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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 1.75 MB, 800x803, Castlevania_-_Symphony_of_the_Night_%28Saturn%29_-_%28JP%29_-_01.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8099770 No.8099770 [Reply] [Original]

The Saturn version of Symphony of the Night is superior to the PS1 version.

>> No.8099773

Yes but I already knew that

>> No.8099778

The iOS version of Symphony of the Night is superior to the Saturn version.

>> No.8099780

>>8099778
>touch controls.
Nope. Instant 0/10

>> No.8099790

>>8099770
>all the tiles and art lOokIn GoOd with no way to fix it
>map behind a load screen and an additional button press
>new content is C grade
>slowdown and fucked effects and transparencies
It's sort of charming in a high school amateur way to see the ways they got it on to the Saturn without actually redesigning around its strengths. It's a neat curiosity but your opinion is come-on-now as fuck. Playing through it now

>> No.8099815 [DELETED] 

>>8099770
Not only is that not true, but also it doesn't matter because SotN is a boring, casualized piece of shit that ruined the series by turning it into Gothic RPG Metroid instead of skill-based platforming action so any version of it is going to be terrible regardless.

>> No.8099851

dude the shiturn is totally a 2d monster!!!

>> No.8099868 [DELETED] 
File: 2.69 MB, 440x360, princess-crown.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8099868

>>8099851
Yes.

>> No.8099872

>>8099780
iOS has native support for many controllers.

>> No.8099910

>>8099851
While I feel like Saturn's 2D superiority is a little overstated, Saturn SOTN was clearly a square peg shoved into a round hole and they did nothing to intelligently redesign the game for the system.

>> No.8099921

>>8099851
Consider yourself kicked in the face, Aussie-kun

>> No.8099923

>>8099868
What game? That ghost monster is very charming.

>> No.8099926

>>8099923
>filename

>> No.8099937

>>8099923
Sonic 3D Blast

>> No.8099945

>>8099778
What does it offer

>> No.8099948

>>8099770
Despite shoving a few extras in there, the Saturn version is a lazy port. Just look at how they stretched the assets to fit the Saturn's native aspect ratio rather than redesigning the art and sprites.

>> No.8099949

Any decent balancing mods?

>> No.8099985

>>8099949
For the PS1 version? Probably only this one https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6125/ which I haven't used. Don't bother with Hardtype, it's fucking lazy garbage that doesn't fix anything, nerfs or outright removed items and boats enemy stats to hell and back. Alternatively, get a patch that locks exp gain and play with Luck Mode or something.

>> No.8100021

>>8099770
>(You)

>> No.8100047

Why did Konami become so lazy with ports starting from 5th gen?

>> No.8100779

>>8099923
Vanillawares first game

>> No.8100781

>>8099770
Not with those load times and non uniform pixels it’s not

>> No.8100784

>>8099780
>not owning a controller

>> No.8100904

>>8099815
>Gothic RPG Metroid
This sounds based as hell

Enjoy not being able to move after you jump on your janky crap platformers

>> No.8100915

>>8099770
maria and the new area are nice but fairly minor
maria is boring easy mode and the new area isn't particularly interesting either
the poor performance and fucked transparency are more significant to me than the new content desu. plus i just don't like the saturn.

>> No.8101092

>>8100784
>>8099872
Yes, I'm going to carry a controller with me in my pocket and attach it to my phone when I feel like playing a game.

>> No.8101101

>>8099945
Hipster cred for being as contrarian as possible.

>> No.8101102

>>8099985
I got as far as the Minotaur/Werewolf fight on this patch. So far, it seems to be doing a better job of keeping the game challenging but doable with some effort. I actually got use out of casting Hellfire to take out armor enemies.

>> No.8101832

>>8099770
No.
The added content isn't worth the technical downsides : both music tracks suck and the extra levels feel out of place and aren't interesting to play. You're just being a faggot hiptser as usual, OP.

>> No.8101903

>>8099778
>>8099770
The xbox360 is supeWe can do this fucking game all night.

>> No.8101926

>>8101832
OK, thank you. Next.

>> No.8101986

>>8100904
>based

You got WORDFILTERED.

>> No.8102003

Emulating the Saturn version eliminates all of the slowdown and at least minimizes time spent on all the extra loading screens. I'm glad I finally got to play it and dick around in the new areas but outside of Maria and the weird Richter sprite it's a curiosity a best

>> No.8102076

>>8102003
No. It was my only means of playing the game in 1998, so fuck you.

>> No.8102146

>>8099851
Eat penis, Australo fag

>> No.8102159

>>8102003
Still doesn’t fix the poorly scaled sprites

>> No.8102182

>>8102159
It doesn't but it didn't really bother me when actually playing and everything is in motion

>> No.8102239

>>8102159
idgaf desu

>> No.8102367

>>8102182
>>8102239
>Longer loading times
>Loading in areas where there was previously none (single rooms split into multiple rooms now with loading in between)
>Some rooms missing entirely
>Mismatched resolution which they just stretched out resulting in distorted sprites and other artefacts along with incorrect aspect ratios
>Lower quality downsampled audio
But I guess you can play as Maria

>> No.8102370

>>8102367
Yes.

>> No.8102375

>>8101092
>you can only use your phone when you're not at home
are you retarded?

>> No.8102378
File: 9 KB, 236x290, iuNJJK46R7.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8102378

>>8102367
oh no no no

>> No.8102387

You faggots need to stop pretending you speak Japanese, I know you haven't practiced in months you dumbass niggers, and if one of you responds with your japanese certification I don't give a shit because for every one of you there are 10 other larpers. At any rate, no, this version is not the best.

>> No.8102391

>>8102387
I spoke to my wife this morning.

>> No.8102392

>>8102375
Why the fuck would you phone game at home?

>> No.8102395

>>8102391
Gay

>> No.8102398

>>8102395
DIL8

>> No.8102446

>>8099770
Hmm, maybe Sega will rerelease it on their next-gen console?

OH, WAIT A MINUTE—


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

AAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

>> No.8102450

>>8102446
Digital re-release

>> No.8102552

>>8099770
PSP/Chronicles is based on Saturn or PSX?

>> No.8102597

>>8102387
Holy shit, I broke this mother fucker so hard by posting that N1 certificate. Literally kill yourself for going through every single thread where someone posts Japanese cover art and complaining about this shit. If you want to play Japanese games so bad, why not try learning the language instead of getting mad at successful people? No one is this obsessive without having some serious self esteem issues.

>> No.8102613

>>8102552
PSX but with new translation, maria mode (based on Rondo) and some fixes here and there. Every other version is just PSP ver

>> No.8102887

>>8102367
>Loading in areas where there was previously none (single rooms split into multiple rooms now with loading in between)
The load times actually are there in the PS1 version as well. KCEN just completely failed at handling it properly on Saturn so it goes to a now loading screen instead of just pausing for a second like it does on the PS1.

Comically enough, the entire reason the pause menu takes so long to load is because they're loading in a 700+KB Font file very slowly. For the English patch it was replaced with a 30KB ASCII font file and suddenly the annoying load times for the pause menu went away.
>Some rooms missing entirely
Which ones? This is the first I've heard of this
>Lower quality downsampled audio
The audio quality is 44100Hz, so if anything it's a little higher than it is on PS1 as on PS1 it's something like 37000Hz

>> No.8103328

>>8101092
That's the spirit

>> No.8103342

>>8102367
>>Some rooms missing entirely

This one i never understood, i saw the full map of the Saturn version and it looks the same.

>> No.8103343

>>8102887
>The audio quality is 44100Hz, so if anything it's a little higher than it is on PS1 as on PS1 it's something like 37000Hz

Then why its sounds worse bitch?

>> No.8103817

>>8099790
Pretty much this. I borrowed the SS version back in '99 or so and was pretty disgusted. Not even worth keeping.

>> No.8103829

>>8103817
LARP pisshead

>> No.8103840

As a dealer on ebay I sold 5 of these last year. Pays way better than the PS1 release. I can currently buy them for 150 in Japan and I get 300 to 400 here.

>> No.8104071

>>8102887
>if we put lower quality audio on a higher sample rate, that makes it better
That’s not how that works mate

>> No.8104447

>>8103343
>Then why its sounds worse bitch?
It doesn't.
>>8104071
The only reason the audio quality would be dropped would be to save space. Both games use ADPCM compressed audio streams. PS1's Audio chip can play ADPCM so it uses that format, the Saturn version uses a Software decompressor. However ADPCM formats have various implementations that have very low CPU footprints, so it's not hard to do.

While Saturn SotN doesn't use something as nice as ADX, it seems to be using a variant of IMA ADPCM and it has pretty good results. I bet if you listened directly to the files on the disc you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

>> No.8104897

>>8099851
the saturn was considered a 2D beast because it could handle a lot of sprites on screen. Nothing on ps1 compared to Dragon Force

That said, the saturn had worse colour maths than the super nintendo

>> No.8104904

>>8104897
>the saturn was considered a 2D beast because it could handle a lot of sprites on screen.
That's really not what gives it it's 2D Strength. VDP2 is what gives it the edge for 2D stuff.
>That said, the saturn had worse colour maths than the super nintendo
Except the Saturn handles transparency exactly as the SNES does and then some as it supports additive blending.

>> No.8104936
File: 327 KB, 800x1000, 55125099_p0.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8104936

>>8104904
then why was transparency both rare and limited on the Saturn? on Saturn you couldn't even layer a transparent sprite over another sprite, the other sprite would not draw

>> No.8104978
File: 1.96 MB, 1280x720, guardian heroes.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8104978

>>8104936
example

>> No.8105287

>>8099778
PS1 > Saturn >>>>>>>>>> iOS

>> No.8105312

>>8104936
> Saturn you couldn't even layer a transparent sprite over another sprite
It actually can do that. The issue is this. VDP1 can't see what VDP2 is going to draw in it's frame buffer. So if VDP1 is doing the transparency it can either blend the color with other sprites in the frame buffer, or set a flag to have the blending be down with whatever background layers are going to be drawn by VDP2. But it can't do both. With 3D objects you get the issue of pixel overdraw corrupting the transparency. VDP2 however doesn't have this problem if it's doing the blending.

In the Guardian Heroes example it's because the developers chose to blend with VDP2 objects and not VDP1 objects. If they blended with VDP1 you'd see the sprites behind it, but not the VDP2 objects.

There are ways to work around this and you do see a lot of 2D games doing these tricks:
- Alternate every other frame between blending with VDP1 objects and VDP2 objects. If your game is running at 60Hz it will look like proper transparency. The Cotton games do this.
- Render all the sprites that will be behind the transparency to a VDP2 layer, then have your transparent sprites be drawn to the frame buffer and set to blend with VDP2 objects. Grandia does this in battles.
- Render your Transparent Objects to VDP2 and have it do the transparency for you.

For things that are drawn on VDP2 though you can just have it do the transparency without much effort. A lot of games use this for weather effects, shadows, clouds, text boxes, etc.

As for the SNES, again it renders in a very similar fashion for blending and transparencies and actually has a lot of similar limitations.

>> No.8105317

>>8105312
>In the Guardian Heroes example it's because the developers chose to blend with VDP2 objects and not VDP1 objects. If they blended with VDP1 you'd see the sprites behind it, but not the VDP2 objects.
why not do it the other way then

>> No.8105319

>>8105317
Because then you would have a solid cape where ever the pixels are overlapping with the background and it would look even more odd. You would only ever be able to tell it was transparent when the few pixels from another sprite were underneath it.

>> No.8105323

>>8105319
and not a problem faced by sneschads

>> No.8105397

>>8105323
Because SNES doesn't have one chip dedicated to sprites being drawn in a frame buffer with no knowledge of what's being drawn behind it. It does however have it's own set of limitations, some even more limiting than the Saturn. For example on the SNES you cannot stack multiple transparencies on top of each other. You can however do this on the Saturn.

>> No.8105403

>>8105397
why didnt saturn devs then stack a transparency over another sprite with an opacity of 100%

>> No.8105427

>>8105403
What exactly do you mean?

>> No.8105435

>>8105427
you said saturn could stack transparencies over each other, so why did developers have such difficulty stacking transparencies over opaque sprites?

>> No.8105449

>>8105435
Do you mean just drawing a 50/50 blended sprite over a normal sprite? Some games do just that. I already explained the trade off to you. You can either blend with sprites or blend with the background layer but not both at the same time because of the split frame buffer set up between VDP1 and VDP2. If you have it set to blend with sprites there's nothing stopping you from stacking multiple transparent sprites on top of each other. If you blend with VDP2 backgrounds though it's going to erase the pixels of the sprites behind the top most sprite.

You can also have VDP2 doing additional transparency effects on top of the VDP1 transparencies which is another thing the SNES cannot do.

>> No.8105512

>>8099790
What was wrong with the Saturn that made SotN not work well on it? I thought the Saturns whole deal was that it was designed entirely around being the perfect machine for 2D games, and that part of why it failed was that when consumers became autistically 3D only after Mario 64 launched it was a terrible system to run 3D games on. Seriously I've never seen a 3D Saturn game that didn't make me want to tear out my eyes.

>> No.8105614

>>8105449
why didn't the Guardian Heroes devs do that
Why did Mega Man X4 and SotN use dithering

>> No.8105759

>Less color
>Shitty extra stages

>> No.8106171

>>8105512
>What was wrong with the Saturn that made SotN not work well on it?
Nothing, it's just a lazy port. Transparency is the only thing the Saturn isn't that great at.
SotN Saturn is bad because Konami did nothing to re-design the game around the Saturn's strengths, the most notable one being stretching the screen out to the Saturn's higher resolution rather than make any real use of it.

>> No.8106305

>>8105614
>why didn't the Guardian Heroes devs do that
This has already been answered.
>Why did Mega Man X4 and SotN use dithering
Because dithering is faster and doesn't have the same either or limitation. The other issue is the both use paletted graphics. While you can still technically use VDP1 transparencies in that situation, the manual states the results are not predictable as the calculation is done by averaging the 15-bit RGB values of each pixel. So if the pixels aren't 15-bit RGB but instead color lookup values you'll get odd results. Some devs did work around this by setting up their palettes right, but it does take a lot of extra time and effort.

That said, Both games do use real transparencies for VDP2 layers as well as for certain sprites when they can.

SotN though being a lazy port actually does use quite a few sprite transparencies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-iAV5lJzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVepeDyfb8

Also pretty much every time you see a candle or lantern, the light glow around it is being done with a VDP1 transparent sprite. Now SotN being a lazy port doesn't do anything special other than VDP1 transparent to a VDP2 layer.

For an example of VDP1 transparencies blending with other sprites look at Keio 2 (~9:30 mark):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Phzqa8_pQ&t=570s

Notice how the lantern lights and water splashes are all blending with sprite objects, but not the background objects?

Cotton Boomerang is probably one the most interesting uses of VDP1 transparency though as the developers found they could alternate between blending with VDP1 sprites and blending with VDP2 backgrounds every frame to get the desired look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAnidA9USH0

>> No.8106319

>>8106171
> the most notable one being stretching the screen out to the Saturn's higher resolution rather than make any real use of it.

The stretching is bad, but it's really not the most notable thing of being a lazy port. I'd say the fact they waste 2 entire VDP2 layers on text drawing is the most idiotic part of the whole port. As a result they throw a lot more of the scene onto VDP1 which causes issues with both doing transparencies as well as just being too much for VDP1 to draw in some cases. They waste 1 VDP2 layer for drawing debug text which is never actually used outside of dev builds so they could have made use of that better. The other wasted layer is used for draing story dialogue. So regardless of if you're actually seeing the scene currently or not, that layer is reserved and has the text for it sitting in VRAM at all times.

>> No.8106435

>>8106305
>this has already been answered
you said what they did but not why

>> No.8106652

>>8106435
I did explain why. You can either blend with backgrounds or blend with other sprites but not both. It should be obvious that they chose to blend with the backgrounds because they personally thought it looked better. The other alternative would be that you would just have opaque pixels wherever it overlaps with background objects which would look odd and jarring.

I explained this in detail in this post.>>8105312
I explained more here. >>8105319

Why don't you actually take some time to read and learn about these systems instead of just replying for the sake of replying?

>> No.8106672

>>8106171
Keep in mind that people didn't play these games in emulators or on LCDs when they came out. They played them on CRTs that didn't give a fuck about your horizontal resolution, and would just display everything in its 4:3 tube.

Essentially, if you play the game as it was originally intended, the aspect looks correct and equivalent to the PSX version, since a CRT would have actually stretched out the PSX version to the same width of the Saturn version.

>> No.8106676

>>8099770
The Saturn as a whole isn't superior to anything

>> No.8107029

>>8106676
K aussie kun

>> No.8107062

>>8106672
This isn't quite accurate. While yes the PSX version would be stretched to fill the 4:3 space, you would just have non-square pixels. What the Saturn does is duplicates every 4th pixel which causes uneven scaling causing things to look off and a tad distorted, even on a CRT.

>> No.8109629

>>8101832
The music was the only quality addition to the Saturn version, especially the unique theme for boss Maria/Maria's final boss.
>>8103342
I don't think it's missing rooms. It is, however, lacking properly-scaled map completion percentage for the true ending.