SONIC Torn Apart to Expose SEGA's Insanity With Multichip Madness 

I would love to see a video about that crazy parallelism on the DSP

As a developer nowadays, I get the sense that I would have simultaneously loved and hated working on the Saturn 🙂 Simultaneous Multi-Thinking, if you will.

More please! I find the Saturn fascinating, it had such stark differences in game graphics quality. I believe that one must be a wizard developer (team) to make great looking 3d games like Powersslave, panzer Pragoon zwei, etc using this architecture. The Saturn, was part of my teenage gaming years, hope to get more coding secrets content for it. Great work!

This is the most diplomatic and tactful description of the Sega Saturn's patchwork architecture I've ever seen. A more pragmatic take would be "a confused, schizophrenic design resulting from haphazardly converting a system originally designed exclusively for 2D games into a 3D system in order to compete with the PS1, which blindsided Sega while they were still focused on one-upping the SNES". Given Traveler's Tales' penchant for doing crazy stunts with limited hardware, it's no wonder Mr. Burton has such fond memories of the console, but most third-party developers hated it, which was one of the reasons the Saturn flopped.

I think I'm starting to see why Yuji Naka just gave up and ran his game loops on the 68k

The Sega Saturn did sound like a bloody "knightmare" to code for.

And to think that's not even the most absurd system Sega ever produced. A Sega Genesis with both the CD and 32x add-ons formed a system with: A 68000 at 7.67MHz, a 68000 at 12.5 MHz, a Z80 at 3.57MHz, and two SH-2s at 23.01MHz, then for sound you have a YM2612 with 6 FM channels (or 5 and 1 PCM channel), a PSG with 3 channels of square waves and 1 noise channel, a QSound chip with 2 PWM channels, an RF5C164 with 8 PCM channels, and two channels of CDDA, and then for graphics you have... I'm not even going to try to describe the CD32x graphics hardware, but it's 3 completely different chips being over or underlayed.

You already know we want to see the DSP code explained again; why would you ask?

3:23 Extreme Danger Dungeoneers! (Nice reference to Knightmare!)

I notice that Tails is named "Tales" in the code. because Traveler's Tales, I presume?

Im still at 8th Grade but I aspire to be a programmer. I really love YOUR VIDEOS

Have I seen all of these episodes before? Yes. Am I watching them all again as they're uploaded on the new channel? Absolutely. They're just too good not to 👍

There were many revisions made through its life. Me: Wait. The Saturn had a lifespan?

I had no idea that the Saturn had twin CPUs. The 32X/Mars also has twin SH-2s as far as I'm aware. I only knew that because of 32X test programs that people have come across. They make reference to the Master/Slave SH chips.

These are really awesome videos, both the explanation and the graphical representations really paint a picture of what's going on. I'd definitely want to see a video on how you programmed the DSP too

fun fact: "sram" is "im sh!tting" in polish

Man, I don't envy you for your assembly code... Ouch, I remember the nightmare 68000 assembly was, let alone the SCU interaction... Thanks for these videos

Mate, the way you did the visualisation deserves a fucking award, showing a window of what each chip does on the chip. Brilliant, I have never seen that before, if done before someone show me where.

Wow, I LOVED this one!!! Man, the way computer stuff work is just SO interesting! Highly looking forward to more vids pertaining to console hardware!!!

Love these videos, I mess around in Unity and this seems like another world. I LOVED sonic R!

So cool! Thanks for the breakdown.

You do a great job on these videos btw

This is awesome. Amazing video

Dude, I know that doing this sort of thing was commonplace for you and your team, but this sounds like the most complicated sort of programming ever. You must have been so thoroughly familiar with the hardware. How long was the documentation for that beast of a console?

It would be interesting to go a little deeper and break open some of the steps that were a little handwavy. Like, "finally all the layers were combined", what does that mean? The pixels for each layer were sitting in memory and the scan-out could read from multiple buffers at the same time, compositing final pixels as they were sent to display? If so, how were transparent pixels in the layers indicated? If not, was there a composition step boiling the layers down to one framebuffer? If so, what chip performed that? Etc.... Love the videos and your presenting style by the way.

Sonic r was my childhood, thankyou

Thank you so much I love this!

I love how you break this down.

wow. I'd love an in-depth version of this entire video actually!

@1:36, looking at that thing and looking at a modern mainboard. XD. Back then a hundred different chips with different languages and different buses. Today a cpu and a chipset and MAYBE some ram sticks if not soldered on. The dying of the various chips and buses began in 2006, when AMD started putting the dram memory controller into their cpus. Subsequently intel started eradicating various other chips like ata and sata controllers and usb hc's from their boards and moved them into the boards chipset. Nowadays looking at a schematic, you have the cpu and chipset, all ios extend from those two like a tree root, no other controller or chip involved.

Servent CPU? Isn't it typically referred to as the slave ?

Non Sega creators are left relentless and uncertain when it comes to creating games for the Saturn. It’s not because they aren’t skilled, but rather how complex and challenging it is to code this kind of game on a system like this

From the thumbnail I thought you were going to say that each one of Sonic's limbs was controlled by a separate cpu.

I definitely would be interested in a video showing a more advanced look at how the code works.

Fascinating stuff. The Saturn architecture looks super complicated. Would love to see more. How would you have developed Sonic R on the PS1?

I remember submitting subtitles for this back on GameHut. But it seems Jon never integrated them. :(

"I loved coding on the Saturn" - Coding Secrets

Sega programmer tasked to make seemingly impossible graphics on complex hardware: ok, I am gonna just develop my own 3D engine and use every trick I know about the hardware to get it to run. The real blast processing was not the hardware, but the brain power of Sega Devs.

Now that's a lot of chips!

we need more

i played the crap out of sonic r on pc as a kid. its crazy getting to see the technical aspects of it so many years later.

What is a servant cpu and how is it different than a slave cpu?

1:10 - Saturn was promoted back then as having access to an internet based system where you could play original genesis games. I still believe I have my old Game Pros which talk about Sega Net, so I bet that chip was there in the case they could run genesis roms via the online server (that failed horribly).

the one frame shot of 'Knightmare'

I'd be all in favor on a video about that special assembly code.

Absolutely loved Sonic R!

I love these videos ❤

So I finally decided to subscribe. I really love your content. Just wanted to know if your code could be made available?

I want to see how you handle multiprocessing like that. Are they prone to raceconditions, or is this more in tune with MIMD architecture?

You should check out PowerSlave, whose SlaveDriver engine was reused for the Saturn ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Ezra Dreisbach, the lead architect of the SlaveDriver Engine, was one of the few people who used the Saturn to its full effect, despite him criticizing the Saturn’s architecture.

4:05 Yes please, would love to know how that worked. The Saturn is fascinating architecture wise :)

Brings back memories

Insane (I feel like I've seen this before, did you post similar video years ago? :) Great work!

I have Sonic R for the PC. The environment and various time/weather changes looked so good while the soundtrack was perfect for the game. Sonic R has a strange spot in my heart separate from the other games. Running around in the rain looking for balloons was oddly satisfying.

I'd love to see a video series on how assembler relates to C, C++ etc. I primarily code in C++ and C#, so when I look at C code you're written, it's a little more complex than the code I write, but I can see what you're doing in a given snippet. When you show assembly, I'm just lost. Best I can do in assembly (and only x86 assembly at that) is perform operations on arbitrary numbers with mov and add/sub/div/mul commands etc. Anything above that? No chance. I could maybe write you a basic calculator, but that's about it lol I guess a big question I would have is did hardware manufacturers back then give you datasheets on how to send commands to the various components and red input etc? Or did they just hand you the dev kit and just expect you to figure it out? I ask because I've done a bit of work with PS4 development with a dev kit at the university I teach at, and they provide a COLOSSAL amount of documentation on the internals and how to use the various abstraction layers built into it so you can write code to run on it. Of course, you wouldn't write code in assembly for a PS4 or you'd still be working on one game 50 years from now, but in theory you *could*. I'm just curious how, say, the C++ instructions I write for it convert into assembly, even at a basic level to give me an idea. We have a separate lecturer who teaches the low level stuff like assembly, and I teach the more creative stuff like game design and high level scripting, but I'd love to get an insight into how our two disciplines relate.

I hereby leave a comment to let you know I want to see a video on how exactly this code works.

i REALLY want to see that dsp video

Can you show us how the Sega Saturn programming software looks like?

Who handled the PC version of Sonic R and were the limitations any different on PC than it was on the Saturn?

I wonder how the transparent level was made.

Soo interesting that tecno mages existed at some point in time.

I am wondering did the x68k chip play any role in this game? If not, why not? Since it was still relatively a capable (not powerful) chip that could contribute some to the game, like drawing hud, mixing, etc

I mean i didnt like sonic r because i couldnt control it at all but its very interesting to learn how you made it

So, what's that spare green connector by the first VDP chip used for?

I like how he explained all that in only five minutes

Amazing!

Maybe a video like this comparing how it would have been done on the psx?

Interesting stuff, I wonder if this guy ever worked on non-Sega gaming systems such as the PlayStation 3.

Would love to see a video teaching some of that assembly programing for the Genesis or Saturn! Even a hello world of sorts

Absolutely do want to see how the scu chip coding worked.

this is the man who programed magnets into the walls

nice one m8

"But sir, we can't program that in!" "yes"

How did you select the CPU you wanted to run vice on? Was it separate memory blocks where you’d assemble the code into?

Servant CPU? Come on.

3.58 in sounded like boris johnson wrote that little sentence.

Do you still program? I love your videos... but I can barely do long division now a days

Question hopefully someone can answer for me...I want to create a sprite based 2d game using unity. Do I need to create the sprites in, say, GIMP or Photoshop, and then transfer them to UNITY. Or does UNITY already have software for that purpose?

I understand a fraction of what you’re talking about but I’m fascinated nonetheless

"SEGA's Insanity" No, YOUR insanity.

Go forward. Nightmare!

Wizards you guys were!

A nightmare you say? Ooh, nasty.

The ironic thing is, that Sonic R could've been repurposed from a racing game to what sonic Xtreme was supposed to be.

My gosh this was overly complicated, yet Sega Saturn was heavily underappreciated, along with Sonic R. By itself it looks like grandfather off multi-CPU processing, with manually assigned processing instructions. Wild! While PC world statred to get dual-core processors around 2000's.

"Knighmare" Haha

I would love to see more videos on lego star wars/indiana jones. I loved those games.

So the VDPs werent actual GPUs in the sense that we'd think of them now, they just draw the screen output? They just display whatever objects are given to them more or less? Just trying to understand how this machine worked.

Did u work mostly on genesis 16 bits stuff?

How is it possible to write and compile a program in two languages (assembly and C)?

A technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic to the average person. Computers are freaking magical.

Cool!

@2:34 that "height hack" comment tho :)

These videos about your work on the Saturn and how it functioned are completely fascinating. Extremely underrated console.

Do you know about the 32X? Was it even worse to program for?

If only Traveler's Tales were hired to help tame the beast that was Sonic X-Treme. Ah well, maybe in some other universe.

the stuff Travelers Tales did here with Sonic R is the reason I believe the Saturn far exceeded the original Playstation in capability.

I would love more and more and more about programming Sonic games please

Multi Threaded Parallelism

I wonder if Saturn lost the console war because programmers said "I cant be arsed to code for this, I will just do N64 and PSX ports, they're both running 64 bit MIPS, that should be straightforward enough"? :p