has enough processing power to do lots of these kinds of things, plus twice the amount of action/collision/speed/etc of a comparable SNES game and not slowdown, while the comparable SNES game does slowdown.

So "tricks" do affect the PCE, but it's still relative.

Just the same, various forms of parallax in Genesis and SNES games are not resource-free. The most common Mode used in SNES games to have parallax includes a layer of NES/Gameboy quality color. Once you see it you can't unsee it.

But Ninja Spirit is completely different and unique. It's not playing pre -rendered animated tiles, it's rendering them in real-time, or in other words, it's "hardware parallax".

[TurboXray]

Sorry but tricks to achieve parallax DOES affect gameplay whether you want to recognize it or not.

In the case of the snes, doing parallax can contribute to slowdown and technically on the Genesis as well. If you miss a vblank flag by 10 cpu cycles, it's no different than missing it by 10,000 cpu cycles; game logic is stalled for one frame.

 Parallax takes cpu resource on all three systems. It's not free. I'd say the PCE cpu is more than up for the task. Of course one can make an easy/fast routine, bloated and slow in operation, as well graphic designs for such effects. Sometimes "just enough" is the standard. Especially if that's enough to standout to other competition on the platform. I.e. PCE and parallax. If that standard isn't being pushed, then other game developers don't have much of an incentive to go beyond that. Just look at the Genesis; parallax standards were pushed to a high level. To the point where gamers thought that the SNES couldn't do the parallax on the level of the Genesis. The irony is that the SNES is capable of much more complex parallax, but the snes game developers didn't. That didn't become the focus - other effects did. And some of those other effects on the SNES took up much more cpu resource than complex parallax. 

Ninja Spirit has the background darker to hide the 'black spot' problem, not really noticeable:

And yet the next level with tree leaves that have no such issue and the dynamic tiles appear perfectly on a pixel level behind the tree leaves. And those leaves aren't part of the pre-compiled animation either (or realtime rotated pixels).
 
 The PCE definitely has limitations when it comes to how complex a scene can be, but what you get out of it is the directly related to what you put into it. Lords of Thunder is a great example (and it's doing more than both NS and SS). That 'black spot' problem in Ninja Spirit and ShapeShifter can be avoid or 'fixed', with or without sprites. The linescroll issue you bring up, is also an issue with the Genesis and SNES when used in the far BG layer. You need solid color transition areas to hide the seam when straight edges aren't an option, when two BG layers can't be used in composition. Whether is looks 'cheap' or not, doesn't effect the gameplay though. Unless you consider it a distraction.

 
 Edit: Scroll speed isn't limited by parallax effects.

[Gentlegamer]

The parallax discussion in this thread is the type of thing that would make a great article on the future pcefx super site, in my opinion.

As a total layman, I love these technical breakdowns. Bonknuts points out what I've come to understand, that the human factor is really the biggest.

[Sadler]

*ahem* I genuinely think this looks as good or better than anything on the Genesis or SNES (slight spoiler, this is the last area of Legend of Xanadu):

Final Stage

~1:20-2:00 is just amazing. Many layers of complex overlapping parallax.

All the side scrolling areas in that game that I've seen look great. See here for the first area.

[Gentlegamer]

*ahem* I genuinely think this looks as good or better than anything on the Genesis or SNES (slight spoiler, this is the last area of Legend of Xanadu):

Final Stage

~1:20-2:00 is just amazing. Many layers of complex overlapping parallax.

All the side scrolling areas in that game that I've seen look great. See here for the first area.

The cloud section looks like it has 3 layers of parallax. Looks good, what techniques are employed there?

[Sadler]

Sprites + scanline is my guess. I think people underestimate what you can do with sprites.

[CrackTiger]

All you need is sliding strips of tiles and sprites in the right places, including "behind" the tiles. Sprites can float around on the base color of the tile palettes like a third layer. Since they don't penetrate the rest of the tile art, all kinds of neat effects can be achieved.

[NightWolve]

*ahem* I genuinely think this looks as good or better than anything on the Genesis or SNES (slight spoiler, this is the last area of Legend of Xanadu):

Final Stage

~1:20-2:00 is just amazing. Many layers of complex overlapping parallax.

All the side scrolling areas in that game that I've seen look great. See here for the first area.

Agreed, gonna be great to see this fan-translated one day which might just be some time next year!

[Sadler]

*ahem* I genuinely think this looks as good or better than anything on the Genesis or SNES (slight spoiler, this is the last area of Legend of Xanadu):

Final Stage

~1:20-2:00 is just amazing. Many layers of complex overlapping parallax.

All the side scrolling areas in that game that I've seen look great. See here for the first area.

Agreed, gonna be great to see this fan-translated one day which might just be some time next year!

I am very much looking forward to translated Xanadus!

[Psycho Punch]

Parallax takes cpu resource on all three systems. It's not free. I'd say the PCE cpu is more than up for the task.

 That 'black spot' problem in Ninja Spirit and ShapeShifter can be avoid or 'fixed', with or without sprites. The linescroll issue you bring up, is also an issue with the Genesis and SNES when used in the far BG layer. You need solid color transition areas to hide the seam when straight edges aren't an option, when two BG layers can't be used in composition. Whether is looks 'cheap' or not, doesn't effect the gameplay though. Unless you consider it a distraction.

 
 Edit: Scroll speed isn't limited by parallax effects.
 

I really wasn't comparing the PCE to any of its competitors. With all that text I just wanted to say that parallax doesn't come for free and the design of the game is significantly influenced by how the BGs are designed to behave and look. Perhaps I'm too influenced by the NES but I always see these effects as "oh shit this is going to be 90% of my processing time isn't it", specially when it depends of a lot of Video RAM updates.

The line scroll technique looks great in Samurai Ghost but it does look cheap when the solid color of the edge clashes with the background that's supposed to be behind it isn't of a solid color as well. Well at least for me. My opinions suck, so what.
edit: an example that's the opposite of Samurai Ghost: Atlantean. Now that's a damn great looking game, because sprites are used to hide the linescroll and the BG is designed to be a set of rectangular walls one in front of the other. That's what I meant, it is a cheap technique processing time wise (specially with the built in line interrupt!) but it does show unless you go the extra mile, inducing flicker with too many sprites on screen.

You sure it doesn't? I don't see myself making a game update the virtual BG with new tile indexes as fast as a game like Sanic or Bio Force Ape while it uses part of vblank to also update the tile sets. Doesn't sound viable to me. I'm not challenging your opinion or anything, I just want to hear a detailed explanation of your statement.

[Gentlegamer]

*ahem* I genuinely think this looks as good or better than anything on the Genesis or SNES (slight spoiler, this is the last area of Legend of Xanadu):

Final Stage

~1:20-2:00 is just amazing. Many layers of complex overlapping parallax.

All the side scrolling areas in that game that I've seen look great. See here for the first area.

Agreed, gonna be great to see this fan-translated one day which might just be some time next year!

Be sure to make a special Tobias edition that infects his systems with malware.

[CrackTiger]

Parallax takes cpu resource on all three systems. It's not free. I'd say the PCE cpu is more than up for the task.

 That 'black spot' problem in Ninja Spirit and ShapeShifter can be avoid or 'fixed', with or without sprites. The linescroll issue you bring up, is also an issue with the Genesis and SNES when used in the far BG layer. You need solid color transition areas to hide the seam when straight edges aren't an option, when two BG layers can't be used in composition. Whether is looks 'cheap' or not, doesn't effect the gameplay though. Unless you consider it a distraction.

 
 Edit: Scroll speed isn't limited by parallax effects.
 

I really wasn't comparing the PCE to any of its competitors. With all that text I just wanted to say that parallax doesn't come for free and the design of the game is significantly influenced by how the BGs are designed to behave and look. Perhaps I'm too influenced by the NES but I always see these effects as "oh shit this is going to be 90% of my processing time isn't it", specially when it depends of a lot of Video RAM updates.

The line scroll technique looks great in Samurai Ghost but it does look cheap when the solid color of the edge clashes with the background that's supposed to be behind it isn't of a solid color as well. Well at least for me. My opinions suck, so what.
edit: an example that's the opposite of Samurai Ghost: Atlantean. Now that's a damn great looking game, because sprites are used to hide the linescroll and the BG is designed to be a set of rectangular walls one in front of the other. That's what I meant, it is a cheap technique processing time wise (specially with the built in line interrupt!) but it does show unless you go the extra mile, inducing flicker with too many sprites on screen.

You sure it doesn't? I don't see myself making a game update the virtual BG with new tile indexes as fast as a game like Sanic or Bio Force Ape while it uses part of vblank to also update the tile sets. Doesn't sound viable to me. I'm not challenging your opinion or anything, I just want to hear a detailed explanation of your statement.

Although 16-bit consoles could always be pushed further, anything already achieved is proof of what is possible at the very least. It doesn't matter how something might seem to be theoretically, like the resource impact of dynamic tiles, because we already have so many PCE games which already make liberal use of dynamic tiles for stuff like parallax, while at the same time still run an "intensive" game like a shooter.

[TurboXray]

You sure it doesn't? I don't see myself making a game update the virtual BG with new tile indexes as fast as a game like Sanic or Bio Force Ape while it uses part of vblank to also update the tile sets. Doesn't sound viable to me. I'm not challenging your opinion or anything, I just want to hear a detailed explanation of your statement.

Well, the tilemap itself would have more entries to update, but dynamic tiles are just the position number/frame to write to vram. Dynamic tiles and hsync scrolls aren't affected by scroll speed. They are a constant factor. That just leaves the tilemap update.

 How fast does Sonic scroll? Let's say it's 64 pixels per frame. That's 15 full frames scroll per second in PCE low res. That's pretty damn fast! A full screen has completely scrolled by in just 4 frames (there are 60 frames in a second for the video). That's 8x2x28= 448 bytes to update to vram. Just using a simple load/store loop (no block transfer), that's ~11 cpu cycles per byte. That's 4,928 cpu cycles (4.1% cpu resource per frame). There's 16,380 cpu cycles in vblank with a frame of 256x224. (262-224-2)* 455 cpu cycles. That still leaves 11,452 cpu cycles left over in vblank.

 But here's the thing; I wouldn't update the tilemap during vblank for scrolling. The PCE can write vram during active display. And the virtual map is large enough to write offscreen during this time. I would (and do) do this during active display. That frees up all of vblank. SATB doesn't need to be updated during vblank either. There are also ways to do dynamic tiles without having to resort to vblank as well. Vblank time is more of a NES, Genesis, SNES time of thing/limitation. That's why the Genesis and SNES have local to vram DMAs, because such a short amount of time - the cpu isn't fast enough to update vram. The NES only has a sprite DMA option.

 Vblank should be saved for critical things that can't be double buffered or done off screen during active display (like palette ram updates, etc).


Edit: Scrolling 64 pixels per frame is ridiculous and unrealistic, or a rare special case. Even 8 pixels per frame is pretty fast for scrolling (almost two screens per second).

*If you're using HuC and the default map libraries, well then maybe you'll run into some issues. Those map routines are slow and unoptimized. They're are meant for general flexibility.