Sega Saturn Architecture: What Can You Do With 8 Processors? by Rodrigo Copetti

Author:Rodrigo Copetti [Copetti, Rodrigo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Computers, Advanced Computing, Engineering, Computer Architecture, Application Software, Computer Graphics, Computer Science
ISBN: 9798201361051
Published: 2019-08-02T16:30:00+00:00

5.7 The transparency issue

The Sega Saturn is capable of drawing half-transparent graphics, in other words, mixing overlapping layers of colours (blending) to give the illusion we can see through them. Unfortunately, both VDPs aren’t as coordinated as one would expect, so this effect will not work properly when these layers are found in different VDPs.

As a workaround, games can activate the ‘mesh’ property on a texture. With ‘meshed’ textures, the VDP1 sets the odd X/Y texture coordinates as ‘transparent’ (empty). Making it possible to blend other layers using the transparent pixels. Curiously enough, the mesh would appear blurred if the console was connected to the TV using the composite video signal (which was pretty much the standard back then, aside from RF) resulting in an accidental but effective way to accomplish half-transparency [12].

As you may suspect, this just wasn’t viable for some games, so in the end, these had no option but to ditch half-transparency altogether… Although some studios found ingenious fixes, take a look at these two cases:

Figure 5.13: Sega’s Daytona (1993). Interactive viewer available in the website edition.

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