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Tomb Raider has been ported to 3DO

stranno

Member



OpenLara is an open source reimplementation of the engine used in the first five Tomb Raider games, developed by Timur Gagiev. He already ported the engine to many platforms, including a crazy GBA tech demo, and today he has published the 3DO port.

 
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N30RYU

Member
ryan reynolds hd GIF
 

Arioco

Member
Mark Cerny once said that when he was working at Crystal Dynamics he would program graphic engines for 3DO and he soon found out that the console was too weak for both 2D and 3D. "I was quite disappointed", he said. Then he started to hear from a new and more advance console called "the Playstation" and went to Japan to try to get a devkit. Unfortunately devkits were only available for Japanese developers and the contracts were only in Japanese. "No problem, think of me as a Japanese company", he said. And surprisingly Suhei Yoshida saw that scene and thought "Hmmm... This Cerny must be up to something... Let's give him a devkit". So Cerny signed the contracts and Crystal Dynamics became the first non-Japanese developer to have a PSX devkit, all because Cerny didn't like 3DO. Funfact: Cerny did NOT have any legal authority to sign those contracts on behalf of Crystal Dynamics, but Yoshida had no idea at that time. 🙄

Years later Yoshida would steal Insomniac and Naughty Dog from Cerny after those devs reached huge success with Spyro and Crash. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
 

CamHostage

Member
Pretty crazy stuff. Some of his OpenLara work has interesting 'practical' appeal (there's a 2-player split-screen demo and a VR mode, and just in general OpenLara is great and gets the games onto platforms you might use like Xbox One or an Android game player.) Then there's this 3DO demo and the Game Boy Advance project that are just... interesting.


OpenLara is an open source reimplementation of the engine used in the first five Tomb Raider games, developed by Timur Gagiev. He already ported the engine to many platforms, including a crazy GBA tech demo, and today he has published the 3DO port.

Five TR games? I know Gagiev says that, but what are the 5?

There's 1,2,3,Revelations on the old PlayStation-era engine, but then TR: Angel of Darkness (Tomb Raider 5 I guess it'd be called) would be on totally different tech systems I would think and I don't see how it'd be compatible with what this project is doing. Does he mean like TR Gold content (Unfinished Business) or some of that stuff, or would Angel of Darkness really run in OpenLara?

(*EDIT - Whoops, there were 5.)
 
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CamHostage

Member
Tomb Raider V: Chronicles.
Oh, duh... sorry, I thought that was one of the Game Boy ones. I forgot that they did two more after everybody was like, "That's enough Tomb Raider please, I can wait for PS2 now...", and that even Core all but killed her off both times while hoping to somehow move on.
 
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stranno

Member
Mark Cerny once said that when he was working at Crystal Dynamics he would program graphic engines for 3DO and he soon found out that the console was too weak for both 2D and 3D. "I was quite disappointed", he said. Then he started to hear from a new and more advance console called "the Playstation" and went to Japan to try to get a devkit. Unfortunately devkits were only available for Japanese developers and the contracts were only in Japanese. "No problem, think of me as a Japanese company", he said. And surprisingly Suhei Yoshida saw that scene and thought "Hmmm... This Cerny must be up to something... Let's give him a devkit". So Cerny signed the contracts and Crystal Dynamics became the first non-Japanese developer to have a PSX devkit, all because Cerny didn't like 3DO. Funfact: Cerny did NOT have any legal authority to sign those contracts on behalf of Crystal Dynamics, but Yoshida had no idea at that time. 🙄
3DO biggest issue was the CLIO chip. In order to work with the VRAM and FRAM, the MADAM chip (sort of VDP1) had to go through the CLIO, which destroyed the fill rate. CLIO and MADAM should have been a single chip to begin with (or at least MADAM should have had a graphics cache). And, on top of that, it featured a very weak first gen ARM processor.

Jaguar was technically more powerful, but the architecture was a disaster and TOM chip had to work with the graphics data in the main RAM, which also destroyed the fill rate.
 
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Drew1440

Member
Jaguar and 32X version when?
In all seriousness it's nice to see new ports on old systems
Also I thought the 3DO did well for 2D, just struggled with 3D once the PlayStation and Saturn hit the market.
 
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Arioco

Member
3DO biggest issue was the CLIO chip. In order to work with the VRAM and FRAM, the MADAM chip (sort of VDP1) had to go through the CLIO, which destroyed the fill rate. CLIO and MADAM should have been a single chip to begin with (or at least MADAM should have had a graphics cache). And, on top of that, it featured a very weak first gen ARM processor.

Jaguar was technically more powerful, but the architecture was a disaster and TOM chip had to work with the graphics data in the main RAM, which also destroyed the fill rate.


Thanks for all that technical info. To be honest I don't know too much about 3DO. Their M2 looked very impressive, it was supposed to be more powerful than N64 and way more than PSX, but most demos shown back in the day were just CGI. Too bad it was never released, I would've love to see what the system was really able to do.
 

JimboJones

Member
Mark Cerny once said that when he was working at Crystal Dynamics he would program graphic engines for 3DO and he soon found out that the console was too weak for both 2D and 3D. "I was quite disappointed", he said. Then he started to hear from a new and more advance console called "the Playstation" and went to Japan to try to get a devkit. Unfortunately devkits were only available for Japanese developers and the contracts were only in Japanese. "No problem, think of me as a Japanese company", he said. And surprisingly Suhei Yoshida saw that scene and thought "Hmmm... This Cerny must be up to something... Let's give him a devkit". So Cerny signed the contracts and Crystal Dynamics became the first non-Japanese developer to have a PSX devkit, all because Cerny didn't like 3DO. Funfact: Cerny did NOT have any legal authority to sign those contracts on behalf of Crystal Dynamics, but Yoshida had no idea at that time. 🙄

Years later Yoshida would steal Insomniac and Naughty Dog from Cerny after those devs reached huge success with Spyro and Crash. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Lol, revenge? The man is in charge of the PlayStation hardware.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
I fucking LOVE this song! Watched the whole video because of it.

The GBA demo was more impressive though.
 

Alebrije

Member
Mark Cerny once said that when he was working at Crystal Dynamics he would program graphic engines for 3DO and he soon found out that the console was too weak for both 2D and 3D. "I was quite disappointed", he said. Then he started to hear from a new and more advance console called "the Playstation" and went to Japan to try to get a devkit. Unfortunately devkits were only available for Japanese developers and the contracts were only in Japanese. "No problem, think of me as a Japanese company", he said. And surprisingly Suhei Yoshida saw that scene and thought "Hmmm... This Cerny must be up to something... Let's give him a devkit". So Cerny signed the contracts and Crystal Dynamics became the first non-Japanese developer to have a PSX devkit, all because Cerny didn't like 3DO. Funfact: Cerny did NOT have any legal authority to sign those contracts on behalf of Crystal Dynamics, but Yoshida had no idea at that time. 🙄

Years later Yoshida would steal Insomniac and Naughty Dog from Cerny after those devs reached huge success with Spyro and Crash. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Cerny got Knack ...but nice story
 

Arioco

Member
Lol, revenge? The man is in charge of the PlayStation hardware.


Yes, now. But at that time Cerny was President of Universal Studios and had created the top selling saga on PSX (Crash). When Yoshida took his studios from him he had to choose between stay at Universal, which meant he had to find new studios and start everything from scratch, or leave his position as President to work with Insomniac and Naughty Don, but this time he wouldn't be their boss anymore, he would be and employee, in fact an external consultant. 🙄


There's a video on YouTube where Mark interviews Yoshida and at some point Mark brings up this story about how Yoshida took his studios from him. Yoshida just laughs and says "You've done well". And Mark says "I would've done better if you hadn't stolen my studios". 😂


Funny enough Cerny is now, as you say, in charge of PlayStation hardware, even though he's not a Sony's employee. In fact when he asked if he could take over the design of the new hardware (you know, after Sony forced Kutaragi to retire because of the PS3 fiasco) Yoshida was the first one to say "Yes". They made a good team with Andrew Ryan.
 

01011001

Banned
Pretty crazy stuff. Some of his OpenLara work has interesting 'practical' appeal (there's a 2-player split-screen demo and a VR mode, and just in general OpenLara is great and gets the games onto platforms you might use like Xbox One or an Android game player.) Then there's this 3DO demo and the Game Boy Advance project that are just... interesting.



I played through the game on N-Gage back in the day and that was mindblowing to me (it was 2003 after all)... how they got that GBA demo running tho is even more mindblowing lol
 
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trapexit

Neo Member
3DO biggest issue was the CLIO chip. In order to work with the VRAM and FRAM, the MADAM chip (sort of VDP1) had to go through the CLIO, which destroyed the fill rate. CLIO and MADAM should have been a single chip to begin with (or at least MADAM should have had a graphics cache). And, on top of that, it featured a very weak first gen ARM processor.

Jaguar was technically more powerful, but the architecture was a disaster and TOM chip had to work with the graphics data in the main RAM, which also destroyed the fill rate.


1) The 3DO uses the ARM60 which is in the ARM6 family using the ARMv3 architecture. Same family as the one used in Apple's Newton. The first gen ARM was the ARM1 of the ARM1 family using ARMv1 arch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microarchitectures
2) FRAM? You mean SRAM/NVRAM?
3) The MADAM hasdirect access to VRAM among other devices. See the technical manual (page 8, diagram 2-2): https://3dodev.com/_media/documentation/manuals/panasonic_fz-1_-_technical_guide_us.pdf
4) Just to be clear... XProger hasn't "ported" he is "porting". He spent his vacation porting with some technical assistance from myself and other devs on our discord. He uploaded to YT where he is because his vacation is coming to and end and won't be able to dedicate as much time on the port but work will be on going.
 
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VGEsoterica

Member


3DO! 3DO! 3DO!

lol but in all seriousness this is a legit cool thing to have happen. 2 weeks of development and its running at an average of 15 FPS. So cool
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
I really hope they don't port OG Resident Evil to the 3DO cause if they do I'd have to buy one to experience it, lol.

Very cool, I love it when people do stuff like this.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
3DO biggest issue was the CLIO chip. In order to work with the VRAM and FRAM, the MADAM chip (sort of VDP1) had to go through the CLIO, which destroyed the fill rate. CLIO and MADAM should have been a single chip to begin with (or at least MADAM should have had a graphics cache). And, on top of that, it featured a very weak first gen ARM processor.

Jaguar was technically more powerful, but the architecture was a disaster and TOM chip had to work with the graphics data in the main RAM, which also destroyed the fill rate.
Yeah but I think the 3DO handled transparencies better than the Saturn ever could, and the pop-up wasn't as bad compared to the more powerful Saturn...
 
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