the GBA is more than capable of doing a doom style 3D game using nothing but
its own hardware coupled with some tight code!

as for the superFX chip - the GBA on its own is WAY more capable than the
super FX chip ever was - and by that i mean more polygons and at a better
framerate :)


-----Original Message-----
From: D Green [mailto:fbs@...]
Sent: 31 August 2001 22:49
To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [gbadev] Hardware 3D on GBA ?


Silly thought - but was the super nes capable? (without the FX chip)

Now, in my eyes, the GBA is a souped up/enhanced snes, and seeing that it
could just about handle 3D scenes with an FX add on, then seeing the GBA
is - twice as powerful?

I'd like to see 'how' this doom port is done, as the snes version used an FX
chip, is this version also following that route?

Dan.

P.s - Dont flame that I called the GBA a souped up SNES. In fact I am quite
fond of the snes, and this is one of the main reasons for buying a GBA :-)

----- Original Message -----
From: "The Night Howler" <Night-Howler@...>
To: <gbadev@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 8:13 PM
Subject: [gbadev] Hardware 3D on GBA ?


> Hi all,
>
> We all know now that GBA isn't quite able of doing hardware-rendered 3D
> scenes for games, as the viedo chipset is only aimed at 2D.
> With software 3D rendering, one can manage to get around 50000 polygons /
> second (if I can remember well the figures), which is really not enough
for
> a big, real 3D game.
>
> So my question is, does anyone think it would be possible to incorporate
> some kind of 3D video chipset in a cart, which would do the render of
scenes
> and blit it awesomely fast on the screen, for example in mode 3 or 4 ?
>
> Let me explain.
> Aperture size for cartidge is 32 Mb. So what if one uses, for example, 28
Mb
> for the cartidge ROM, and the 4 last Mb would be to transmit data to what
> I'd call the "3D chipset" in the "special cart" ?
> As I see it, the "3D chipset" would work like this :
> - On the first bytes of its address space, we have some controls (such as
:
> position of the camera for drawing, chipset enabled, chipset bliting etc.)
> in read and / or write states.
> - On the next Mbs the user would have to DMA the scene polygons data, and
> then the texture data. The same data may remain for several frames
> (background, wals etc.) or may be for just one frame (3D moving objects
> etc.).
> - The "3D chipset" would then do, when ordered (one control bit for
"render"
> maybe), the blitting of the resulting scene on the GBA display. The
> rendering shall be made by the "3D chipset" without halting the GBA cpu
(of
> course).
>
> As I don't know anything about electronics, I'm just wondering if such a
> chip is only an utopia or may be madeable. What do you think about it ?
Does
> anything similar exist for another game system ?
>
> Regards,
>
> Mathieu -- The Night Howler