ReVolte (1996, Virtuality KK) playthrough - NEC PowerVR PCX1 / Pentium Pro / Windows 95 PC - SGL API

[@dipshidian]

ReVolte features pretty impressive real-time shadow effects for a 1996 game! Observe the self-shadows on the player ship and how the darkness of the cave completely (and partially) engulfs the player ship when entering and exiting the cave at 8:30. The same effect can also be observed with dark spaces in the desert level at 11:00.

[@TeiTenga]

I actually have a question to this. The gameplay loop feels very familiar to Terminal Velocity, except looking a lot better ofcourse. Of all the PowerVR exclusives tested, this seems to be one of the more advanced ones. My question is: Does this have a first person view of the action? It looks superb for 1996 technology.

[@dipshidian]

@@TeiTenga Thanks for your comment! I have not seen any info in the manual suggesting there is a first-person view mode. I also tried every key on the keyboard and could only find the pause key and reset key (takes you back to main menu). Pretty sure the game only has the one third-person view.

[@TeiTenga]

@@dipshidian thanks for replying back! Thats actually somewhat a shame all things considered, considering it looks so similar to other titles like the aforementioned TV, but also Descent and Forsaken. A follow up then: Outside of Antworld, id there any PowerVR exclusive demo/game that features a first person view that you know of?

[@dipshidian]

Excluding racing games (Ground Master, Ultimate Race, maybe Moon Racer?) I can only name PacfaMoroWh!! (which is a ”light gun shooter” demo game but without light gun support) and Nirgends (has a plane cockpit view) as two other PowerVR games with first-person view. There are a few games I have yet to try (3D Shooting Maker and Enigma comes to mind).@@TeiTenga

[@TeiTenga]

@@dipshidianI saw these and Nirgends seems pretty cool. I look forward to footage of 3D Shooting Maker and Enigma!

[@johnnygong7268]

This feels like it was made for PS1 and ported, makes me wonder how the Rave Racer port would've performed if it were finished

[@dipshidian]

Minus the real-time shadows, I can see what you mean by it looking like a PS1 game. There is a little bit of overlap between the graphical hardware features of 5th gen consoles and early PC 3D cards. As for Rave Racer, it might have been similar to how Ultimate Race performs, maybe slightly faster without real-time shadows. God only knows, sure, but it’s fun to speculate.

[@apollosungod2819]

The idea of this looking like a Sony PlayStation game is a bit misguided... what's really happening is that ever since the 3DO launched in late 1993 up to the year this game was made in 1996 which is only three years. The average game programmer/s or dev team on any platform were not immediately masters of 3d graphics games or even 3d game design... they were making attempts yes and many of these early 3d graphics game attempts were still in experimental phases. What his game is doing is attempting to convert the 2d side scrolling Japanese S.T.G. or shooting games like the genre that games like Tatsujin, Raiden and others in terms of having some type of military or futuristic military aesthetic and is just an early attempt to translate the 2d shooting game design into the 3d polygon graphics world so it comes off as a mix of a bunch of things... not just the genre because for example the game has some Sega Xaxxon like design elements due to having the 3d graphics and an isometric camera perspective. As such a more casual person might think it's like a PlayStation game but iirc since I actually purchased the launch 95 PS1 and knew what games were out there... pretty much in terms of pure 3d graphics it was only Namco and a few others who could pull off fully 3d graphics like this and mind you that the PS1 had half the colors on screen as this game due to this PowerVR hardware being newer... I also purchased the launch Nintendo 64 and again only a few dev teams were pulling off amazing feats while others did attempt also to convert the 2d shooting games into full 3d graphics but they sort of lacked the knowledge of tapping the N64 hardware as well as the budget so in a way this game could be seen as N64 like especially taking into account games like BlastCorps even though RARE was pulling off bump mapping and other effects of custom 3d programming there. These early Power VR PC games basically represent the early potential of the card... you need higher sales to secure the install base which on PC was somewhat possible but Microsoft released Direct X requirements to shut down these early 3d graphics cards from having their proprietary API tools from becoming standards

[@dipshidian]

@@apollosungod2819 Holy sh*t, how did I not get notified about this reply when it was first posted? You make several good points here, including the fact that ReVolte only scratches the surface of what PowerVR could have been in a more favorable timeline. Kudos for giving credit to the 3DO too; it wasn’t very far-off from Saturn/PS1 performance and graphical features (if games like The Need For Speed or the OpenLara port are an indicator), one year ahead of both systems!

[@Malheirods]

Thanks a lot for all these explanations! Now I know why it was almost unplayable lol

[@dipshidian]

This is a playthrough of ReVolte done using the original 1.0.0c1 drivers for the NEC PC 3DEngine card, which are the drivers that ReVolte released alongside with. *If you are curious about how the game runs and looks when played with newer drivers you can check the link at the end of this comment* for unlisted footage from my last capture done using the later 4.1.0C3 Developer drivers for the PCX1 card. These later drivers will allow ReVolte to run at a higher average frame-rate (consistently runs at 60fps in less busy scenes) than with the 1996 drivers but it does speed up the game too, resulting in more audio distortion (from weapons firing faster) and erratically fast camera rotations as well as giving the player less reaction time in general. They also break the loading screens a bit by not correctly displaying the "Please Wait" text on screen. My previous capture was played *without* using a gameport joystick or game pad, which is *not* a good controlling experience (the mouse and keyboard control presets give you no fine control over movement and aiming) and results in my playing looking very erratic and sloppy. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGjCc2ihd656aZY(

[@dipshidian]

Commentary subtitles have been added to the video! Use the subtitle button in the video player to enable or disable them (whichever you prefer).