After several months of hard work, Saturn community member & developer, Frogbull, shared his latest progress on the Metal Gear Solid project for Sega Saturn.
Frogbull claims the second level is now 85% complete! This level is significantly more demanding than the first level due to its impressive draw distance.
“I’ve had to be quite clever with optimizations to maintain my 30 FPS goal. This involved extensive work on the geometry of the level. Unlike the Docks, I’ve managed to preserve the textures much better this time around. You might not notice at first glance, but many parts of the level’s geometry have been completely reworked compared to the PlayStation version.“
-Frogbull
VDP2 has been implemented in order to enhance the atmosphere by creating a snowfall effect & clouds moving in the sky (which can be seen in the video demonstration above). While these effects do add to the sense of immersion, Frogbull has plans to refine and improve these visuals even further.
One of the major improvements has been a complete rewrite of the collision system. This new system allows for a separate and more CPU-efficient collision map. This rewrite not only enhances performance but also provides a solid foundation for future development, Frogbull says.
“It looks very close to the PS1. One big part to finish [collision], and Level 2 will be near complete! …the goal is to first keep the 30 FPS even with all the polygons. No slowdown at all at the moment. [It’s] a bit hard to translate some parts to quads and keep textures aligned without UV [mapping]…“
-Frogbull
Simply amazing, inspiring work.