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GTA 3 (Dreamcast "Super Early Version" vs PlayStation 2) - Gameplay Comparison

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Comparison of Grand Theft Auto III between Sega Dreamcast and PS2.

Note of the YouTuber:
What you're seeing on the Dreamcast is a draw distance 10 times greater than that of the PS2, true 480p resolution, and many more cars and NPCs on the screen simultaneously, along with 3D models with more polygons, as they are the same as those from the PC version... obviously, the Dreamcast version is still poorly optimized, since development started less than a month ago. The goal of the video is not to ridicule the Dreamcast but to show that it is more than capable of running GTA 3.

It's a shame that small-minded people think the video is meant to ridicule the Dreamcast, especially considering that this is my channel, where it's no secret to anyone that my all-time favorite console is the Dreamcast (Number 1), followed by the SNES (Number 2) and PlayStation 1 (Number 3)

Anyway, the video is to show that even at the beginning of the development of the Dreamcast version, which is being done by fans and not Rockstar developers, the game already proves that GTA 3 would easily run on the Dreamcast and that it wasn't released due to commercial reasons, not because of a lack of capability.

After all, anyone familiar with the Dreamcast knows that 98% of its games are in 480p, which demonstrates that the Dreamcast is powerful and that it died too soon to showcase its true potential!!!


Even though the Dreamcast is my favorite console, I am impartial when it comes to all consoles... for example, among the 16-bit consoles, I prefer the SNES over the Sega Genesis, but the more I learn about the Genesis, the more I'm surprised by the things the Sega Genesis could do that the SNES couldn't... but it's hard to change my preference just like that, since I grew up playing the SNES. However, the Sega Genesis has my respect too, as it has great games and is a fantastic system.

What I mean by all this is that, regardless of our preferences, we can look at things impartially without being swayed by passion.

So, to those of you who are SEGA fanatics, stop saying that this video is meant to ridicule the Dreamcast...
 
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Soodanim

Member
It will be interesting to see how far this project gets. 10x draw distance etc might be a little ambitious if he wants the framerate to be playable one day, but that's the beauty of being able to tweak settings.
 
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SkylineRKR

Member
Yeah this is developed when the console is over 25 years old.

And even so, GTA 3 being possible on DC was already confirmed by one of the developers. The cancellation was a business decision. But we don't know how it would stack up tp the eventual PS2 version if we consider it had also been in development by 2000 with tools and expertise from that era.

Its not strange that people can make machines do what they previously couldn't. Think of Doom on 32x, or Real Bout Special on Genesis.
 
Yeah this is developed when the console is over 25 years old.

And even so, GTA 3 being possible on DC was already confirmed by one of the developers. The cancellation was a business decision. But we don't know how it would stack up tp the eventual PS2 version if we consider it had also been in development by 2000 with tools and expertise from that era.

Its not strange that people can make machines do what they previously couldn't. Think of Doom on 32x, or Real Bout Special on Genesis.
I heard the same probably from the same developer. The game was originally planed as a Dreamcast title, so I don´t know why we should be surprised if somebody got a port of the game running on dreamcast 20+ years later
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
Also, let's not compare. It's a tough thing to judge if was back in the day

We saw Portal running on the N64 and looks amazing like no game could not run like that back in the day. You know why? People learn advanced methods of development in the long run. As a task there's little room for trial snd error, and development has a time to deliver, so... You know. Not really fair if is a direct comparison

Congrats for the fan made
 

thatJohann

Member
Wow didn’t think it was possible to run GTA3 on a Dreamcast. Granted it’s early development and runs at about 5fps but nice!
 
The game looks clearly downgraded (missing sky, clouds, rain, fog, postprocessing effects, car shading, shadows and lighting, extremely blurry textures even compared to PS2 version) and it still runs at around 5-10fps. I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done to make it run at a playable framerate, but I'd like to be surprised.
 
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Big Baller

Al Pachinko, Konami President
Turning Around GIF by Max
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
One, this looks and runs like shit. Two, because a bunch of hardcore fans are using modern tools and knowledge to port the game doesn't mean anything. We have no idea what the game would have been had it been made on Dreamcast at the time because we can't step into that universe.

Dreamcast fans remind me of those Japanese soldiers in the jungles who didn't know the war ended a decade prior.
 
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Agent X

Member
For a homebrew project that was whipped up in short order, this is actually quite impressive.

Aside from the lower frame rate, disappearing geometry, and some other general glitchiness (which may or may not get ironed out with some further optimization), one other obvious disadvantage is the much lower resolution of bitmaps. The Dreamcast GD-ROM has much lower capacity than a PlayStation 2 DVD, and the "open" design of GTA3 doesn't lend itself to disc swapping, so this could be one hurdle that would not be easy to overcome.
 

Drew1440

Member
Looks promising, hopefully there will be good progress on this.

GTA3 on the PSX would probably look like driver 2 :).


One of the few games that should have been moved to the sixth-generation consoles, the PS1 could barely run this. Even the original Driver released in 1998 could tank the framerate when you had too many cop cars on screen,
 

amigastar

Member
I'm just saying picking up a prostitute, having sex with her, killing her and getting your money back was *THE MOMENT* you knew video games were never going to be the same again.
Yeah, it was actually cool, no kiddie game (nothing wrong with more kiddie games but yeah). K-Jah and all the other radio stations ,whereas K-Jah introduced me to Dub music.
 
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BlackTron

Member
As a Dreamcast fan I'm not sure how they are going to get better geometry and draw distance at the same time no less, but if it reaches anything approaching parity with PS2 a lot of these posts will age terribly.
 
Reminds me of early PS3 vs 360 multiplats...

...not flattering for Dreamcast here. But then again, it's just an early build over there. We'll see how close it gets to the PS2 retail version over time, hopefully by the end of the year.

As a Dreamcast fan I'm not sure how they are going to get better geometry and draw distance at the same time no less, but if it reaches anything approaching parity with PS2 a lot of these posts will age terribly.

Considering back in 2000 a retail Dreamcast could run Shenmue (and later, Shenmue 2), it should be obvious that a retail version of GTA3 would've been a lot more polished than this fan project is at currently.

The question I guess is if it would've ran better than the PS2 version. I'm of the opinion it would not have, and would have had much simpler lighting & particle effects in areas. Framerate would've probably been consistently 5-15 FPS below PS2 depending on the area and amount of stuff happening on-screen too.

But I'm sure there'd of been some clever workarounds developed for obvious deficiencies to get closer performance parity.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
As a Dreamcast fan I'm not sure how they are going to get better geometry and draw distance at the same time no less, but if it reaches anything approaching parity with PS2 a lot of these posts will age terribly.
Imagine if DMA had 20 years to work on it. It was the first PS2 game they did. Even a few years later they put out San Andreas which was vastly more complex than GYA3.

Again Dreamcast warriors are fighting a battle that ended a long time ago.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It's pointless to have such comparisons before it's further done (no less because we see huge improvements in mere days/hours, though of course that won't last forever). Even that channel already has a new video comparing an older to a newer (still not latest) DC version, lol... Folks saying it's so easy because it's 2024 can always re-port the PC version to PS2, show how easy it is to do 1000x better than this project, have all the visuals somehow magically work with no glitches/performance issues in the early days from a codebase meant to run on completely different hardware, apis, etc. 🤡


But no, apparently we should take the current (or previously purple tinted) results as the very best Dreamcast can do because these guys are the best, the tools they use are too, the DC is maxed and it can't even properly render black bars for cinematics to be letterboxed widescreen, what a pos 🤡

Love how the warrior narrative swiftly changed from "DC couldn't do such sandbox games, Crazy Taxi (cited by Rockstar's then tech director as a great indicator, obviously it's lacking many elements but the engine is great and at a flawless 60fps showing there was tons of room for additions if one was willing to drop the performance to PS2 GTA levels in order to add more such elements in both visuals and gameplay, even if such a DC focused game would end up different to what GTA became) doesn't count" to "of course it can be done as Rockstar's tech director said, the sequels can't". 🤡

Of course that tech director was ridiculed by armchair devs who mocked him or at best misinterpreted his words as only speaking for some super early version of the game that was completely different to the impossible for DC end result, digging up unrelated pre-release media as how it'd be on it. Now we're moving to omg it doesn't already look or run as good as the AAA finished product on PS2 so obviously DC always sucked, like anyone ever claimed it'd somehow top the end result of a PS2 focused AAA release if only a half decent developer had cared to port that game to begin with...

PS: Portal 64 was not a port but a complete demake sharing no code with the original. It doesn't look like anything N64 hasn't shown as possible before that, the system had plenty great looking complex games in its time, but noone had thought of a Portal-like, before Portal (well, Narbacular Drop). Of course it was still an amazing project, but not exactly comparable to what the developers of this port are trying to do (and in the end for all we know they may fail in getting anything playable or will have to severely reduce the default settings to get it to anything resembling a playable game). Nor is it suddenly easy for a small team (even ignoring not every amateur dev is equal to the very best ever seen somewhere else) to make work equivalent to yesteryear's AAA projects as we came to know them, Portal itself was far from anything resembling AAA to begin with and no DC homebrew game so far is anything close to the system's best, unlike modern devs using modern knowledge and tricks to max out some much older 2D retro platforms where a full game is just a few MB with whatever that entails for the quality and quantity of assets and even the # of programming lines. Also, that's obviously not real 1080p internal rendering with the GSM or whatever faux patches but just the final output resolution, tweaking settings for an existing PS2 game with whatever placebo or subjective effects with downgrades like no trail effects some may prefer is obviously a different deal 🤡
 
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BlackTron

Member
Imagine if DMA had 20 years to work on it. It was the first PS2 game they did. Even a few years later they put out San Andreas which was vastly more complex than GYA3.

Again Dreamcast warriors are fighting a battle that ended a long time ago.

I think there's a bit of false equivalence here. Nobody worked on any game for 20 years, they made this under a month with the benefit of the years of added knowledge to refer to, which isn't the same as your own experience accumulating that knowledge.
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


"A side-by-side comparison between the old and new updates of Grand Theft Auto III for Dreamcast. The Old Update is from August 14, 2024, and the New Update is from August 16, 2024, and today is August 17, 2024. The Dreamcast port is still in development and is being made by fans.
 

Agent X

Member
Here's some food for thought. I mentioned earlier that the disc capacity of a Dreamcast GD-ROM is significantly less than a PS2 DVD. This means that graphic and sound assets might have to be reduced in quality to fit on a single disc.

Meanwhile, some reasonable Grand Theft Auto games made their way to the PSP.

Perhaps the PSP Grand Theft Auto games would be a better fit for Dreamcast. These systems are more closely matched with regard to disc capacity and control schemes.
 
Imagine if DMA had 20 years to work on it. It was the first PS2 game they did. Even a few years later they put out San Andreas which was vastly more complex than GYA3.

Again Dreamcast warriors are fighting a battle that ended a long time ago.
some devs for many reasons cannot or not use some options it can be an artistic choice, fear of performance problems or lack of understanding of how things work at the beginning of a gen, but the community specially with popular games find interesting ways to mod games, for example you can play the PS2 gta trilogy with improved framerate, widescreen and 1080p output in the same PS2 console, this is interesting as GTA3 in particular have better effects in PS2 compared to the original PC version but well is very late now, only people with Xploder disc or things like that used some of those functions back in the day



there are other interesting patches



 
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marquimvfs

Member
The Dreamcast GD-ROM has much lower capacity than a PlayStation 2 DVD, and the "open" design of GTA3 doesn't lend itself to disc swapping, so this could be one hurdle that would not be easy to overcome.
Not true. Kalisto Group released, back in the day, one ripped ps2 iso that fitted in a single CD. I've used the damn thing, worked flawlessly. They've done it just by removing some (not all) radio stations. Remember that the PC version with improved assets also came in just 2 cds, one of them being used only to stream the radio stations. So, with today compressing tools I guess that fitting the whole content in a single disk it's totally doable, or they can just make like Kalisto and rip out some "unnecessary" content (instead of reducing assets quality) if they plan to release a burnable iso.

Edit:
Found the file and extracted the .nfo from it. 4 of the 9 radio stations were removed. The iso without the dummy files is only about 1GB. Pasted below.


._______ /\______ _______. ________/_________________________/\ | |/ /______/\ | | eNf \___ / ______/\____ ____/ \ | / // \| |__________\/_______ | |/ \ | _// \ | / \ . | |. _// | \_ |: \ \ | / \ | |: \ | / :|: \ \ /\ \\ | // \ || \ / :::_____|\______\ /_________\______/___________\__________|_____|\ _______/ <::-------------\/----------------/-------------------------------\/--------> :. Proudly Presents : | | | | Game : Grand Theft Auto 3 (c) TAKE 2 | | Origin : USA - NTSC Filename : KAL-GTA3.001 | | Released : October 23rd, 2001 CDs / Rars : 1 CD / 28 RARS | | Platform : Sony Playstation 2 (PS2) Format : BIN/CUE (CDRWIN) | | Source : [ ] CD [x] DVD CD Length : [ ] 74 [x] 80 | | Ripped : [ ] Intro [ ] Movies [x] Music [ ] Speech [ ] Nothing | +--|- - - -|--+ | Release Notes ------------------------------------------------- | +--|- - - -|--+ | | | Crime does pay. The hugely successful, highly controversial Grand | | Theft Auto franchise moves into 3 dimensions in the dark and seedy | | underworld of Liberty City. With the freedom to go anywhere and jack | | anyone, Grand Theft Auto 3 puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless | | world of crime at your fingertips, if you have enough guts to take it. | | | | Ripping notes : | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | | Only 4 of the 9 radio stations got ripped. The rest got relinked. | | Don't worry this is not at all related to the gameplay. | | You might wonder how come not more has been removed since this game | | DVD is around 2.5 Gb. The answer is simple when you leech the ISO | | half of what you leech are fake files the full game is only like | | 1 Gig! So why waste your time with fake datas get the KALISTO | | release! | | | | Little note: There's a chance that the real time cutscene after the | | first major loading in the game might freeze if you abort it. So just | | sit back and watch it through. But this seems random, and it doesn't | | happen all the time. | | | +--|- - - -|--+ | Application Info ---------------------------------------------- | +--|- - - -|--+ | | | Wanna join the #1 Console Group? We were the first to defeat PS2's | | advanced DVD protection schemes and the competition could only rush | | to leech our releases and copy our ripping techniques... | | | | To develop our talented PS2 division we are now open for new | | TALENTED & MOTIVATED new members to help us fill the ranks! | | If you fall within any of the following categories, you might | | be just what we're looking for: | | | | - If you can supply NEW & UNRELEASED games on Playstation, Dreamcast | | and Playstation 2 (CD & DVD as we can do DVD rips better than | | any other group!). We are mainly open for PAL & USA suppliers. | | | | - If you can CRACK Playstation 2 advanced DVD protection schemes! | | (No, that doesn't include file-comparing our cracks and copying them | | like a certain website does..) | | Or if you're a skilled C/C++/ASM coder able to design Win32 tools | | to help the ripping process! If you are familiar with PS2 ASM | | and PS2 programming and if you have access to the lastest SDK's | | and programming tools feel free to contact us! | | If you have some experience in the Utils or Game Scene, dealing | | with Encrypted EXE's and Reindexing Large resource files we | | can also use your help. | | | | - If you are a demo maker and can do PSX/PS2 Intros! Or if you | | can do PSX/PS2 trainers! | | | | - If you work for an ISP, or other provider of (legit) shell | | accounts (Unix / SSH only), etc! | | | | - If you feel that you have anything else that might be of | | value to us! | | | | NOTE: WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING COURIERS OR FTP SITES. DO NOT BOTHER | | CONTACTING US ABOUT EITHER OF THESE. | | | +--|- - - -|--+ | Contact Info ---------------------------------------------- | +--|- - - -|--+ | | | Should you wish to make contact with our members, we can | | easily be reached via the following methods: | | | | E-Mail (USA & Europe): kalisto@hushmail.com | | Internet Relay Chat (EFNet): #kalisto | | | | NOTE: NEVER ASK US FOR ANY FILES FROM OUR RELEASES, NOR WHERE TO FIND | | OUR RELEASES, NOR COVERS FOR OUR RELEASES. ALSO DO NOT BOTHER | | ASKING US FOR TECH SUPPORT, WE DO THIS FOR FREE, NO TECH | | SUPPORT IS PROVIDED, BUY THE GAME AND ASK THE COMPANY. YOU WILL | | SIMPLY BE IGNORED IF YOU CONTACT US FOR ANY OF THE ABOVE. | | | +--|- - - -|--+ | Note -------------------------------------------------------- | +--|- - - -|--+ | | | Webmasters: | | | | We authorize posting our releases on webpages ONLY if you include the | | corresponding NFO and DIZ files. Please do not edit these files if | | you plan to post our releases either. Other than that, feel free to | | spread our work as much as you want. | | | | Endusers: | | | | Do not trust releases that are supposedly from KALISTO unless they | | have corresponding NFO and DIZ files. These may very well be fake, | | contain viruses, or be modified from the original form in which we | | released them. | | | +--|- - - -|--+ | Greets -------------------------------------------------------- | +--|- - - -|--+ | | | Class / Fairlight / Backlash / Risciso / Mode 7 / Venom / Anthrox | | Menace / Eurasia / Aggression / Echelon / Static / TegVcd / Its / Ego | | | | .____ /\__________: ____________________/\ | | | |/ / \ | | \_ ___/__ ___/ \ kalisto psx 1998-2001+ | | | / / \ |_/\ |____ | / | \ | | || \ \ /\ \\ | \ |. | | \\ | / we set the standards | | |___|\ _\/______\____/_|_______|___\ ____/ we are the benchmark | | \/ \/- eNf .: <------------------------------------------------------------------------::> "Oh shit I ran over a MYTH member :p"
 
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