Any 3D you see in a MegaDrive game would be rendered in software (like any 3D PC game before 3D acceleration became the expected norm) on the CPU, and then background or sprite graphics are generated on the fly and transfered to the video memory.Steven wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2024 9:14 am The Neo Geo is really cool with how it builds everything with sprites. I've heard that it can't do 3D at all (the helicopter in Mark of the Wolves is prerendered, but it looks like flat shaded polys!), but the Mega Drive can do true 3D without assistance. It runs at really low framerates, but it's cool to see those few 3D games like LHX Attack Chopper on the MD.
I don't have any insight into Neo Geo tech, but I'd imagine it should be capable of the same, unless it's designed so that the graphics hardware can only read directly from graphics ROMs instead of internal memory (which makes sense, given the amazing full-screen animations it's able to pull off given big a enough ROM size). In that case it'd only be able to do it by using RAM chips on the cartridge like some NES games have
One thing you could do for sure is faking "virtual" 2D hardware which is then used to "blitter" individual pixels on to a texture in memory, and render that as a single polygon. That's how emulators usually work, so there's no reason a video game engine couldn't be designed in that way. But it would be a terribly ineffecient way to do things, and the only reason I'd imagine someone doing it is because they think it's a cool/fun way to program their game (and I'd be inclined to share that enthusiasm to be honest). It *would* probably make porting the games to multiple platforms a bit easier too, but 2D games shouldn't run into that many problems anyway.Another interesting one to check out is the Retro Engine that Sonic Mania runs on. I have heard it uses the CPU to render most stuff and the GPU isn't really used that much. Is it actually a 2D engine or does it use textured polygons? I have been wondering about it for a while, but I've never looked into it.