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[hussar16]

Alot of cross gen games look wayyy better then ps2 blurry mess. But some games on ps2 did look impressive. I stil think if dreamcast stayed alive with ps2 it's games would rival or even exceed ps2 graphicly

 

[hussar16]

Yes. It actually did several things better than PS2, such as having deferred rendering (you can think of it as an earlier version of VRS), higher output resolution (thanks to VGA support), a better color palette (imo), more VRAM, crisper texturing (on average) and arguably better mip-mapping support.

However, PS2 beat it in polygon geometry output (as did GC and Xbox), lighting, particle fillrate (where it outdid all other systems that gen, including Xbox), and a better CPU (thanks partly to it being faster). We arguably didn't get a chance to see the Dreamcast maxed out, but I think Shenmue 2 would've been a game that came closest to that.

Since many of the post-DC 6th-gen games other platforms got were planned for DC, it would've been interesting to see how ports of VF4 and Outrun 2 ran on the system. The latter probably would've been saved for a DC successor had one came about. Sadly, that wasn't to be.

...and I mean an actual, official successor, not the OG Xbox which by all means was a spiritual successor (and a very good one at that).



Yep. Outside of some very select early-gen PS2 titles I always thought the coloring was sharper and more vibrant with Dreamcast titles, plus the resolution was better. The coloring arguably could've been down to stylistic choices, tho: SEGA's games tended to be influenced by arcades a lot since that was their pedigree, so naturally their games had a vibrant and colorful palette of hues. But this was enhanced a lot by the resolution output.

DC came up short against the other three in polys, obviously, but there wasn't much they could've done about that since it was a '97/'98 design spec. Especially compared to GC and OG Xbox. But it still managed to put out some great-looking games.



The EA story is actually kinda funny, but also shows SEGA's hubris at the time. EA was 100% on board with DC, but they wanted exclusive rights to produce and publish sports games on it. That meant SEGA would've had to repurpose Visual Concepts for some other style of games, and SEGA probably saw that as a waste of an investment, so they turned EA's proposition down.

In doing so, EA basically told DC to screw itself and waited for the PS2. I don't know if the decision to turn down EA's deal was SOA or SOJ, but SEGA as a whole should've seen the domino effect of not having EA on their platform would've caused. Because of that, I strongly think some other big publishers decided to hold off as well, but that obviously created a Catch-22 situation.

I'm not saying having EA on the platform from Day 1 would've "saved" DC per-se, but it would've gone a long way to boosting its presence in the Western markets, which is where SEGA needed DC to success anyway after the botched Japanese launch (which was way too early; Saturn community was still pretty strong there).

The ps2 barely had lighting.i think the bouncer from square eniq was the only game tht had some actual lighting tht was impressive as what they promised. Everything else was flat. Looked good because of art direction but lighting was missing just like dreamcast.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Did you actually play GTA3 on PS2 or remember how atrocious it ran? smh You really think 19 fps should be acceptable with that atrocious draw distance, low resolution and jagginess? I think you missed the point entirely. Xbox is able to run the game at 1280 x 720 with smooth textures, much better draw distance, MSAA applied and with better framerate. There was no reason to drop the resolution or omit the option for those with HDTVs, there were deals behind closed doors to even allow Xbox to get GTA which was money hatted for about 6 months.

Sure, Xbox version looked much better, because it was running at 480p + MSAA, had better polygons (cars, character models, vegetation), more effects (dynami car reflecitons, shading on the read, new rain and blood effects), much higher resolution textures, and even framerate was way more playable, however when it started raining xbox dipping to around low 20fps as well.

Xbox classic had ultra fast GPU (comparable to GF4 4200 that was cappable to run games at 720p and even over 100fps at 1080p in quake 3), but MS gimped memory bandwidth, so xbox GPU could never match GF4 results on PC. Xbox classic was 480p console, not 720p, so I dont blame MS for this decision, and especially considering how much money they had to spend on xbox console already.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

It was a very powerful machine but in 1999 a Voodoo 3 card would still smoke it.

However, back in the day, Japanese developers were still producing more graceful looking games VS the janky stuff you would get from the west. So maybe PC had a better looking Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 that also run faster but the Dreamcast had an amazing looking Sould Calibur that looked and moved as gracefully as silk.

Based on dreamcast results in PC ports (games like half life 1, UT99, soldier of fortune, quake 3) I even think my gimped TNT2 (TNT2M64, aka TNT1.5) was faster, not to mention mighty 3DFX VOODOO 3.

PS2 was also much faster, so games were much more detailed on PS2 however dreamcast had awesome texture compression technology (back then it was a big deal, because consoles has extremely limited amount of RAM memory), and better video output, so picture quality and textures on dreamcast like next gen even compared to PS2.

 

[AJUMP23]

Could have called it Beastcast because it was so strong. But very few things are as strong as dreams so that is why they went with dreams. In history Dreams have changed kingdoms.

 

[01011001]

the hierarchy of the generation was very clearly
Xbox > GameCube > PlayStation 2 > Dreamcast

but due to the extremely different hardware of all of them compared to eachother, each one had certain things that they could do better than every other system of their gen.

the Dreamcast was way ahead of anything when it first released for sure, it was basically arcade hardware in a console form factor.
the early launch also came with the downside that it couldn't react to trends and missed out on better technology that all its competitors could use.

 

[MiguelItUp]

The timing was great, sure, but the system was also awesome and ahead of its time.

I'll never forget seeing so many games running at 60fps on a console. I walked into an EB Games and they had folks playing Power Stone on the big screen TV they had. As soon as I turned the corner, I just stopped in my tracks and watched, lol.

 

[Fat Frog]

the hierarchy of the generation was very blurrily
Xbox > GameCube >>>>>>>>>>>> PlayStation 2 > Dreamcast

Or "alliasingly"if you prefere but certainly not "clearly" if you talk about the PS2

 

[Dural]

The VGA output was amazing and forward thinking. Playing a DC today hooked up to a 36" RCA HD CRT TV looks amazing, it's hard to describe just how good and sharp it looks.

 

[SF Kosmo]

DC was incredibly impressive at launch, absolutely next-gen at the time. Not only that but because of the more straightforward architecture and double the VRAM it really looked better than PS2 during the first year or so of PS2's life.

Eventually devs got better at squeezing performance out of PS2 and GC and Xbox obviously were significantly more powerful, but the DC still shared quite a few multiplatform games, and was very much a part of the same gen despite launching a full 3 years before the Xbox and GameCube.

 

[JackMcGunns]

the hierarchy of the generation was very blurrily
Xbox > GameCube >>>>>>>>>>>> PlayStation 2 > Dreamcast

Or "alliasingly"if you prefere but certainly not "clearly" if you talk about the PS2

Xbox was likely a few more >> than the GameCube provided that its GPU had programmable shaders introduced by the Geforce 3 and not supported on Flipper, making games that made use of it like Splinter Cell, look on a different class altogether than the GameCube counterpart and enought memory bandwidth to display some of its games in HD like Enter The Matrix. In terms of capability, it was on another weight class.

 

[Fat Frog]

Xbox was likely a few more >> than the GameCube provided that its GPU had programmable shaders introduced by the Geforce 3 and not supported on Flipper, making games that made use of it like Splinter Cell, look on a different class altogether than the GameCube counterpart and enought memory bandwidth to display some of its games in HD like Enter The Matrix. In terms of capability, it was on another weight class.

Well... Yeah ?

I mean the Gamecube's launch price was only 200€ and the Xbox 450 in Europe...

In terms of competitivity, Gamecube and Dreamcast were the most insane consoles of their time.(in the US, DC was $150 when the PS2 arrived for $300...same in Europe 225€ vs 450)


I kinda like the new Xbox approach though(Series S, Series X)Nonetheless, i dream of new power efficient consoles like the Gamecube or the Dreamcast.

 

[JackMcGunns]

Well... Yeah ?

I mean the Gamecube's launch price was only 200€ and the Xbox 450 in Europe...

In terms of competitivity, Gamecube and Dreamcast were the most insane consoles of their time.(in the US, DC was $150 when the PS2 arrived for $300...same in Europe 225€ vs 450)


I kinda like the new Xbox approach though(Series S, Series X)Nonetheless, i dream of new power efficient consoles like the Gamecube or the Dreamcast.

I was speaking in terms of performance alone. Xbox was ahead of its time, Dreamcast was ahead of its time. GameCube was a lovely piece of hardware and priced perfectly, no one is debating that. PS2 was a true mess, I don't even understand why this topic exists. The DC launched 9.9.99 for $199 and its games at launch looked better than PS2 games of 2000 running on a $300 machine.

 

[FF:Enhanced_Reality]

Honestly if you're a believer of graphics are the game then Dreamcast honestly had minimal appeal once XBOX arrived. Honestly I felt they could have easily done a generation until about 2004 when a new console would have been ready. The games they made still looked great. The down side is they'd always be the furthest behind unless they came onto a concept they could milk a year or two more.

Sadly SEGA didn't have the funds and went bye bye. But I remember seeing Soul Reaver on there after playing in on PlayStation and being blown away. That being said when Defiance came out it was clear DC would be in the embers of its life span anyway.

 

[Fat Frog]

Alot of cross gen games look wayyy better then ps2 blurry mess. But some games on ps2 did look impressive. I stil think if dreamcast stayed alive with ps2 it's games would rival or even exceed ps2 graphicly

Don't do it ! They'll come at you from all over the world to make you pay your word.

I don't if it would have exceeded it but the Dreamcast was clearly competitive:

Seeing DOA2 running that clean on 720p screens was already worth the price.
An hypothetic Virtua Fighter 4 on Dreamcast would have been icing on the cake:

- VF4 PS2 has twice less poygons than the arcade.(7000 polygons for characters)
- DOA2's characters on DC can have 8000 polygons and backgrounds has several levels...reduce them to one and you can enhance the graphics.
- A VF4 on DC would be cleaner, with better textures than PS2 (more geometry, more effects on Sony's hardware).

@indies
If you want to port VF4 on DC, please ditch that demanding ugly dynamic sand on Jeffry's stage and the pathetic two 3D herbs lol. Imitate Tekken Tag's beautiful 2D herb ...

 

[01011001]

Xbox was likely a few more >> than the GameCube provided that its GPU had programmable shaders introduced by the Geforce 3 and not supported on Flipper, making games that made use of it like Splinter Cell, look on a different class altogether than the GameCube counterpart and enought memory bandwidth to display some of its games in HD like Enter The Matrix. In terms of capability, it was on another weight class.

true. the Xbox sometimes actually felt like playing next gen games.

I remember when I first played Chaos Theory or Riddick on it, me and my cousin who often played through games together back then (as we lived basically next to eachother) were in awe at how graphics like that were possible at the time.

Chaos Theory looks impressive in some scenes even to this day IMO, it's strong use of real time shadows can be striking at times because the devs always tried to use them in cool looking ways.

and then there was the 60fps showcase that was Ninja Gaiden of course. looked better than anything on other consoles while running at 480p60

 

[coffinbirth]

That's my point. DVD would have been better (cumfy to stay on the couch) but that wasn't mandatory for 95% of the games of that era...

Dreamcast and Gamecube prove it.

GTA3 is only 900mb.
Only latest open worlds and maybe extremely minor other genres would absolutely needs it.

Gamecube and Dreamcast seems to have texture compression so it reduces highly the number of games really out of reach.
(PSP reduced GTA Liberty/Vice City Stories to 400 and 500mb so...hard to believe Gamecube and Dreamcast cannot compress datas as well)

First of all, let's get your facts straight. GTA III is 4.3GB on PS2, untouched. A ripped ISO is 1.4GB, and a highly compressed .chd file, that is UNUSABLE on PS2 hardware is 1GB. If you're seeing a 900MB iso out there, it has removed assets.

GTA Liberty City Stories is 1.2GB straight from Sony's servers. Those 400MB rips are just that, rips with highly compressed assets that make the game run even worse on PSP, lol. That goes without saying that the PSP assets are of lower quality to begin with.

Did we forget that GTA III was originally being developed for Dreamcast, but was abandoned because the hardware was too weak???
There is an interview with a R* dev that talks about it out there, they couldn't get 3rd person perspective to run on the console. It couldn't stream the data from disc fast enough either.

Hey, what two consoles don't have large open world games like GTA from that generation? Weird, huh?

 

[Alexios]

First of all, let's get your facts straight. GTA III is 4.3GB on PS2, untouched. A ripped ISO is 1.4GB, and a highly compressed .chd file, that is UNUSABLE on PS2 hardware is 1GB. If you're seeing a 900MB iso out there, it has removed assets.

GTA Liberty City Stories is 1.2GB straight from Sony's servers. Those 400MB rips are just that, rips with highly compressed assets that make the game run even worse on PSP, lol. That goes without saying that the PSP assets are of lower quality to begin with.

Did we forget that GTA III was originally being developed for Dreamcast, but was abandoned because the hardware was too weak???
There is an interview with a R* dev that talks about it out there, they couldn't get 3rd person perspective to run on the console. It couldn't stream the data from disc fast enough either.

Hey, what two consoles don't have large open world games like GTA from that generation? Weird, huh?

There were open world games on the previous generation consoles (and newer weaker systems like DS). Implying they were impossible for Dreamcast (whatever their gameplay or graphical complexity may have been to achieve that, or what tricks would have been used just as not everything in GTA III is seamless) just because they weren't commonly made and the console didn't last long enough to get one, only makes you look ignorant.

Lol @ believing PR trying to sell its game as so very advanced by trashing the discontinued system they obviously wouldn't release on or have bridges to burn to. But if devs say something positive about that same system it doesn't count.

Crazy Taxi 2 is pretty open, big, often has tons of traffic or other obstacles and runs at an all but flawless 60 fps while being incredibly fast paced so they sure had room to add/change graphical or gameplay or speed elements to match GTA III's 15-25fps deemed amazing at the time. Would that mean they could copy GTA III 1:1? Nope, but maybe that would be for the better and it'd still be a big open world game, just not GTA. Well, it already qualifies as open world as is, never mind how it may have been at the hands of another team, just saying.

Super Runabout is similar too, a bit Driver-esque though far wackier and not nearly as accomplished. And of course Headhunter exists also, though the open world once again only has driving and only the separate mission areas the rest gameplay. It still counts.

GTAIII PC only required 500MB HDD space. Maybe there's junk or duplicate data on a PS2 iso like Dreamcast discs often had to facilitate loading.

 

[01011001]

Hey, what two consoles don't have large open world games like GTA from that generation? Weird, huh?

Uhmm... True Crime? an arguably way better looking open world game...

 

[Alexios]

Uhmm... True Crime? an arguably way better looking open world game...

GC had Spider-Man 2 also and I'd say Zelda games count as much as GTA, neither is fully seamless, they are just segmented in different ways, there's still plenty to do and see in each area. Requiring fully seamless gameplay to qualify would mean even some modern open world games wouldn't. Dreamcast also had a shoddy port of shoddier PC Omikron but hey there it is, technically possible even by a technical disaster, never mind good devs

 

[Fat Frog]

First of all, let's get your facts straight. GTA III is 4.3GB on PS2, untouched. A ripped ISO is 1.4GB, and a highly compressed .chd file, that is UNUSABLE on PS2 hardware is 1GB. If you're seeing a 900MB iso out there, it has removed assets.

That's... The kind of downgrad the can make the game happen on low storage consoles .(without bringing the texture compression on the table)

5000 gamers voted for this 900mb ISO, they gave it a 4,9 out of 5.(must be pretty faithful to be that well regarded)

So... A reprogrammed GTA3 by Yuji Naka's team (bakana leader but tensai programmer) would have been a blessing for million of modest families back then

Nomad Soul is only 400mb as well, there are enough room for optimization and for expanding the city to fill the 1,2 GD Rom

 

[polybius80]

First of all, let's get your facts straight. GTA III is 4.3GB on PS2, untouched. A ripped ISO is 1.4GB, and a highly compressed .chd file, that is UNUSABLE on PS2 hardware is 1GB. If you're seeing a 900MB iso out there, it has removed assets.

GTA Liberty City Stories is 1.2GB straight from Sony's servers. Those 400MB rips are just that, rips with highly compressed assets that make the game run even worse on PSP, lol. That goes without saying that the PSP assets are of lower quality to begin with.

Did we forget that GTA III was originally being developed for Dreamcast, but was abandoned because the hardware was too weak???
There is an interview with a R* dev that talks about it out there, they couldn't get 3rd person perspective to run on the console. It couldn't stream the data from disc fast enough either.

Hey, what two consoles don't have large open world games like GTA from that generation? Weird, huh?

I dont think the space in the disk is too much problem, maybe putting the game in 2 disks? sounds horrible I know but still doable for the storage, the problem may be the amount and speed of memory and what kind of probleam can it represent in a game like GTA3, luckily GTA3 in particular can get away with solid colors so in theory shouldnt be that much textures to stream compared to vice city or san andreas or other open world games, maybe its because it was originally designed with DC in mind, I dont know what problems stoped the DC port who knows if lowering the geometry or the amount of NPC could do the trick

 

[coffinbirth]

There were open world games on the previous generation consoles (and newer weaker systems like DS). Implying they were impossible for Dreamcast (whatever their gameplay or graphical complexity may have been to achieve that, or what tricks would have been used just as not everything in GTA III is seamless) just because they weren't commonly made and the console didn't last long enough to get one, only makes you look ignorant.

Lol @ believing PR trying to sell its game as so very advanced by trashing the discontinued system they obviously wouldn't release on or have bridges to burn to. But if devs say something positive about that same system it doesn't count.

Crazy Taxi 2 is pretty open, big, often has tons of traffic or other obstacles and runs at an all but flawless 60 fps while being incredibly fast paced so they sure had room to add/change graphical or gameplay or speed elements to match GTA III's 15-25fps deemed amazing at the time. Would that mean they could copy GTA III 1:1? Nope, but maybe that would be for the better and it'd still be a big open world game, just not GTA. Well, it already qualifies as open world as is, never mind how it may have been at the hands of another team, just saying.

Super Runabout is similar too, a bit Driver-esque though far wackier and not nearly as accomplished. And of course Headhunter exists also, though the open world once again only has driving and only the separate mission areas the rest gameplay. It still counts.

GTAIII PC only required 500MB HDD space. Maybe there's junk or duplicate data on a PS2 iso like Dreamcast discs often had to facilitate loading.

I didn't suggest that it was impossible, I was simply pointing out that they didn't exist.
My qualifier, since this subject is about GTA III, was that games like Crazy Taxi and Super Runabout are racing/arcade games. Comparing them to GTA III is actually ignorant. Doubly ignorant is comparing GTA III for PS2 to PC. R* have said numerous times that they were only able to pull off GTA III on PS2 because of streaming data from the disc...which is not an obstacle with an HDD on pc and Xbox. This was something not possible with cd rom tech.

EDIT: Decided to look up the pc version of GTA III. The pc requirements say 500MB installation size because the music files were streamed from disc. A digital copy from Steam is 1.8GB.

 

[Alexios]

B

I didn't suggest that it was impossible, I was simply pointing out that they didn't exist.
My qualifier, since this subject is about GTA III, was that games like Crazy Taxi and Super Runabout are racing/arcade games. Comparing them to GTA III is actually ignorant. Doubly ignorant is comparing GTA III for PS2 to PC. R* have said numerous times that they were only able to pull off GTA III on PS2 because of streaming data from the disc...which is not an obstacle with an HDD on pc and Xbox. This was something not possible with cd rom tech.

Um what? You were acting like there was too much data for a gd rom. Ie over 1gb. The pc release only needing 500MB likely for higher quality assets at that shows it could fit on a gd rom and then some (with room for duplicated data to help loading even, but of course you could expect the assets to be of lower quality than PC so have even more room left). Of course they had no standard hdd to install to and stream from on a PS2 so of course they streamed from disc. Whether they needed to max out streaming speed exceeding the Dreamcast's read speed is another matter. And whether they could or couldn't make it work isn't what makes it possible/impossible. If all your argument is gonna come down to the game not being on Dreamcast then um, yeah nobody said otherwise, thanks.

 

[coffinbirth]

B

Um what? You were acting like there was too much data for a gd rom. Ie over 1gb. The pc release only needing 500MB likely for higher quality data at that shows it could fit on a gd rom and then some (with room for duplicated data to help loading even). Of course they had no standard hdd to install to and stream from on a ps2 so of course they streamed from disc. Whether they needed to max out streaming speed exceeding the dreamcast's read speed is another matter. And whether they could or couldn't make it work doesn't make it possible/impossible.

Did you miss the part where R* were developing the game for Dreamcast and canned it because they couldn't get it to run? You say "of course" they did this like there was a precedent. GTA III was the precedent, prior to DVD you could only stream audio from disc.

 

[Alexios]

Did you miss the part where R* were developing the game for Dreamcast and canned it because they couldn't get it to run? You say "of course" they did this like there was a precedent. GTA III was the precedent, prior to DVD you could only stream audio from disc.

What are you talking about? Only stream audio? Dvd made streaming possible? You are clueless. Games like Soul Reaver streamed all kinds of data off cd/gd too. Or do you think they put an invisible hdd on ps1/dreamcast for it?

 

[coffinbirth]

What are you talking about? Only stream audio? Dvd made streaming possible? You are clueless. Games like Soul Reaver streamed all kinds of data off cd/gd too. Or do you think they put an invisible hdd on ps1/dreamcast for it?

You clearly don't know the difference between streaming data and loading data.

 

[Alexios]

Okay, do tell what makes audio data magically the only type of data you can stream off a cd vs dvd and what magic obstacles there are to streaming that aren't a mere combination of a) the size of the data your game design needs to keep gameplay uninterrupted and b) the read speed of data possible by your system and its available drive, whatever that is, a hdd or optical, dvd or otherwise, which means anyone could design a game balancing these 2 factors as seen fit. Also why gta qualifies as streaming and soul reaver doesn't even though both keep gameplay uninterrupted by reading from disc and loading to ram/vram what's coming ahead (with ahead based on player action rather than the game being on rails in one direction) before it's actually needed and unloading what's no longer/yet necessary. Same for the GC games mentioned you avoid responding about of course, as I doubt they keep the whole seamless areas of those games in memory at all times and thus must be using a form of streaming themselves, without DVD.

 

[Ecotic]

I think you're thinking more about storage (wider open world like San Andreas )than polycount.

If you were really thinking about polygon amounts. How many genres would be impossible on DC, i'm curious? (It's not forbidden to limit geometry to fit with Dreamcast's limits, it's called downgrad )

Well, I wouldn't phrase it as certain genres couldn't be done on the Dreamcast, it's just a matter of how far the Dreamcast could go with them. For example, the PS2 had a lot of third-person action games like the Jak & Daxter games, the Ratchet & Clank games, and the God of War games that were pushing polygons that were, in my judgment, considerably beyond the Dreamcast's abilities. I don't think those games could have been downgraded and ported for the Dreamcast while keeping the essence of the games intact. Most mid to late PS2 games looked to be pushing and manipulating geometry in a way that were beyond the Dreamcast's abilities. That's not to say the Dreamcast couldn't have a great exclusive game in those genres, it just couldn't have done decent ports of a lot of PS2 games.

Don't get me wrong though, I actually didn't like the PS2's 'look' that its games had, but it was good at polygons for a machine of its time.

 

[coffinbirth]

Okay, do tell what makes audio data magically the only type of data you can stream off a cd vs dvd and what magic obstacles there are to streaming that aren't a mere combination of a) the size of the data your game design needs to keep gameplay uninterrupted and b) the read speed of data possible by your system and its available drive, whatever that is, a hdd or optical, dvd or otherwise. Also why gta qualifies as streaming and soul reaver doesnkt even though both keep gameplay uninterrupted by loading what's coming ahead before it's needed.

An audio processor. Back then data and audio were separate systems running in parallel. You load the game data into RAM and stream the audio. This is why cd-based systems can have the cd removed from the system with the game still running.

You used Soul Reaver as an example, and it is an extremely bad one unless you think all of those looooong corridors were fun and an important part of the game design. They were loading screens.

PS. I was making Dreamcast homebrew before PS2 was even out. I am very familiar with the hardware and it's limitations.

 

[Alexios]

An audio processor. Back then data and audio were separate systems running in parallel. You load the game data into RAM and stream the audio. This is why cd-based systems can have the cd removed from the system with the game still running.

You used Soul Reaver as an example, and it is an extremely bad one unless you think all of those looooong corridors were fun and an important part of the game design. They were loading screens.

PS. I was making Dreamcast homebrew before PS2 was even out. I am very familiar with the hardware and it's limitations.

Seems you don't know what loading screens are. The game areas were designed in a way that meant the system's read speed could have the next area ready by the time the player got through it. That's all. Whether that was a corridor or any other area, it was to balance what is currently in ram, what can be unloaded, what needs to be loaded next. Do you think gta didn't have similar design thoughts put into its own distribution of assets/areas and that they could have loaded anything else, say 2x or 4x of each thing already in the game instead? Did it magically make ps2's ram infinite too or what? Having actual loading screens in the game already vs your own interpretation of what a loading screen is to apply it to soul reaver says no, its streaming potential wasn't infinite, just balanced for the game as it was designed, just like soul reaver's was for itself.

 

[coffinbirth]

Seems you don't know what loading screens are. The game areas were designed in a way that meant the system's read speed could have the next area ready by the time the player got through it. That'd all. Whether that was a corridor or any other area it was to balance what is currebtly in ram, what can be unloaded, what needs to be loaded next. Do you think gta didn't have similar design thoughts put into its own distributiob of assets and they could have loaded anything else, say 2x or 4x of each thing already in the game instead? Having actual loading screens in the game already vs your own interpretation of what a loading screen is to apply it to soul reaver says no.

LOL, what?

There are entire sections of the game that exist to mask the loading process. Again, you seem to not understand the fundamental difference between loading the data and streaming it. If Soul Reaver was streaming the data those corridors wouldn't exist.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Did you miss the part where R* were developing the game for Dreamcast and canned it because they couldn't get it to run? You say "of course" they did this like there was a precedent. GTA III was the precedent, prior to DVD you could only stream audio from disc.

“I also concocted a crazy algorithmic texture packer that would deal with the fact that our gorgeous 512×240 mode left us with too little texture memory. And the even crazier – way crazier – virtual memory system required to shoehorn the 8-16 meg levels the artists created into the Playstation’s little 2megs of RAM.”

Making Crash Bandicoot – part 3

While all this art design was going on, I, and then in January 1995, Dave, struggled to build an engine and tool pipeline that would make it possible to render these grandiose cartoon worlds we had…

all-things-andy-gavin.com

See this video at 23’50’’ where Andy Gavin explains how he was chunking code, assets, audio, all sorts of data that was needed in 64 KB pages the game would then stream in and out as you moved through the level:

So… no…?

 

[polybius80]

I didn't suggest that it was impossible, I was simply pointing out that they didn't exist.
My qualifier, since this subject is about GTA III, was that games like Crazy Taxi and Super Runabout are racing/arcade games. Comparing them to GTA III is actually ignorant. Doubly ignorant is comparing GTA III for PS2 to PC. R* have said numerous times that they were only able to pull off GTA III on PS2 because of streaming data from the disc...which is not an obstacle with an HDD on pc and Xbox. This was something not possible with cd rom tech.

EDIT: Decided to look up the pc version of GTA III. The pc requirements say 500MB installation size because the music files were streamed from disc. A digital copy from Steam is 1.8GB.

you can stream data from cd too maybe there is a problem with how good it works for the game needs

 

[coffinbirth]

“I also concocted a crazy algorithmic texture packer that would deal with the fact that our gorgeous 512×240 mode left us with too little texture memory. And the even crazier – way crazier – virtual memory system required to shoehorn the 8-16 meg levels the artists created into the Playstation’s little 2megs of RAM.”

http://[URL][URL]https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/

[/URL][/URL]

See this video at 23’50’’ where Andy Gavin explains how he was chunking code, assets, audio, all sorts of data that was needed in 64 KB pages the game would then stream in and out as you moved through the level:

So… no…?

There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but this was certainly not common practice. They were literally hacking the file system pipelines and bypassing interpreters to achieve this. They actually have patents on the systems they created for Crash. And that was for 64kb files, lol. He actually goes on at length describing how little data you could fetch in real time with cd-roms slow seek/fetch times, this is completely impractical for streaming real time geometry and assets for something like an open world game.

 

[Fat Frog]

Well, I wouldn't phrase it as certain genres couldn't be done on the Dreamcast, it's just a matter of how far the Dreamcast could go with them.

In that case, it's different and of course, i agree. With less geometry, DC would have to compensate with something else. Bump mapping, 2D elements, normal mapping ?





I would be so pleased to see old blocky port like Rayman 2 being enhanced by the often unused Dreamcast abilities... (Still love the overall look of that game )

 

[polybius80]

In that case, it's different and of course, i agree. With less geometry, DC would have to compensate with something else. Bump mapping, 2D elements, normal mapping ?





I would be so pleased to see old blocky port like Rayman 2 being enhanced by the often unused Dreamcast abilities... (Still love the overall look of that game )

tomb raider iv used emboss bump mapping



it wasnt used that much, maybe it costs too much and has to be used with small textures

 

[Fat Frog]

tomb raider iv used emboss bump mapping



it wasnt used that much, maybe it costs too much and has to be used with small textures

I just think the Dreamcast died too soon (after 2 years and 4 months), many games were just slightly enhanced cross gen games.(Shadowman, Rayman 2, Tombraider...)

Publishers just ported quickly their usual IPs and didn't care about exploiting the Dreamcast since the stellar PS2 was coming soon...

 

[Drizzlehell]

It was way more powerful than PS1 or N64 but PS2, Xbox, and GameCube pretty much blew it out of the water.

 

[polybius80]

I just think the Dreamcast died too soon (after 2 years and 4 months), many games were just slightly enhanced cross gen games.(Shadowman, Rayman 2, Tombraider...)

Publishers just ported quickly their usual IPs and didn't care about exploiting the Dreamcast since the stellar PS2 was coming soon...

DC has very interesting stuff like the compresion algorithm they used in its textures that proved to be difficult to match or exceed for the other consoles(excepts xbox) at the begining of their life, but lacked greatly in other things like the ram speed and size and vertex processing and ilumnation maybe because the tech available at the time, it was a very good product in my opinion when it released, it probably could be used in a smart way with various levels of details strategies to make competent ports of some games form ~2004 from the other consoles

 

[Fat Frog]

DC has very interesting stuff like the compresion algorithm they used in its textures that proved to be difficult to match or exceed for the other consoles(excepts xbox) at the begining of their life, but lacked greatly in other things like the ram speed and size and vertex processing and ilumnation maybe because the tech available at the time, it was a very good product in my opinion when it released, it probably could be used in a smart way with various levels of details strategies to make competent ports of some games form ~2004 from the other consoles

Interesting. I didn't know that much this game. Very good water effect (0:20) and the title is less blocky than the usual first dreamcast productions.(the announcer has 18000 polygons, not bad.) Nice looking game. Too bad, the DC was already dead

 

[Drell]

tomb raider iv used emboss bump mapping



it wasnt used that much, maybe it costs too much and has to be used with small textures

Not rrally the subject but crazy how on the same "generation" of consoles you had the PSX that could barely display any texture or polygon correctly while the Dreamcast was showing the same game with some advanced features that would only be used on the next gen.

 

[polybius80]

Interesting. I didn't know that much this game. Very good water effect (0:20) and the title is less blocky than the usual first dreamcast productions.(the announcer has 18000 polygons, not bad.) Nice looking game. Too bad, the DC was already dead

nice effect using the previous frame like tomb raider(PSX) over the water i guess

it was common to use higher poly models in some parts of games, blue stinger also used very high polygons models, here and there, unfortunately some games like sport jam suffered of very low poly models and even made with discreet polygons for everything else

 

[polybius80]

Not rrally the subject but crazy how on the same "generation" of consoles you had the PSX that could barely display any texture or polygon correctly while the Dreamcast was showing the same game with some advanced features that would only be used on the next gen.

DC came very late in the generation, its more interesting if you consider that we started the 90's playing nes games but ended with the release of DC and its first months

 

[Alexios]

Pretty much everyone other than you considers/calls what soul reaver does streaming. Maybe the term wasn't as common back in the 90s though so you can find sources just calling it uninterrupted or on the fly loading or whatever else. Even the Crash guy rarely if ever calls it streaming yet you conceded to it being an exception to the rule, ie admitted in a stupid way that indeed it can be done on cd even though you claimed it impossible and tried to ridicule those opposing that claim.


It doesn't load in corridors, it always has 3 world chunks in memory, unloads one as you progress past it and loads the one further ahead. One or two or all three or none may need corridors attached to pad the length. On the fly. Without pauses and loading screens. Or whatever. If your drive malfunctions or is slower for any reason it won't keep up and you'll get a dark void. IIrc also the word streaming shows but not sure about that, it doesn't matter anyway.

It's similar to Metroid Prime's streaming though that frequently needed extra time due to the complexity of the areas so doors didn't always instantly open into the new area (and this can be aleviated with faster devices than its drive even though the game wasn't made for them). Simpler design would have it completely seamless regardless, they chose not to compromise to that is all.

Now as you did with Crash you move the goalposts to wanting streaming exactly as GTAIII does it, laughing at the small size of the streamed files or whatever, as if ps1 could load GTAIII assets even if it had a dvd drive.

I did not say ps1 could run GTAIII as is, I said cd or gd or dvd do not inherently have or don't have streaming capabilities, they are just stored data and it's all about the game balancing what needs to be in ram with the available read speed of said data by the drive and interface speed.

Of course ps1 was slow as it had a 2x drive, the slowest and cheapest possible. There could have been another cd based system with a 12x or more cd drive and more ram and power and everything and that would still be cd and facilitate streaming of larger assets easier along with other tricks mentioned already.

GTAIII's gameplay and world design was also done to work in tandem with the streaming, that's why you have that vehicle top speed, that's why you have that world design, that asset density, that everything you ever see, that's why you have literal loading screens for many mission areas, usually indoors, as it can't stream infinitely without concessions the devs wanted those areas to be free of vs the open world etc., because it too is limited by the read speed and the data that needs to be loaded in ram to function in the game. Less than ps1 obviously as it is superior in every way. Both did streaming in game still.

Not sure of Dreamcast's read speed atm (I think it's a 12x drive but I mean what that translates to in actual data with the interface used) but it's likely faster than a ps1 given the huge difference in asset complexity, without crazy long load times (with exceptions, as there are ps2 games with long load times too).

Gamecube game examples have also already been mentioned but you conveniently don't respond but to specific comment bits you can, in isolation and ignoring everything else said (as well as all the debunked stupid shit you have claimed while appealing to your - lol - authority as having dabbled in development), pull a gotcha on. Lame.

I'm pretty sure both have slower read speed than ps2, maybe even half as fast, but different games or versions of games could make that work for streaming regardless by adjusting their design, tech, asset complexity and so on.

Where read speed is mentioned obviously that means including potential seek times as game data isn't linear like a video (video being another format outside your exclusively audio claim that games streamed often off cd but anyway, meme away I guess) hence tricks like duplicate data on discs etc. (and on Dreamcast cd rips without the duplicates of gd acccelerating drive failure because of the added seek stress).

 

[Panajev2001a]

There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but this was certainly not common practice. They were literally hacking the file system pipelines and bypassing interpreters to achieve this. They actually have patents on the systems they created for Crash. And that was for 64kb files, lol. He actually goes on at length describing how little data you could fetch in real time with cd-roms slow seek/fetch times, this is completely impractical for streaming real time geometry and assets for something like an open world game.

They were still doing, not 64 KB files, but 64 KB chunks of data (you would have wanted to use the most compressed geometry and texture representations you could do 64 KB of data was not too too bad, N64’s texture cache was 8 KB ) to keep the 2 MB of RAM full, seek time issues were partially ameliorated by duplicating data on the discs and reducing seeks as you are streaming the level back and forth. Far bigger problem was RAM not allowing to store enough seconds worth of level data in without lots of visibility tricks to cover seek times.

It was a game that came out less than 2 years after the console launch, of course it was doing innovative things compared to other devs just starting to push CD based consoles (vs PC’s that were not generally pushing HW at that low level), but it was not impossible and developers started figuring it out. Hacking the file system… hehe… that is the joy of console development back then and in general: you have access to the innards of the machines and are trusted to use it. Then it becomes a latency and transfer speed balancing act vs the way the program on CPU/GPU needs to consume it (producer vs consumer). 1 MB of VRAM (lots of it used by the display buffers), 2 MB of main RAM, 650+ MB of CD-ROM. At each level of that pyramid you have more data you want to work on than you can fit so you are streaming data in constantly and need to find ways to hide the streaming (including how fast you can move around the level, what is actually visible, etc…).

Seek times did not magically get better with DVD, the transfer speed grew but so did RAM (by 16x as we went to 32 MB or RAM from 2 MB, actually the time to fill RAM from Disc did not get smaller going from CD to DVD in PS2 but grew: https://kb.iu.edu/d/adme ), seek times were similar, and the space in ram used to hold “seconds of level data” instead of just working data for the current frame. The same problem remained with games installed on HDD’s whose bandwidth and seek times are much much much better than DVD’s (seek times alone are at least 10-100x better than optical disk, still nowhere near enough as RAM goes to 512 MB and then 8 GB and then more…)… see Cerny’s Road to PS5 talk (SSD section).

 

[Panajev2001a]

Pretty much everyone other than you considers/calls what soul reaver does streaming. Maybe the term wasn't as common back in the 90s though so you can find sources just calling it uninterrupted or on the fly loading or whatever else. Even the Crash guy rarely if ever calls it streaming yet you conceded to it being an exception to the rule, ie admitted in a stupid way that indeed it can be done on cd even though you claimed it impossible and tried to ridicule those opposing that claim.


It doesn't load in corridors, it always has 3 world chunks in memory, unloads one as you progress past it and loads the one further ahead. One or two or all three or none may need corridors attached to pad the length. On the fly. Without pauses and loading screens. Or whatever. If your drive malfunctions or is slower for any reason it won't keep up and you'll get a dark void. IIrc also the word streaming shows but not sure about that, it doesn't matter anyway.

It's similar to Metroid Prime's streaming though that frequently needed extra time due to the complexity of the areas so doors didn't always instantly open into the new area (and this can be aleviated with faster devices than its drive even though the game wasn't made for them). Simpler design would have it completely seamless regardless, they chose not to compromise to that is all.

Now as you did with Crash you move the goalposts to wanting streaming exactly as GTAIII does it, laughing at the small size of the streamed files or whatever, as if ps1 could load GTAIII assets even if it had a dvd drive.

I did not say ps1 could run GTAIII as is, I said cd or gd or dvd do not inherently have or don't have streaming capabilities, they are just stored data and it's all about the game balancing what needs to be in ram with the available read speed of said data by the drive and interface speed.

Of course ps1 was slow as it had a 2x drive, the slowest and cheapest possible. There could have been another cd based system with a 12x or more cd drive and more ram and power and everything and that would still be cd and facilitate streaming of larger assets easier along with other tricks mentioned already.

GTAIII's gameplay and world design was also done to work in tandem with the streaming, that's why you have that vehicle top speed, that's why you have that world design, that asset density, that everything you ever see, that's why you have literal loading screens for many mission areas, usually indoors, as it can't stream infinitely without concessions the devs wanted those areas to be free of vs the open world etc., because it too is limited by the read speed and the data that needs to be loaded in ram to function in the game. Less than ps1 obviously as it is superior in every way. Both did streaming in game still.

Not sure of Dreamcast's read speed atm (I think it's a 12x drive but I mean what that translates to in actual data with the interface used) but it's likely faster than a ps1 given the huge difference in asset complexity, without crazy long load times (with exceptions, as there are ps2 games with long load times too).

Gamecube game examples have also already been mentioned but you conveniently don't respond but to specific comment bits you can, in isolation and ignoring everything else said (as well as all the debunked stupid shit you have claimed while appealing to your - lol - authority as having dabbled in development), pull a gotcha on. Lame.

I'm pretty sure both have slower read speed than ps2, maybe even half as fast, but different games or versions of games could make that work for streaming regardless by adjusting their design, tech, asset complexity and so on.

Where read speed is mentioned obviously that means including potential seek times as game data isn't linear like a video (video being another format outside your exclusively audio claim that games streamed often off cd but anyway, meme away I guess) hence tricks like duplicate data on discs etc. (and on Dreamcast cd rips without the duplicates of gd acccelerating drive failure because of the added seek stress).

In the end it is a memory pyramid and systems keeps some RAM as latency hiding buffers for I/O and memory is moved around as needed. It is a problem of figuring how how fast each layer is and how much data you need, how much you can store, how latency sensitive each streaming solution (for whichever layer) is and then you try to chunk the data (and try to compress it) and lay it on the disc well to make sure the whole system works, and ensure your level design does not force you to request more data at a faster pace you need, etc…

People discover consoles were dealing with resources virtualisation before things like PRT/SFS/MegaTextures, etc… not saying it was easy, but it was possible and people were doing it.

 

[supernova8]

I remember it being the sort of "hipster" console at the time. Everyone would be like "oh yeah I'm getting a PS2" or "I'm getting a Gamecube" and then you'd have some emo kid with long hair, baggy pants and vans shoes like "you should try jet set radio mate".

Based on this video:


It was good at doing what it did at a high resolution but was unable to do any of the advanced rendering/lighting stuff PS2 could do.

 

[Boy bawang]

There was arguably less difference between a Dreamcast and PS2 as there was between a PS2 and an Xbox.
In the beginning, there was even games looking better on Dreamcast than in their PS2 counterpart such as DOA2. And well, there was Shenmue...

 

[cireza]

prior to DVD you could only stream audio from disc

This is not true. Dreamcast has many games streaming assets from disc real time, like Crazy Taxi for exemple which streams the city. Even Saturn has, for exemple Road Rash.