/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3360214
What kind of retarded question is this

>>3360214
I can't think of a single DC game that was better on PSX.

I'm not trying to derail your thread, but I don't know why DC wouldn't be the choice here.

>>3360214

Wow, I never realized the difference in graphics between the PS and the DC.

>>3360214
wow, really makes you think

>>3360224
Not retarded, never played this game before, just want to know exactly if the original or the ported version is better, any way just found out that Nixxes ported the Dreamcast version and this guys are simply the very best at porting games.

http://www.nixxes.com/nixxes/projects/19-uk/projects/134-legacy-of-kain-soul-reaver

>>3360225
Because the Dreamcast is shit.

>>3360214
Is this a good game?

>>3360214
Nothing wrong with the psx version, also both version feature no loading times, I dont even know how the hell they did that.

>>3360251
>1.5 million copies were sold by 2001

1.5 million people think it is good dude

>>3360267
>everyone likes every game they buy

>>3360242

Cast him in

>>3360214

Dreamcast. The PSX version looks like total ass, has huge load times, and the frame rates are abysmal.

Pretty much all PSX 3D games have aged like total shit.

>>3360285
>everyone buy every game they dont like

>>3360307
Kill yourself.

>>3360314
All he has to do is run a PSX 3D model across his wrists.

>>3360307
>has huge load times
Nigga what, a major technical achievement of Soul Reaver was the fact that in-game load times were few and far between and the world was seamless

>>3360337
>>3360307
Are you still mad about people shitting on the N64 (which actually aged the worst out of all of them) in the other thread, champ?

got this for dreamcast a few weeks back, are dreamcasts meant to be annoyingly loud or is mine just on its last legs?

>>3360378
Turn the volume down on the TV.

>>3360214
The PC version.

-Argument settled-

>>3360384
Doesn't that have major sound problems that makes it not render echos properly?

>>3360386
Not that I know of, but it's been ages since I played it.

Put the PS1 version in your PS2 and turn on texture smoothing.

There you have it, the Dreamcast version.

>>3360309
Nobody implied that you dickhead.

This game is awesome and I prefer the ps1 version only because the dreamcast controller is terrible

>>3360406

>>3360378
GD-ROM drives are loud as fuck and they always have been.

>>3360427
A girl has truly become nobody.

>>3360384
PC version is just a buggy port of the psx version in higher res. The DC version has better textures and models than both the PC and PSX

to anyone considering the pc version, dont.
if you dont want to pay for the dreamcast version you'd be better off emulating the ps1 version
the pc port is just absolute garbage, just pretend it doesnt even exist

>>3360449
played through the Windows port. What's so bad about it?

>>3360214
neither, that game looks awful

>>3360617
Ikr? I bet it's not even 4K 120fps. Fukken lol...

>>3360258
Same way they do it now adays. They hid the loading screen.

See all the green mist? There you go. Its hiding the stuff the game is loading.

>>3360214
>Should I play the one with worse graphics or the one with better graphics?

>>3360214
You should play a game that isn't loved because everyone played it when they were an angsty 14 year old. Consider suicide.

>>3360214
>a game on a 5th gen console doesn't look as good as a game on a 6th gen console
Color me surprised OP.

Dreamcast version is superior visually but Playstation version has superior audio simply because the PS1 is fanless (passive cooling).

>>3360801
> Muh better graphics
I much prefer the organic fell of the PSX.

>>3360242
Go cry in your other thread

>>3360872
Wut mate??
What the little cooler of the Dreamcast has to do with decreasing the quality of the audio?

>>3360906

>>3360440
If you put it that way, DC's Soul Reaver, while with undeniably better textures, also looks more cartoony, making the color palette (look at Raziel) clash a lot with the environments, while on PS1/PC it just looks natural, like the lighting is actually worth something and it adds to the gritty realism which just isn't there on DC. You may think I'm going through some kind of hoops to make the most defined version look worse, but even today some HD remasters don't get it.

>>3360790
>Same way they do it now adays
only on hardware that usually needs most of its power to display what's on screen and can't afford to stream in the background

>They hid the loading screen
You're funny, tell another

>See all the green mist?
distance fog exists to fight pop-in and allow for more complex models. It has nothing to do with loading

>>3360915
they're assuming your DC is in the same room as your TV, and you're playing on low volume, so there's a loud hiss over the audio, coming from the fan nearby

>>3360985
The fan is no big deal, its the cd drive thats loud.

>>3360994
same difference. The anon's point was noise coming from the hardware interfering with sound coming from the tv. Also, you're a shithead

>>3360998
Same difference? No, fan and cd rom drive sound completely different.

>>3361013
wow, you're a special kind of asshole. Go die in a fire.

>>3360915
Fan raises the noise floor on the music and takes away your immersion in quiet parts of the game, reminding you you're just some guy in his living room.

I very much doubt Dreamcast has the awful green fog here >>3360258

>>3360225
>I can't think of a single DC game that was better on PSX.
It's rare but possible. Super Robot Wars Alpha is pretty awful on the Dreamcast because it's more of a remake than a port (PS1 version is all sprites, DC is polygons up your arse).

Typically speaking a game that's ported normally should always at least look a bit better on the DC.

>>3360214
PC version or emulate with texture filters

>>3361291
>a game that's ported normally should always at least look a bit better on the DC
why? The bare minimum for a port would be identical models and textures, plus a performance reduction for lazy wrapper code.

>>3360801
>>3360930
Having a good summer anon?

>>3360225
Tomb raider IV runs smoother on psx

>>3360368
>which actually aged the worst out of all of them
Explain

>>3360978
Oh please enlighten us with your apparently heightened intelligence, Mr Wizard. Please bestow upon us how they hid the loading screens, because apparently you have the design document on hand thst details it.

>>3360214
Are you just basing it off of the graphics in your pic?
If so, then you're retarded.

>>3360214
I've always thought that the PSX's graininess lended positively to the look of the game. The DC version might have better frame rate though; I can't remember.

I found the game a little underwhelming compared to Blood Omen. The series fell apart pretty hard.

>>3361529
I played them all, and I have to disagree, I think they got better.
Well, Blood Omen 2 is an acquired taste, though it is fun in its own way.
I would play the Playstation version only because I am more familiar with the controls.
And if someone is worried about graphics, then play it on a PS2 and smooth out the graphics.

>>3360214
PC version of course

>>3361469
He won't be able to unless he says "muh pixels and jitter tickles my nostalgia"

>>3361572

>>3361550
The story grew tediousIy narcissistic and the gameplay grew more restrictive to accommodate said narrative self-obsession. I liked exploring. The first Soul Reaver is still good to me, though weaker, but after that the series takes a dramatic nose dive.

>>3360402
You're an idiot

>>3360429
This. Honestly if you want to quiet the noise you can just do a SD mod.

>>3360214
Man that looks a lot like Naxxramas in WoW.

imagagine if a odd ball port of WoW exsisted on DC...??

>>3361518
>how they hid the loading screens
there aren't any. You don't need to show a splash screen while loading, and you don't need to load environments as a whole or at once.

>>3361525
why? What is missing that the graphics don't show?

>>3362273
Please leave

>>3361572
Or maybe because the vaseline filter (amongst other shit) makes almost every game on that system looks like I'm playing some third-rate bargain bin PC game on the lowest setting. It's more stable yes, but considering all that's said above, at what cost?

The PS1's graphics are rather shit as well, but really I find it to be a "lesser of two evils"-type situation at this point. At the very least I like that the visuals have a sharper look to them.

I also grew up playing an N64 btw.

>>3362285
And how do you load environments? through streaming them and hiding the pop-ins behind the fog.

Good, glad you could further prove that >>3360790 was right all along.

>>3363620
>>3360790
Green mist hides more complex details because rendering them all at once would cause immense slowdown. It has nothing to do with loading.

Loading in SR happens during the door and portal tranitions. It doesen't load the room you enter however, but the rooms you CAN enter from that room. At the same time it unloads the rooms you could've entered from the room you left.
So at any time it holds the room you are in, as well as all rooms you can enter from there in memory, loading and discarding them as you go through doorways.

>>3360242
Missplaced your 'the'

>Because Dreamcast is the shit

Fixed for you cuck.

>>3363474
It all boils down to library. Ps1 had some decent games like Silent Hill, Tobal. No 2, Bushido Blade, and a couple other Square titles.

>>3361307
perhaps because the DC had better polygon handling/an actual z-buffer?

>>3363620
>And how do you load environments? through streaming them and hiding the pop-ins behind the fog.

If this were even remotely true then no N64 game would have fog since cartridges give it virtually instantaneous loading.

As another poster already pointed out, fog is used to hide draw distance in order to improve rendering speed, nothing to do with loading.

>>3361557
The PC version is the PS1 one with fucked controls

>>3363721
Both rendering limitations and disc loading limitations are justifications for fog. Don't be dense anon.

Another game with no loading screens is King's Field.

>>3363721
Both rendering limitations and disc loading limitations are justifications for fog. Don't be dense anon.

I'll make it extra clear for you. You seem to think that finite rendering speed <=> fog when in reality finite rendering speed => fog. That is, it's not biconditional.

Consider a system with an infinitely powerful graphics card but finite memory and a finitely fast cd drive. That system wouldn't need fog for rendering, but it would need fog to hide objects being loaded to ram. So fog does not imply that the system is limited by its rendering capabilities.

Another game with no loading screens is King's Field.

>>3363980
>Consider a system with an infinitely powerful graphics card but finite memory and a finitely fast cd drive

Pull the stick out of your ass. We aren't talking about such theoretical systems, we're talking about 5th generation consoles.

How about you consider that 5th generation games have fog much closer to the screen than their memory limits allow for. Their RAM was tiny, but it was more than enough.

Conker is one of the most advanced games in the whole generation and it doesn't use the Expansion Pak because the developers said "no benefit".

>>3363997
>much closer to the screen than their memory limits allow for
wow, so much ignorance

>>3364003
Going along your stupid line of thought the game would need to constantly dump new assets from ROM to RAM per frame because they don't have the room to cache those assets in a store.

So very stupid.

>>3364012
welcome to the reality of streaming engines. Only, replace ROM with disc. And yes, that is precisely what streaming engines are doing, constantly streaming the assets you currently need from disc to RAM, or lucky-guessing which assets you may need next. It's terribly complicated to implement, an insane burden on the disc, and still often goes wrong. Yet with the limited memory of consoles, it's almost the only option

>>3364017
>And yes, that is precisely what streaming engines are doing, constantly streaming the assets you currently need from disc to RAM

They don't do it on frames you fucking idiot.

There is not a single game on 5th generation consoles that has pop-in / fog due to a lack of memory. Not a single one. NOT EVEN ONE. It's all because of a lack of performance.

>>3364030
nobody suggested anything per frame. You got an agenda, or just being ignorant?

>>3364041
>nobody suggested anything per frame

It's implicit you ignorant fuck if you say that fog = no memory to hold assets in distant view. You're essentially tying asset streaming directly to the rendering process done per frame.

>>3364047
if you use fog, you don't have to do them per frame. You sure you understand this fog thing?

>>3364051
>if you use fog, you don't have to do them per frame

What if you go forward? Fog is set to distance from the camera in the view frustrum

>>3364054
you ditch what's falling out of view and load what's coming into view. Need everything spelled out for you?

>>3364056
>you ditch what's falling out of view and load what's coming into view

This occurs on a per frame basis.

>>3364062
decrease the viewing distance and drop the model complexity and you can do it every X steps, or spread it out over several frames. Come on, you're being deliberately obtuse at this point

>>3364067
Because you're describing something that never happened.

>>3364071
in gen 5 or in gen eral?

>>3364076
In Gen 5

>>3364080
and that's a reason to pretend to be a dumb shit about it? Next time be less of an idiot in picking your battles

>want to play all these games because the story and characters are praised by everyone
>gameplay is fucking ass

>>3363997
You're a fucking idiot. How do you even function in day to day life? Things can have multiple purposes and multiple causes. The fog serves a dual purpose.

Since you seem to not understand logic here's this:

It rained therefor the sidewalked is wet. Someone goes up to you and says that the sidewalk is wet as someone turned on the sprinkler system. You call that person a dumb shit because you eat paint. No anon, there can be simultanious and multiple causes.

>>3364101

true for a lot of western games

i think ur picture answers that question.

I like to watch dubbed LOK cutscenes when learning another language.
I should pick up spanish again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLqMnQtPyM

>>3364523
..and japanese games

>>3364521
>muh false equivalances

stop talking you tech illiterate piece of shit

it only had one purpose in 5th gen

Wasn't Soul Reaver one of a handful of PS1 games that ran in high res mode?

I went back and played it a while ago and it looked a lot smoother than the messy, jaggy ugliness a lot of PS1 games had.

PC

>>3360214
Neither, soul reaver is awful.

>>3360225
GTA2 is better on the Playstation, but mostly as a matter of the balls to the wall difficulty they took from the PC version. Looks pretty on Dreamcast though.

>>3366935
GTA (1) gets no love. I'm kind of starting to think the R* free versions are fairly shit though, and PS might just be the best option, despite all its flaws

>>3364521
Fog can theoretically hide streaming of assets, yes, but it was never used that way, simply because games didn't use asset streaming back then. They hid loading times behind cutscenes, yes, but steaming simply was not a thing yet. At least not a thing used in PSX/Dreamcast games.

>>3367415
>simply because games didn't use asset streaming back then
>but steaming simply was not a thing yet

Crash Bandicoot.

>>3367558
>Good thing there are emulators with real time VRAM viewers to prove you wrong.
are you messing with me, or can you confirm the game is streaming to some degree? There are clearly loading sequences at doors, but they seem too brief for me to load everything on the other side, and that's a lot of geometry per area. Meanwhile the game has a strong room + tunnel structure, suggesting the tunnels are for loading

>>3367573
I'm just saying that streaming assets (be it models or textures) is not farfetched at all. I didn't try SR, but you or anybody else could get no$psx and check VRAM to see where it actually loads stuff. Although I don't remember how SR's music worked, since a lot of it is similar over time, they might load some prerecorded samples in the sound RAM and play them in a non-repetitive way, but if it uses XA, then it could not stream data unless there's no music, because XA requires exclusive access to the CD drive, unless they found a way to interlace data reads.

>>3367584
>streaming assets (be it models or textures) is not farfetched at all
yes and no. The general technique is sound, but I'm not 100% sure gen 5 had enough cycles to spare to load stuff in the background. Would be cool though if SR did indeed stream

>>3367593
Meh, moving data chunks does not require as many as those cycles you think it does. I can understand if they were compressed (unless they used stuff like LZW) but even then, considering the game's framerate, the fact that the 3D unit and GPU operate independently and use DMA, couldn't a 3x3 grid streaming system be implemented? In any direction the player went, they would only have to stream the equivalent 3 quadrants whenever an adjacent one is accessed.

The only weak point in my theory is that by wandering around the intersection of 4 quadrants you could easily overload the system, unless you put safety measures for that to happen, or just make bigger grids with smaller chunks.

>>3367661
>moving data chunks
a disc drive is involved. That usually includes lots of nasty timing issues. So you can't load everything during one frame, which means logic to split it across frames, and so on

>>3368675
>So you can't load everything during one frame

Did you just skip the part where I said the GPU acted independently and read DMA regardless of what the CD, its buffer and the CPU were doing? There is no frames, either the second FB is ready or it's not.

>which means logic to split it across frames

Or, you know, use some fucking fog.

>>3369157
GPU and DMA are independent, but you still need some "planning" when to load data, as it won't be ready within a frame. I mean frame in the sense of a gameloop iteration, as on these machines usually each loop includes rendering.

>fog
the fog hides the pop-in of the loaded models, we went over that. It does not help though with loading models from the disc within a couple ms. The logic to perform the loads from disc needs to run async (including dma, I suppose), or be split into multiple chunks that can each do a little bit during each game loop iteration.

Are you suggesting loading the data from disc is just a single DMA call, and the engine will automagically reference the new models as soon as they become available?